Cardas Speaker placement..


Once again I'm playing around with speaker placement.After reading some from the cardas site I fiqure I would try this method.After putting my dimension's in the calculator it says 4' from the sitde walls.I went with this but the final set up looks rediculous".The speakers look smashed together.does this seem right in a 14.5' room or did I do something wrong..?My room is 14.5' x 22' x7'.The reason for the change in placement is the bass is never right to me..I tried other speakers in this room with the same results..Thanks
spaz

Showing 3 responses by kevinzoe

Hi Spaz,
My room is essentially the same dimensions (14'*21'7') as yours so I will share my experience.

1) Belfore doing anything, get yourself an acoustical measurement tool so that you can measure the room in its current layout which will form your baseline for comparison purposes.
2) Using the Harmon mode calculator you will see that your listening chair should be about 38% of the room's length (8.36') out from the back wall so that you aren't sitting in bass modal peaks or nulls but somewhere in between their nulls and peaks. Try placing your speakers about 33% of the room length out from the front wall. Take measurements for each different speaker position. I'd focus on "Freq VS SPL" for now.
3) I found that the best imaging and mid/high freq response was not the best bass response so I bought 2 subwoofers (Rythmik F15) to tailor the low end to my liking. Again, the measurement tool is invaluable in helping me assess 99 candidate sub locations in 2 hours! I have an upwards tilted bass freq curve and freq decreases to align with the equal loudness curve of our ears.
4) try rotating your system 180 degrees to see if that works better as your room isn't perfectly symetrical I would guess.
5) try placing your speakers straddling a front wall corner, in essance rotating your system 45%.

Toole's book is excellent. good luck.
My ceiling has Roxul fiberglass in between the 2by6's and then another sound barrier and then 5/8ths inch drywall. I would have used the resilient channel for better sound proofing but didn't want to loose more of the limited 7' height.

I've also seen baffles angled downwards to 'catch' the ceiling reflections on the ceiling.
Spaz - if you want a subwoofer to help add more low end, check out this 712lb monster:

http://www.lycanaudio.com/The_Ulric.html