Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Changed the HT room layout a bit -- wow !!

You might remember I had been complaining a bit about the room layout in the basement (HT) area. The original setup sounded pretty good but only worked for one person... and when I rearranged to make it more people friendly the sound sucked.

I'm posting because I was astounded how much improvement was gained from a relatively small room change. I know I shouldn't have been surprised but I was anyways.

The "before" layout had the speakers at one end of the room, a couple feet from the far wall, over to one side of the room and angled slightly towards the centerline of the room. The furniture (sofa and love seat) were arranged in an L, with the love seat opposite to the speakers and the sofa running between speakers and love seat offset to the other side of the room. Normal seating position was on the sofa with my head twisted towards the screen; love seat was too far away.

The "after" layout basically discarded the love seat, moved the sofa to where the love seat used to be but centered in the room and a couple of feet closer to the screen. The TV and speakers were also centered in the room and pulled a few more feet from the far wall. The new layout is not quite a classic "thirds" floor plan but pretty close, perhaps 1/4, 1/2, 1/4 down the long axis of the room.

I also moved the QS8s so that they were both roughly at ear level with similar orientation and distance, although I did keep the soup cans 'cause I couldn't find the T bracket.

The only settings I changed were to remove a slight boost I had added to one main (2dB) and center (1dB) to reflect the fact that the other main was by a wall while these speakers were "out in the open" by comparison. New settings are 0dB all round except for the sub.

I knew that imaging etc.. would improve a bit (and it did), but two other changes surprised me more. The sound was much more "open", presumably because I didn't have the big sofa right in front of one of the M60s, and the difference in deep bass was astounding. I hadn't realized it, but the old seating position was in the middle of the long axis and close to the middle of the short axis. Since the subwoofer was in the corner that meant I was seated in a big fat null.

Wow... now I know why people babble on about high end subs. I played through the juicy scenes from movies I had played in the last couple of weeks, and the difference in LF effects was huge. The factory scene in Minority Report had never impressed me... in fact I had never really heard the bass that everyone talked about. Now I can feel the bass.

In the "Burly Brawl" from the 2nd Matrix movie there are low frequency "slams" where the sofa comes up and kicks you in the butt and you can almost "see" the bass hit moving across the floor from the speakers to the back of the room.

Fixing up the QS8 location also greatly improved the surround effects. Guess I'll have to go listen to 5 channel music again as well.

One other interesting thing is that the sub is pretty much invisible when listening to music but kicks REALLY hard when watching movies. That either means I have a response hole in the mid-bass or (hopefully) it means that I'm finally hearing decently flat response without mid-bass peaks making the music sound boomy. Going from the PSB sub to the SVS (in the same location) allowed me to greatly reduce the tweaking when going between music and movies; now I don't have to tweak at all

Anyways, I thought the system was pretty good before but now I'm just blown away. Let this be a lesson to everyone re: how much difference the room and placement can really make.... and remember that I always thought this was a crappy room.

What, no pictures or diagrams? Bah, I say. BAH!

Yeah, you're right. OK, here you go :

Original layout (sub not shown but same location) :



New layout :

John, I'm glad to hear you've found such an improvement. Your revalation sounds similar to the one I just had moving into my new house. One thing you said really struck me:

In reply to:

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One other interesting thing is that the sub is pretty much invisible when listening to music but kicks REALLY hard when watching movies. That either means I have a response hole in the mid-bass or (hopefully) it means that I'm finally hearing decently flat response without mid-bass peaks making the music sound boomy.

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This is exactly what's going on in my place right now, and it's really making me want a BFD to tune it just so and make it as perfect as possible. I've read the setup guide, and while it looks tedious it doesn't seem that difficult. Is anyone here familiar with using one of these properly? Is it something that's not for the faint of heart, or can a relatively inept person such as myself tackle a project like this?

congrats John on your new setup, looks awesome. I like the Bar area

That will be my next project for my basement.

If you haven't read this thread, take a look. This describes "doing it just right", with before-and-after frequency response plots, optimized sets of filters and just-so tuning. I don't think most people are so lucky :

http://www.axiomaudio.com/boards/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=HT&Number=90033&page=&view=&sb=&o=&vc=1

As long as you have a CD or DVD with test tones on it (the realtraps site offers a free download that several people have burned onto CDs) and don't mind plotting a few points in a spreadsheet or on paper you should be able to make a big improvement with some relatively minor adjustments.

If you live anywhere near another audio nut it gets much easier, of course.

One thing I should mention is that I regard my current situation (sub is invisible on music and hits hard on movies) as pretty much ideal. I am getting good, deep bass on the music but there is no hint of overpowering bass. With a less favorable setup you end up having to turn the sub up for movies and down for music, which I hated...

>>I like the Bar area

That's somethingn I'm going to have to figure out for the new house. I might have to go with one of those freestanding bars you see in hotel conventions...

... or it can be some kind of phase II build-in when I add the bass traps and surface treatments I am undoubtedly going to need as a result of having a triangular room.

Hello John,

Delighted you've kept one of the QS8s supported by the Habitant soup cans (Lentil?). It adds that Canadian touch.

Thanks for the great diagrams. I never cease to be amazed by the degree to which slight changes in speaker and listener locations alter the perception of fidelity, soundstage and, of course, bass.

Regards,

I can certainly see why the new floor plan sounds better. I think what I would do is replace the love seat with two comfortable club chairs or tub chairs with casters on the other side of the coffee table or to either side of the table to creat a conversation pit and then when you play movies they swing around easily for viewing. My current setup has the entertainment center angled like your first diagram and I too find it difficult to get a good surround set up for all or even most seating positions. The reality of real living quarters versus dedicated HT rooms.
oz

Thanks for linking that thread bridgman. The setup is a bit tedious since there's a lot of trial and error to it. Somtimes you set the bandwidth too wide and end up filtering too large a frequency range. Sometimes it's too narrow and doesn't do much. While tedious, it's not really difficult once you get the button pressing sequences down.

The BFD is an amazingly good bargain for what it can do.