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Re: Stupid Room Tricks
bridgman #406908 08/31/14 04:25 AM
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Bean bag chair?
You would be able to lower the speaker back down to the floor and, in theory, get the best of both worlds.



Re: Stupid Room Tricks
brwsaw #406910 08/31/14 05:46 AM
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Originally Posted By: brwsaw
Bean bag chair?

Hah, that's a great idea. I clicked on a Sumo beanbag chair ad once and now the ads are coming up all the time... had a nagging thought that I needed to get one but couldn't figure out why. Now that you mention it we always used to prefer beanbag chairs for music listening but I never made the connection with listening height before.

Last edited by bridgman; 08/31/14 06:28 AM.

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Re: Stupid Room Tricks
bridgman #406911 08/31/14 06:14 AM
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I had a Sumo Omni several years back and liked it, though I never got enough use out of it. It was never in the main room. I eventually got rid of it after deciding I wouldn't have space for it in the future layout. If you can accommodate one, I say go for it.

Re: Stupid Room Tricks
bridgman #406916 08/31/14 07:22 AM
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I wonder...
I can't raise my ceiling height for Atmos but I could replace some or all of the seating.
I wonder which fabrics and or fillers have the best acoustic properties (do no harm).



Re: Stupid Room Tricks
bridgman #406921 08/31/14 08:05 PM
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Nickbuol gave me some good advice about fabrics on the first page of this thread :

Quote:
... you can use a basic solid muslin fabric (a bit too "industrial" for me), or really any fabric that you can literally blow through... Try putting the fabric up to your mouth and think, "If I was a hostage, and they put this over my mouth, would I be able to breathe, or would I pass out." If you can breathe through it, then you are pretty good for being passable for covering an absorption panel.

After doing a bit more listening/testing it occurred to me that the deep bass notes sounded just a bit like someone thumping on the bottom of a big Rubbermaid tote ... so maybe I'll try some solid speaker stands before I replace all the furniture with beanbags.

Last edited by bridgman; 08/31/14 08:08 PM.

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Re: Stupid Room Tricks
bridgman #406933 09/01/14 06:29 PM
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Hmm. At first glance the more solid stands didn't improve things, although I may just have lost some artificial bass reinforcement from the tote bottom resonating. Coupling to the floor seems a bit better, ie the bass can be "felt" more readily, but there still seems to be a loss of very deep bass relative to having the speakers on the floor.

I guess next steps are (a) moving the speakers closer to the front wall to see if that helps to make up for moving the woofers/ports away from the floor, (b) raising them a smaller amount, trading off better midrange/imaging for better deep bass, (c) beanbags or sitting on the floor.

Option (d) - taller speakers -- looks a bit better every day laugh

Last edited by bridgman; 09/01/14 06:57 PM.

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Re: Stupid Room Tricks
bridgman #406934 09/01/14 06:30 PM
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Whoops, double post. As long as I'm here, I tried the second option from the above list (raising the speakers, but not so much) and that seemed to help quite a bit, ie the improvement in bass was noticeable and any loss in higher frequencies was not.

I don't know how much of the improvement came from making the stand effectively more solid vs getting the drivers & ports closer to the floor, but guessing the reduced height made relatively more difference. Anyways, the M40s are about 6" off the ground now and are sounding good enough to leave alone for a while.

Last edited by bridgman; 09/01/14 07:01 PM.

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Re: Stupid Room Tricks
bridgman #406950 09/03/14 12:25 AM
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OK, that was interesting and a little bit disturbing...

After getting comfortable with the M40's for music I hauled the M60s back upstairs to the HT area and now it sounds right again. That freed up the M2s and got me thinking about how they would sound down in the music system. Fortunately they're a lot easier to carry than M60s.

Put the M2's upside-down on top of the M40's and moved the speaker cables across to the M2s. Wow. I never did a direct A/B between M40's and M60's but I guess now I know what the results would have been. Vocals on the M2's are a lot clearer than on the M40's, to the point that it was a tough call between the excellent full-range response of the M40's and the crisp midrange of the M2's. If I had to listen to just one I probably would have leaned slightly towards the M2's over the M40's (!!!), at least for the (not very bass-dependent) tracks I was listening to.

So what to do ? Duh, wire 'em up in parallel and listen to some music. The result was a tough call. From a distance the combination works really well, pretty close to the M60's, but sitting in front of the speakers there was something mucked up with the imaging (basically it wasn't there). I checked for obvious out-of-phase stupids and didn't find any, but I never have 100% confidence in a one-time check.

The M60's are staying upstairs, so I either need to throw another pair of full-range speakers into the mix or at least go back to 2005 and pair up a subwoofer with the M2's. As Yoda says, meditate on this I will.

Last edited by bridgman; 09/03/14 01:08 AM.

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Re: Stupid Room Tricks
bridgman #406951 09/03/14 01:36 AM
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Just pair your M2s with an EP400 or two (like I have) & you can have sonic nirvana - crisp mid & upper end & oh so deep & powerful lower end...

TAM

Re: Stupid Room Tricks
bridgman #406954 09/03/14 03:24 PM
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Good point -- like bi-amped, LF-optimized Bryston Mini-T's. Nice !!

I took the stands out from under the M40's, aligned the baffles of the M2's and M40's more carefully and toed them out a bit further - one or more of those seem to have improved the imaging.



At first glance the M2's seem to have wider midrange dispersion than the M40's so they don't need to be toed in quite as much as the M40's did on their own. I could try angling the M2's out a bit further than the M40's but that's a bit too Bose Cube for my liking.

Or I could turn the M2's around and mock up an LFRxxx system. The possibilities are endless laugh

Last edited by bridgman; 09/03/14 04:02 PM.

M60ti, VP180, QS8, M2ti, EP500, PC-Plus 20-39
M5HP, M40ti, Sierra-1
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