[WGH]

ebag4 - I looked at the photos in your gallery and your speakers are very nice, are the backs of the midrange drivers open? If the backs are open you could be swamping your small room with too much out of phase sound. Try tossing a light sheet and then a heavy blanket over the back of the MTM units and see how that affects the soundstage.

[Ethan Winer]

By coincidence, I just spotted this post in another forum by famed Motown recording engineer Bob Olhsson:

Best Monitors in small room?

--Ethan

[Wind Chaser]

It's been my observation that proximity to the sound stage has much to do with the choice of amplification.  Some amps are more up front or forward.  They aren't as holographic or three dimensional, but they do come across as sounding more lively or aggressive.   With amplifiers that have these characteristics in a near field situation, the boundaries of a small room are more apparent.

However having said all that, I would experiment with the position of your listening chair.  Move it incrementally further back until you're right up against the back wall.  Your speakers are well positioned away from the walls.  This is far more important than your proximity to the back wall.  So give it a go and let us know what happens.

[JLM]

My imaging (and my image as an audiophile  ) improved when I went to monoblocks.  Images are better focused/defined (which coincides with improved level of detail).

As Wind Chaser mentioned, some tube amps in particular have deep soundstage presentations.  The SET crowd get along with horns or Lowthers in part because the deep soundstage from many of those amps offset the forward presentation of those drivers.

[Browntrout]

I to have a small room to listen in. If you are willing to try something then may I suggest....moving your speakers closer to the front wall say about one and a half feet out, keeping them a little closer together so they are perhaps three feet in from the side walls, removing the absorbtion at the first reflection points and the absorbtion on the back wall and placing this in the corners behind the speakers then toeing in your speakers by say about 30 -35 degrees and sitting so that you are forming an equal sided triangle with the speakers.
  I realise this would require you moving your speakers and room treatments but I am fairly sure the soundstage would improve once you have tried it. It would be nice to hear from you if you have given this a go as it works for me.

[Wind Chaser]

Ed,

What exactly is it about the soundstage you would like to improve?

[Wind Chaser]

...some tube amps in particular have deep soundstage presentations...

And there are some SS amps that have deep a deep soundstage as well.  The Classe DR-2 comes to mind.  But if your more spend thrift, consider a Gainclone / Chip amp.  They sound terrific and combined with a tube buffer (if you have a SS front end) you should have something fairly deep and wide that sounds very good.

[ebag4]

Thanks again guys.

WGH, yes, the mids and the bass are OB.  I tried placing my first reflection panels directly behind (and leaning on the back of my speakers), I can't say the soundstage improved, it sounded a bit different but it wasn't positive. I will try again with something thinner to determine if there is an improvement.

Ethan, thanks for your input.  I have been running large speakers in here almost the complete time I have been using the room for 2 channel.  I recall enjoying better sound when I went with the larger speakers (which have all been OB) but I was wondering if I was missing out on something by not using smaller speakers in this space.  I keep reading about issues with large speakers in small hotel rooms at the various audio shows.  Since bass has not really been an issue in this room since going OB, it sounds like I should be able to acheive great sound with large or small speakers.


Thanks Wind, I am currently running a factory modified Jolida 102b, I have in the past had a Pass F5 clone (which sounded vey good), a couple of DIY T-amps, and a pair of the original CI Audio mono blocks whose model number escape me now.  I don't recall the soundstage improving with any of these amps (they weren't all in my possession while I had these speakers).  The improvement I would like to hear in my soundstage is better definition of the various players and depth/height.  Iwas listening last night in the dark, I could hear some players in different locations behind the speakers but they didn't come into sharp focus.  I am thinking that WGH may be correct in his assumption that this has something to do with the sound coming out of the back of the OB and reflecting off the front wall.  It may be that OB doesn't acheive the same type of soundstage that is possbile with a monopole speaker.  Frankly this seems counterintuitive to me but that doesn't mean it isn't accurate.  Absorbtion on the front wall may be called for.

Thanks JLM, I have had monoblocks in here, the same model you run I believe.  I don't recall which speakers I was running at that time but I ended up selling both the amps and the speakers.  I don't recall any better soundstage with that, or any setup in this room.

Thanks for the input Browntrout.  If I was running monopole speakers I would definetly try your layout, however I am running OB speakers and can tell you that they definitely need room to breathe.

Thanks for all of the response guys, it is appreciated.  I will be trying my V-1 coaxials out this weekend (installing the new revised crossover with the back of the compression tweeter removed), this should help determine if driver integration is an issue in the nearfield scenario I have here.

Best,
Ed

[Duke]

Ethan, I love your choice of small-room speakers!  I didn't know you had 4430's.  Very cool, very cool.

For those who don't know, the model 4430 is an absolutely landmark loudspeaker design.  It introduced the concepts of radiation-pattern-matching in the crossover region (woofer and horn have the same pattern width at the crossover frequency) with a constant-directivity horn (same pattern shape from the crossover region on up, aside from inevitable top-octave beaming).  Those of you familiar with Earl Geddes' designs, he owned 4430's before building his Summas, and his designs are modern adaptations of the basic principles of the 4430.  So are many of my designs.

Here's a paper on the 4430; it's three nearly decades old but still leading-edge conceptually, in my opinion:

http://www.pispeakers.com/AES_v31_n6_p408.pdf

Over the last few months, in the course of developing a product, I've been looking hard at what the major problems are in small rooms, and what the practical solutions might be. 

In a small room, the peaks and dips in the bass region tend to be farther apart and more distinct.  This causes poor sound quality, as the peaks in particular stick out like sore thumbs.  Many people prefer for the bass to simply not be there rather than have the distraction of peaky bass.

And because the room boundaries are closer to the speakers, gain from boundary reinforcement sets in higher up and is stronger.  This exacerbates the problems of lumpy in-room bass.

Early reflections are pretty much inevitable because of the proximity of the walls, unless very aggressive room treatment is used.  These reflections will arrive early enough to degrade imaging and clarity, and can be a source of coloration.

The solution to the room reflection issue, from a loudspeaker design standpoint, is good radiation pattern control (in my opinion anyway).  The 4430's that Ethan uses are outstanding in this respect:  They have a much narrower pattern than a minimonitor does (roughly 100 degrees constant from 1 kHz on up as I recall), and with a judicious amount of toe-in this pattern can be aimed so as to minimize early sidewall interaction. 

I don't think the 4430 does anything in particular to address in-room bass lumpiness, but one might try a slightly asymmetrical setup.  Imagine looking down on the room from above and seeing the speaker-listener-speaker triangle within the rectangular room.  Rotate that triangle maybe 15 degrees or so within the rectangle, either clockwise or counter-clockwise.  Now the distances of the two bass sources and listener are asymmetrical relative to the room boundaries in the horizontal plance.  This isn't guaranteed to smoothe the in-room bass, but it often brings improvement (not trying to second-guess Ethan; he knows his way around a room acoustically better than I do).

Ethan has probably addressed the issue of room gain by introducing sufficient low-frequency damping, but if that were not the case then it's possible that plugging one of the ports on the 4430 would tame any excess bass due to room gain.  That would cause the bass rolloff to commence a bit higher up, but would make it more gradual.

Getting back to ebag4's specific situation, in my experience the soundstaging on dipole speakers suffers greatly if there's a strong, early reflection off the wall behind the speakers.  The closer the speakers are to the wall behind them, the greater the need to diffuse or (in some cases) absorb that backwave energy.  I try to get my dipole or bipole speakers at least 5 feet out from the wall behind them, and taking them out to 6 or 7 feet is usually a worthwhile further improvement (this probably isn't possible if your room isn't a mancave).  I consider 3.5 feet out from the wall a minimum for a dipole or bipole; less than that and in my opinion a monopole makes more sense.

[Ethan Winer]

Ethan, I love your choice of small-room speakers!  I didn't know you had 4430's.  Very cool, very cool.

To be clear, I have two different rooms with totally separate systems. The JBL 4430s are in my large home studio, about 34 by 18 feet, 12 feet high at the center peak. Here's a really old photo take from the rear toward the front:



Those huge 4430s look tiny, but sound huge. I have many more bass traps in there now.

My other system is 5.1 surround, in my 25 by 16 foot living room, with a peak at 11 feet high. That system has Mackie 624s plus a killer SVS subwoofer. That room has a total of 54 bass traps and other panels and diffusors:



This too is an old photo, from before I got a 110" screen and Mitsubishi projector. I really need to take new photos, but then I'd have to clean and vacuum first.

--Ethan

[emac]

WGH, yes, the mids and the bass are OB.  I tried placing my first reflection panels directly behind (and leaning on the back of my speakers), I can't say the soundstage improved, it sounded a bit different but it wasn't positive. I will try again with something thinner to determine if there is an improvement.

It seems that OB speakers need some distance from the walls in order to sound optimal.  Danny often recommends 3 or more feet, and I'd agree w/ him on that.  My Hawthorne SI's (OB speakers) and X-Omni's and O-3's (both omnidirectional or OB type speakers) all need at least 3 feet in order for the soundstage to come alive.  And, given the size of your room, it would be difficult to pull that off.  Room treatments can help, but they won't cure the problems.

[Duke]

Thanks for the clarification, Ethan.  Nice to see 4430's still doing what they love to do.

[Ethan Winer]

Nice to see 4430's still doing what they love to do.

Yes, they go very loud! When friends visit to play music, we can play drum loops or whatever to jam along with, and the speakers can play as loud as a real band.

--Ethan

[jimdgoulding]

My office is in a small extra bedroom (10.5'x12.5'x8').  This room is also my 2 channel room.  I am considering building another set of speakers but it occurred to me that maybe some of the shortfalls I detect in my system are partially due to the type/size of speakers I have been using. 

So what makes a speaker too large for a space?  Is it only the bass response?  In my opinion that is probably a major part of it, however I have found that using open baffle bass somewhat alleviates issues with "boomy" bass, OB bass seems to load the room differently from the boxed type bass I have heard that can tend to get boomy.

I am asking this question mainly because I am trying to determine if going with a small, or smaller set of speakers would actually make an improvement to what I experience today.  The primary issue I seem to have is with soundstage.  I have good, non-boomy bass, I have good imaging, but the soundstage in this room is really where I have struggled.  I base this percieved lack of soundstage on what I have read here and other forums.  I can't say that I have actually heard the soundstage better reproduced elsewhere primarily because I have heard few good systems.

Thanks for taking the time to read this fairly long winded post.  I am interested in your opinions and experiences with sound in small rooms.

Best,
Ed

If I understand how OB bass works, waves are not being contained in the box or used to reinforce by means of a port.  Sounds good to me, anyways, as its workin with the room and there would be little if any cavity resonance.  To open up the stage, you might try an equilateral triangle as this would get both your speaks AND your ears out from the walls where reflected waveforms and room loading may be crowding images and collapsing space.  Worth a shot, anyway.