[cloudbaseracer]

"Is it really worth worrying about various minor issues in audio like DACs or subtle amp differences, when speakers have fairly high distortion, and your room has a pretty big impact on sound? "

MichaelJHoffman Quote found on AVS Forum.  I think it is his signature and not related to that current subject but it makes sense and brings me to my reason for this post.

First some pictures:










I am currently running:

Emerald Physics CS2
Sqeezbox Touch
Berhinger modified for all digital processing and output with 3x SPDIF board
(2) Panasonic SA-XR 700 running all digital

I also have a cheap INDAY switcher that I am sure is crap but I need some way to select inputs.

I am looking to change probably everything in my system except for the Squeezebox Touch. Currently this looking for the GedLee Abbey for speakers along with 4 subs.

My challenge is my room which is absolutely huge at 30' x 41' with the ceiling going from 11' to 18'.  It is an old converted church and I believe is hard to get to the sound great.  The CS2's sound great but they just cannot fill this room so I am searching for more in the speakers. 

You can see that I am off in the front corner and basically have wood flooring, brick walls, quite a bit of glass and a tin ceiling.  There is a large area above the tin ceiling that is just open space up to the roof line.  The tin is not insulated or dampened in any way at all.

So....

What can I do to improve my sound?  I do not want to put up a large amount of room treatments unless they look really good and inconspicuous.  I have not been to Earl Geddes home but many people say he uses no room treatment really other than a very thick rug.  One thing that I should mention is that this is the only system I have had in here so I am not sure what it "should" or "could" sound like.  I am basically a novice with these things but would love to get the help of you guys on this forum.  I do know that the CS2's or at least the amps seem to run out of steam and begin to sound compressed at higher volumes.  The bass as well does not seem to be anything to write home about.  I do have decent imaging but that is about the extent of my description of the system.

The pictures are essentially of the western side of the house so you can pretty much double the size.  I am sitting about 11' from the speakers and the plasma is a 60" with the speakers at 48" tall or so.  The rectangular windows are 9' wide and 7' tall.  The gothic window is 9' wide and 14' tall - actual glass area.  There is one more gothic on the 90 degree wall to the one pictured.  This should give you a good scale of the place. 

Given the initial quote, I know this is where I need to start and to look for the best refinement and improvement.  I did have a ficus tree behind the speaker in the left corner but it died.  I would love to use plants as room treatments as much as possible.  Not sure how much the Abbey's with 4 subs will take the room out of the equation but they look like a great choice.

Thanks,

James 

[drphoto]

I don't have an answer to your question, but just wanted to say, that is a totally awesome living space!!

[Tyson]

Put some large, heavy, nice quality rugs on the floor (with additional padding beneath them).  Get some "Art" to hang on the walls that is made of cloth and has absorptive material inside the frame.  Finally, some heavy drapes that you can pull across all those hard surfaces.  Those few changes will make a HUGE difference in the quality of sound you are getting.  Also, large bookshelves are good ways to tame a hard room like yours.   Also, sell the flat screen and get a projector with a retractable screen, so you can center it and place your speakers symmetrically on that side of your room.  And place the speakers as far away from any room boundaries as you can.

[cloudbaseracer]

The rug is a definite and will not be a problem!

I cannot use a projector because there is just WAY TOO MUCH light in my house. The plasma is the only thing bright enough. There is also no way to do any effective window coverings due to the shape of the Gothic window.  Please do not think I am not appreciative of your response, I am. 

Cheers,

James

[Tyson]

Lots of books and bookshelves will help tremendously.

[TRADERXFAN]

Actually that Geddes room does have room treatment. Behind the speakers (behind a projector screen) is a lot of absorbtion material. Also the some walls and ceiling are acting as bass traps with floating cld drywall. The rock walls in the front of the room were chosen because it did have a little bit of diffusive properties. He has diffusion on his ceilling and a heavy padded rug on the floor.

The side walls treatment aren't quite as important with the Geddes recommended setup (only possible with the controlled directivity speakers) but diffusion would be good option.

-Tony

[jimdgoulding]

I would like to comment but can't quite tell where your speakers are in your diagram.  Wish I could.  I may not be alone, dunno.  Can you show me better?   

[lonewolfny42]

I don't have an answer to your question, but just wanted to say, that is a totally awesome living space!!

WOW....nice !! 

[bpape]

That room has a ton of possibilities given a proper setup.  The size is such that we'd actually look at it from the standpoint of large room acoustics rather than small room acoustics.  ie - skip the bass control and work on developing a bass wavefront and minimizing slap echo and parallel surfaces.

Some of the things mentioned already will work fine.  The windows and the asymetric location of your setup will still be problematic.

The only places I would really address serious absorption assuming the existing location are:

- left wall to give better symmetry
- left front corner to minimize the corner loading of just one side
- peak of the ceiling to minimize horn effect.

other than that, just work on breaking up large, flat surfaces.

Bryan

[MaxCast]

I don't have an answer to your question, but just wanted to say, that is a totally awesome living space!!

I agree.  I when ever I see and old church or school house I wonder what it'd be like to make it into a house.

[Mightyburner]

I don't have an answer to your question, but just wanted to say, that is a totally awesome living space!!

What he said!   

[WGH]

That is a fantastic looking room. Unfortunately I don't have any answers to your question either.

Have you browsed the Floyd E. Toole articles?
Loudspeakers, Rooms, and Subwoofers - Audiophile Articles
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=58304.0

The quote below is from:

Loudspeakers and Rooms for Sound Reproduction—A Scientific Review
Thus from the perspectives of maintaining the excellence in sound quality of good loudspeakers, rendering an unwanted reflection inaudible, and preserving the effectiveness of the precedence effect, there are reasons not to alter the spectrum of reflected sounds. One is free to redirect them with reflectors or diffusers, or to absorb them with lossy acoustical devices, but in each case, the process should not alter the spectrum of the sound above some frequency toward the lower side of the transition region in a small room. It seems reasonable to propose, therefore, that all acoustical devices used in listening rooms — reflectors, diffusers, and absorbers—should be uniformly effective above about 200 Hz. For resistive absorbers this means thicknesses of 3 inches (76 mm) or more.

[Nyal Mellor]

Getting the room's reverberation time (the time it takes for sound to decay) down into the range for high quality music reproduction is going to be tough without spoiling the aesthetic. I can image you are probably suffering from poor clarity and definition as a result of the long decay times.

You have virtually no absorptive surfaces in there as far as I can tell, does it sound 'echoey'?

One of the issues with a space like that is you can treat around the listening position to get a reasonable decay time in that space but you will tend to get an audible echo from the rest of the space which is untreated. So you will need to position absorption around the room. Doesn't necessarily have to be panels, could be soft furnishings, rugs, window treatments, etc. You will still have a longish decay time though because of the amount of untreated ceiling surface area.

[Rob Babcock]

Wow, that's a beautiful room!

[doug s.]

as my first preference in a living space is sound of my audio system, (and i don't care much about a tv screen), my first choice for speaker location would be where the blue squares are; then, possibly i'd consider the red squares,  in either case, the listening position would be where the bigger red square is.  all this +/-, of course, depending on the actual situation in the room.  for sure, i'd have the backs of the speakers at least 4' from the rear walls, preferably 6'.  and the listening position as far back as possible, w/o getting to close to the stairwell - which might need some absorption on it.  i'd get two mondo subs to flank the mains, and consider adding another pair of subs run out of phase somewhere behind the listening position; their actual location wouldn't be so critical...

that room is huge; for subs i'd  consider four of vmps' larger offerings, or some danley tapped horns, or something custom from danny richie, w/maybe two 12" or 15" servo drivers per sub...  actually, something like a pair of danley dts20's, standing on end, 18x20x87.5, against the wall, flanking the gothic window towards the corners, might be yust the ticket, w/the main speakers at the blue squares...  that room really needs serious bass to fill in the sound...

http://www.danleysoundlabs.com/tapped_horn.asp?MODEL=DTS%2020



doug s.

[bpape]

A pair of Danley DTS-20's would be outstanding.

Bryan

[jimdgoulding]

Nice, thanks.  I think the blue squares is your ticket.  As your speakers are open baffle (right?) you may not want to come out further than 4'.  Some of the guys here can talk about that better than me.  I like the blue spots more than the red cause of the four walls behind and beside your speakers would be perpendicular.  That is if the cubicle in the NW corner is enclosed.  This would give your speakers something to load into and may prove complimentary to a good many of your recordings.  You stated that you would move your seat as far back as possible.  Keep an equilateral triangle in mind in your experimenting.  Neat things can happen in that relationship.  All these things should help give you a more intimate experience of your recordings and help keep the reverberation of your room from becoming too noxious.  Ideally, this would not include your TV.

[PeteG]

I don't have an answer to your question, but just wanted to say, that is a totally awesome living space!!

What he said!   

What he said +2, I wish I had that problem.

[newzooreview]

"Is it really worth worrying about various minor issues in audio like DACs or subtle amp differences, when speakers have fairly high distortion, and your room has a pretty big impact on sound? "

I am looking to change probably everything in my system except for the Squeezebox Touch. Currently this looking for the GedLee Abbey for speakers along with 4 subs.

The GedLee's are optimized for small rooms according to their white paper and online design descriptions. They look awfully small, and integrating 4 (!) subs into the sound is a recipe for tedious trial and error with potentially disappointing results, I would think. I had a sub, and I got rid of it as soon as I got better amplification and transmission line speakers.

In the price range of the GedLees, you could consider some Salk HT2-TLs. With one of Jim's custom veneers, they would really like great in that space. If you give Jim Salk a call, he would be happy to give you sound advice about filling a big room (with great sound).

If you run them with a Wyred4Sound STP-SE and a pair of SX-1000 monoblocks you would have all the juice you need. I just upgraded to the STP-SE, and it would be great for a large room because aside from excellent transparency it has amazing timbre that will really make the music sound real and natural. The monoblocks will give you excellent imaging.

Well, have fun with it!

[Mike Nomad]

James,

First, let me join the chorus of complimenters on your digs. Simply wonderful.

I have some of the same problems you do. My main room is 22' long and a few inches over 10' across, with a ceiling that goes from 11' to 16'. The house is 1914 Craftsman bungalow, with _a lot_ of tall windows. I wont add room treatments. Also have the original wood floors.

My high ceiling just sucks the room dry. When I tried to compensate by turning up the volume, the wood floor starts to be a problem.

This evening, I decided to remove the back feet from the speaker cabinets, put a little felt pad on along the back edge where the speaker cabinet would (now) make contact with the floor, and see what would happen.

It fixed all of my problems: lack of bass response, bloom at certain frequencies, dead response at others; sound stage improved, along with height imaging that I didn't have previously; the room has good fill, and it sounds great in other parts of the house.

Tilt measures at 11 degrees. A No-Cost tweak, and I have almost got a "I just got a whole new music collection" level improvement out of the deal.

I don't know if tilt will help with what look like open baffle speakers. I would try it. The brick should help you out, and the tin is so high up, I don't think it will be a problem.

If you are going to go to different speakers, I would be looking at surface area of the drivers (the more area, the better), and possibly go with electrostats.

I think you biggest problem is in catering to the video. You are going to have a very hard time filling that room from the corner.

I hope you find a solution.

Mike