Complicated room: best possible upgrades?

[webzeb]

Hello,

I live in a 93 apartment in France and I want to upgrade my audio setup in my dinning/living room.

I currently have an Anthem MRX 520 (chosen for ARC, bought second hand for 520EUR) and a pair of Wharfedale Evo 4.2 (bought second hand for 450EUR) on heavy stands (steel with sand, more than 20kg each) with soft industrial rubber feet underneath.

Usage is:

• 70% movies,
• 20 % games,
• 10% music (60 and 70s progressive and alternative rock, a bit of trip hop)

The room is small and brings a lot of challenges:

(sorry, too lazy to had the chairs around the table.)

After experimenting a lot, this layout is the best I could come with without compromising too much all the usages (dining, watching TV, accessing the balcony...). That said, I'm open to suggestions!

Ceiling height is 2.5m.
Floor is covered with LVP (old tiles and concrete structure underneath). There is a wool carpet in the sofa area.
Right wall is 18cm concrete with an inner insulation of 90mm PS and a 10mm sheetrock. There are three glass doors leading to a balcony.
Botton wall is also 18 cm concrete with an inner insulation of 90mm PS and 10mm sheetrock. It's separating the apartment from a corridor leading to the building lift and other appartements.
Left wall is 18cm concrete also separating the apartement from the same corridor. it's almost fully covered by a gigantic closed storage.
Top wall behind the TV is a sheetrock and honeycomb carboard sandwich (10/28/10mm). There are a lot of noise/vibration coming from the kitch hood in this area, which is one of the reason why the sofa is in the opposite wall of the room.
The 370x630 angle you see is actualy part of the entrance close, made of sheetrock.
The entrance doors are solid wood and glass.

As you might guess from the room geometry, I have a lot of resonance in the 35-40Hz area.
Here are the ARC measurement (from a 7 positions constellation on my sofa):

Finally, living in an apartment with zero noise insulation between floors and a concrete structure, I have a concern regarding neighbours (even if for the moment I had no complaints of whatsoever).

What I'm looking for:

• First priority: tighter and cleaner bass + mitigate the accidents in the bass response curve
  I was thinking that maybe a closed subwoofer would give me more freedom of placement and help me reduce room induced issues: what do you think?
• First priority:...without disturbing my neighbours!
• Optional: surrounds
  The sound stage is narrow and very frontal with the current setup.

I'm open to any suggestions, should it be room layout, audio setup, calibration...
(Note that having bought everything second hand, I would not loose much money reselling them if other h/w is more appropriate

Many thanks!

Fred

 

[Ruediger]

With 70% movies yes to both points.

A subwoofer, small (in size), closed one will give some options about where to put it and potentially fix everything from 80hz downwards.

But what about a center speaker? In my experience/opinion movie material relies so heavily on a center, you can mix it to the sides and have the best FR speakers, it will never be as good as with a center.

 

[webzeb]

It's a good remark!

Currently I have a slight toe-in:
The left speaker fires between the left and the center places of the sofa.
The right speaker fires between the right and the center ones.
This gives a 'decent' (but not perfect) illusion of having a 'virtual center speaker' during dialogues scenes.

That said, I have a more significant issue with dialogue scenes.
To be gentle to my neighbours ears, my Anthem MRX 520 volume is usually set between -42 to -36 at night (with Dolby volume to compress) and -30 to -24 during the day (without Dolby volume).
Dialogues are sometimes a bit too low with that setting. I have to check if I can boost the center channel in the stereo downmix (still getting familiar with the Anthem).

One may say that a center speaker would improve on that. That's probably true.
But IMHO it also has to do with my room/bass problem. Indeed, if in ARC I cut bass at let say 50Hz I loose a lot of impact in movie and, to a lesser extent, in music. If I cut lower I get this massive room resonance peak that I would bet propagates very well to the neighbour below me (I guess a lot of energy dissipate in the walls/floor, hence also in my neighbours apartment).
Having more 'control' on the behavior in the bass region would, at least I hope, allow me to increase slightly the overall volume without causing disturbance.

 

[webzeb]

With 70% movies yes to both points.

A subwoofer, small (in size), closed one will give some options about where to put it and potentially fix everything from 80hz downwards.

But what about a center speaker? In my experience/opinion movie material relies so heavily on a center, you can mix it to the sides and have the best FR speakers, it will never be as good as with a center.

May you have a closed subwoofer suggestion?

I know the SVS SB-1000 Pro is often mentioned but in France it's quite expensive (699EUR in ash wood finish is the best I could find; add 100EUR for other colors).
It's also hard to get on the second hand market (people tend to keep it and it sells light fast) Iss bigger brothers are paradoxically not maintaining their price that well but still pretty rare on the second hand market...


I'm also puzzled about how to position it.

The big spike around 40 Hz is obviously a resonance between the wall behind the sofa and the wall behind the TV/speakers (or possibly the TV itself, it's a big 77 OLED).
There is a less pronounced spike around 35 Hz that might correspond to a resonance between the big closet (on the left of the plan) and the right wall/glass doors (on the right of the plan).

 

[Ruediger]

May you have a closed subwoofer suggestion?

I know the SVS SB-1000 Pro is often mentioned but in France it's quite expensive (699EUR in ash wood finish is the best I could find; add 100EUR for other colors).
It's also hard to get on the second hand market (people tend to keep it and it sells light fast) Iss bigger brothers are paradoxically not maintaining their price that well but still pretty rare on the second hand market...

I have a couple of SB1000Pro, a SB2000Pro and some older ones I wouldn't call competetive. Very pleased with the SVS (and the app and EQ features).

I don't know how they handle France, but take a look at the german SG-Akustik shop. They have them on sale sometimes. And throw in a pretty expensive Viablue sub cable at other times.

Otherwise svsound.de might have some B-stock, but I don't know if they do across the border.

 

[Ruediger]

I'm also puzzled about how to position it.

The big spike around 40 Hz is obviously a resonance between the wall behind the sofa and the wall behind the TV/speakers (or possibly the TV itself, it's a big 77 OLED).
There is a less pronounced spike around 35 Hz that might correspond to a resonance between the big closet (on the left of the plan) and the right wall/glass doors (on the right of the plan).

Every room is different and advice over the net can't be that good. But when I look at your chart I guess start with a position somewhere at the front, in line with your FR speakers. Cross over at 80hz. Measure with your AVR.

Then use the app to control room gain, roll off at 25-31-40Hz and see what that does. If you see a big difference here, stay at the frequency you like and measure again with the AVR.

From your layout a position left and right from the sofa could also be usable. But that will be a long cable. To make it easy just start at the front and see that your chart is fixed first.

 

[webzeb]

Every room is different and advice over the net can't be that good. But when I look at your chart I guess start with a position somewhere at the front, in line with your FR speakers. Cross over at 80hz. Measure with your AVR.

Then use the app to control room gain, roll off at 25-31-40Hz and see what that does. If you see a big difference here, stay at the frequency you like and measure again with the AVR.

From your layout a position left and right from the sofa could also be usable. But that will be a long cable. To make it easy just start at the front and see that your chart is fixed first.

Well, there are spikes at 40Hz and, to a muche lesser extent, 35 Hz and those perfectly match the length and width of the room. I guess this is no coincidence !

I was wondering if they were rules and/or empirical methods that would help not stimulating too much those.
I did a quick search for 'how to' but got puzzling results...
(edit : currently reading the Subwoofer / Low Frequency Optimization post)

 

[webzeb]

Other related question:
May a two (smaller) subwoofers setup be relevant in my space?
For example, I could purchase two BK Electronic XLS300 instead of a beefier single subwoofer and place one at the left of the sofa, the other one in the small angled space at the left of TV, behind the left speaker.

 

[webzeb]

Some updates:

1. I'm still getting acquainted with the (very interesting!) topic. Recently ordered Floyd Toole's book but won't receive it before September.
2. I ordered a BK Electronics XXLS400-FF but won't receive it before the end of August (they're currently closed for holiday). The XXLS400 might be oversized, but it has more embedded controls (for future hypothetical future setup) and the price difference with the XLS300 was not a lot. I wish I could find two subs of the used market, but they seem very rare in France...
3. I have a lot of question regarding SBIR, the interest of acoustic panels behind or on the side of the speaker (e.g. to fight the room assymetry) => May you have advices for my particular setup ?

Thanks!

Fred