Hello,
I would like to share my experience of how the Neumann KH310 behaves in a small room and what measures have improved the acoustics for me.
I thought it might be interesting for others, since the KH310 has been reviewed and measured and the predominantly neutral characteristics are well known.
It might also help some who are very interested in small differences between speakers, but perhaps haven't thought much about room acoustics yet.
I'm not looking for advice since I'm moving in a few weeks anyway and will be starting all over again.
My setup at the moment looks like this:
- Neumann KH310
- 2x Neumann KH750
- 2x PSI AVAA active bass absorbers
- RME UCX II
The room is a small bedroom with the dimensions 3.0 x 4.8 meters (14 sqm). There is a bed and a big closet full of clothes, books and other stuff in it. The front view looks like this:
View attachment 158831
There are:
- 2x basotect absorbers at the ceiling ("cloud"), ca. 12cm thick
- 2x basotect absorbers on the side walls, 10cm
- 2x basotect absorbers in front of the window, 10 and ca. 12cm
- 2x green basotect absorbers in the corners, 25cm thick, with another 25 airgap
- 2x green basotect absorbers, 40 cm trangles
The 2 AVAAs are at the back wall. Subs are in the L/R corners (on top of the small wooden boxes and partially behind the absorbers) at 1/4 room heigt.
Listening distance and distance between monitors is 1.55 meters.
Desk is small, 1.0 x 0.5 meters and tilted 10 degrees. I use furniture risers like this:
View attachment 158834
This is the frequency response i get with all measures after calibration with the Neumann MA 1 (single sweep L/R + average): red: left 1/24; green: right 1/24; blue: average with var smoothing
View attachment 158835
And here is the same without treatments:
View attachment 158836
And now the interesting part, i hope. I'll go through the individual measures and show the differences in each case:
Left channel single sweep only for all graphs.
1. I switched off the AVAAs:
View attachment 158837
2. I removed the "cloud":
View attachment 158838
3. I removed the risers and put the desk flat:
View attachment 158839
4. I removed the absorbers in front of the window:
View attachment 158840
5. I removed the green absorbers in the corners:
View attachment 158841
6. I removed the side wall absorbers:
View attachment 158842
7. And finally disconnected both subwoofers and deactived the built in DSP:
View attachment 158843
And here again most of it in one picture:
View attachment 158844
Some additional graphs:
ETC before (blue)/after (red) treatments:
View attachment 158845
Group delay before (blue)/after (red) treatments
View attachment 158846
Waterfalls:
View attachment 158847
View attachment 158848
Some conclusions for me:
- AVAA in my room helps only below 30 Hz
- Tilting the desk was very important for imaging
- Basotect absorbers behind the monitors and in the corners help in upper bass and lower mids, but have no effect below 100Hz
- Cloud in my case may be the least helpful measure.
- Subs were needed to fill the gap between 70 and 100 Hz (1 sub did most of it, btw. second sub didn´t add very much)
- EQ is mandatory in a small room even with neutral speakers, absorbers and PSI AVAA