Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Hearing Things Stupid Room Tricks

8:06pm - The new layout seems to be working OK

I basically rotated everything 90 degrees, so the speakers were along the end wall instead of a side wall. Didn't make much difference in where the bass buildup happened, but I figured if the bass was "over there" then moving the listening position in that direction couldn't hurt either. The change also fits with the general advice that you should orient the speaker-to-listener axis along the ridge of a cathedral ceiling, not across it, which I had rejected earlier because each of the placements I could imagine resulted in a dysfunctional furniture layout.

Downside is that I now have a totally dysfunctional furniture layout, where you have to sort of slide between sofas to get to the listening area, but I figure I can fix that some other day. At least the sound seems to be a bit better. Makes for better sound in the loft too, which is where the office will hopefully end up.

As a bonus, I no longer have to hang a duvet up near the ceiling to block a first reflection point, so I'm going to take another shot at declaring this exercise finished other than improving turntable isolation. The turntable is now pretty close to the left speaker, and there were already audible "bumps" when I walked around near the turntable. No skipping, not even close (knock on wood) but not silent either.

2 things....

1.
B-Man. I think it's intervention time. We are all here for you today because we love you and have been concerned about this obsession since a Duvet fell on our heads as you tried to hang the subwoofer over the 23rd newly decided sweetspot, like some sort of deathtrap from the movie Saw.

OK I'm not serious about #1 but I am about #2.

2. Metric? I still have a strong hatred for them since Emily Hanes made everyone wait for 90 minutes only to decide she was refusing to play in the ever so slight mist that was left over after the three opening acts all played through actual rain.

Thanks Murph, but don't worry I can quit any time.

I mean just this morning I was walking to the CD player and heard an edgy sound I didn't like. Turned out that since I was standing up the Roxul panel covering the first reflection point on the window was too low to be effective.

I didn't buy more ComfortBoard, or move the existing panel, or even steal an extra panel from one of the bass traps -- no I confirmed the sound was still good in the listening position, and went back to work.

It is kinda weird hearing all the frequencies in the same room though, it's actually a bit distracting.

Whew.
I was waiting for you to say that you broke out the window!

Thankfully I have aged hearing or perhaps I'm just not that observant...

TAM

I have become less critical with age.

I was wondering about the same thing yesterday -- whether the huge differences in sound quality I see from changing speaker placement or room treatment were typical, or (and you guys said it much more nicely) I was just wierd.

I went 5 years or more with a relatively crappy sounding system (the room, not the equipment), but I ended up not listening to music much either during that time. Not sure which was cause and which was effect -- the music just didn't sound very good, and started to bug my ears after a few minutes.

I may be more sensitive to first reflection signal than most, since even now I notice immediately if there's a bad reflection even if it takes me five minutes to figure out the bounces ie where the reflection is coming from.

The interesting thing is that some albums I had written off as "poor recordings, listen in the car only" now sound much better. As an example, the B.B. Gabor CD (local guy from the 80s) sounded like crap on both the HT system and the stereo system downstairs, but with all the treatments in place it now has that "raw" sound you associate with direct-to-disk recordings but nothing fatiguing at all.

The bass problems are at least partially my own fault -- I'm drawn to interesting architecture so tend to end up in challenging rooms. That said, the level of mid-bass clarity you can achieve through luck or treatment is incredible -- the M60s are finally starting to remind me of the $50K systems in $100K rooms I listened to during my misspent youth (forget drugs, my parents worried about me mugging old ladies to feed my audio habit).

Getting into specifics :

1. Mark - breaking the window out didn't occur to me but that's a great idea, will remember it for next time

2. It's possible I was starting further back (ie with poorer sound) than most people, since AFAICS most of you do think about first reflections when setting up your systems in the first place (eg putting speakers on the long wall so you can ignore most of them) and aren't above making little tweaks (wall hangings, carpet, strategically located pillow/chair) where needed.

3. After some more listening I realized that the bass build-up in the bedroom *was* substantially reduced after all -- there was still a lot of bass there but almost as much bass out in the living room, so it turns out that moving one speaker had a huge effect on how the room was energized.

4. Decided there was actually too much bass with the new layout so experimented with speaker distance from the wall. First pulled them out ~5 inches and that seemed to reduce the bass too much, so pushed them back in a couple of inches and now it seems just right.

There's still a freaky amount of bass relative to what I've been hearing for the last 5+ years but the response seems pretty even, at least as far as I can judge by listening to bass notes walking up and down the scale.

My impression has been that when people buy Axioms and end up listening to all their recordings again it's because of the much-improved midrange clarity, but now I'm in the weird situation of wanting to go through every recording again and listen to all the bass lines I haven't heard before.

When I got home from work tonight the first thing I did was move a panel from what seemed to be a no-longer-needed spot so I could sit on the couch or stand behind it and have first reflection points covered in both cases. Removing the panel from its previous location did seem to have a minor effect on the sound but since I can't even characterize it as better or worse I'm going to ignore it.

After pulling the M60s a couple of inches further from the wall (which slightly reduced bass levels and got rid of the distracting aspect) I think the bass is as close to "just right" as I'm going to get on this round of tweaking. It is a "freaky level of bass" relative to what I had been hearing before but it sounds pretty accurate and boom-free -- I just have the same ability to "see deeply into the music" in the low notes that I previously only had with higher frequency sounds.

The depressing thing is that all this tweaking has done is "get the room out of the way" so the speakers can work as designed. Probably would have been easier to haul everything out in a field and listen there.

Make sure you hang your sub from a pole!