Room treatment advice needed


I have a pair of Yamaha NS-1000x as mains in my primary listening room, and I love them so much I bought a second pair for my office. The new pair is a gorgeous rare walnut cabinet and the drivers are pristine without blemishes. A very lucky find that I treasure. I tried them with my original equipment in my main room, and they are wonderful. However, the new pair sounds awful: super-detailed, as expected, but thin, trebly, no bass, no imaging at all, in my office.

My office is small (I'm in Japan), less than 3X4 meters. It has a hard wall on one side, but that side has my work desk and computer. The other three walls are composed of thin sliding doors made of plexiglass.

The floor is of firm wood, covered by a carpet.

The Yamahas are currently on brass cones on granite slabs over cement blocks. I have put blotches of blue tac between the stone slabs.

I know these large, heavy speakers are huge overkill for such a small room, but I want to make them work (or face a serious marriage crisis...) there. I am wondering what should be my first aim in room treatment, and hope for the advice of this boards' minds.

What comes to my mind first is thick curtains to cover the plexiglass sliding door/walls, hopefully reducing lots of high-end reflections. Do you guys agree with that?

What other steps should I take?

Main source/amp is flac files fed from iMac or Wav from iPod through an iDecco. I also sometimes bring in my Luxman amp and Njoe Tjoeb CD player instead, from my main room. Wonderful sounds in the main room, but no magic in the office in either case.

On the other hand, the iMac/iDecco combination sounds rich, full, warm, and detailed through a pair of Quad 12L's on my desktop. These are placed with the rear-port bass outlets facing the hard wall. They are on small granite slabs on my computer desk on either side of a 27-inch iMac, with blue tac between slabs and desk and slabs and speaker. They are in a near-field listening position, meaning that I hear mainly the unreflected sound from them, as opposed to my Yamahas (behind me while I work), from which many reflections reach my ears together with the direct speaker sound.

Please freely offer advice on getting the best sounds out of my Yamahas that they are capable of in this small, plexiglass-walled office space. I will greatly appreciate your opinions.
deaf_in_left_eye

Showing 1 response by glai

I find a mix of absoprtion and diffusion works best. You really have to experiment to achieve the right mix and the effect you desire. Diffusion would decrease and spread out specular reflection and make the room sound bigger.

With mostly absorption, the sound in my room was very focused but I was always aware of the side boundaries. The diffusors along the side and front wall increased the perceived width and depth of the soundstage and relieved a lot of combfiltering problems at mid and high frequencies. The traps or absorption was not as effective as the diffusors at the upper frequencies.

When I had too much diffusion along the frontwall, the soundstage was too far away and individual instrument lost focus. It is really up to you to decide whether you want a large hall sound vs small Jazz venue. Good luck.