Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Speaker Placement; Bass Null

I'm hoping for feedback on my speaker placement, and if I'm really lucky how to eliminate a bass null that I think I just created.
I have to start by saying this in a room that my wife has layout control over, so some obvious options are not available. (I get other rooms, like the theater room, but the living room is hers.)
Up till this weekend I had the speakers about 2 feet more narrow and the chairs artificially over to the left. It didn't really work visually, but more importantly the stereo separation wasn't as good as I thought it could be. On the plus side the bass seemed decent.
Now I have the speakers a little closer to the side walls, and the chairs in the middle; but I seem to have created a bass null in the center, right where I sit. The null is the rounded-corner rectangle. (I didn't notice it at first, until I was playing music while walking back and forth tweaking tow-in and placement.)
Overall I like the new placement better; but would love to remove the null.

So, what do you guys think, any other suggestions for placement? And is there anything other than removing the chairs I can do about the bass null?

[img]https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/D5yAymbUgjJSOTbVKi8g69e2tqp8mpNSZgXmPIX0k8Z[/img]
[img]https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/pG1Xuw1wEo9hkP5Asu9TeTke4DHnd22ZpJ7tgE69jSk[/img]

I assume that you don’t have a sub … if you do, I’d try moving it around … do the sub crawl. If not consider adding one or two If you have the money. 2 to 4 small subs would be the easiest way to even out the lows … otherwise you can try playing with the mains position more … as to method, someone else might have a better answer but … my first thought, and this would be an experiment, would be to try the sub crawl using a main speaker. Get a feel for where in the space you’d like to set them up. Might work if you have enough leeway in the positioning of the mains … then see if you can get them to image. Never tried that myself but it sounds like it might work. Like to know your solution once you get it … have fun ….

P.S. if you have the space to get around them you can try moving the mains a bit further into the room and/or away from the sides. You might even have them hug the chairs and walk around their backs (if you don’t have the space to get around the fronts)

Personally, I’d try setting up the speakers first and then come up with furniture arrangements to work with them.
From there you might discover a decent compromise.

P.S. I love the invisible man with the party ballon’s

Try toeing them in, moving them closer to the wall behind them and moving your MLP back.

I think though your real problem might be the bad audio juju channeled by the disembodied giant toad skeleton hanging on the right. Throw that shit in a hot fire and all will be well.

So no magic bullet, huh. Thanks guys, I'll keep playing and moving them around.
I should have mentioned the sub, my wife didn't want one of those either (so I got the HPs). But there are a few spots that wouldn't be intrusive and I should be able to "negotiate", so I'll experiment with an existing sub to see if any of those spots work.
They are toed in by-the-way, about 7 degrees. I found a few sited that said aim for directly behind your head. Separation-wise, that's working pretty well.

Ha - thanks! Quick background on that - about 15 years ago my daughter wanted a mannequin to make costumes (she was in community theater). But we go the wrong kind. Instead of taking it back it sat there, and over time everyone in the house took to dressing it up in whatever floated their boat: party animals, weather related, vacation destinations, ... We've had some good ones along the way. Although, people coming into the house for the first time do think we're wacko. Oh well.

You know, that *does* look like a disembodied skeleton! It's actually a weird clock and a bunch of angels. But the next time we're sitting in there drinking I'll make sure to point out to my wife the similarity to a skeleton.

Maybe OW in that room and you could get your sub too?

Can you still get a good holographic Center image with those chairs in between them? I know you’re dealing with the limitations of sharing the room.

Believe it or not I originally suggested OW and she declined. The next time she regrets her decision to let speakers in I'll see what happens.

I completely forgot that at one point I did remove the chairs to see the difference, and it didn't seem to be much at all. That surprises me as I type this so I'll do that experiment again. I will say that I am getting a center image, but the overall effect is L/R heavy. That's actually one of the reason I posted, as I was thinking maybe I went too wide. But at the time I was separating that effect with the bass null; which now sounds like a really obvious miss.

She doesn't want on-walls because they'll interfere with her wall clutter. Maybe she can nail the voodoo doll to the ceiling.

The other alternative is to just forget about traditional tower speakers and see if there's an aesthetically pleasing all-in-one wonder that might suit the wife. If not the AxiomAir Force 2 or 3, then maybe a B&W Zeppelin, Sonus Faber Omnia, or a couple of Sonos Fives.

I don't think you'll be doing critical listening with any of these, but maybe they might be good enough, and might even alleviate the bass null at the seating position.

The B&W Zeppelin looks like a hemorrhoid suppository for elephants.

Mojo, you definitely have a way with words ...

Can't quite put my finger on it ...
What's the inverse of Eloquent, Sophisticated, Pleasing, Suave ...
It will come to me ...

Agreed. I have quite the talent. No need to be envious. All you have to do is practice.

While that is a darn good guess, the speakers displaced her desk and a table chock full of do-dads; so she came away with a net reduction of clutter. OW would have preserver both.

Noooo ... ! Is it that bad of a layout? This is my main music listening location now. Replacing my 13x14 study with M5s. That would be the worse outcome possible. The nulls are not that bad, I'm just trying to improve things. Also, it's not the speakers she objects to, it's moving out any more of her stuff.

That was an "interesting" description! But you now know more about my room that I do - where the heck to you see a b&w zeppelin?

No update on actually doing more experimenting, everyone's been working or sleeping.

Cork, hamurabi suggested you might want to consider a B&W Zeppelin. You missed that part of his post like you missed the nominal impedance line in the M5.

You don't have to move her stuff out of that room. Just screw those two chairs to the ceiling. Problem solved!

I love these boards. They are an endless source of entertainment for my aged yet immature mind.

It's hard to second guess someone else's decor decisions without more photos. I take it there's a fireplace on the left longitudinal wall? If so, I'd consider relocating the sofa to face it directly, with the accent chairs on either side to form a sociable seating group. That would get rid of the primary sight-line of the stairs from the main seating area. I would have the loudspeakers straddle the fireplace mantle. If there is no mantle, it might be a good spot for a TV bench.

Good home decor has symmetry, repetition, and proportion elements. The short curtains, low curtain rod placement, and crooked picture frames mounted above the door archway call unnecessary attention to the short ceiling height (even though it's not short), and the hanging pieces are the wrong scale for the room size. Those three frames ought to be mounted to the right of the door arch to balance out the mirror on the left. Make sure the grouping is at the same eye-level height as the mirror.

The cushions are the right size but too close to the color of the room; may I suggest bright yellow, cobalt blue, forest green, or white?

If she can buy into making those revisions, then you can upsell her on a subwoofer.

Ha! And ouch!
Well, we don't spend much effort to be stylish, so we're good with it as-is. We get some art at the occasional show, throw it up on the wall and call it a day. Or actually a decade. You would have really enjoyed critiquing the walls when she did her sponge thing. That took two paint-overs to erase completely. (You got me on the crooked picture though; it almost bothers me enough to fix it. I almost did 3 days ago, but that would have required me to actively put my hand over my head and that was waay too much work for the moment. It's on the project list.)

On the serious side (I only consider speaker placement as serious), there is a fireplace to the left, and we did have the couch on the right for a while. One problem with that layout is the right is a commonly used path to get to the hot tub, and the couch there makes it a more confined/awkward walk. The other issue is that the measurements would be 7.5' between speakers and ~8' from the speakers to the listening position. Probably too close for M80s. But if she ever decides to go back to that layout I'll definitely give it a try.

I still haven't played around again, that's probably a Friday night with beer activity. But I'm guessing my "fix" will be to slide the chairs back when I want to listen critically.

I finally had a chance to experiment some more.
First off, the chairs definitely affect the center image. So thanks for mentioning that Kodiak. It wasn't a complete washout, maybe 3ish db; but I'll definitely pull the chairs back for critical listening from now on.
As for the null, I now think it's less of a center deficit than a boundary reinforcement problem. The extra bass is roughly 3 ft from each wall, which corresponds to the size of the front wall opening. So the speakers could be too close to the wall, or they could just be reflecting off the front wall (But moving them out as much as 3 feel didn't change things.) In any case, I think I'm good as-is for the low end; not that a sub wouldn't help in the grand scheme of things.
I also tried changing the toe-in again, and I think I had them over-toed. At least I'll try that way for a while and see if the difference remains a positive.
Finally I decided to leave the picture off-center. Too much change all at once can't be good.

Toe it in, toe it out
Let the wife scream and shout
Slide those chairs all around
watch her howl like a hound.

Those god-damned pictures have to go
The monkey ju ju also so
Ju ju, pictures, firepit
Watch her throw a hissy fit.

Speakers pounding out the sound
Images forming all around
Cork just laughs hysterically
As soundstage expands majestically.

The ol' lady screeching, bloody freaking
As her bones start a creakin'
Bones that jump right through her skin
Erasing Cork's shitty grin

Ulna shoved up Cork's rectum
Tibia deviates his nasal septum
Her patella rips his scrotum
Cork is propped up like a totem

Her skull holes are alit with anger
As she grabs a wire hanger
Gouging woofers, squawkers, tweets
Cackling now Cork's heart she eats.

Cork's spirit now starts to rise
A peaceful look deep in his eyes
For in the light, across the gates
A majestic sight awaits.

He sees a place in the light
Filled with speakers, amps with might
Best of all but could it be?
A boundaryless infinity.

Love it Mojo!
Kind of dark there in the middle, but who doesn't love a happy ending. As a bonus it really does sum things up very nice and tidy-like.

I felt real bad about the middle so I tried to give it a positive spin. But no matter how positive, she turned into a demon and eviscerated you so there's that.

I forgot the title. 377 Ohms.