Sound Stage Issue

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RCHeliGuy

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I'm having a bear of a time with this. I have limitations on how far I can move these speakers out into the room and I'm finding that the sound stage is favoring the right side pretty strongly.

Ideally I would be able to pull them 5' out away from the back wall, but I can't do that. I suspect the asymmetry of my room is impacting this.

Are their any room treatments or ways that I might be able to center my sound stage better without pulling them way out into the room ?

I welcome any ideas about this.

denaudiosetup.jpg
 
Straighten them up more, and see if it makes a difference.
 
Straighten them up more, and see if it makes a difference.

Interestingly enough straightening them up and pushing them back closer to 2' away from the front wall seemed to bring the sound stage together. I went even further and turned them very slightly out.

I was using the HDTracks Tony Bennett with Lady Gaga and finally got it to the point where the horn corus and solo horn were separate, Tony and Lady Gaga were singing close to center stage, the drums moved over to the left.

The instruments moved around quite a bit and I don't think I have it perfectly dialed in, but it is much better than it was before.

What I believe I'm doing is reducing the effect of the closer side wall on the left side and the lack of a close wall on the right side.
 
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My friend who is going to help me dial the speaker positions in will be bringing Stereophile: Test CD 2 which has a section so sound stage setup.

Do any of you have any recommendations that are downloadable?

Unfortunately the weather has been horrible and we've had to rescheduled this twice now.
 
Is the diagram to scale? It appears that your system is not centered between the fireplace wall and the opposite wall, and this causes the strong reflected L & R rear waves to reach your listening position at different times and levels.
Also it's likely that the short 'horizontal' wall segment behind and to the right of the listening position will contribute to pulling the image to the right, but perhaps this could be confirmed by adding a temp screen or wall on the left to make it symmetrical behind you...
 
The fact that straightening out improves soundtsage implies that the toe in was causing one rear wave to go out from that gap you have in the wall. Going back to 2' proves that. However I would prefer not to go back more than 3 to 3.5'

Also depending on where you sit, you can keep them straight, it should improve things. I doubt the side walls will be much of an issue.
 
Is the diagram to scale? It appears that your system is not centered between the fireplace wall and the opposite wall, and this causes the strong reflected L & R rear waves to reach your listening position at different times and levels.
Also it's likely that the short 'horizontal' wall segment behind and to the right of the listening position will contribute to pulling the image to the right, but perhaps this could be confirmed by adding a temp screen or wall on the left to make it symmetrical behind you...

The drawing is to scale. Unfortunately I have some compromises needed to handle the traffic pattern there. My office is directly behind the front wall and a bathroom is next to my office.

I wonder if I will need something less reflective on the left wall to offset the right wall being further away.
 
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I'm guessing the rectangle against the right wall is a piece of furniture. Could it be eliminated or changed out for something smaller to allow the right speaker to move to the right and still gain access to your office?

A suggestion for the open corner on the right might be two panels hinged in the middle. Kind of like a room screen that would unfold and fill the opening and create a corner. It could have a hard surface or build it into some type of bass trap. When not in use it could be folded up and placed behind the right speaker. Whether any of this would be acceptable might depend on the WAF, though I have not seen any mention of a W or GF.
I will agree with other suggestions of bringing them out into the room as much as possible though. If you have not tried the flash light method for toe in yet, it works well to set the inside third of the panel pointed at you.

On another subject what actually happened with the pipe bursting. I didn't see any discription of the cause or damage or I just missed it.
 
Sadly I really don't have many options for changing the room. The Den is a key area in my home and sees a lot of traffic.

I was probably overly optimistic that I could get a set of electrostatic speakers to work well in this space. Sadly I'll need to compromise between over all sound quality and sound stage and will never be able to optimize either in this space.

I started with the flashlight toe in and that is what results in the sound stage sitting on the right speaker.

I've moved my left speaker a bit closer to the wall and have both speakers toed out a bit to at least center the sound stage. I'll keep playing with it, but I think I'm going to need some expectation management on what I will be able to get out of this room.

The pipe burst due to a long period of near 0 degree temperatures and an unheated garage wall. I now have a cutoff so I can drain the water out to the exterior drain. I doubt that is a huge concern in Tampa, but where I live it definitely is.
 
BTW I'm not giving up by any stretch. I'm going to do my best to make the best sound within my constraints.

Ironically I have a nearly unused 12x16' room in the house on the bottom level carpeted with a concrete base with heavy drapes over the windows, that I could set up just for audio and even go wild with sonic treatments.

However one of my objectives was to have music playing on the main level of the house and and if I put this in that room it wouldn't see much use. So for practical reasons I'm going to keep them where they are.

They still sound much better than anything else I've got setup in the house. If at some point I decide to put a less picky speakers in my den and move my Ethos downstairs I would have no restrictions and could get big mono-blocks etc...

Something to think about for another day. Although my wife actually would prefer smaller speakers in the den... LOL... what to do...

This isn't going to end well....
 
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I've reconsidered the idea of a folded wall.

I think I might be able to set up something that was unobtrusive, and if painted to match the wall and with trim added to it that I might be able to get by my wife.

The question is how heavy and what type of material it would need to be to be effective for the frequencies involved in creating the sound stage.

How rigid would the structure need to be and could I get by with it only being 7' tall vs. reaching the ceiling?

My wood working skills are pretty good and I think I could make it aesthetically pleasing. I could create a rigid wall with 1/4" MDF with a reinforced frame, but I suspect that would be a bit too hard. Lining the inner wall with a thin foam might help.

Thoughts?

soundstage1.jpg
 
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Sort of in the same situation as you but my image is pulling to the left. My front left speaker is under a sofit. It's making my image pull to that speaker. I am trying to figure out how I could balance it back to the right . Hopefully you figure out how to fix yours and I could implement that in mine.
 
I'm considering a proof of concept.
I'll just go to lowes and have a 1/4" 4'x8' MDF board ripped to give me two 24"x 8' lengths that I can throw a hinge on just to see what happens. If it looks like it has promise, then I'll pursue making something pretty.
 
It dawned on me that I could try this out with a foldout table from my storage room.

Guess what? My sound stage is centered with the speakers toed in and 2.5' from the front wall.
Speakers are spiked and I've added some length to the back spikes.

It dawned on me that what I should probably make a corner piece that extends out just enough to be the exact same distance from the right speaker as the left wall is from the left speaker.

I have some tweaking to do before I finalize a design, but I will probably make the end design adjustable so I can close off the corner and move it out within a range.

experiment.jpg
 
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It dawned on me that I could try this out with a foldout table from my storage room.

Guess what? My sound stage is centered with the speakers toed in and 2.5' from the front wall.
Speakers are spiked and I've added some length to the back spikes.

It dawned on me that what I should probably make a corner piece that extends out just enough to be the exact same distance from the right speaker as the left wall is from the left speaker.

I have some tweaking to do before I finalize a design, but I will probably make the end design adjustable so I can close off the corner and move it out within a range.

View attachment 17767


I bet you it is my sofit then that is causing this.. glad to see your problem is resolved.
 
I'm not there yet.

I still can't pull the speakers out enough for the bass response to be right and tilting the speakers back swings the sound stage to the right again.

I had it actually working well for a little while and I kept playing with it and lost what was really starting to sound good.

It seems I can get it to sound good for some things and not others. I'm getting a very fatiguing bass response right now.

I'm back to having it to sound pretty good with a decent sound stage. The sad part is that until I come up with a solution that I can reliably position I may be wasting my time working on this.
 
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Ok, it looks like you are concentrating on reflected waves and their impact. While that is important (immensely), I suggest working on the direct waves first. IMO, the closer you are to your speakers, the more critical the difference in speaker distance from the listening position becomes. Small variances can have dramatic effects on perceived volume from each speaker. This difference will cause an image shift to one side or the other. So, play with toe in toe out for best center fill and timbre/sound, but also play with the distance from your seating position each speaker is. You should be able to center the image. Once that is done, then worry about reflected sound waves and their effect on the sound.
 
Ok, it looks like you are concentrating on reflected waves and their impact. While that is important (immensely), I suggest working on the direct waves first. IMO, the closer you are to your speakers, the more critical the difference in speaker distance from the listening position becomes. Small variances can have dramatic effects on perceived volume from each speaker. This difference will cause an image shift to one side or the other. So, play with toe in toe out for best center fill and timbre/sound, but also play with the distance from your seating position each speaker is. You should be able to center the image. Once that is done, then worry about reflected sound waves and their effect on the sound.

I agree about the priorities being overall sound quality and then sound stage.

However if I'm going to need to block the hole in the back of my room in some way, shouldn't I have that in place before I dial in everything else?

I can probably only move the couch forward and backward about about 1'. I don't have great latitude in my seated position.

This is an exercise in compromises.
 
I probably wasn't clear. If the sound is more prominent to the right, try moving your right speaker back a little. The distance each speaker is to your ears has a huge effect on the apparent soundstage.
 
Make the new screens from the same material the rest of the room is made from: drywall...
 

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