[davidc1]

Well, after about a year and a half after buying my Supertower III/R's, I finally moved them into the house while the wife was on vacation in Mexico with her sisters. Although I've had Supertowers since 1980 when I built them from a kit, my wife always occasionally asked me if we could get smaller speakers. I mean the ST are pretty big at about 5ft tall and 140lbs.  I got them for a steal of $500 on an eBay auction, but it did cost another $500 to ship.

But the ST III's are monsters of course. 6 1/2 ft tall.

I "prepped" her by teller her while she was on vacattion that I finally got my system sounding good again. She knows I've been frustrated with my hearing loss.

It took her about 4 min after walking in to really notice them. Then we listened to some music and she was impressed. Enought to approve the change. Yay!!

The are the oak finish which doesn't really go well with our stuff. The ST were walnut. My center channel LRC is the African Ebony wood. I would love to put that same kind of veneer on the ST III's. Anybody have experience with that? Normally I wouldn't think it would be a big deal, but the ST III's have a rounded edge on the front.

I had several of the woofers refomed and all 8 of the Focal T-120's refomed by Speakerrepairpros.com in Garden Grove, CA. They sound great. Even to my debilitated ears.

They will be powered by two Carver PM-2400 amps each operating in bridged mode, meaning approx 2400 watts RMS per channel (if we think of the speakers as about 8 ohms). Currently they are powered by a Carver PT-1201 with about 475 watts per channel RMS, and I can get the amp to clip if I'm playing some good quality recordings at high volume. The room is relatively big though at about 15x20ft. I use a Denon AVR-4800x  for source and room eq with Audyssey. I plan on upgrading to Dirac ART whenever it finally gets introduced. I have two VMPS Original Subwoofers I can place behind the TV and next to the couch for the bass EQ when that happens.

Being in SoCal, I also gotta figure out a way to stabilize them against earthquakes. They are not next to the wall...any ideas?

Here's a pic...what do you think? I'm so happy!

[toocool4]

The condition for the right channel is not the same for the left channel, is there any other way you can setup your speakers to make the condition for each channel similar? You will get far better sound from your system, if you can do that. Also best to keep speakers away from walls.

[veloceleste]

Always a major victory when the wife says “ok”! It looks like you may need a custom width outrigger. 

[davidc1]

The condition for the right channel is not the same for the left channel, is there any other way you can setup your speakers to make the condition for each channel similar? You will get far better sound from your system, if you can do that. Also best to keep speakers away from walls.

There is no way to move anything. I would say that rarely are the placements of anybody's speakers the same. I think I was doing pretty good as the only wall near either is the right speaker side wall, and it's about a foot away. Audyssey helps with this, and Dirac ART will take care of it real well when it is released.

[toocool4]

That’s a pity, a foot distance from those big speakers will not help at all. Those size speakers will be putting out a lot of low-end energy. I don’t see Audyssey or Dirac doing anything to help.

Do you have enough space to put something on the left-hand side to mimic what is going on, on the right-hand side?

[davidc1]

That’s a pity, a foot distance from those big speakers will not help at all. Those size speakers will be putting out a lot of low-end energy. I don’t see Audyssey or Dirac doing anything to help.

Do you have enough space to put something on the left-hand side to mimic what is going on, on the right-hand side?

Again, no real way to change anything. I'm lucky the wife accepted them in the first place.

Forgive me for questioning you, but if you don't think that Audyssey, or Dirac Art will do anything, my guess is you don't use them, and you may not know exactly what Dirac ART does.

I am not referring to a low-grade Audyssey, and I am not referring to Dirac Live. Dirac Art is a completely different animal

[Avoosl]

Davidc1,

     I owned and enjoyed those speakers for twenty years. They never failed to get wows of appreciation, even from picky audiophiles. You have a treasure there. Here are a few set-up rules I followed:

      The distance from the front of the speakers to my ears were about 15 to 16 feet away.

      The mid-high drivers were on the INSIDE. Something you may want to experiment with.

      They were angled so that the focal point was a few feet in front of my listening position. That is, NOT in the beloved equilateral triangle position.

       You have a nice, unreflective carpeting there. With the help of a friend, pushing them around shouldn't be hard at all, after all, I did it myself.

       You can fiddle with the mid-high controls on the back to balance frequencies a little. And don't forget the base tuning with small bits of clay stuck onto the drivers and the passive

I didn't see many helpful comments after your post, so I wanted to share my experience. I only moved to the rare, rare, unobtainium RM50s when I got the inside scoop speaking with Brian Cheney. I got the pair demonstrated at CES 2011, where Brian had the real vs live demo, which most fancy-pants speaker dealers shy away from, perhaps for obvious reason. They are made to use active external crossovers, which entails four monoblocks and a versatile DSP-Musik box which can be obtained from that wizard of the juice, Rich Hollis (HAL).

In short, work with what you have there and you may be rewarded with twenty years of MOST gratifying listening

[artur9]

davidc1, I have a similar situation to yours where my right speaker is "free standing" but the left is very close to a wall.  Rooms, am I right?

I put a quilt on that wall that helped some and room correction software helps some more.

I'm thinking maybe get a "acoustic blind" for that window instead of the one you have.  I have cellular shades behind the MLP and they do help.

[toocool4]

davidc1, you are correct I have not used those software but one thing I have experienced is software can’t fix room problems but only mask over them and give you the illusion of trying to fix the issue. As soon as you move away from your sweet spot, you will find out the problem is still there. The only way to fix room problems is physical intervention, meaning room treatment and proper setup. If you cannot move things around or have proper setup, then you have to go with the best compromise you can live with. Yes, most of us have some sort of compromise, unless we can have a dedicated room built.

I am still working on my room, as I have a window to the side of my right speaker, but I keep both speakers one meter away from the side wall / window and treat the first reflection points the same on both side so trying to have both sides as having the same physical condition as possible.

[Bob Stark]

Put a shim under the left side of the right speaker both near the front and near the rear of the speaker.  Use a level and get that speaker vertical.  Currently, the top of that speaker is leaning towards the middle.  It will help the sound a little and will look much better also.

I have a great pair of VMPS RM40 BCSE speakers and I had to shim under both speakers to get them straight. 
Bob

[davidc1]

Davidc1,

     I owned and enjoyed those speakers for twenty years. They never failed to get wows of appreciation, even from picky audiophiles. You have a treasure there. Here are a few set-up rules I followed:

      The distance from the front of the speakers to my ears were about 15 to 16 feet away.

      The mid-high drivers were on the INSIDE. Something you may want to experiment with.

      They were angled so that the focal point was a few feet in front of my listening position. That is, NOT in the beloved equilateral triangle position.

       You have a nice, unreflective carpeting there. With the help of a friend, pushing them around shouldn't be hard at all, after all, I did it myself.

       You can fiddle with the mid-high controls on the back to balance frequencies a little. And don't forget the base tuning with small bits of clay stuck onto the drivers and the passive

I didn't see many helpful comments after your post, so I wanted to share my experience. I only moved to the rare, rare, unobtainium RM50s when I got the inside scoop speaking with Brian Cheney. I got the pair demonstrated at CES 2011, where Brian had the real vs live demo, which most fancy-pants speaker dealers shy away from, perhaps for obvious reason. They are made to use active external crossovers, which entails four monoblocks and a versatile DSP-Musik box which can be obtained from that wizard of the juice, Rich Hollis (HAL).

In short, work with what you have there and you may be rewarded with twenty years of MOST gratifying listening

Thank you for your comments.

I'm about 17 ft away.

If I move the speakers a little more behind the TV, the left may be blocked by the TV, and I may have to switch them to put the mids and tweeters on the outside. Brian suggested keeping them on the inside. But...I'm not a "Golden Ear", (Is that term still used?)just a audiophile for about 50 yrs.

We just put the carpet in...I had to put my foot down with the wife to keep carpet in the living room. Generally, I like carpet, but it's really important for sound.

I still have to adjust the passive radiators with the clay, but it's difficult for me. However, I do like a high Q better, meaning a tight bass response. Being able to use Audyssey and the software REW, will help me adjust this.

[davidc1]

davidc1, I have a similar situation to yours where my right speaker is "free standing" but the left is very close to a wall.  Rooms, am I right?

I put a quilt on that wall that helped some and room correction software helps some more.

I'm thinking maybe get a "acoustic blind" for that window instead of the one you have.  I have cellular shades behind the MLP and they do help.

The left speaker is free standing with the wall in back of it about 2-3 ft away. The right speaker is the same 2-3 feet from the back wall, and about 1-2 feet from the side wall. While putting them against the walls would provide bass reinforcement of course, it would introduce more room modes. Frankly, I don't think I need any bass reinforcement, lol

We will be getting new blinds soon, we should be able to get cloth ones, like the cellular kind, but this is mainly gonna be the wife's choice.

[davidc1]

Put a shim under the left side of the right speaker both near the front and near the rear of the speaker.  Use a level and get that speaker vertical.  Currently, the top of that speaker is leaning towards the middle.  It will help the sound a little and will look much better also.

I have a great pair of VMPS RM40 BCSE speakers and I had to shim under both speakers to get them straight. 
Bob

Agreed. I have done that since I took the picture. My Supertowers never needed any shims since they are only about 5ft tall and a little wider.

[davidc1]

davidc1, you are correct I have not used those software but one thing I have experienced is software can’t fix room problems but only mask over them and give you the illusion of trying to fix the issue. As soon as you move away from your sweet spot, you will find out the problem is still there. The only way to fix room problems is physical intervention, meaning room treatment and proper setup. If you cannot move things around or have proper setup, then you have to go with the best compromise you can live with. Yes, most of us have some sort of compromise, unless we can have a dedicated room built.

I am still working on my room, as I have a window to the side of my right speaker, but I keep both speakers one meter away from the side wall / window and treat the first reflection points the same on both side so trying to have both sides as having the same physical condition as possible.

Thanks for your suggestions TooCool.

Todays good room correction software is frankly game changing. The improvement it can make to your sound quality is absolutley amazing. But, it has to be the good software. Most AVR's come with room correction now, but the type from manufacturers such as Pioneer, Sony, Onkyo etc ain't that great.

The Audyssey Multi EQXT 32 in the high end Marantz and Denon AVR's is awesome. And, you could upgrade to the even better Audyssey MultEQ-X. The software from Dirac, Dirac Live Room is also excellent.

I agree that the first step is proper speaker placement. And if you have a reflective room such as yours, proper sound absorbtion. But, you don't have to go overboard.

It is important to understand this isn't just frequency response EQ. It adusts delay, phase, levels using essentially an infinate number of digital filters that don't screw up the sound. In short, good room correction software fixes things that simply cannot be fixed by speaker placement or room treatment. Even Brian thought the future of room correction was going to be impressive before he passes away.

The new Dirac ART software does amazing things with cancelling out room modes and reflections using signals produced by the other speakers.

While I don't fault your opinion, the old addage of "software can’t fix room problems but only mask over them and give you the illusion of trying to fix the issue." is simply not true anymore. It can fix things that no amount of speaker placement and room treatment can't.

[toocool4]

davidc1 even if I wanted to try some sort of digital room correction, I can’t my kit are analogue. Turntable, Cassette Deck and FM Tuner.
Click on systems under my avatar to see my room and system.

[davidc1]

davidc1 even if I wanted to try some sort of digital room correction, I can’t my kit are analogue. Turntable, Cassette Deck and FM Tuner.
Click on systems under my avatar to see my room and system.

Understood.

If you ever get a chance to borrow somebodys outboard Audyssey or Dirac processors, I'd give it a try.

As an aside, may I suggest you purchase the miniDSP UMIK-1 microphone, (only about $75) and then use the free REW software to analyze your room.

Even if you never use any room correction software, the REW software will show you, and teach you, things you couldn't have dreamed about 10 yrs ago.

It includes tools for generating audio test signals; measuring SPL and impedance; measuring frequency and impulse responses; measuring distortion; generating phase, group delay and spectral decay plots, waterfalls, spectrograms and energy-time curves; generating real time analyzer (RTA) plots; calculating reverberation times; calculating Thiele-Small parameters; determining the frequencies and decay times of modal resonances; displaying equalizer responses and automatically adjusting the settings of parametric equalizers to counter the effects of room modes and adjust responses to match a target curve.

https://www.roomeqwizard.com

[toocool4]

davidc1, I do want to see what my room is like. I have only just moved in, in fact about 3 months.
Too many things taking money out of my pocket at the moment.
When I get round to it, I will be contacting Acoustic Fields for my room treatment.
They make you take measurements of your room before they design a solution for the room. They don’t do guess work, they are not cheap but I want to get it done properly.

www.acousticfields.com

[davidc1]

davidc1, I do want to see what my room is like. I have only just moved in, in fact about 3 months.
Too many things taking money out of my pocket at the moment.
When I get round to it, I will be contacting Acoustic Fields for my room treatment.
They make you take measurements of your room before they design a solution for the room. They don’t do guess work, they are not cheap but I want to get it done properly.

www.acousticfields.com

That sounds like a good idea. So they come out to take the measurements, correct?

[toocool4]

davidc1 they do for big jobs, but for other jobs they tell you what you need to get the measurements for them.

[davidc1]

davidc1 they do for big jobs, but for other jobs they tell you what you need to get the measurements for them.

So they provide you with the microphone and the software? Do you know what software they use?