Robert Greene, technical director of TAS uses 40's but I don't know how big his room is. A customer of mine uses Spendor 1.2's, a speaker closer in size to yours and he, also, listens in a narrow room altho one side is semi open. I made some thick wool felt fascias with a 2.5" cutout to surround his tweeters that extend out to the width of his cabinets to damp waveform reflection from his baffles. He reported back that it improved focus and image wander and removed some tizziness from his tweeters. He said that he no longer thought he needed to treat the closed side wall of his room and that he could listen comfortably at higher volume. Sounds like a recipe for you to me. Contact me if you like at [email protected]
Toe-in for Harbeth M30 in a narrow room?
Although my Monitor 30's present lots of problems in my room from hell (see below), they perform better than most speakers I have had in this all but impossible room. Fore me, the most vexing issue is toe-in.
I am m trying to position my speakers for fairly nearfield listening. They are 64" apart and I sit 64" away.. For the most part, the side walls on my L shaped living room are very reflective, although I have a few bookcases and wall hangings to ammediorate the hardness of the plaster/concrete/cinderblock construction.
Pointing the speakers at the listener, yields a very intense and focused sound and a very compressed soundstage-almost like looking through a fish-eye lens, However, there is good tonal accuracy, for the most part. The sound can get a bit over the top and fatigueing at 75-85 db. I sometimes have to lower the volume. While center-fill is excellent, some images just hang around the speakers.
Pointing them straight ahead, gives a wall to wall rectangular sound stage, with slightly diffuse images-although relaxed and easy to live with and non-fatiguing. loss in transparency and tonal accuracy, but not significant.
Surprisingly, an intermediate level of toe in, seems to combine the worst aspects of each approach. Midrange becomes hard and compressed.
Trying to get them further apart and therefore closer to the bookcases/sidewalls makes them sound worse still-very recessed, thin and vague.
The nearfield placement, as described above seems to work best, but I am bafled about the toe-in.
Under these circumstances, if you had to chose between pointing the speakers at the listener and no toe-in, what would you chose?
Thanks so much,
Jay
I am m trying to position my speakers for fairly nearfield listening. They are 64" apart and I sit 64" away.. For the most part, the side walls on my L shaped living room are very reflective, although I have a few bookcases and wall hangings to ammediorate the hardness of the plaster/concrete/cinderblock construction.
Pointing the speakers at the listener, yields a very intense and focused sound and a very compressed soundstage-almost like looking through a fish-eye lens, However, there is good tonal accuracy, for the most part. The sound can get a bit over the top and fatigueing at 75-85 db. I sometimes have to lower the volume. While center-fill is excellent, some images just hang around the speakers.
Pointing them straight ahead, gives a wall to wall rectangular sound stage, with slightly diffuse images-although relaxed and easy to live with and non-fatiguing. loss in transparency and tonal accuracy, but not significant.
Surprisingly, an intermediate level of toe in, seems to combine the worst aspects of each approach. Midrange becomes hard and compressed.
Trying to get them further apart and therefore closer to the bookcases/sidewalls makes them sound worse still-very recessed, thin and vague.
The nearfield placement, as described above seems to work best, but I am bafled about the toe-in.
Under these circumstances, if you had to chose between pointing the speakers at the listener and no toe-in, what would you chose?
Thanks so much,
Jay