Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Hearing Things Room tuning for beginners (like me)

As promised a while ago, here is the measured response of the powered M2s at my father in laws place. This is NOT the same response you will have, nor is it telling of the M2s anechoic response. His speakers are located extreme nearfield in a computer setup, and nested inside the walls of a wrting desk. Not an ideal setup, but it still sounds pretty good.

Where did my speakers land? Smack dab 1/3 of the way into my room. Freakin' amazing acoustics. Speakers completely disappear. I can't imagine how much better it could sound with better bookshelves, real stands and that coffee table out of the way.

Mojo's second dojo

Awesome! Great pics. Handsome panels, there.

I've thought about using the 1/3 dimension for my towers...thinking its a rarity that all the seats are used.
I might pull the seats out of the room and focus on the two lazyboys again. I can always place the kids chairs back in the room after.
There is seating for 8 atm (4 adults size seats 4 children size), getting back to tweakville would really make my winter.
Its all about me, and"can it be any better with what I have?".

Another tinkerer!

If you havent done the measure, laser, toe-in match its a great "wow" improvement.

Laser all the way. Save so much time and stress'n over knicking/scratching etc.

I love lasers! (insert Doctor Evil joke)

Here's how I do mine fer those interested. Probably easier ways but this is consistent and I can take notes on how each position performs with great accuracy (and repeatable if I want to change back. -Abort mission)

I put a scale behind the listening position on the centerline of the room. Scale gets larger off centerline so right and left channels can be set without moving scale around. To set the scale, I measure from zero point to each sidewall and make sure the measurements are equidistant.



Then I plunk a line laser atop the speaker and shoot towards the listening position along the centerline of the speaker cabinet. You can see an example of the laser reading in the scale photo. I match the toe in like this during setup. I take notes and change the toe in a couple inches at a time until it sounds like the singer is locked in place dead center and the phantom image is as loud as the hard left and right panned sounds. I use the Barenaked Ladies album "Gordon" to do it and the songs Yoko Ono, Brian Wilson and Box Set for testing. Centered vocals and busy percussion are good tracks to test with I find. Centered vocals for phantom image and busy percussion for timing cues\smearing. Yoko Ono gets annoying, but there is a great right/left/phantom singer setup that makes sensing balance a little easier. Toe in too much and phantom is too strong, too little and other singers are louder. Toe in also affects treble balance, so it's good to listen to female vocals as well to sense if they are getting too nasally or sibilant. I use "Cults" self titled album, as she is already on the verge of being too nasal. The tracks You Know What I Mean and Oh My God are good ones. Love Madeline's vocals. I want to make sure I'm not shifting them any further.

Some people use mono recordings to do this, but I found that it is too hard to get a balance between phantom and left\right sound level when only a phantom image is present. Not sure if you are close to good stereo\phantom balance? Use headphones to check the track without the room involved.

Yes, I have speaker setup OCD.

As i am a fan of measurements and occasionally obsessive about probes and temperatures and thick meats, i will read through this thread when i have time.
One thing i have yet to do is take a frequency response of my own setup and room.
Maybe one day if i ever buy a laptop...though first i should maybe consider a cell phone...don't have one of those either.