Speakers on the long wall
My Vandersteen 2Ci speakers are now on the long wall of a 13' x 20' room with a 7' 7" ceiling, roughly centered on the wall and about 10" from the front wall, with a TV between them. The listening position is about 9–10 feet away, on the opposite side of the room in front of three windows, and one of the short walls has a 6' opening into the kitchen.
In a previous setup the speakers were on the 13' wall and sounded excellent, but returning to that arrangement is no longer possible. With the current long‑wall placement, the sound is shallow, a bit lifeless, and the soundstage is poor. This seems to point strongly to room interaction.
This seems like the kind of room many have successfully tamed with careful placement and treatment, so practical advice on how to proceed with room treatments and positioning would be very welcome.
Vandersteen 2Ci, McCormack DNA‑0.5, Marantz CD player.
Yes, the listening position is 9-10’ from the front of the speakers. Thanks to all for the suggestions. This provides me with options I haven’t considered before. I really want this to work again and it sounds like it can be accomplished without too much disruption, and words from the other half, who really doesn’t care 😥 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
That is why an innovative hybrid acoustic design is suggested, i.e., upper diffusers and lower absorbers, for your reference. Regarding the speaker separation, Let me suggest the following more analytical yet simplistic way to set up your speakers. When the speakers are set up on the long wall and the distance between MLP and tweeter plane (D) is constrained, the maximum tweeter separation (S) can be determined as:
Using your room as an example. Your Vandersteen 2Ci speakers’ horizontal beamwidth at -3dB is around 40 degree (see the diagram). If you sit 7 ft away from the tweeter plane, align the -3dB off-axis angle to your ears (A) like I do (which is 20 degree, see the diagram below) AND the speaker toe-in angle (T) is about 10 degree, you could set the speaker 8 ft apart at a maximum.
Now, if you increase the toe-in angle to 20 degrees, you could further increase the distance between tweeters to almost 12 ft. This is an effective way to enlarge the soundstage width while keeping the image focused.
On the other hand, when the speakers are set up on the short wall and separation between tweeters is constrained, the minimum distance between MLP and tweeter plane can be determined as:
In your case, on the short wall, the distance bet. tweeters is confined at 7 ft. If you toe-in speakers at 10 degree, you need to sit at least 6 ft away from the tweeter plane.
If you set the speaker straight, i.e., no toe-in, then you need to pull the seat further away to 10 ft.
Lastly, the min. separation bet. the tweeter and front/side wall should have been 34" not 28". This is based on the min. 5 ms lag bet. reflection sound wave and direct sound wave to prevent the reflection wave smearing into the direct wave, i.e., 1125.33 f/s (sound spd) x 5 / 1000 / 2 *12 = 34".
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Excellent analytical information that I can use as a baseline. Thanks for taking the time to do so. By chance, are there any plans on how to design or make diffusers or absorbers? Although when reality sinks in the other half will want something "not ugly". It would be a lot to ask,but ideally plans with acoustic plots with absorption over frequency would be interesting to work with. I would assume there is software to simulate a room and then add the details of an absorber and/or diffuser. Much like a ray tracing program. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
