I don't disagree the statement about "response changes by fractions of a dB to 1dB max, tiny shifts in time, microscopic distortion levels". I used to think that an amplifier could only be a minor contributor to imaging until I was blown away and mesmerised by a Pathos TT that I repaired and rebuilt for a client. That amplifier was the only component in my regular system that changed; the source, preamplifier, loudspeakers, seating position, room acoustics, etc were identical, yet the change in imaging, depth, width, height, space, etc was staggering. I have not heard anything like it since and would own one now if I had the budget.
I don't have any theory about why I heard what I heard. I hear small differences differences in imaging between amplifiers if any, but I do contend that generally mid-level AV receivers, and even so-called high-end Japanese receivers from Yamaha, Marantz, Denon, Onkyo, Integra, etc, are as flat as a tack when it comes to imaging and realism, and are totally un-engaging to listen to.
(1) So you're listening roughtly 8 feet from the speakers, in an equidistant triangle. That's almost the near field. Are the speakers straight ahead or toed in directly towards the listener? You might want to try the old British LS3/5 trick and set them up so they cross just ahead of you... you should see a little bit of the outside cabinet wall. The amount of toe and proximity to the side walls will make the soundstage change.
(2) The amp makes a huge difference. That AVR does you no favors. This being the diyAudio, try looking for a nice F5 or A5. Get a B1 preamp. I figure you shouldn't need much power in such a small room. A good used tube amp as well will make a difference. If you can get something like an old ARC D70 MkII... yes, I got the A5, F5 and D70. They drive my Acoustic Energy AE1s to an incredible soundstage.
(3) BTW, sounds to the outside of the speakers... the trick that HP (Harry Pearson) used was to listen in a small room and very close to the speakers. Wear the speakers as large headphones. He got a lot of side wall reflections, that's how he got the out of the speakers "imaging". Besides the toe in, you might want to move the speakers a bit more towards the side walls.
For testing your soundstage and bass response, I recommend Propius Cantate Domino and Classic Records Lt. Kije. For pure fun, get some of those Elvis reissues.
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Nope... my first dedicated listening room was 10x12x9, I had a pair of Acoustic Energy AE1s, a CJ PV9 in stock form, an ARC D70 MkII with NOS tubes, and a Valhalla LP12 with I forget what MC cartridge and some kind of a Sony ES CD player. I had only once comfy chair in there.... and the soundstaging was incredible. I did sit in the very near field. I had corner traps and LPs on one side wall.
My current home office is 12x13x10, my AE1s are on a shelf just about head level, about four feet apart, three feet from my head, with a NuForce DDA100 amp. This is real near field and the soundstaging is out of this world. The walls of my office are lined with shelves, books, records, desks, etc, etc...
In a small room you have to sit in the near/mid field.
Naturally, deep bass is not gonna be there, but you'd be surprised how good bass can sound in a small room if you don't push it too low and make the room resonate.
Hmm... I just updated the AD/DAC in my main rig with an RME ADI2 Pro RS.... you BETCHA the DAC makes a difference.
No, that's correct, not an exaggeration at all.
But that's not an "amp", it's a device specifically marketed to modify soundstage. It is completely exptected to modify all sorts of things. That's not what an "amp", a power amp or preamp without any deliberate response modification, does or can do. You're just confusing things now.
I disagree.... what is important is FAST bass and NOT deep bass either. If the woofers you are using are slow, and heavy, then of course you would want the larger woofer to get the same acoustic power but less distortion ( less cone travel ).
So you need to get a set of Maggies or large panels with ultra light driver surfaces. They will likely not fit into your room though. They fit in my 22'x14' living room though. They present large scale symphonic works like you are in the middle of row M ( our seats ).
But, IMHO, in a small room, you don't want extension, so the most important aspects are the macrodynamics and microdynamics of the driver, the ability to follow the bass lines. For this, there are a number of excellent mini monitors. An alternative, again IMHO, would be to go with a very high efficiency speaker like a Lowther. Again, a speaker that has limited bass extension but can track the bass lines with no overhang, overshoot, distortion, etc...
That's why in our two home offices we run Acoustic Energy AE1s and Quad 12LS Actives in the bedroom... small monitors with exceptional low distortion. They put out truly outstanding soundstaging in ALL kinds of music except for rap and heavy metal.
Unfortunately, I'm not aware of DIY designs that can match some of the more esoteric monitor designs, so you either go new or buy into the used market.
I think you are going the wrong track by thinking you MUST build larger speakers. But, hey, whatever floats your boat. I did it my way with small drivers and better amplifiers so it worked for me.
BUT, it sounds to me like your current small speakers are likely much better than you have given them a chance..... Did you really play with their set up? In a small room, mini speakers properly set up can sound really, truly good..
https://www.psaudio.com/askpaulvideo/achieving-proper-speaker-toe-in/
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Not at all. To see how the room and speaker modify the signal separately you need to llook at the performance of a speaker in an anechoic chamber, which isn't something most people have access to. What becomes important then is the direct on-axis sound from the speaker. Looking at that, we can always see some modification of requency response, often on the order of several dB, but ideally, we should see a fairly smooth response free from peaks and dips. But it won't be flat, it never is.
Next we look at what happens in time. Looking carefully we always see a bit of separation in time between drivers, in all but the most carefully time-alained models. The, looking at freqency response, but delayed in time, we find certain resonanaces that carry on a bit past the initial wafe front, creating "color" and "voice", and caused by driver and cabinet design. Hopefully, these are minimized by proper damping, but the will always be there, usually confined to the first few milliseconds or less.
Next we could view distortion of various kinds. Transducers, especially dynamic speakes, are notably nonlinear, so we get THD and IMD added to the signal, the audibility of which is a complex matter (you can' say 1.5%THD is audible, for example, without sating frequency and consideing masking). Al
All of those are signal modifiers, and they are far beyond what any amplifier can or will do.
Now, look at the room. Every surface is a potential reflector unless treated. That means that off-axis signasl from the speaker will definitiely find their way to your ears, delayed in time and with shaped response. The number of reflections in an untreated room is immense. Even items in the room become reflectors. The unfortunate part of this is, room surface and objects reflect energy easiyl up to 10kHz, then begin to fall off. Time-delayed reflections produce spatial cues tha conflict with those in the original recording, conflict with the direct sound from the speakers, and affect any speakers ability to create palpable phantom images. At the low end, we can't get bass response below the Schroeder frequency without support from room modes. That means the size, shape, and construction materials become key factors. The position of the bass driver in the room affects the capablility of the room to support low frequencies, and we don't often get to pick the optimum position for the bass driver. Room srufaces, in small rooms, have an audible effect based on time, and that can extend to ove 1 second, though typically RT60 runs less than that in small rooms.
All of those are huge modifications to the original signal. And they are the result of interaction between the speaker and the room that makes the anechoic response of the speaker a rather poor indicator of its performance. No speaker will produce a measurrable RT60 response in an anechoic chamber. No speaker can add late arrivales displaced in time from 1ms on out to 20-30ms, and beyond. No speake can produce room modes on its own, it must have a room to work in. That makes the room the single biggest modifier, followe by he speaker, and followe by amplifiers in a distant laast place.
Of course, and hopefully, but you cannot discount the indirect sound in a room. It's a big factor, which the anechoic comparison confirms.
Hopefully you will understand this better soon. The differences between what a room does and what an amp does are so incredibly far apart there's no simple way to scale it other than my earllier 1000X approximation.
But the "speed" of a woofer cone is inseparable from amplitude and frequency. If a woofer can produce full output down to a pearticular frequency, and up to another frequency, then it's already "fast" as it needs to be. Otherwise, there is no such thing as "fast bass" other than a marketing term. You may be thinking of damping, but that's something entirely different from speed.
BTW, re-reading your comments from the start... are you sure what you want is SLAM? Not soundstaging?
Those are different. Very different. Soundstaging is all about imaging.
Slam is the ability to give you a sense of low level speed.... a fullness to the sound, like the kettle drum in the back row... Not loud, not really deep but a sense of air moving. Being the owner of Maggies, I'm very familiar with the notion of limited deep bass that sounds very full and very fast... "Bass Slam". It makes the sound very realistic.
Perhaps, you need Lowthers or maybe a pair of Zu Audio speakers with a pair of ACAs set to bridge mono.
OK, but the change was not a correct comparison, it was sighted and biased. Clearly, you have no idea how much an amp changes frequency response, and I don't mean that as an insult, it's pretty typical. The same for distortion. These are parameters that are easily meausred and verified.
But you discount FR and distortion? What else? Nothing an amp does is not measurable and quantifiable, but more than that, the differences sometimes heard (if they are real) are related to the interface of the amp to the speaker load. That's something that is real, and can be audible.
Please understand, I'm not saying an amp change isn't or can't be audible. Not at all. I am saything that when changing something that has a subtle difference, a signed test will always verify expectations. Always. And that's where this all comes from.
As to radically changing imaging, depth, width, height, space....these are highly subjective qualities. To evaluate them properly you can't just install a new amp and form an opinion. Expectation bias absolutely will become the dominating factor.
I note that every claim made that an amp changes the soundstage is unsupported by anything other than subjective opinion. It might be true, or not, bu we literally have no data to go on.
Woah, hang on now. Didn't we establish somewhere up the thread that "soundstage" and "imaging" were not the same thing?
Lets put a couple of numbers to this. Take phase, for instance.
A McIntosh 240 power amp shows a phase lag of 12 degrees at 15kHz. What would that be in the acoustic world?
The wavelength of a 15kHz acoustic wave in 20 degree C air at sea level is 22.8mm (360 degrees). 12 degrees would be a distance of .76mm.
Does anyone align their speakers and listening position to the accuracy of .76mm? Or even 3 or 4mm? No? Ok, so then why would anyone thing amplifier phase shift is an audible factor at all?
The frequency response of the same Mac amp is fairly flat, down 0.4dB at 10Hz, and down 0.3dB at 20kHz. And less than a 0.1dB change from 50Hz to 10kHz.
Take a look at the frequency response of the Magnepan LRS speakers, shown here. Ignoreing the "near field response", take a look at the predicted in-room response. See if you see what I see, which looks a lot like 10dB spread from 50Hz to 10kHz.
And we haven't looked at the room yet, which I won't do here because all rooms are different, but as I said above, considering reflections, modes, RT60 and other factors, the room dominates as the modifier, the speaker is a large modifier, and the amp is tiny.
Here are the Mac amp measurements.
A McIntosh 240 power amp shows a phase lag of 12 degrees at 15kHz. What would that be in the acoustic world?
The wavelength of a 15kHz acoustic wave in 20 degree C air at sea level is 22.8mm (360 degrees). 12 degrees would be a distance of .76mm.
Does anyone align their speakers and listening position to the accuracy of .76mm? Or even 3 or 4mm? No? Ok, so then why would anyone thing amplifier phase shift is an audible factor at all?
The frequency response of the same Mac amp is fairly flat, down 0.4dB at 10Hz, and down 0.3dB at 20kHz. And less than a 0.1dB change from 50Hz to 10kHz.
Take a look at the frequency response of the Magnepan LRS speakers, shown here. Ignoreing the "near field response", take a look at the predicted in-room response. See if you see what I see, which looks a lot like 10dB spread from 50Hz to 10kHz.
And we haven't looked at the room yet, which I won't do here because all rooms are different, but as I said above, considering reflections, modes, RT60 and other factors, the room dominates as the modifier, the speaker is a large modifier, and the amp is tiny.
Here are the Mac amp measurements.
Can the OP post pictures of the actual room + system ? I don’t believe there are any 300 answers later.
I submit that every advance in audio engineering over the past 140 years has started out as an unsupported subjective opinion. I've had a >50 year professional career in electro-acoustics, with many years on the committee of the local AES committee even presenting a seminar on AES recommended practise for double blind testing of loudspeakers, and I am acutely aware of subjective observations and expectation effect. Have I understood everything I have heard yet? Not at all.
distortion profile, cannot be more simple and real ,look at Nelson article .....
just reversed all polarity on speaker r and L channel maybe you will find something.....
?
Yes. Inverted polarity. However, polarity is random anyway, not possible to determine what is "correct" throughout the entire chain, mic to speaker.
classicalfan had stated from the start that Jeff Bagbys' Piccolos delivered a sound stage ... it just isn't large enough.
It was found by Floyd Toole that bass reproduction accounts for 30% of our satisfaction with any given loudspeaker listening experience.
I don't think that it's a stretch to realize that a smaller woofer won't produce enough low frequency content vs a larger woofer ... and not just sub bass. You need that additional Sd to reproduce the low frequency content that is a big part of the orchestral genre and expands the sound stage. That is just something the Piccolo lacks. Since classicalfan is completely satisfied with Jeff Bagbys' Piccolo it would seem that the simplest route to take would be adding in a larger woofer module as Jeff Bagby did with his Kairos design. Some crossover rework will be in order but classicalfan will end up with an exceptional set of loudspeakers as a result.
It was found by Floyd Toole that bass reproduction accounts for 30% of our satisfaction with any given loudspeaker listening experience.
I don't think that it's a stretch to realize that a smaller woofer won't produce enough low frequency content vs a larger woofer ... and not just sub bass. You need that additional Sd to reproduce the low frequency content that is a big part of the orchestral genre and expands the sound stage. That is just something the Piccolo lacks. Since classicalfan is completely satisfied with Jeff Bagbys' Piccolo it would seem that the simplest route to take would be adding in a larger woofer module as Jeff Bagby did with his Kairos design. Some crossover rework will be in order but classicalfan will end up with an exceptional set of loudspeakers as a result.
Jaddy say :
" I note that every claim made that an amp changes the soundstage is unsupported by anything other than subjective opinion. It might be true, or not, bu we literally have no data to go on."
"1000 times or more" is just a phrase written loosely for me.That is subjective. I don't see how it can be related to phase changes, mathematically speaking. An amplifier introduces phase shifts if it is not well designed, and then it can no longer fulfill the premise that "what goes in must be equal to what goes out". The only thing you should introduce is an increase in the magnitude of the input signal ( amplitude ) with respect to its output, but not a delay in time ( alteration in its phase ).
https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/technical-articles/understanding-phase-shift-in-analog-circuits/
" I note that every claim made that an amp changes the soundstage is unsupported by anything other than subjective opinion. It might be true, or not, bu we literally have no data to go on."
"1000 times or more" is just a phrase written loosely for me.That is subjective. I don't see how it can be related to phase changes, mathematically speaking. An amplifier introduces phase shifts if it is not well designed, and then it can no longer fulfill the premise that "what goes in must be equal to what goes out". The only thing you should introduce is an increase in the magnitude of the input signal ( amplitude ) with respect to its output, but not a delay in time ( alteration in its phase ).
https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/technical-articles/understanding-phase-shift-in-analog-circuits/
Am I confusing things? How do you think the soundstage is achieved? Are they not point sources of sound delayed in time?
As someone mentioned before here on the forum, "I'll take a bow and walk away"
Considering your situation, I got thinking about the loxjie a30 I bought a while ago. Didn't click with it at first but thinking more about your dilemma, I wondered if I should give it a try in my main system again. This time around I was quite smitten. I played many classical tracks and i really had a hard time shutting down and going to bed.
i mention it because it's around $200 and audio science review found its performance to be first class, and i was getting some big soundstage. This way you spend very little and you will get some perspective on the amp issue. You may find the amp is a keeper. It's hard to believe something that cheap can perform so well but it's worth trying. It also has a TINY footprint, good DAC, remote, and Bluetooth, which is sure handy. I'd recommend you read about it at audio science review. Worst case you sell it and lose about $50 bucks or so but I doubt you'll want to. Just be forewarned, they are so clean sounding it's a bit disconcerting at first, and i had to get the volume up a little for the best sound. Family was sleeping though so manageable sound levels.
speaking of audio science review, the intellectual capital being shared there is stunning and there is no patience there for subjective, wishy washy hifi speak. The harman approach to loudspeakers is highly regarded there and many contributors are literally the architects of contemporary audio. I mention this because there is a lot of hifi myth and lore creeping in here and that is part of the reason there is so much contradiction. Much of the wierd stuff audiophiles do is actually needed to deal with bad engineering.
i mention it because it's around $200 and audio science review found its performance to be first class, and i was getting some big soundstage. This way you spend very little and you will get some perspective on the amp issue. You may find the amp is a keeper. It's hard to believe something that cheap can perform so well but it's worth trying. It also has a TINY footprint, good DAC, remote, and Bluetooth, which is sure handy. I'd recommend you read about it at audio science review. Worst case you sell it and lose about $50 bucks or so but I doubt you'll want to. Just be forewarned, they are so clean sounding it's a bit disconcerting at first, and i had to get the volume up a little for the best sound. Family was sleeping though so manageable sound levels.
speaking of audio science review, the intellectual capital being shared there is stunning and there is no patience there for subjective, wishy washy hifi speak. The harman approach to loudspeakers is highly regarded there and many contributors are literally the architects of contemporary audio. I mention this because there is a lot of hifi myth and lore creeping in here and that is part of the reason there is so much contradiction. Much of the wierd stuff audiophiles do is actually needed to deal with bad engineering.