Help with speaker placement and room treatment - XL room

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Metfit77@gmail.com

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Hi everybody
I have fairly large room above my garage (36ft x 28ft x 11ft ceilings). There are lots of videos out there on how to treat a smaller room to make it feel bigger...(adding diffusion) but I don't think I have seen any videos or article on how to approach larger rooms. If anyone has a video or article to refer that would be greatly appreciated.

Regarding speaker placement, there are two options and neither are optimal.
1. I put my Nt-Oticas as front left and front right in my home theater. No issues having them a good 6-8ft from the front wall, but they would be 14ft apart, both of them being 7ft from a side wall. side wall treatment wouldnt be too complicated, but I would need to change my ht screen for a accoustic transparent screen and put some acoustic treatment behind it.

2. The only other place I could place them is in the corner facing the 36ft wall. The issue with this setup is that the right servo sub would be about 3ft from the wall on the right side, and the left side would be wide open...about 25ft away.

Regarding room treatment, since the room is a decent size, would diffusion still be recommended or simply aim to add absorbtion?

Thanks in advance for any wisdom you are willing to share.


Early B.

Re: Help with speaker placement and room treatment - XL room
« Reply #1 on: 24 Mar 2024, 11:36 pm »
An extra large room is a great problem to have. Sounds like one of your issues isn't so much speaker placement, it's combining HT with two-channel. It's doubtful that optimal speaker placement for 2-channel will be identical to the 14-foot width apart scenario for HT. That means you will need to consider moving your speakers (and possibly your listening position, too) back and forth between movies and music. With option #2, there are no issues with the servo sub being 3 feet apart from the wall. However, you'd benefit greatly by employing a swarm of subs. I have 3 dual servo subs in a 13x20x8 room and if I had the space, I'd add another one. For you, 4 triples would be a good start.

 

Metfit77@gmail.com

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Re: Help with speaker placement and room treatment - XL room
« Reply #2 on: 24 Mar 2024, 11:51 pm »
I have 4 x 15inch drivers i will be adding in dual 15s in sealed enclosures. I planned on putting them out phase on the back wall.

Early B.

Re: Help with speaker placement and room treatment - XL room
« Reply #3 on: 25 Mar 2024, 12:12 am »
I have 4 x 15inch drivers i will be adding in dual 15s in sealed enclosures. I planned on putting them out phase on the back wall.

That'll do it! 8)

richidoo

Re: Help with speaker placement and room treatment - XL room
« Reply #4 on: 25 Mar 2024, 01:16 am »
You don't need to do much. Speakers are far enough from walls and the room is big enough that the reflections are delayed enough so they won't compromise legibility of the direct sound from the speaker. Reflected sound that is delayed longer than 25mS is thought to be mostly benign, "reverb"

But too loud or too long midrange reverb is disconnected in time from the original sound, so it is non-linear and counts as noise. Too loud of a noise floor interferes with perception of low level direct sound. If you listen to music with large dynamic range then too much reverb can be a problem. High noise floor means you have to turn up colume to hear soft parts, then it's too loud in the loud parts. Depends on your music compressed/uncompressed, how critical you are about hearing accurate tone, etc.  Fortunately, excessive midrange echo is easily tamed with carpet, drapes, furniture, or 1-2" thick absorption panels or amplitude diffusion on ceiling or wall reflection points. If you like the room to have quiet as possible noise floor, or a dead sounding room, then consider reducing the size of the listening area with thin faux walls, or free-standing wall panels like they use in recording studios.

Wood construction attics are one layer of wood, and maybe sheetrock, so bass goes through that easily, so your bass response is probably excellent. If you hear any problems come back for specific recommendations.

A thick rug in front of speakers helps to cut down the midrange floor bounce.
Enjoy!

mlundy57

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Re: Help with speaker placement and room treatment - XL room
« Reply #5 on: 25 Mar 2024, 01:56 am »
Ideally you want your speakers to be a little closer together then they are away from the listening position. So 14ft apart wouldn't be an issue if they are on the 28ft wall. They could be 8ft into the room, the seating position 16-18ft away from the speakers, and still have plenty of room behind you to mitigate reflections off the back wall.

If they are on the 36ft wall, the seating position may be close enough to the back wall to cause issues if not well treated.

For position 2: If the servo subs are OB, there won't be an issue because they have nulls at 90 degrees so there aren't side wall reflections. It's kinda like the wall isn't there.

Metfit77@gmail.com

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Re: Help with speaker placement and room treatment - XL room
« Reply #6 on: 25 Mar 2024, 10:51 am »
In position 2, I wasn't as concerned about the wall being 3ft away than the other wall being 25ft away.

I was playing around yesterday and found a compromise that might work. It doesnt look the greatest but whatever.

My HT screen is 12ft wide so naturally I wanted to put the speakers on each side, about 6ft away from the walls. What I did is pull them out another 2ft from the wall and closer together (about 9ft apart). I also moved my listening position back 3ft. This made quite a difference, especially on imaging and reverb I was getting from back wall.

Now that speaker position decision is made, it's time to start room treatment.
1st step is absorbtion on side walls and ceilings.
Then (and this the part I am unsure), build a fake wall with built in skyline diffusion panels between the speakers (behind the HT screen) and on each side of the scren. Should I put absorbtion there instead?