Book shelves, folding partitions?
I used to borrow books from a library in Bangalore, he had a nice stereo, the sound was clear as all the walls were lined with books, nearly ideal absorbers.
Loads of imported records, he sold the whole set for about a third of my valuation, too high for me then.
Kenny Rogers, Carpenters, John Denver boxed sets... gone in 1984
I used to borrow books from a library in Bangalore, he had a nice stereo, the sound was clear as all the walls were lined with books, nearly ideal absorbers.
Loads of imported records, he sold the whole set for about a third of my valuation, too high for me then.
Kenny Rogers, Carpenters, John Denver boxed sets... gone in 1984
I've been having adventures in simulating active cardioid in this thread, which has turned away from line arrays and towards cardiods lately.
https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/full-range/337956-range-line-array-wall-corner-placement-143.html#post6720387
You can get cardioid with inverted attentuated delayed side woofers as well as with a rear woofer. With side woofers on top and bottom sides as well as left and right sides, you get reduced radiation towards ceiling and floor as well as to the sides, which you might find helpful in your tall space.
But many of the problems you listed have to do more with its open-ness. You can't soundproof your living room; you might try soundproofing the bedrooms. Else, what you play in the living room will be heard there as well. That is another argument for Synergy or other point source speakers, the sound will stay together at distance and at least sound fairly good in those remote spaces. What I describe in my thread is very difficult to differentiate from a Synergy within the listening window defined by its 60 degree waveguide.
I doubt you can solve your problems just with speakers, but have you considered full-range?
They have limited HF dispersion and reduced bass output, plus very clean sound at lower levels.
Some smaller 5 or 6,5 in units from Fostex, Mark Audio or Tang Band in a MLTL or similar cabinet and placed not to far away from listening position.
They have limited HF dispersion and reduced bass output, plus very clean sound at lower levels.
Some smaller 5 or 6,5 in units from Fostex, Mark Audio or Tang Band in a MLTL or similar cabinet and placed not to far away from listening position.
Are you equally Bateman and have next to no furniture? I presume it looks a lot different in situ, but that room is crying for treatment IMO.
I have spent time talking with someone who does screen printing, and I'm sure others do it, but using dye sublimation printing onto acoustic fabric to make designer panels that have high WAF.
The beauty is that now with technology, you could make panels with family photos, art you own and like etc. Could even hire an artist to do them for you. This allows you to appease the other party whilst accommodating the sound. You don't care what it looks like, but they might and probably do.
Other than that, I am interested in your journey. It looks like a great place. Wish we could see more of it. Congrats on the new space!
I have spent time talking with someone who does screen printing, and I'm sure others do it, but using dye sublimation printing onto acoustic fabric to make designer panels that have high WAF.
The beauty is that now with technology, you could make panels with family photos, art you own and like etc. Could even hire an artist to do them for you. This allows you to appease the other party whilst accommodating the sound. You don't care what it looks like, but they might and probably do.
Other than that, I am interested in your journey. It looks like a great place. Wish we could see more of it. Congrats on the new space!
My listening space is also a "great room". For those outside of North America, a great room was a 1990 - 2010 home building trend which combined a living room, family room, and sometimes dining room all into one really big room. The great room was seldom separated from the rest of the house by doors, it is a very open-style floor plan.
My room is 32' long, 23' wide, and has a ceiling which varies from 8' to 25' high. Thankfully it is carpeted, and I have a fair amount of soft furniture, but no dedicated wall treatments. I had to experiment with several speaker positions and listening positions to get something I liked. My speakers are along the short wall, about 2' from the front (short wall). The left speaker is about 3' from the side wall, the right speaker is about 7' from the side wall. I sit fairly close at about 8' away, and this means the majority of the room space is behind me. It is not quite a near-field environment, but almost. One of the subwoofer cabinets is in a corner, the other is more free space. I don't know why this sounds so good, I am sure an acoustician could tell me why.
My point is, experiment, and be open to unusual positioning. The nice thing about a really big space is that the fundamental room modes are quite low. It is easy to get high quality bass without much (or in my case, any) EQ.
However, I have the same issue as you do with activity in the house. When I am doing serious listening, I run at 90 - 95 dB SPL, and the whole house hears it. Luckily it is just my wife and I, so this is rarely a problem.
My room is 32' long, 23' wide, and has a ceiling which varies from 8' to 25' high. Thankfully it is carpeted, and I have a fair amount of soft furniture, but no dedicated wall treatments. I had to experiment with several speaker positions and listening positions to get something I liked. My speakers are along the short wall, about 2' from the front (short wall). The left speaker is about 3' from the side wall, the right speaker is about 7' from the side wall. I sit fairly close at about 8' away, and this means the majority of the room space is behind me. It is not quite a near-field environment, but almost. One of the subwoofer cabinets is in a corner, the other is more free space. I don't know why this sounds so good, I am sure an acoustician could tell me why.
My point is, experiment, and be open to unusual positioning. The nice thing about a really big space is that the fundamental room modes are quite low. It is easy to get high quality bass without much (or in my case, any) EQ.
However, I have the same issue as you do with activity in the house. When I am doing serious listening, I run at 90 - 95 dB SPL, and the whole house hears it. Luckily it is just my wife and I, so this is rarely a problem.
Hi Patrick,
your threads are always interesting, thanks a lot for your amazing contributions!
I live in a very open floor plan house too, and music listening happens in my (small, separate room) home office... no easy solutions, but also I can't see where exactly your listening area is in that space.
My living room is wired for atmos with ceiling speakers, speakons everywhere.. but i haven't even put speakers or a receiver in it.....
DIY absorbers (140 mm rockwool + air space, wrapped in felt) have made a marked improvement in "RT60" (REWs "Topt") and big impact on subjective sound quality for me. Of course only > 300 Hz or so.
Any chance for bass arrays / grids with active cancellation?
Suggesting headphones is kinda cruel... but I actually use mine alot more so I don't wake the kids at night...
your threads are always interesting, thanks a lot for your amazing contributions!
I live in a very open floor plan house too, and music listening happens in my (small, separate room) home office... no easy solutions, but also I can't see where exactly your listening area is in that space.
My living room is wired for atmos with ceiling speakers, speakons everywhere.. but i haven't even put speakers or a receiver in it.....
DIY absorbers (140 mm rockwool + air space, wrapped in felt) have made a marked improvement in "RT60" (REWs "Topt") and big impact on subjective sound quality for me. Of course only > 300 Hz or so.
Any chance for bass arrays / grids with active cancellation?
Suggesting headphones is kinda cruel... but I actually use mine alot more so I don't wake the kids at night...
Because the spectrum of audio that spills into the adjoining living space is mainly lower midrange on down, you end up with mostly mud and rumble going everywhere you dont want it to. That specific band of audio is the hardest to control and the most unpleasant to the ears on its own.
Then theres the low end transmitted directly through the sub flooring and walls with the delayed arrival of airborne sound, which makes it even worse. Multi story houses are really difficult to get sounding right unless you acoustically isolate the listening space.
No specific speaker design will fix any of this stuff with the limited exception of cardioid bass reproduction helping the extreme lower end. Directivity patterns only help in the immediate listening space. They do nothing for the lower midrange on down interacting with the rest of the acoustically joined living space.
Then theres the low end transmitted directly through the sub flooring and walls with the delayed arrival of airborne sound, which makes it even worse. Multi story houses are really difficult to get sounding right unless you acoustically isolate the listening space.
No specific speaker design will fix any of this stuff with the limited exception of cardioid bass reproduction helping the extreme lower end. Directivity patterns only help in the immediate listening space. They do nothing for the lower midrange on down interacting with the rest of the acoustically joined living space.
I like these a lot.
My Nexus projects are basically the same thing, but they beamwidth is symmetrical.
It kinda bums me out that these designs haven't received more attention; they have significant advantages over an MTM array, which are ubiquitous.
I've never been terribly thrilled with the measured performance of my Paraline projects and my VDOSC projects, but I gotta admit, the Danley SBH speakers sound great.
I recorded this video at their HQ last year: Danley Sound Labs SBH10 - YouTube
Generally, our horns and waveguides are relatively symmetrical. Mabat, in his projects, has been a big proponent of symmetrical waveguides and horns.
Logically, this makes sense: when you have a waveguide that's asymmetrical you're going to get pattern flip. For instance, if you have a waveguide that's 25cm wide and 50cm tall, the horizontal pattern control will collapse at 1360Hz and the vertical pattern will collapse at 680Hz.
Some of the ideas that I've been messing around with, in this project, are to make the height of the box very tall. A 25cm x 50cm waveguide will have pattern flip, but if you increase the vertical size to 400cm, the vertical pattern will hold all the way down to 170Hz.
This idea is particularly compelling when the horizontal pattern is wide. In other words, if you have a horizontal pattern that's sixty degrees, but then it collapses at 1360hz and goes omni, there's going to be a noticeable discontinuity between the narrow pattern in the top four octaves (1250Hz - 20khz) versus the bottom six octaves (20hz-1250Hz)
The idea would be to have a horizontal pattern that's so wide, you don't notice when pattern control is lost, or a horizontal pattern that slooooooooowly narrows as you get higher and higher and frequency. The 'trick' is to avoid any sudden jumps in beamwidth.
I've done plenty of projects in the car audio world, where this is a fundamental part of making horns work in a car.
There are a few monster threads on here and AVS Forum about horns versus direct radiators. And, arguably, a big part of the reason that direct radiator speakers often win is because they work on the same idea. For instance, a Revel Salon 2 maintains vertical pattern control down to about 100-200Hz, because the speaker is about one meter tall. 340Hz is a meter long. A JBL M2 has a horizontal pattern that's narrower than the Revel. In a nutshell, there's a limit to the horizontal beamwidth of a waveguide. The JBL M2 has a horizontal beamwidth of about 120 degrees, whereas the Revel's horizontal beamwidth is both wider and maintained down to a lower frequency:
Yes, the M2 will get louder, but listeners prefer the Revel, four to one.
The waveguide for this project is using a monster of a diffractions slot:
I've been using the 18Sound XT1086 for 10+ years and it's one of my favorite waveguides. It doesn't measure anywhere near as well as the QSC waveguide, which has no slot. To my ears, the QSX may sound a *tiny* bit better. But I gotta admit, diffraction slots solve a lot of problems. If you want a speaker with very wide horizontal directivity and narrow vertical directivity, you have four options:
A Danley SH96, that's the size of a Volkswagen
A line array, which introduces it's own set of issues
Planar speakers, with their own set of issues
Decades ago, I heard the NHT 3.3s, and that was probably the best soundstage I'd ever heard in my life. At the time, I had no idea how they worked their magic.
Now that I know a thing or two about making speakers, I understand that the very deep cabinet increases the stereo seperation.
This is a similar to people who do ambiophonics with a barrier:
Try Ambiophonics with your speakers
If you've never tried this, you must IMMEDIATELY go to Home Depot and spend $20 on a sheet of Owens Corning Foamular. You've never heard a huge soundstage until you've tried listening to your speakers with a barrier between them. I have the MiniDSP ambio processor, I've tinkered with doing Ambio in software, and nothing even comes close to a $20 sheet of foam between your speakers.
The idea I'm pursuing in this project, is to try and get a fraction of that effect. But instead of doing it by building a wall between the speakers, I'll try and do it by narrowing the pattern between the two, to eliminate the sound from the room. It's an art and a science, because if you make the pattern TOO NARROW, the stereo sounds mono.
I recorded this video at their HQ last year: Danley Sound Labs SBH10 - YouTube
Generally, our horns and waveguides are relatively symmetrical. Mabat, in his projects, has been a big proponent of symmetrical waveguides and horns.
Logically, this makes sense: when you have a waveguide that's asymmetrical you're going to get pattern flip. For instance, if you have a waveguide that's 25cm wide and 50cm tall, the horizontal pattern control will collapse at 1360Hz and the vertical pattern will collapse at 680Hz.
Some of the ideas that I've been messing around with, in this project, are to make the height of the box very tall. A 25cm x 50cm waveguide will have pattern flip, but if you increase the vertical size to 400cm, the vertical pattern will hold all the way down to 170Hz.
This idea is particularly compelling when the horizontal pattern is wide. In other words, if you have a horizontal pattern that's sixty degrees, but then it collapses at 1360hz and goes omni, there's going to be a noticeable discontinuity between the narrow pattern in the top four octaves (1250Hz - 20khz) versus the bottom six octaves (20hz-1250Hz)
The idea would be to have a horizontal pattern that's so wide, you don't notice when pattern control is lost, or a horizontal pattern that slooooooooowly narrows as you get higher and higher and frequency. The 'trick' is to avoid any sudden jumps in beamwidth.
I've done plenty of projects in the car audio world, where this is a fundamental part of making horns work in a car.
There are a few monster threads on here and AVS Forum about horns versus direct radiators. And, arguably, a big part of the reason that direct radiator speakers often win is because they work on the same idea. For instance, a Revel Salon 2 maintains vertical pattern control down to about 100-200Hz, because the speaker is about one meter tall. 340Hz is a meter long. A JBL M2 has a horizontal pattern that's narrower than the Revel. In a nutshell, there's a limit to the horizontal beamwidth of a waveguide. The JBL M2 has a horizontal beamwidth of about 120 degrees, whereas the Revel's horizontal beamwidth is both wider and maintained down to a lower frequency:
Yes, the M2 will get louder, but listeners prefer the Revel, four to one.
The waveguide for this project is using a monster of a diffractions slot:
I've been using the 18Sound XT1086 for 10+ years and it's one of my favorite waveguides. It doesn't measure anywhere near as well as the QSC waveguide, which has no slot. To my ears, the QSX may sound a *tiny* bit better. But I gotta admit, diffraction slots solve a lot of problems. If you want a speaker with very wide horizontal directivity and narrow vertical directivity, you have four options:
A Danley SH96, that's the size of a Volkswagen
A line array, which introduces it's own set of issues
Planar speakers, with their own set of issues
Decades ago, I heard the NHT 3.3s, and that was probably the best soundstage I'd ever heard in my life. At the time, I had no idea how they worked their magic.
Now that I know a thing or two about making speakers, I understand that the very deep cabinet increases the stereo seperation.
This is a similar to people who do ambiophonics with a barrier:
Try Ambiophonics with your speakers
If you've never tried this, you must IMMEDIATELY go to Home Depot and spend $20 on a sheet of Owens Corning Foamular. You've never heard a huge soundstage until you've tried listening to your speakers with a barrier between them. I have the MiniDSP ambio processor, I've tinkered with doing Ambio in software, and nothing even comes close to a $20 sheet of foam between your speakers.
The idea I'm pursuing in this project, is to try and get a fraction of that effect. But instead of doing it by building a wall between the speakers, I'll try and do it by narrowing the pattern between the two, to eliminate the sound from the room. It's an art and a science, because if you make the pattern TOO NARROW, the stereo sounds mono.
If it were my house, I think my ideal solution would be something similar, but more continuous: a wall to wall grid, or layer of perforated panels.
Basically, build a second ceiling slightly under the existing ceiling.
e.g. "Stratopanel has a recycled gypsum core sandwiched between two layers of heavy duty recycled paper."
e.g. "Ecoustic® Blade is a highly-functional acoustic system designed for use as ceiling and wall claddings."
Interesting! Wasn't aware it had died out as I commissioned a quad level in the fall of '69 starting with a wide range of 'great room' floor plans, winding up with a 46 x 26 ft, half cathedral ceiling main level with an open kitchen opposite the bricked in sound wall. Designed the layout, cabinets to act as reflectors to create a fairly diffuse back 'wall'.
Really miss that house, the times, but life 'happens', though couldn't complain since it sold for nearly 3x our cost in just 5 yrs. and the 'great room' is what allowed me hold out to highest bidder, very much against the real estate agent's insistence to make a quick sale in such volatile times, then 'flip it' to get the 'Lion's Share' of the profit.
Really miss that house, the times, but life 'happens', though couldn't complain since it sold for nearly 3x our cost in just 5 yrs. and the 'great room' is what allowed me hold out to highest bidder, very much against the real estate agent's insistence to make a quick sale in such volatile times, then 'flip it' to get the 'Lion's Share' of the profit.
My 3D printer was struggling to print the waveguide that I designed. So I used that as an excuse to re-do the thing in ATH.
The drivers remain the same, but the waveguide looks quite different. Tweeter is the ubiquitous and unloved BMS 4526HE, woofers are a pair of Dayton DC130s.
Get the BMS here: BMS
– SpeakersAndAmps.com
Old and busted
New hotness
Old and busted
New hotness
The drivers remain the same, but the waveguide looks quite different. Tweeter is the ubiquitous and unloved BMS 4526HE, woofers are a pair of Dayton DC130s.
Get the BMS here: BMS
– SpeakersAndAmps.com
Old and busted
New hotness
Old and busted
New hotness