Hello,
I have the following near-field setup: (click to enlarge)
The speakers are Genelec 8030As. The large white and black panels are bass traps; specifically, RealTraps MondoTraps.
My problem is that the soundstage is not properly centered. If I watch a movie, the vocals seem to come from the left of the screen, near the left speaker. This is true regardless of room correction EQ, and even though the measured frequency response seem aligned between both speakers. I tried to isolate problematic frequency ranges using bandpass filters but was unable to (they all seem to lean left).
Experiments show that I need to add about 4 dB gain to the right channel for vocals to sound centered. This seems like a hack though, and even with that in place it still feels like there's more ambience coming from the left.
Now, what strikes me as the most likely cause is asymmetric reflections off the left wall, as there is no wall on the right.
So I figured a simple fix could be to simply put up an additional panel on the left wall:
To my surprise, this didn't make any significant difference. At best, it might have reduced the imbalance from 4 dB to about 3.5 dB (and that's assuming it's not placebo). I find this odd, given that these panels are supposed to have lots of broadband absorption (absorption coefficient close to 1), especially in localizable frequencies. I don't understand this result.
So now I'm out of ideas. Changing the layout to get rid of the left wall is not an option. I'm wondering if I could fix it using a different type of panel, but I don't really see how, given the one I'm using is already very absorptive. (Maybe the absorption data is misleading with regard to incidence angle?)
In case it's useful, here are (ungated) measurements of the right channel with and without the panel:
And both channels with the panel, which shows that the channels are reasonably aligned as far as measurements are concerned:
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
I have the following near-field setup: (click to enlarge)
The speakers are Genelec 8030As. The large white and black panels are bass traps; specifically, RealTraps MondoTraps.
My problem is that the soundstage is not properly centered. If I watch a movie, the vocals seem to come from the left of the screen, near the left speaker. This is true regardless of room correction EQ, and even though the measured frequency response seem aligned between both speakers. I tried to isolate problematic frequency ranges using bandpass filters but was unable to (they all seem to lean left).
Experiments show that I need to add about 4 dB gain to the right channel for vocals to sound centered. This seems like a hack though, and even with that in place it still feels like there's more ambience coming from the left.
Now, what strikes me as the most likely cause is asymmetric reflections off the left wall, as there is no wall on the right.
So I figured a simple fix could be to simply put up an additional panel on the left wall:
To my surprise, this didn't make any significant difference. At best, it might have reduced the imbalance from 4 dB to about 3.5 dB (and that's assuming it's not placebo). I find this odd, given that these panels are supposed to have lots of broadband absorption (absorption coefficient close to 1), especially in localizable frequencies. I don't understand this result.
So now I'm out of ideas. Changing the layout to get rid of the left wall is not an option. I'm wondering if I could fix it using a different type of panel, but I don't really see how, given the one I'm using is already very absorptive. (Maybe the absorption data is misleading with regard to incidence angle?)
In case it's useful, here are (ungated) measurements of the right channel with and without the panel:
And both channels with the panel, which shows that the channels are reasonably aligned as far as measurements are concerned:
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
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