Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Hearing Things Stupid Room Tricks

The worst part is that I had a can of (oil-based) "Professional" Varathane in my hand at the store, but that got me thinking about consumer marketing people who put the word "Professional" on cheap junk (since any problems customers encounter with the cheap stuff can be blamed on them not having the specialized knowledge to use it correctly) so I put the "Professional" can back on the shelf and bought the regular (water-based) stuff instead.

<insert sound of head banging on amber-hued pine>

OK, that was interesting. The panel only had an easy-to-notice effect on instruments with prominent highs, so I tested with the first track from "Metheny Mehldau", guitar and piano. Guessing the percussive nature of the instruments helped as well.

Removing the panel made everything seem more intense & detailed, but also seemed to shift the soundstage a couple of feet further away from me, as if the instruments were level with the window pane rather than with the speakers. I didn't like the effect, so I put the panel back and after some side-to-side experimentation ended up with it in the same spot as before. Oddly enough when I centered the panel between the speakers it seemed to make the room too "dead". I was walking around shaking my head at how much of a difference one panel could make.

On a positive note, I'm finally happy enough with the room (if not with the colour of the speaker stands) that I'm going to stop tinkering for a while and listen to music instead

The only part i didn't understand was this:

I've used both but unfortunately my experience only extends to "outdoor" poly (both oil and water based). Both left that amber hue (which i didn't want) on cedar. I understand that this comes from the UV protectant however the marketing on the side of the water based poly specifically stated it wouldn't change the wood colour.
Ummm, ya.
Sell me another ice cube i guess.

Guess I should have bought whatever you bought. Turns out mine was outdoor anyways -- Varathane Diamond Coat Outdoor Satin.


Huh, wonder what was supposed to be there ? I noticed a forum thread on CanuckAudioMart talking about SVS shipping directly to Canada, and nobody seemed to get that they had probably just partnered with ElectronicsForLess / SonicBoomAudio (their previous dealer) and were handling ordering/billing through the SVS site now and having SBA handle fulfillment. I think the text was quoted from the SVS site -- no idea why I selected it though...

One of life's little mysteries.

OK, think I figured it out last night. There's a bit too much absorption on the right wall, and I was compensating for it by having the front wall absorption offset to the left. Problem is that the results varied depending on the amount of high frequency content, since AFAICS only the high frequencies reflect off the window behind the speakers.

Guess the next step would be to try removing the panel to the immediate right of the listening position (partially cut off in the pic above) then moving the panel on the front wall a bit to the right.

Removing the panel on the right was too much. I tried a few combinations, including having two rigid panels in various positions against the "front wall" window, and ended up with something simple -- moving both panels (arrow and X) about 6" to the right. That seemed to balance the reflected sound a bit more consistently. All of the other options seemed significantly worse.

Putting two panels on the front wall rather than one made a big difference -- basically all the instruments in the middle of the soundscape stayed there but seemed really quiet. The instruments were still loud, but the impression of the instrument in a specific spot was much reduced. Not good. Maybe that's why the general recommendation is absorption on the back wall and diffusion on the front.

The interesting thing was that having an alternating mix of reflection and absorption really made a difference -- too much absorption in one place made for a really dead sound. In one sense this is a seriously black art, but the general guidelines from acoustic treatment vendor sites and forums seem to work really well.

AFAICS the complexity comes from the fact that the system is off to one side rather than being centered in the room. In my previous system setups (all centered in the room) getting the acoustics right has been much less work... but that was in another century.

Out of curiosity, what are your test tracks that you've been using for all of this trial and error?

Have you considered removing the coffee table, at least temporarily?

Pretty much every CD in the carousel (maybe 150 disks) -- room testing seems to need a wider range of tracks than speaker testing, at least if you're learning as you go like I am. I'm not using LPs much because the CDP's remote control and ability to replay sections over and over is really useful.

When I was trying to get the bass smoothed out I was using the first part of "Echoes" from Meddle and "On The Run" from DSOTM along with "Can-Utility and the Coastliners" from Foxtrot, but when I was playing with reflected higher notes I started with Metheny/Mehldau then settled on isolated vocal tracks, eg the opening bars of "Dancing with the Moonlit Night" from SEBTP. There's a bit of an edge on Peter Gabriel's vocals at the start of the song and that seems to hit all the right frequencies for adjusting reflections from the front wall window.

The pattern is basically "get it right, listen to a bunch of tracks, realize it's not right yet, tweak using the track that identified the problem, repeat ad nauseum" interspersed with periods of "forget about all that stuff and just enjoy the music".

One odd/neat thing is that I'm starting to get an overwhelming "yeah, that's what it's supposed to sound like" feeling as the room & speaker placement gets into "good enough" territory. It's been ~25 years since I've been able to sit back and just be aware of the music, not the system that provides it.


Thanks for the reminder. I had tried removing the coffee table a couple of months back and it didn't make a lot of difference at the time (although it was covered with so much junk I guess it was pretty stealthy) but when I moved it over to the right hand wall tonight there was a small but noticeable difference.

I ended up moving the coffee table out of the listening area completely. I'm not sure it improved the imaging but it somehow made the sense of "ambience" seem less disturbed. On the downside, in a sense all that did is expose the next problem -- the overstuffed arms on the couch in the listening position.

Guess replacing the seating is next on the hit list, although the room is getting good enough that the position of my own arms is starting to make a noticeable difference