ScottG said:
Internal walls have no insulation just plaster and brick, however the outwalls are all double walled with insulation filled cavity.
I might give that a go 😀 the walls are a mess in there so good old uncle is skimming them all as I'm painting on to the plaster.
ShinOBIWAN said:
Thats very cool! 🙂 Here in the US even if your family was in a particular trade - its often the case that you simply live so far apart that it isn't even practicle.
Bummer about the wall construction. Kinda makes it hard to push an HT speaker into a wall. 😀
One thing to note on the "look" of the room. For some reason wall to wall carpet tends to "close in" the look of the room and make it smaller feeling. You might want to consider wood here, or perhaps that carpet with a wood surround abutting the walls.
ShinOBIWAN said:
Note though that the walls need to be very dry - and you probably don't want to do this IF the wall paper was a thick vinyl type.
ScottG said:
There's no damp or anything like that and the walls will all be 'keyed' and PVA'd prior to skimming.
ShinOBIWAN said:
The resulting sanding may not even require a "keyed" finish - at least I've found thats the case (..but I'm certainly no expert here on finishing and whats required for one - in fact I'm pretty inept at producing a good finish 😀 .) I can paint.. I can sand. But I can't seem to float anything beyond a simple guide-based (thats level) and "scree" it. I totally screw'ed up shower base to the point where I had to chip it all out and instead install a plastic base.
I know you like painting, but try talking to your uncle about a venetian plaster with a stained finish in the color you like - see what his thoughts are. (..and also run the sanding idea by him.)
ScottG said:
During summer break from uni, I used to help out on the building sites/jobs where my uncle and father worked.
I'm not sure completely sure of the whole plastering process but from what I saw the skimming prep work involved, checking existing plaster work to make sure it was sound and if not, removing and then finely scoring the existing plaster on the walls and then apply a very watered down PVA type glue(not sure if it was PVA but similar).
It was a few years ago since I last saw it done so I'm not 100% sure.
The room is very small Scott - 4m x 3m with 2.3m ceiling. With such a limited space its important to keep thing uniform. I've seen venetian plaster and whilst it can look fantastic in the right settings I strongly believe the room doesn't have the dimensions to do it justice.
The same thing goes with the laminate flooring and carpet island, I'd expect it would make the room look even smaller.
I was chatting with Simon and Ralph in another topic on here and posted a crude plan view of the room. Its a very limiting space, there's only two possible orientations for the speakers:
Grey are the speakers, black subs, thin black line is PJ screen and the hatching is rough listening area. There's also a window as shown with the box.
Bearing in mind the dimensions of the room, I did have the kit setup as in the top drawing, unfortunately I'm only ~2m away from the speakers and the rear wall is literally a foot and half away from my head, bonus is not much in the way of prominant side wall/ceiling reflections and the bounce off the floor is lessened due to the 16 degree baffle slope.
The other method (which I haven't yet tried with the Perceives) is firing across the length of the room. Bonus here is good distance from the rear wall(1m) and the speakers (~2.5m) but they're pushed right into the corners with some toe in, so bass will be hectic and imaging and sound in general will suffer from strong first reflections off the side walls that arrive almost coincindentally with direct sound and I'd imagine with only a slightly lesser magnitude.
As you can see both are heavily compromised and need strong but considered treatments. I'll be setting the speakers up firing on the length of the room just to see how good/bad they sound like this without treatment - my guess is they will sound like £100 floorstanders with most of the sound wrecked because of the wide dispertion pattern design of the loudspeaker and the close proximity to rear and side walls. I can see the most potential in this setup though but I'll have to be very careful with treatments. Luckily Simon(Tenson) has a wealth of acoustic knowledge both practical and theory, he actually has his own line of treatments which he's just about to bring to the market hopefully:
http://www.audiosmile.co.uk/products.htm
He's very kindly undulging my noobishness to acoustics and hopefully I'll be able to apply his insight into make the room work better than it did before.
Yeah, that is NOT an easy room to work with..
Just from a cursory look I'd go with floor plan 1 but (IF possible):
1. Move the speakers a little closer to the listening position.
2. Toe-out the speakers so that they are effectivly firing straight ahead AND use some eq. to get a flat on the listener's axis response.
Unfortunetly that would waste even more usable space - so I'm not sure its practical.
I haven't found the color variation in venetian plaster to effect apparent volume. Base color does seem to matter greatly however - the lighter the color the larger the room.
I have however found that a wood floor (especially a light color like maple or birch) makes the space seem much larger. Even better is if the planks are oriented diagonally.
Still, it is purely subjective - do what works for you. 😉
EDIT: considering just how small the room is I'd to scrap the idea of pigmented venetian plaster and use this stuff:
http://www.hytechsales.com/prod150.html
Just from a cursory look I'd go with floor plan 1 but (IF possible):
1. Move the speakers a little closer to the listening position.
2. Toe-out the speakers so that they are effectivly firing straight ahead AND use some eq. to get a flat on the listener's axis response.
Unfortunetly that would waste even more usable space - so I'm not sure its practical.
I haven't found the color variation in venetian plaster to effect apparent volume. Base color does seem to matter greatly however - the lighter the color the larger the room.
I have however found that a wood floor (especially a light color like maple or birch) makes the space seem much larger. Even better is if the planks are oriented diagonally.
Still, it is purely subjective - do what works for you. 😉
EDIT: considering just how small the room is I'd to scrap the idea of pigmented venetian plaster and use this stuff:
http://www.hytechsales.com/prod150.html
ShinOBIWAN said:
Forget stripping, just dab and dot 9mm plasterboard over the top, you'll be done in a room that size in a couple of hours. 🙂
Ant,
Just to point out that I wouldn't expect firing down the length of the room to work well if you didn't have room correction. But as you do, you can take advantage of corner loading the subs which will give a smoother response because reflections will be in closer phase. It will also give you more boundary gain so you don't need to push the subs as hard 😉 On top of that as they will be symmetrically opposing each other they will knock out a lot of the room modes anyway.
Just to point out that I wouldn't expect firing down the length of the room to work well if you didn't have room correction. But as you do, you can take advantage of corner loading the subs which will give a smoother response because reflections will be in closer phase. It will also give you more boundary gain so you don't need to push the subs as hard 😉 On top of that as they will be symmetrically opposing each other they will knock out a lot of the room modes anyway.
I got to thinking about the room a bit more and this is probably closer to what I would do. (..bear in mind that I absolutely suck at pictures.)
Kind'of a "mini-me" version of this for the layout (..but with a walkthrough area between the amps/speakers):
http://www.arduman.com/aa/Sayfalar/adnans/adnans3/syst.htm
Kind'of a "mini-me" version of this for the layout (..but with a walkthrough area between the amps/speakers):
http://www.arduman.com/aa/Sayfalar/adnans/adnans3/syst.htm
Attachments
Thought I'd fill-in some more details on the placement..
Here is a good idea of corner loading subs considering boundry and modal issues:
http://www.audioholics.com/techtips/setup/loudspeakers/SubwooferplacementP18.php
Note that your smaller room will likely have its decline closer to 50 Hz than 40 Hz as shown.
The speakers centered in room fairly close to the sidewalls should also have a moderatly smooth modal response (..something between these two):
http://www.audioholics.com/techtips/setup/loudspeakers/SubwooferplacementP17.php
http://www.audioholics.com/techtips/setup/loudspeakers/SubwooferplacementP18.php
(..of course here its much harder to make an even "semi" accurate guess.)
Because you are close to the speakers (around 5 feet away from each if centered at the listening position), early reflections will be substantially lessened. (..not just side-wall, but also floor and ceiling reflections.) Additionally, apparent width should have some increased expansion because you are listening further off-axis, but center-fill should still be good because the speakers will be fairly close together.
The greater distance from the front wall will help substantially with imaging depth. Furthermore it *should* track better with movies if you have your screen back next to the wall with door. On the otherhand you will need a pull-down black-out screen for the window when viewing movies (..that you didn't need before).
Finally, there is the "feng shui" factor. This is related to your position in the room and the door where others enter. Because you will be facing them when they enter, it marginally reduces stress. (..surprising, but I've personally found this to be true.)
Here is a good idea of corner loading subs considering boundry and modal issues:
http://www.audioholics.com/techtips/setup/loudspeakers/SubwooferplacementP18.php
Note that your smaller room will likely have its decline closer to 50 Hz than 40 Hz as shown.
The speakers centered in room fairly close to the sidewalls should also have a moderatly smooth modal response (..something between these two):
http://www.audioholics.com/techtips/setup/loudspeakers/SubwooferplacementP17.php
http://www.audioholics.com/techtips/setup/loudspeakers/SubwooferplacementP18.php
(..of course here its much harder to make an even "semi" accurate guess.)
Because you are close to the speakers (around 5 feet away from each if centered at the listening position), early reflections will be substantially lessened. (..not just side-wall, but also floor and ceiling reflections.) Additionally, apparent width should have some increased expansion because you are listening further off-axis, but center-fill should still be good because the speakers will be fairly close together.
The greater distance from the front wall will help substantially with imaging depth. Furthermore it *should* track better with movies if you have your screen back next to the wall with door. On the otherhand you will need a pull-down black-out screen for the window when viewing movies (..that you didn't need before).
Finally, there is the "feng shui" factor. This is related to your position in the room and the door where others enter. Because you will be facing them when they enter, it marginally reduces stress. (..surprising, but I've personally found this to be true.)
Thanks for the thoughts Scott.
Its going well, only real problem is that the walls are in worst state than I originally imagined. I started to knock some of the damaged plaster off and then found out that the virtually all the plaster on two of the walls has blown. One of the walls forms the chimney breast and I guess all the heat over the 50 odd years that the house has stood caused this. The other wall is the outer wall with the window, I'm guessing the temperature again is responsible. In the end I've decided to rip the plaster off all walls and just start from scratch, not what I originally planned and much more work but I'd rather do that than half a job.
Before all this, I did manage to take a listen with the speakers firing down the length of the room and was surprised just how good it sounded. The bass was rough sounding, although certainly listenable, it certainly had a new level of punch that almost negates the need for subs - no doubt because both speakers were corner loaded. The mids were a little shoutey at first but I stuck a few 2" tiles right on the first reflection point and it cleaned up no end. First thing I noticed was that the strong imaging characteristics had been lowered a notch or two but after listening for a few more minutes I soon realised it had been replaced by a much larger soundstage, pretty sure this was due to the absence of my brute force room treatments. Overall the sound was very powerful, quite a bit more so than with the original setup, I played Prodigy's "Poison" (95 EQ Remix) at what must have been triple figure SPL's and it was hugely intense with sweet dynamics. Bass sounded sooo much more extended, I felt it went down 30hz strongly(but couldn't be bothered to measure anything to confirm) and had massive punch, these are only little 9" drivers but I could really feel the kick of the bass - great fun actually 😀 The bass actially sounded like a completely different speaker to what I was used to, it surprised me. I should add that this was without any treatments except right near the mid and treble - the room was actually virtually bare with only the equipment and a carpet in there and I hadn't messed around with any DRC for this quick experiment but in some ways I preferred this more raw and powerful sound to the controlled and ultra clean sound of mass treatments and DRC'ing the speakers to within an inch of their lives. I'll be extremely happy if I can keep the energy of this presentation but with more subtlety in the mids and up top and get back the pin point imaging I had before.
Its going well, only real problem is that the walls are in worst state than I originally imagined. I started to knock some of the damaged plaster off and then found out that the virtually all the plaster on two of the walls has blown. One of the walls forms the chimney breast and I guess all the heat over the 50 odd years that the house has stood caused this. The other wall is the outer wall with the window, I'm guessing the temperature again is responsible. In the end I've decided to rip the plaster off all walls and just start from scratch, not what I originally planned and much more work but I'd rather do that than half a job.
Before all this, I did manage to take a listen with the speakers firing down the length of the room and was surprised just how good it sounded. The bass was rough sounding, although certainly listenable, it certainly had a new level of punch that almost negates the need for subs - no doubt because both speakers were corner loaded. The mids were a little shoutey at first but I stuck a few 2" tiles right on the first reflection point and it cleaned up no end. First thing I noticed was that the strong imaging characteristics had been lowered a notch or two but after listening for a few more minutes I soon realised it had been replaced by a much larger soundstage, pretty sure this was due to the absence of my brute force room treatments. Overall the sound was very powerful, quite a bit more so than with the original setup, I played Prodigy's "Poison" (95 EQ Remix) at what must have been triple figure SPL's and it was hugely intense with sweet dynamics. Bass sounded sooo much more extended, I felt it went down 30hz strongly(but couldn't be bothered to measure anything to confirm) and had massive punch, these are only little 9" drivers but I could really feel the kick of the bass - great fun actually 😀 The bass actially sounded like a completely different speaker to what I was used to, it surprised me. I should add that this was without any treatments except right near the mid and treble - the room was actually virtually bare with only the equipment and a carpet in there and I hadn't messed around with any DRC for this quick experiment but in some ways I preferred this more raw and powerful sound to the controlled and ultra clean sound of mass treatments and DRC'ing the speakers to within an inch of their lives. I'll be extremely happy if I can keep the energy of this presentation but with more subtlety in the mids and up top and get back the pin point imaging I had before.
ShinOBIWAN said:
Bummer about the additional demolition.
I personally don't like traditional absorptive boundries at freq.s above the modal region - except for the ceiling and the "front" wall (particularly the front wall), and some for the floor in front of the speakers.
Be carefull of the presentation's "energy" at least with respect to midbass imaging. I often find that imaging depth (particularly with monopoles) for instruments/voices that extends anywhere from 60 Hz to about 300 Hz is often unnaturally "forward". An example is with a good recording that has drums that seem in front of the singer and other instrumentalists (..or right behind them). Of course it shouldn't be like this and it may require some eq. to get it back to its proper perspective. From my experience this is where free-air dipoles reign supreme - they can actually "display" a drum kit that is WAY behind the band if it was actually like that on the recording (..and still have very accurate image size and stability).
Good luck on the room! 😉
ShinOBIWAN said:
I think you will be able to. I would not corner load without the ability to EQ but when you have EQ you can smooth out the bass and still keep the added extension and punch. You then treat the room for mid and high frequencies with a mixture of diffusion and absorption in the right places to get the mid and highs good without any need for EQ (actually I find I use just a bit to add a pleasant sounding curve, no more than 1dB or 2dB). Obviously Scott likes an absorptive front wall and perhaps a diffusive back wall. That is more common in design these days, but I find it is best to just use absorption for whichever wall is nearer you.
Anyway I’m glad you are finding it works well for you.
Regarding sub placement: with your room dimensions (4x3 m) you shouldn''t get standing waves below 42 Hz (longest room dimension < 1/2 wavelength). So if you cross the sub at 50 Hz there really isn't much potential for any discrete room modes from the sub itself, in other words you might put it pretty much anywhere for that matter.
Bass envelopment quality is another matter. I found this paper quite enlightening regarding speaker placement, but this would apply to your main Perceives only, since your subs will operate in the sub-modal region only.
And yes, from my understanding you do want mid/high reflections in the 10-50 ms delay range for spatial depth and width. Here is another paper from the same author on this subject.
Bass envelopment quality is another matter. I found this paper quite enlightening regarding speaker placement, but this would apply to your main Perceives only, since your subs will operate in the sub-modal region only.
And yes, from my understanding you do want mid/high reflections in the 10-50 ms delay range for spatial depth and width. Here is another paper from the same author on this subject.
the room was actually virtually bare with only the equipment and a carpet in there and I hadn't messed around with any DRC for this quick experiment but in some ways I preferred this more raw and powerful sound to the controlled and ultra clean sound of mass treatments and DRC'ing the speakers to within an inch of their lives.
People place too much emphasis on room treatments and DRC
instead of focusing on a solid loudspeaker design. I believe we
debated about this last year where you placed a high priority
on DRC and I dismissed it as less important. /harr harr
The raw and powerful sound is pretty sweet and desirable at times. When you are done with this project, think about a monster line array to feel the insane power of musical dynamics.
People place too much emphasis on room treatments and DRC
instead of focusing on a solid loudspeaker design. I believe we
debated about this last year where you placed a high priority
on DRC and I dismissed it as less important. /harr harr
The raw and powerful sound is pretty sweet and desirable at times. When you are done with this project, think about a monster line array to feel the insane power of musical dynamics.
I think you need both equally. I just put a pair of £150 Gale speakers in my room as stand-ins. They sound better than many peoples audiophile systems I have heard, because the room is good. Get really good speakers as well and 'oh boy!'.
I'd have to agree with Thy' here with regard to emphasis - the speaker is always SUBSTANTIALLY more important, and strangely enough this NOT with respect to a linear response on-axis.
You can have all sorts of modal issues FUBAR'ing the sound typically from anywhere between 28 Hz - 200 Hz, AND possibly floor bounce creating a severe null around 300-500 Hz and still have good sound (though a bit different).
In this respect its because the mind is an amazingly adaptable equalizer for freq. linearization.. Think about it - it must do this all the time for ear wax build-up. (..eww
)
You can have all sorts of modal issues FUBAR'ing the sound typically from anywhere between 28 Hz - 200 Hz, AND possibly floor bounce creating a severe null around 300-500 Hz and still have good sound (though a bit different).
In this respect its because the mind is an amazingly adaptable equalizer for freq. linearization.. Think about it - it must do this all the time for ear wax build-up. (..eww
)
thylantyr said:
First off, the loudspeaker design; its not like I neglected that area. 😉 I only looked towards treatments and DRC after they were up and running and like most I noted improvements. The very best loudspeakers are *always* room limited to varying degree's, no design can negate that fact. So concentrate on a sound loudspeaker design then consider the room a function of the loudspeaker and optimise that; result = exceptional realism that is near impossible to beat without the investment in the room.
Spending £20k on speakers, sticking them in a room and expecting the best from them is likely wasted money.
Secondly, I've always maintained that room is more important than the speakers, I think when we discussed this last my list went something like:
1. Room/setup
2. Speakers
3. Amplifiers
4. Frontend/source
999. Cables/Racks/Voodoo etc.
I couldn't live with long term satisfaction without DRC and treatments, I noted that the mid were shoutey and imaging was in the toilet before I but a few tiles up to combat side wall reflections. The problem I realise now is that I had too much. It'll all still be there with the change around but in more considered and intelligent approach, instead of the blanket everything until the speakers measure near perfect. I don't think I'll be able to get the sheer detail and especially the sharp imaging back but I'll gain in a couple of other area's that were lacking before such as energy of presentation and a more vast soundstage, I'm hoping to balance these in something that represents a half-way-house between the over the top treatments/DRC and nothing at all.
I think anyone that doesn't consider both electronic and physical correction is only hearing perhaps two-thirds of the capability of the system and likely less than that, problem is trying to find a balance that suits is effectively akin to designing a loudspeaker ie. requires study and prerequisite knowledge.
I've got hold of a copy of the rather excellent 'Master Handbook of Acoustics' by F. Alton Everest, which is very accessable but will also allow you to go deeper should you read the more indepth chapters. I'd highly recommend this book to anyone looking into doing room treatments.
The raw and powerful sound is pretty sweet and desirable at times. When you are done with this project, think about a monster line array to feel the insane power of musical dynamics.
😀
Did you catch the bit where I said my room was 4 x 3m? I think with the sub these what I have now are about as gutsy as I'd want for music(for fear of damaging hearing and wrath of neighbours), more sub 20hz performance would be nice for HT though.
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