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Swapped long wall to short wall and now I am having some big issues

I have a 14.5 x 27 ft x 8' room (it is narrower at 12 ft (the last 6 ft on the end where I have the speakers)


I had my system aligned on the long wall with the rack in between the speakers.

The speakers were 9' offset from listening position and the side wall were so far away (and had two record cabinets) that they were out of the equation.  I had real traps mondo bass traps in the corners and GIK art panels to handle slap echo.

The sound was excellent - great tonality, dynamics, imaging. The only issues I had were a limited listening area and not back enough for full speaker driver integration.


After listening to a friends system in a 12x23 room - old home with wood construction I was a gasp. His system was short wall and there was great integration with easily 2 rows of 3 people could sit and listen. It was a very relaxing and engaging experience.


Fast forward. I made the move. knocked out a closet in the corner. Removed one of 2 floor to ceiling record racks, a Wurlitzer jukebox, and Victrola.  I placed the equipment racks on the opposite side wall.  The speakers were set up 2 feet from the walls in front of the two corner bass traps. The sound was dreadful.  The once luscious mids were thin and highs (1.2-3khz) were bright and cymbals were brittle, hard strumming acoustic guitars and brass sounded terrible as well.  If the music got dynamic - it sounded terrible.


The vinyl was bad - cd atrocious.


I went ahead and took all the acoustic panels out except the GIK art panels.


I did some research and bought some GIK Impression 2' 2" panels for first reflection  and GIK Impression 1' 4" diffuser/bass panels for the front corners allowing absorption from the back.  This was much better but still way off.  I moved the speakers out from the wall and then the instrument subtle details snapped into place - at 6 ft this was most apparent however it developed a very bloated mid bass.


I am looking for ways to tame the high end and mid bass but bring out the mid range,  I do not want to over treat.

This in incredibly frustrating as I had my sound very refined and the short wall setup should theoretically produced better results.  I would be interested in your comments and suggestions.


Thank You

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islandmandan
1,260 posts
 
You don't mention what speakers you are trying to set up in the new configuration. I did the same thing years ago, with the opposite result. You may have to move your speakers away from the wall behind them more to get the benefit of their new location.

If you can locate them one-third of the way into the room, and say, 3' from the sidewalls, and your listening position equidistant between them, that may work for you. Keep moving them around until you get them placed where they work best. It's all about location, location, location.

Good luck,
Dan
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millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
The most effective way I know to treat a room is the four triangular corners where the ceiling meets the walls first, followed by the vertical corners where the walls come together.

The treatment is standard acoustically transparent fabric (like speaker cover) over Owens Corning 703. Cut four triangles about 12" on a side for the upper corners, four rectangles about 8" to 12" wide for the vertical.

Not specific to your situation but as far as I know its worked in every room its been tried in. It works because as the walls vibrate, which they do, the corners act like a kind of horn that amplifies any sound coming from the corners. So a small amount of acoustic material placed in the corners stops that before it can happen, and has a big impact without using a lot of material that can make the room sound over damped.

Where you were sitting before this was less important because you were a lot further away from those corners than you are now. So while generic advice it would seem to apply to your situation.
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almarg
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@audiotomb

Hi Tom,

Sorry to hear you are having this very frustrating experience. We have the same speakers (Daedalus Ulysses), as you may recall. My room is 13 x 22 x 8. I have the speakers set up on the short wall, about 4 feet out from the front wall (which is mostly a large picture window, with wood blinds in front of it), as measured to the front of the speakers. The speakers are about 7 feet apart, center-to-center. My listening distance is about 12 feet. The central third of the rear wall opens to another room, and the part of the side wall that is near the left channel speaker opens to another area. The walls are wood paneled.

I have no particular suggestions to offer at this point regarding speaker positioning or acoustic treatments. However the sonics you have described are so vastly different than anything I have ever heard from my Ulysses, as well as being vastly different from what you had with the previous setup, that I’m wondering if some misfortune unrelated to speaker positioning and room acoustics might have been inflicted on the system during the move. For example, perhaps a tube-based component was jarred and the performance of one of its tubes was affected by the physical shock. Perhaps something is amiss with a connection somewhere, perhaps internal to a component if not externally.

Those kinds of possibilities are about all I can think of at this point. As I said, it’s hard for me to envision Daedalus speakers sounding as you’ve described, with a seemingly reasonable setup in a reasonably sized room.

Best of luck as you proceed,
-- Al

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