[macdane]

Hope you don't mind, I decided to introduce myself to the group after lurking here for awhile ... I'm the guy Louis referred to several weeks ago who's transitioning from big Fried transmission line speakers to the Super 3S.

The bulk of my hifi history involves moderate- to high-powered amps and Fried transmission line speakers. I've also owned Quads, Maggies, Acoustic Energy and others, but I've always returned to the Frieds. About 12 years ago or so, I heard a 2A3-based system and decided to give it a go. I read what I could read, listened to whatever I could get my hands on, and bought a pair or George Wright 2A3 mono amps and Doc Bottlehead's Straight-8 speaker kit. A coworker who was helping me with the speaker cabinet skipped town with the kit plans and one of the drivers and I got distracted by a couple of job changes. More than a decade later, the question remained: what speakers?

I started out with a DIY set of single-driver Voigt TQWT using el cheapo Radio Shack drivers. They were a reasonable start, but offered too little in the mid-bass and no bass at all, and they too easily tended toward shoutiness. Off to the garage they went and were replaced by yet another pair of Frieds. Over the past decade, I've used the little 2A3 amps with either a C/3L and D2 combo or a pair of Studio IVs. At low volumes, they gave me the sound I wanted. At higher levels, well...there are no higher levels. So, with no local dealers other than Best Buy (!) I took a leap of faith and ordered the Super 3S.

After receiving the speakers in late July, I put 100+ hours on them in the first week, then spent the next week experimenting with placement. All of this was done using an old Luxman R113 receiver. On Monday, I moved them into my main listening room with my "real" rig, consisting of a Sony 999ES for CD/SACD, a Meier Corda Prehead, and the Wright amps. Cables are XLO signature interconnects with Audioquest Jade to the speakers.

My plan was to fine-tune the placement based on what I'd found in the first room, then spike the platforms and smile. To my dismay, everything suddenly sounded awful. Not just not great...awful. In the "staging room" with the Luxman receiver, the only real criticism I had was with the bottom end. The soundstage was massive and deep, and the speakers utterly vanished in terms of being discrete sources of sound. Ok, if I'm picking nits I'd say individual instruments and voices "appeared" a bit larger than life, but that seemed minor. And as accustomed as I am to almost limitless deep bass, it was no surprise that the bottom end seemed lacking. But I expected that to improve with the tube amps anyway, and with time.

So what went wrong? Dunno. The midrange sounded shrill, and no matter what I did I couldn't prevent certain sounds from really "sticking" to the speakers. Some placement options sounded better than others, but the speakers very forcefully announced themselves as the sources of the music. Ugh. I spent the better part of two days making adjustments to location and toe-in, both small and large, and finally threw in the towel but left them playing. As I headed out to mow the lawn last night, there was one last thing I wanted to try. With the speakers closer together but further from the wall behind them, everything gelled. Woo-hoo!

Screw the lawn ... I spent the next 4 hours listening to everything I could get my hands on. My musical taste covers most anything other than hiphop, rap and today's new country, but my real emphasis is on small combos of acoustic instruments and voice. Jazz, chamber, folk, blues...that covers 90% of my listening. Not last night. I threw everything at them, and they *mostly* took it in stride. Can't wait to try it again tonight, with spikes!

So that's who I am and what I'm doing. Thanks for reading...

macdane

[seikosha]

Whew...glad it worked out for you.  As I was reading it, I started to wonder if this story wouldn't have a happy ending.  Speaker placement can drive one crazy and for me, it can take a good month or more to really tweak the absolute best spot for an individual pair of speakers in my room.  Then, when an equipment change is made, sometimes that spot changes...it's an endless ordeal but one that can be really rewarded when you take the time and effort and sometimes...get lucky.

Enjoyed your story.  Just curious...what sort of set up did you end up with as far as placement within the room and distances and what is the size of the listening room?

Thanks for sharing!

[beowulf]

Great story, have you thought about room treatments at all?

[Louis O]

Hi macdane,

Thanks for sharing and seikosha took the words right out of my mouth. Really happy it all worked out. Placement is a huge deal and I constantly experiment too. All rooms are different as well. I had a situation at a show years ago with setting up and had all the gear on a rack in the center of the rig. Had the turntable up top as usual. It was a very good turntable too with a dustcover. Had been playing with the cover up during set up and it was good. By chance I closed it and it was a way better than good. Been thinking of trying out a long wall setup at the shop looks like I will give it a go.

Thanks again,
Louis

[JLM]

Welcome aboard macdane,

Your story reflects mine (fanboy for Fried transmission lines, interest in SETs, tried tiny amps with mid-efficiency speakers). 

The Wright is a good amp (I was trying to warm up to Decware). 

Currently have 'monster' single driver (mid-efficiency, F3=27 Hz) transmission line floor standers in the main rig.

Hadn't heard of such placement fussiness with Omega (like I've experienced with other small single driver floor standers).

Thanks for sharing.

[Canada Rob]

Welcome aboard macdane,

Very interesting post.  I have heard quite a few different Omega and Hoyt-Bedford speakers over the years in several listening environments and have never had an issue such as you describe.  All were played in untreated rooms, and with various sources and amps (flea powered SETs being my favourite).  Generally I would place the speakers about 1 - 1.5 feet from the wall and 6 - 7 feet apart depending on how far away my seating position is.  I toe them in so I can just see the inside side of each cabinet from my listening position.  One of the great features of Omega and Hoyt-Bedford speakers is their utter ease of placement.

The only things I can think of that could adversely effect imaging is badly mismatched or defective source equipment (amp/DAC/cabling), weird room acoustics, or defective speaker driver(s).  One other thing that can effect listening quality is the health, state of fatigue, and mood of the listener at the time of audition.  A couple of years ago I had a friend who has good ears and whom I have listened with often say the image was off to one side when for me it was properly positioned - turned out he had a head cold.  Just some thoughts, that may be of help.

[DaveC113]

My experience is along the line Canada Rob's.

I have had my Super 3 XRS in 4 different rooms of various shapes and sizes and never had an issue with placement. However, I do think placement makes a big difference and it is well worth the effort to experiment and find out what works best for you.

With the old hemp drivers I did have an issue with imaging for a while, I could never get the speakers to disappear in the room like a good system does... I tried a lot of things but in the end it came down to the amp. After I built my SET amp these issues went away and the speakers disappeared. When I upgraded my DAC a while ago things took another step forward, and when I came up with my current line of cables things got even better. So imaging can certainly be dependent on your gear as well as the speakers interaction with the room.

I bring my speakers a little farther into the room (center of speaker is ~2' from wall) and toe them in a little more than Rob, but it sounds like our preferred positioning is very similar.

[macdane]

Thanks guys! I'll try to tackle these one at a time; with speaker placement first.

My current room is roughly 15' x 11.5' (but much more complicated than that; I'll cover it in another post) and I have the speakers situated along the long wall, firing across the shorter dimension. They're about 39" from driver center to rear wall, very nearly forming a 64" per side equilateral triangle with my seated position.

This whole thing is kinda-sorta near-field and further from the walls than most for two reasons. One is to minimize the effects of my goofy room; the other is to tame the lower midrange/upper bass. Moving them back closer to the wall sounds too boomy, actually emphasizing the lack of true bass rather than fooling anyone into thinking it's there.

I haven't looked into room treatments yet, but perhaps someday. Sorry to say that I lost the soundstage magic when I spiked them, so I'm starting over in that regard.

Dane

[macdane]

Ok, next up is Canada Rob's question about potential culprits.

Based on my experience with other speakers, I'm ruling out defective or mismatched electronics. Other than the fact that 3.5 watts isn't enough for my Frieds, the sound I get is lovely...there's just not very much of it!

Cables are a possibility. I've read in various places that the world of SET amps and single driver speakers gets along better with relatively simpler cables than you normally find in hifi. I don't know for sure whether that should be read as "simpler is better" or just "simpler is fine." There's a difference...which is it?

You folks have a lot more experience at this end of the spectrum than I do, so I'll appreciate any advice you can offer. I have boxes full of cables from XLO, Audioquest, Straightwire, MIT, etc. If there's something about these typical hifi cables that doesn't synergize with SET amps and Omega speakers, what should I look for instead? Am I after particularly high- or low-capacitance, a certain winding topology, silver vs copper, solid core vs stranded?

Finally, I'd be surprised if room oddities weren't playing a role here, and I'll get to that in a few minutes.

Thanks!
Dane

[macdane]

Well that few minutes really stretched out! As it turns out, that lawn still needed to be mowed...

So now I'll try to lay out my room situation. I'm attaching a brilliant piece of artwork that will hopefully help, showing the room I'm currently using on the right, though either room is available to me.



As you can see, what makes this room weird is that it's missing most of the wall behind me and most of the wall to my left. Part of my thinking in moving to a near-field setup (as long as my wife will allow it, and so far she is!) is to minimize the impact of the room. It mostly seems to be working, other than that my speakers seem WAY more sensitive to placement than most of yours.

The other room (on the left in the diagram) is no less goofy, just smaller. It's also missing most of two walls, although things seemed to sound slightly better in there. I know this isn't a lot of information, but how would you guys approach this? Feel free to ask for any additional info that may help...like how high the ceilings are (8 feet) or what sort of floors (carpeted) or whatever else.

Thanks!
Dane

[opnly bafld]

Have you tried the speakers on either side of the 6' 2" opening?
I would try them on the right side of the opening with the listening position to the far right.

Lin

[DaveC113]

My current room is just like your room on the right side except I don't have the 6'2" opening on the left. The short wall opposite the 14'11" wall I do have, and I put some sound absorption on that wall as I didn't want reflection since the wall is missing on the other side of the room. I also have some fairly large traps in the front corners, 2 cylinders about 5' tall and 1' wide stuffed with fiberglass insulation... these help break up the corner nodes that normally form. I am lucky enough to have 12' ceilings in this room which is nice...

In any case, it is interesting that minor changes like spiking are making such large differences in your presentation. IMO, the 4.5" driver Omegas image extremely well, so keep at it, I'm sure you will find a solution you are happy with. 

[Good Times]

You should try a diagonal setup, it can work surprisingly well.

[beowulf]

Since you're dealing with a difficult room - read Red Spade Audio's Bass Integration Guide, then go to Radioshack and buy an SPL Meter and download and install Room EQ Wizard (REW ... it's free).  You can get the equipment that he recommends for under $100, but it's not neccessary if you have the SPL meter and a PC/Laptop.

Run some sweeps on your room using REW and the SPL Meter to find out where your hotspots are.  Knowing this information can allow you to fine tune your room's acoustics with speaker placement and addtional traps and panels (which you can build yourself or buy on the market).  I have heard that the results are very dramatic and plan on doing this myself shortly.

[JLM]

Steve Deckert (Decware owner) had a very similar room that he throughly decked out (sorry couldn't resist).  Here's one of several of his white papers with images of his room:  http://www.decware.com/paper39.htm

His tiny single driver folded corner horns take full advantage of the room shape to provide depth of sound stage potential while still sitting in small corners.  In your case the listening position is towards the back of the right (larger sized space) facing the rest of the overall room with the speakers in the same side of the space tucked into the corners on either side of the 6'-2" opening.  In Steve's case he didn't have the large opening to the dining room/kitchen and the small opening to the stairway/hall had a door.

Years ago I sat in that listening position for one song while attending a DecFest, but not being familiar with the speaker or music can't really give impressions.  Source was very high-end turntable, but I'm allergic to vinyl (any surface noise drives me itchy) so was totally distracted but do recall that it had depth of soundstage, sorry couldn't be more help.

But my first set-up in your space would be to straddle speakers across the 6'-2" opening and listen from the larger room.  I use a near field setup (68 inch equilateral triangle) and love it, which is what I'd try.  Obviously if possible I'd close off both openings into the space, especially if you share the home, even if the opening to the dining room was just insulated/decorative screens.  My audio man cave has an exterior insulated woodgrain fiberglass door with weather seals that can be painted/stained (it's been there nearly 10 years, maybe I'll do that some day   ).

[seikosha]

Thanks for the pics.  As many others have stated, I'd start with the speakers on the outsides of that opening in the larger of the two spaces.  Start with an equalateral triangle at different distances and then tweak from there after you find dimensions that work well.  The diagaonal suggestion is good too, it really can work in a difficult room but it does look awkward.  It might be worth it to try that kind of setup perhaps on the upper right corner (in your pic) using the corner as the center between the speakers.

Really though, every room is different and if you can, it's best to try every configuration you can until you find the best.

Good luck and keep us posted.

[Canada Rob]

A diagonal setup might be worth a try.  I remember some years ago a dealer who had a diagonal setup in his store and it sounded very good.  It was a one man store and the guy who owned it knew what he was doing.  I spent a lot of money there.

[DaveC113]

Diagonal setups seem to work to tame room response, especially when larger speakers are in smaller rooms... I have seen it done many times at RMAF to good effect when a symmetrical setup would often result in massive bass peaks. OP's room doesn't seem like it would necessarily need it to work out... it can look odd and might not be an efficient use of space. Still, no hurt in trying if it fits in with the room's layout. 

[Good Times]

Yep I've settled on a diagonal orientation to tame some bass issues (I use a sub), and at the same time widen the soundstage which was a little too narrow when setup on the short wall. The added bonus for me is that I have my sub placed in the corner void which makes use of that space. First reflection points are a lot further away from the driver than in any other orientation in my room too.

[JLM]

To lean on Steve Deckert again, he also promoted diagonal setup which I tried a couple of time for giggles in a previous room that really didn't have "issues" but sounded nice:

http://www.decware.com/paper14.htm

He has a few more white papers on room acoustics too.  Steve isn't in the main stream, so there are tidbits of different/interesting info there.