Hi Josh,
Thank you so much for sharing your experience! I’ve enjoyed your writing one more time as I don’t think I can do the same in my native language, let alone in English. We maybe were looking at the x series around the same time and I got my x4 2 weeks ahead as I wasn’t as due diligent:)
I was trying to imagine your listening experience with the x4 and x5 based on your words. And was wondering how much of that difference was from the equipments and how much from the rooms/environment. As you described with the x5 with atma-sphere it’s mainly a new total surrounded by music experience, the room has to meet certain requirements (ie treated, more breathing room behind the listener etc). Any light you can shed on this front would be greatly appreciated.
Like you, I found my x4 to be much better than what I had before right out of the box. It’s certainly very close to my satisfaction sound wise. It’s refined after 2 weeks but I can’t describe the difference fully. I have a very similar situation around and behind the speakers as yours and have no room behind me. So I suspect it would be very difficult to get close to what you have experienced at Mark’s home even if I have the same gears. But I am willing to learn and experiment to see how far I can go. But to be honest that’s just an audiophile journey having much less to do with enjoying music.
Steve
Hi, Steve,
Sorry for the late reply. This was the earliest I could sit down and make an honest effort to answer your questions. I meant to address the issue of the rooms in which I listened to the X4s and X5s, as well as the degree of room treatment in them, in the piece I wrote, as it was worth mentioning, but, in my haste to get it done and posted, I inadvertently left it out.
So, regarding the rooms themselves, they were nothing special. The room at Spatial is rather narrow - 10' wide, 11' at the most, and maybe 20' deep, opening up on one side in the back to a larger work space. The speakers were pulled about 3' or so from the wall, with at most 2', possibly less, from the speakers to each side wall. The listening position was between 6' and 8' from the speakers (I moved it back a bit to better emulate my room at home), with the rear wall approximately (I'm guessing here) 10' behind me. The ceiling was typical, between 8' and 9'. The room treatment consisted only of carpeted floor and two probably 2" thick absorptive panels leaned against the wall behind the speakers. That's it. Not a carefully engineered or high-end setup. I actually was glad the room wasn't acoustically dialed in, as so often such fully treated rooms can lead to a sound you have no hope of recreating in your own living space. I understand that dealers want to show the gear at its best, but I think there's something to be said for hearing the gear in less than ideal circumstances. I doubt that is Clayton's intention - it's just very much a working shop and not a showroom. I imagine he'd rather have a polished room in which to show off his speakers, but I, and I may be alone in this, appreciate hearing the speakers when the room is somewhat militating against their best efforts. I suppose the ideal, or my ideal, would be to have one untreated room and one full-on professionally treated room, but then the speakers would cost $20K to pay for all that square footage. I'm all for the sub-par room and more affordable speakers. But I digress.
Mark's room, where I listened to the X5s, was also quite modest. As it was in his home and not a workshop, it was more, well, homey - no cluttered workbenches or drivers and components stacked on shelves or empty baffles leaning on walls - but it was still more a normal living than listening space. It was a bit wider than the room at Spatial, say 12', considerably shallower, with 8' or so to the wall behind the listening position, with the ceiling, again, around 8'. The speakers were situated much like those at Spatial, approximately 3' from the wall behind them and about the same from the side walls. For acoustic treatment, he had, also similarly to Spatial's room, a couple of relatively thin absorptive panels behind the speakers and then a small tapestry at each first reflection point on the side walls. It was very comfortable, but, acoustically, far from overboard or what most treatment-minded people would consider even sufficient.
I describe the acoustic aspects of these rooms in some detail in response to your concern that you couldn't possibly achieve in your room the same level of sound quality I heard at Mark's. Neither of these rooms was anywhere close to treated in such a way as to, theoretically, get the most out of the speakers, nor were the the dimensions of either room, according to the severe strictures I've heard laid out for the best room size relative to speaker size, close to ideal. Yet, against all odds, the sound. was. glorious. Would it have been better in better rooms? Possibly. Even likely. But you needn't despair of getting truly wonderful sound just because your room doesn't match up to a theoretical ideal. I understand that sound propagation is a matter of physics, not opinion, but, while the best room may give you the best sound, there is a vast quantity of good, and very very good, between bad and best. My own room is roughly 15'w x 30'l x 9'h. Good sized, but with a lot of unfortunate nooks and angles and all hard surfaces. The cabinet with all my gear in it sits in the unholy place between my speakers, though behind them by about 4', and has glass doors, and there's a large window behind that. On one wall, too damned close to the first reflection point, is a massive flat-screen tv. You can see from the photo I posted the short false-wall behind one speaker and the stairway leading to an opening leading up the stairs and out of the room. All of these things are anathema, according to room aficionados, to good sound, and, in an absolute sense, I don't disagree with them. But I'm here to tell you that, despite these egregious shortcomings, my previous speakers, the Dynaudio Heritage Specials, sounded beautiful, imaged with clarity and substance, and disappeared to the point that it was impossible to listen to and look at them and imagine any of the sound coming from them. And my new X5s, with virtually no break-in (if you believe in such things) are repeating this performance in spades, with everything the Dyns did in terms of beauty, clarity, resolution, and disappearing act, but all on a larger, fuller, grander, more (yes) spacious, scale, and still with heartbreaking sweetness and delicacy when called for. All this, in my highly compromised, entirely untreated room.
Now, all of that said, does that mean I don't believe in room treatment or that it can help? No. I absolutely do believe it can make a huge difference. In my last home, I had a pair of B&W 802 Diamonds. Despite some snobby poo-pooing you might hear from the odd anti-big-name audiophile or two, these are tremendous speakers, at least according to my possibly somewhat dim lights. But I was never able to get the most out of them in my room, which was 12' x 18'. Not a small room, but not big enough to accommodate such large speakers. Then a friend of mine bought a massive collection of room treatment - acoustic panels of various sizes and thicknesses and several corner bass traps. We stacked the corner bass traps floor to ceiling in the corners behind my speakers, put two 2" panels on the wall directly behind the speakers, two of the same at the first reflection points, and a 4" thick panel in the rear corners of the room. Voila! A sonic miracle. What had been a jumble of instruments and voices piled on top of each other in a heap between the speakers, suddenly spread out and became a stage with instruments and voices in their proper places, with, on some recordings, the stage seeming to extend beyond the boundaries of the room. It was amazing and made me a believer in the efficacy of room treatment. And this was a practically random, entirely uneducated disposition of the treatment. But, again, all of that said, in my current room, with no treatment whatsoever and all sorts of acoustic bugaboos, I'm getting wonderful sound, a wide, deep soundstage, tremendous separation and resolution, and, most importantly, the music is alive and full of feeling. Could it be improved with treatment? I have no doubt. But, man, it is, as it is, pretty damned good.
I hope that answers your questions. Your own experience may never coincide exactly with my description, as my description comes out of the fund of images and associations peculiar to my imagination, but, my own descriptions notwithstanding, I think you can easily achieve the same level of sound quality. From your description of your room, the main issue (in my very inexpert opinion) will most likely be from your listening seat being so close to your rear wall, which can result in exaggerated bass. I suspect you can alleviate some of that by putting some kind of absorptive panels on the wall. My guess is, even a little bit will help. If you're up for the experiment, you could also put traps in the corners behind the speakers and a panel at each first reflection point. I've no doubt it will make a difference. Beyond that, you work with what you've got, and I'm betting what you've got will be plenty.
Josh