Support for speaker placement vs. speaker selection

[sabbot]

Hi ASR!

Later this year I'm confronted with putting a pair of speakers in the room described in attached PDF. Dimensions and the general position of the listening area are not ideal, but at least walls and ceilings are not that reflective since they are mostly plasterboard and insulation. What probably helps as well is that there aren't many parallel surfaces. I could imagine those three indicated positioning scenarios with differences in symmetry, room for speakers, facing or flanking adjacent sloping ceiling, listening distance, listening position in the room... What would be your ranking and why? Maybe even other suggestions to make the best out of this room? Sorry, I don't have better pictures and can't take more appropriate views.

The other question that comes up... Since I would start there with a clean sheet without any hardware, what are the speaker characteristics I should look out for to better match them to this room? Any reasonably priced suggestions? I'm not biased, I like the fully integrated nature of LS50W2s and their design, but at the same time I have a soft spot for speakers like the L82s or Lintons which would also have a better low end. I would be willing to go fully separates and fool around with few/minidsp/dirac and sub integration, but also I like the idea of a active DSP'ed and room corrected speaker, so Nubert nupro X RC series seems interesting, but I'm quite worried that their internals are sourced from their integrated amp which is basically broken. So then there are only Buchardts A500 left which are probably a steal with their performance and features at their initial price, but I would still need to convince myself to spend that kind of money, even though this incorporates everything I need from source to speaker.

Many thanks for any suggestions!

Attachments obsolete, updated floorplans in https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...cement-vs-speaker-selection.23225/post-779939

 

[AdamG]

Attachment is not opening for me?

 

[sabbot]

Attachment is not opening for me?

Hm, strange. Tried downloading it from this post on two android and one win device, worked on all of them. But changed the filename to a simpler one now.

 

[AdamG]

Still just a blank page? See if anyone else can open the file. Maybe it’s just on my end. Using IPad Pro.

 

[NTK]

Attachment opened fine for me on Windows 10 with Brave.

 

[Chrispy]

Red seems to offer the best speaker placement but depends how you arrange the room too, but I'd arrange for red

Firefox can open the attachment or my Adobe Acrobat reader....

 

[AdamG]

Scenario 3 except. Move far left speaker to same general location on right currently occupied by bag of mortar/cement. Best use of side boundaries and room angles. JMHO

 

[sabbot]

@AdamG247 Then I could use the countertop as a speaker stand. Should have mentioned it before, grey blocks are no go zones and used for kitchen/dining area.

 

[nerdstrike]

I think red is the most aesthetically pleasing, but I find myself having doubts about the possibility of really strong first order reflections off the ceiling to where I infer the listening position would be.

 

[Propheticus]

Blue. Second best red, but that one has asymmetrical reflection left/right. But for layout and efficient use of space I'd understand going red...

 

[sabbot]

Thanks for your comments!

With Red I see the biggest issue in the close boundary to the right. Even though I'm assuming those plasterboards are helping a bit I guess I could put some additional but thin panels on the right wall there. I'm somehow less concerned about facing the sloping ceiling. The other probable disadvantage is the small distance between the speakers, especially in relation to the listening position.

In the Blue scenario I like having more space to both sides of the speakers, but the listening position is probably compromised beeing placed more or less right in the center between two kind of parallel walls and beeing flanked by the sloping ceiling to the left.

And I totally agree on not seeing any benefits for going green.

So at the end I will have to try things out, but it helps to have a plan or at least priorities before starting to arrange the room any further.

Any thoughts on the speaker selection? I'm a bit clueless there.

 

[Hipper]

Positioning

I'm assuming that the in the red scenario the area behind the listening position (LP) is completely open.

I'd be tempted to try the following: using the red set up keep the right speaker where it is but move the left one to around the position of the green right one. Keep both speakers more or less the same distance from the walls. The listening position will then be slightly to the right of the black arrow on the 4.40m green line. If you can move your chair further back, say to the 'First' dotted line that might be better still (this could be just when you listen but storing the chair somewhere more practical when not). It's not necessarily best to have speakers wide apart - in my room of 4.2m x 3.86m my speakers are 1.45 apart and about 1.5m from my ears.

This arrangement gives you the most flexibility to move your speakers and LP around to get the best positioning. You will need room treatment, subs, DSP/EQ or a combination of all three, plus some way of measuring to get the best from all of these.

I have to say though that I have no experience of how such a room as yours will behave. Most suggestions will be from people like me who have rectangular rooms with normal flat ceilings. Unless you can get advice from those that have experience of sloped rooves you are going to have to experiment to get the best positions. The priority will be how the bass performs - 0-300Hz or so. Once you have sorted out the bass you can look at the higher frequencies. To do the job properly you will need some measuring software. Most use a free software, Room EQ Wizard (REW). This takes a bit of learning but is worth it. There will be costs as you'll need a usb microphone, mic stand plus cable, and a laptop. There's plenty of advice on here and elsewhere how to go about this.

Speakers

If you can audition speakers in your room that would be best, particularly because of its peculiar shape. If that's not possible, I would think speakers plus subs (perhaps two or more) would be required, the subs being used to even out the bass. Again I have no experience of subs but many on here do.

 

[Spkrdctr]

With that very interesting room layout. I would say probably Red with a full frequency scan and associated EQ and room treatments are in order. That is not expensive just takes time to learn the equipment if not already a user (REW?) Speaker placement is big, but room treatments and EQing are also big. I guess you could call it the "Big Three" of sound!

 

[Spkrdctr]

I want to say that I claim the term "The Big Three of Sound". It is mine and mine alone. I'm getting a Nobel prize for that. I will be famous. Rich beyond belief. Women will thro themselves at me.

Wakes up. Oh what a dream I just had.............

 

[sabbot]

Thanks for your contributions!

What a revelation... above floor plan in the initial post did not match with my perception of the proportions in the pictures I have from that place. Earlier this week I ascertained, that the floorplan I received is squeezed by quite a bit in it's width, so actual dimensions are getting wider now. I only have a few actually measured dimensions as references and scaled the floorplan now accordingly separate for width and height. With this update Scenario Red makes even more sense: I guess I can pull the speakers out from the back "wall" by more than 1m, guess even 1.2m would be sensible and to the side walls there would be something around 50cm. I'm not so much concerned anymore about the right side reflections asymmetry, if I'm pulling out the speakers there shouldn't be much right side wall left for reflections, since a part of it is only at hip height, especially close to the listening position. Also the ceiling there is only inclined with something like 30°, so I have a hard time imagining catching first bounces directly from there. But I'm unsure about the speaker height, rather low is further apart, but then speaker axis approaches the flat ceiling angle, having them firing from above brings them closer to the ceiling, but angled away from it. In Blue Speakers would be definitely placed closer to the back wall.

TL;DR Please See attached updated floor plan w/ corrected, increased width. I also played around with amray and attached single bounce reflection plots. Please be aware, this only considers the ground plane and not the deeply sloped ceiling.

As for the motivation why I merged the speaker positioning and selection question into one topic... I wanted to derive the specific requirements this environment imposes on the speaker concept based on their placement. Don't know if this makes sense and the usual answer would be anyways going Genelec. I would have no objection against them, if this would be in fact an appropriate choice in this case. Actually I like their industrial appeal with the raw finish quite a bit, and would consider them as a long term use case if they are not too much limited by the room. Anyhow, I can't audition speakers there for quite some while. So I just want to make an informed decision beforehand to narrow down the list of potential speaker candidates with this input.

To sum up the requirements demanded by the room. And please correct me if I'm drawing wrong conclusions or missing out on something, I don't know if there are more solutions to this task. As I am saying, highly integrated active ones as well as passives with separates in the chain would be both possible since I'm starting there with a clean sheet.

• Speaker positioning relatively close to boundaries, including sloping ceiling. Listening area is asymmetric but opens up to 2.5 sides.
• Speaker should have a narrow dispersion pattern to reduce interaction with the room. -- No wide baffle designs? Ideally a Coaxial setup with strong directivity?
• Speaker should have a very smooth directivity index throughout its FR to maintain coherent tonal balance of reflections -- Waveguide/Coaxial?
• Ideally addition of subwoofer(s) to dislocate the source of the low frequencies from the rest to allow for individual optimization. Requires proper integration and additional tools depending on actual hardware. Badly placed sub still better than without? For a single one I might find a place, but two not so much. With two I also would go with cheap ones. Listening area is rather small, but rooms ground plane rather big...
• PEQ and Mic, whether in SW or HW depends on the rest of the system. Time/Phase of the setup as well? If DSP, delay managable with TV as input?

Answering these questions brings me directly to Genelec for example. But is that correct/all?

As for the Genelecs, I guess I shouldnt go smaller here than 8x40ies, right? Even with a sub. KS Digital C8 and A100 as well as Hedd Mk2 seem quite compelling as well with their phase correction, but I am unaware of published measurements proving that the acoustical hardware design is on par. On the other hand I still like those oldschool big baffle designs. So is this approach logical, is this room worth spending money on?