Bloody room acoustics

[farflungstar]

We crossed lines s bit there. Sorry.

My fault.

[struth]

Need to get a room treatment mike and software. Or get a guy in

[Sherwood]

In the last twenty years I have been fortunate to live in detached houses in different parts of the world. In all cases the main living/listening room was large with high ceilings and solid floors. I never had a problem with hifi positioning and in most cases was able to have the speakers several feet away from the back wall to optimise imaging and minimise early reflection problems. This was in contrast to my experience in the UK with smaller rooms and wooden floors. What you are describing sounds like classic wave cancellation effects. Even though it might not be a long term solution, have you tried bringing your speakers out to around 2/5th's the length of of room and pointed to slightly behind your listening position? I suspect that will confirm my diagnosis!

[RothwellAudio]

How could a room cause bass cancellation - in front but wallops of it behind.....

By producing standing waves, that's how.

Sounds like some kind of cancellation effect.

No, not a weird cancellation effect, just a cancellation effect.

Some speakers are weird no doubt.

Standing waves will occur in a room regardless of the speakers used.


Lots of info here which should explain what's going on.
http://realtraps.com/articles.htm

[walpurgis]

Yes. Reflected waves and localised room resonances can cause cancellation effects.

[Rothchild]

You don't give a ceiling height but guessing in at 2.2m gives you big axial nodes at 45Hz, 57Hz, 68 Hz and 78Hz (and of course a bunch more) so you're going to be getting big peaks and troughs at those frequencies across the room causing all sorts of funny business in the low end.

https://amcoustics.com/tools/amroc?l...&h=220&r60=0.6

Speaker / listener position may help, but realistically some significant treatment / trapping at those frequencies is going to do the best job at sorting it out - get some rockwool in the corners.

[Sherwood]

Adrian,

I suspect that you will not find an easy solution to your problems. I am sure that the Tannoys are fine speakers but they are physically large so that it is difficult to position them to fire down the long axis of the room and still keep them away from the side walls. If you were to space the speakers with their centres 2m apart then I'm guessing that they would be less than 1ft from the side walls. I think that you may have to find a solution with the speakers on the long wall.

Room acoustics are a real challenge. My first speakers (Rogers LS3/5a's) demanded some space around them to work properly but were well suited to the smaller rooms I used them in. In those days I was living on flats or in close proximity to neighbours so could not crank up the volume very loud. Listening at low to moderate volume levels helps to mitigate problems with room acoustics anyway. The best room I ever had for hifi was about 12m square with ceilings well over 3m. The floor was concrete will large marble tiles. It might have been a bit lively had it not been for the large amount of damping from heavy drapes, thick jute rugs, big sofas, and lots and lots of cane bookshelves filled with books. The second best room was in a Georgian house in Yorkshire. This was a much smaller room although still squarish in dimensions (I'm guessing around 5m by 6m, with really high ceilings). Most modern houses seem to have elongated lounges which makes the physical placement of equipment challenging let alone the acoustics. That is certainly the case with the lounge in my recently built house which is about 3.5m by 6.5m. I have been fortunate that I could use a double bedroom as a dedicated listening room for my Magneplanar 1.7 speakers. Whilst not ideal, the fact that the Maggies are dipoles with very little side radiation means that they work surprisingly well in a smaller room.

Geoff

[tapid]

And yet many folks say squarish rooms are hardest to work with sonically speaking, just shows there s no set rules for these things.
My speakers firing down a longish narrow room ( wooden floors ) does base very nicely certainly better than my old square listening
room with carpet. Good luck Adrianne with the problem.

[paulf-2007]

It's as easy as room treatment end of. All these discerning listeners in denial, box swapping endlessly, because that's what they like to do.

[tapid]

Sorry made a horlicks of spelling your name. Adrian