Near fields in big room, seeking advise

[Pioter]

Hi,

I’m not fully satisfied with my current setup and would love some advice.

Room

• Open living space, ~11 m long overall.
• The “north” front wall is 449 cm wide (see attached floor-plan with dimensions in cm).
• Listening position is the sofa at a hard 3 m from the speakers (can’t sit closer).
• Speakers are on the north wall, left is window

Current system

• APS Klasik 2020 (active, rear-ported).
• Streamer/DAC is TBD; considering WiiM options. Now using dongle and iPhone
• No subwoofer(s) yet.

What I’m hearing

• At 3 m the sound is OK but not fully satisfying, the “positioning” or “space” is lame, I’m fine with it to some extend as these are nearfield speakers but the biggest issue is that speakers sounds “dead”. Hard to explain will add measurements later on.

Paths I’m considering

1. Keep the Klasiks and add subwoofer(s) with basic DSP/room correction.(preferable)
2. Upgrade speakers (8″ two-way or compact 3-way with better low-end and controlled directivity).
3. Electronics: use WiiM Ultra as a streamer/DAC/pre (for PEQ/bass management), or switch to WiiM Amp with passive speakers if I go that route. I’m unclear on the best value/performance path for integrating subs and doing proper EQ at my listening distance.

Tl;dr I assume my speakers are decent (‘maybe incorrectly) just not good for my room. Am I able to fix it with one sub and wiim ultra or it’s waste of time and money and I should just buy big tower speakers.?

Thanks !

 

[DVDdoug]

I won't attempt to give you advice athough a subwoofer probably "wouldn't hurt". But it will just give you deeper-stronger bass. It's not going to help with the problems you're describing.

Listening position is the sofa at a hard 3 m from the speakers (can’t sit closer).

I wouldn't consider that "near field".

This is from Floyd Toole's book:

Near-field monitors
Small loudspeakers placed on the meter ridge of the recording console. The reflection for the working surface is part of the sound heard from thee loudspeakers, and their locations may cause them to interfere with what is heard from main or mid-field monitors. Listeners are in the acoustical near field of the source, meaning that the small changes in head location cause changes in the sounds arriving at the ears.

Mid-field Monitors
Medium-sized loudspeakers that may be full bandwidth or may use subwoofers, localized at moderate distance in front of the main console, positioned to minimize reflections from the working surfaces.

Main monitors
Large, usually in-wall installed, powerful full bandwidth systems capable of very high sound levels.

At 3 m the sound is OK but not fully satisfying, the “positioning” or “space” is lame

I'm not an expert but I'd expect the distance and larger room to create a bigger, more immersive, but less precise "soundstage".
But here's another quote from Floyd Toole:

The important localization and soundstage information is the responsibility of the recording engineer, not the loudspeaker.

biggest issue is that speakers sounds “dead”.

In general, does the room seem "dead"?

with basic DSP/room correction.(preferable)

Room correction also "never hurts". It's most effective in the lower frequencies and most-likely won't help with soundstage or "dead sound". Or EQ or tone controls can be use by-ear (or with measurements) to adjust the overall "frequency balance".

 

[ZolaIII]

I don't think speakers are problem (SOS rarely gives such recommendations) and you could probably fix it with a sub or two. Did you considered separate stands and double thick accustic curtains on wall behind? Bigger rug in between? And still with deacent microphone and DSP.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

Those are pretty small speakers for such a large space and, from the APS website, they are targeted as studio monitors, implying near- or mid-field listening. If you can't move the seating, you should try putting the speakers on stands and moving them out from the wall. This may further increase the need for a sub but try that first and see if it helps the soundstage.

 

[Waxx]

I would use very (controlled) directive speakers in such a room, to minimise room reflections. This because off the irregular size of the room. And bigger speakers surely, the actual are too small for such a space.

 

[EERecordist]

Your home is your home, so some suggestions.

How much can you deaden everything behind your listening position with your aesthetics or co-inhabitant acceptance factor? It is very hard to treat ceilings and walls in residential compared to a purpose-built recording control room.

What can you do for sound absorption, ceiling, walls, and floor between the listening position and the speakers?

I would seek a Spinorama/Klippel analysis of the tweeter vertical and horizontal pattern, plotting them in your room, and correlating that with your subjective experience.

Those are small and well respected speakers. Can you move them around to the homes of friends or even ideally a sound conditioned control room? What do they sound like to you then?

 

[JIW]

Sound & Recording reviewed your speakers. See here. Images cannot be copied, unfortunately. They have poor directivity and are very narrow at high frequencies above 10 kHz and have very broad radiation at 6 kHz. This can add to them sounding dull in your room. Further, point the tweeters at the listening position. If by dead, you mean lacking bass, get them as close as possible to the wall behind them but leave the diameter of the port to the wall at minimum. Move them out until you get what is closest to the response you want. Secondly, the asymmetry of reflections is going to mess up localisation. Consider adding absorbers to at least mitigate that for the first lateral reflections. Putting the setup in the lower left would be better but may not be feasible. Even the section to the right of the kitchen would do better at a listening distance low enough to ensure reflections from both side walls.

Speakers with better directivity may do better, but the asymmetry of lateral reflections will always be an issue. A subwoofer may help as well, since its placement can be better than the speakers. DSP will most likely improve tonality, but benefits for localisation are less clear since this depends on timing and not just amplitude.

 

[Pioter]

Hi all thnx for ur input
Yeah, I bought these speakers back when I really didn’t know much about audio. Honestly, I still don’t know a lot, but I’ve picked up a little since then. I remember in the reviews that the manufacturer mentioned the speakers have a “narrow sweet spot,” which I’m guessing is basically what you’re describing as a directivity issue. In current setup there is no sweet spot at all hehe.

On top of that, there’s the whole wife acceptance factor… and in my case, I literally can’t do anything about the room.
Plus, I’ve got a 2-year-old who’s pretty wild so don’t want to use stands. I tried some changes within the wife acceptance factor interval but it does not help a lot.

Would buying kef q7 meta plus sub or kef q11 solve majority of issues, making sound quality considerably better or not really and I should stick with your recommendations (sub, dsp, maybe some room acoustics - very limited option here). If new speakers would play just “10% better” than I farther stick to imperfect current solution and accept not the g8 sound

 

[JIW]

If your setup is locked in place and you can't do room treatment, directivity along with DSP will be most important. So new speakers should be a priority. For the KEFs, you need an amplifier. Consider Neumann KH120 II or KH150 with the MA1 calibration system or Genelec 8340, 8350, 8341 or 8351 with the GLM system. For less money, you can get Kali LP or IN series speakers but need your own DSP.

 

[ZolaIII]

I still say speakers are fine, 15° @ 2.7~3 m is plenty. That's when helped properly with pair of sub's with minimum maintenance acoustic treatment (double curtains) would really help if you could use stands.

APS Klasik 2020

The revised Klasik from Polish company APS offers exceptional performance at a remarkably low price.

www.soundonsound.com

Carefully DSP-ed of course.

 

[CJH]

Had a similar seating situation. I read your 3m listening distance is fixed (can't sit closer). Please try listening at 2.5m. Looks like you might be sitting in a node caused by that side wall on the right. Try moving forward just a bit.
CJH

 

[Hear Here]

I agree mostly with Kal's observations and suggestions, although I'd go for bigger, better speakers than add subs. They may cost a bit more but the quality of well-chosen speakers means they are better equipped to supply "hi-fi" sound and will reward with sound much better than what many brands claim as "studio active speakers". You'll need a power amp but these are pretty cheap, particularly if bought used. Floor-standers are much better suited to your room size with as big bass drivers as you can afford (perhaps a pair of them) as speakers with 10"+ drivers are sadly now rare and costly. God luck - I'd look for big-ish used floor standers that are relatively 2-year-old-proof!

 

[Pioter]

Hi all,

I’ve gotten mixed advice and I’m… well, mixed (also factoring in the wife-acceptance factor).

My idea / upgrade path

1. Buy a WiiM Ultra (streamer/pre) and a subwoofer to pair with my current active monitors.
2. If that doesn’t get me there, sell the monitors, add an external power amp, and go to tower speakers (thinking KEF Q7/Q-series or similar)

Questions

• Do I risk losing a lot of value taking this staged approach?
• Is a subwoofer generally a safe, future-proof buy (even if I end up with towers later)?
• Am I right that going WiiM Ultra (separates) keeps resale risk lower than going straight to a WiiM Amp Ultra?
• With Ultra + a decent external amp, can I match or even beat the total cost of an Amp Ultra while keeping more flexibility.

Why I’m leaning this way

• Flexibility and WAF: start small/clean, see if the sub fixes what I’m missing; only go bigger if needed. Ya know… boil that frog slowly.
• If I do move to passive towers, I can just add an amp and keep the Ultra as the “brain.”

Any pitfalls I’m not seeing? Recommendations for a good budget amp and subwoofer that pairs well are welcome. Thanks!

 

[ZolaIII]

You need better separation but you ain't getting it till you both treat the wall and still move speakers a bit out. You need to do preliminar chenel matching before anything. You get more headroom when you cut mains high enough as long as tweter can follow, that's have gain switch for it. You won't either get any without treatment and pull out nor can you get more than two good sub's in 2.2 arrangement with let's say something like Flex (Mini DSP) in some flavour. Without mic you won't get anywhere. Fun part of those monitors is decay which is close to sealed and open buffle than port design again those will do just fine (especially crossed high enough). Question is what's accessible to you and what you can catch with good pricing.

 

[MrGoodbits]

I have dealt with a lot of speaker / room / acoustic issues in my day, you're definitely not alone. If the room placement can't be changed, there's still a lots to try with what you already have. I get that it's hard to explain your "dead" sound, but given that, this is what I would try: Play with speaker toe-in, try directly towards you or directly perpendicular to wall and angles in between; try moving speakers to within a couple of inches of wall and then as far out as you can (can affect bass and imaging); slide the rug so it's right in front of speakers (maybe your situation wants a stronger direct reflection area off the floor); plop some pillows on top of that round table in case some sound is reflecting from that. Can you tilt the speakers backward or play with height? Are tweeters at ear level?

 

[Pioter]

You need better separation but you ain't getting it till you both treat the wall and still move speakers a bit out. You need to do preliminar chenel matching before anything. You get more headroom when you cut mains high enough as long as tweter can follow, that's have gain switch for it. You won't either get any without treatment and pull out nor can you get more than two good sub's in 2.2 arrangement with let's say something like Flex (Mini DSP) in some flavour. Without mic you won't get anywhere. Fun part of those monitors is decay which is close to sealed and open buffle than port design again those will do just fine (especially crossed high enough). Question is what's accessible to you and what you can catch with good pricing.

Best I can do is Wiim ultra plus sub and minimal room treatment. One sub generally.would it do the job?

 

[Pioter]

Sorry for span adding psychoacoustic graph. I use Y rca splitter… measurements done in rush as my kids are sleeping already. Also uneven spl coz just realised my youngest one played with it… anyway posting now so o can get some much appreciated feedback (also ob measurements itself) umik 1 calibrated
Red - right
Green - l and right
Orange - left

 

[MrGoodbits]

Yikes. That 6 dB difference between right / left, is that the uneven SPL you mentioned? I mean it does look like a lot of the right speaker output would go to kitchen, whereas the left will the reflect off the close wall. You could try cutting the left by 6 dB volume on back of speaker, listen and remeasure. Also + 1.5 dB the tweeter control on both if not already done. Again just thinking what you can do with what you currently have.

Also, about one/two subs, if you can move one around a little and you're only concerned with optimizing for one or two listeners on the sofa, one good sub ought to do it. Two can have advantage of evening out the nodes but make sure you have an eq system that can handle two subs.

 

[Keith_W]

Before you go and buy new speakers / new Wiim / etc. you need to diagnose your problem. Don't attempt to cure a problem with the wrong diagnosis. Unless you have very good hearing, and your ears can tell you exactly what is wrong, we need to see measurements. Do NOT spend any money chasing speculation of what your problem is. You will end up wasting money.

We should focus on your complaints. These are (1) imaging is poor, and (2) it sounds "dead".

For the first (poor imaging) we need to look at the ETC and ICCC. Not just the frequency response curve. Please read this thread and post the MDAT on ASR in a zip file. I have a strong suspicion that this is caused by the way your loudspeakers are set up in your room, but I would need to see measurements for confirmation.

For the second complaint, we require more information. "Dead" sound can be caused by overdamping in a room (too much acoustic treatment) - likely not a cause in your case. It can also be caused by tonal problems, i.e. uneven frequency response, especially if the high frequencies have too much tilt. It can be caused by dynamic compression - your speakers/amps are playing as loud as they can already go, and asking them to reproduce loud transients they struggle and compress.

Re: the measurements you posted. As already pointed out, there is an obvious measurement error with the right speaker being 6dB softer than the left - but you said that your child played with the settings between measurements. But - I can also see that for both left and right speakers, there is a 10dB downwards tilt from 2kHz to 20kHz. For sure this can suck the life out of your music. This downwards tilt may be real, e.g. caused by (1) speakers not toed in enough, (2) poor speaker design; or an artefact in measurement, e.g. (3) microphone used in the wrong orientation (4) wrong calibration file or no calibration file, (5) poor signal to noise ratio. In other words, not enough information for diagnosis.

Get your wife to take your children shopping and get some proper measurements. We need individual measurements of the left and right speaker from the listening position, please. While you are at it, try toe-ing your speakers in so that you are listening to them on-axis. Repeat the measurement to see if that cures the problem.

 

[ZolaIII]

Best I can do is Wiim ultra plus sub and minimal room treatment. One sub generally.would it do the job?

I don't know about WiiM, one sub will do but two are better and will do lot better. When you find good moment match the SPL between L & R (lower L) then check in which position is the mentioned switch for HF on the back of monitors it goes ±1.5 dB. You need + if the measurements you shown correspond to reality and you already have done plenty when you do that. We aren't magicians and physics remain the same (back to front refractions). A little bit towing speakers out and something that can be easily removed and cleaned is all I asked for in the first place and it will work. I won't charge anytime soon either so I should continue insisting on two sub's in 2.2 crossover at 120 Hz, more potent DSP and ELC or to it adoption on cuple SPL. That way it can work and sound full even on quite listening levels (of normal speech and below 60 dB) as you will need that or to take a brake until kids are all grown up.