Thread: Different speakers or just an unforgiving room?

Welcome to the forum Rod, thank you for joining.

Hi Rod - can you post pics?

A good combo for taming that tweeter is a tube amp/integrated/preamp whatever combo and Siltech cables (don't shoot the messenger, I know they're expensive, but some of their lower priced stuff has the same affect).

You can also be sure to treat the first reflection point. Do you know how to find the first reflection point?


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That's good advice Mike, but I would add consider a DEQX.

The OP wrote that "[t]he room is a bit of an L shape, with the speakers backing onto a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf and essentially facing a line of windows (these have no curtains, just vertical blinds). Flooring is machined oak boards over a concrete base (no carpets). The walls are regular plasterboard but there are quite a few guitars hung around the room so it's not really a good possibility to think about lots of acoustic treatment."

I wonder if some of the OP's problems are room related FR anomalies. I've been there and done it myself.

@ Mike, I just looked at the OP's room layout. You're a DEQX dealer, what do you think?

You mention bare floors and no drapes and reflection points a simple and cost free option to see if it helps is just lay or hang a few blankets in the different spots and see if it helps. A rug has helped my room a lot. Then buy the million dollar cables

Originally Posted by Garth

You mention bare floors and no drapes and reflection points a simple and cost free option to see if it helps is just lay or hang a few blankets in the different spots and see if it helps. A rug has helped my room a lot. Then buy the million dollar cables

Great suggestion Garth. Before buying gear, treat the room.


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Rod - check out this video. You will need someone to help you identify the first and second reflection points. Focus on first reflection point first. Hanging a heavy blanked as Garth suggested (even draped over a chair) will give you an idea of what some treatments can do.

http://youtu.be/B9u7k2V4YPw


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What you're hearing may be a radiation pattern issue.

The Micro Utopias combine a 6" woofer with a 1" tweeter. I would guess the crossover is in the 2.5 kHz ballpark, but the exact frequency doesn't really matter.

Let's assume the Micro Utopias are approximately flat on-axis. Off-axis, the midwoofer will be beaming in the crossover region, whereas the tweeter will still have a very wide pattern. So at the bottom of the tweeter's range, ballpark 2.5 - 5 kHz, you'll effectively have excess off-axis energy relative to most of the spectrum. In fact, the ultra-rigid cone Focal uses for their midwoofer makes the off-axis energy discrepancy in the crossover region even more pronounced (just about everything in speaker design involves tradeoffs). And unfortunately the ear is most sensitive right smack in the region where we have this excess off-axis energy (2.5-5 kHz), which will reach our ears via reflections and skew the perceived tonal balance accordingly. I may be wrong of course, but that's my best guess.

The solution isn't easy. If you try to absorb the excess off-axis energy at the lower end of the tweeter's range, you'll end up absorbing even more energy higher up the spectrum. Not good. If you crank in a compensating dip via EQ, you'll lose some of that upper harmonic richness and detail that's presented by the first-arrival sound. I think your best bet (short of "new speakers") would be to listen nearfield, so that the speaker's first-arrival sound is much louder than its reverberant sound at the listening position. The downside of this would be a "drier" presentation, but I think it's more likely to be a net improvement than the other two options.

Of course there's "get new speakers", but if nearfield listening is practical, might as well give it a shot first.

One easy test you might try: Put on a song that spotlights the problem, turn the volume up a bit louder than normal, and walk out of the room, listening through the open doorway with no line-of-sight to the speakers. From out there, all you can hear is the reverberant sound - there is no direct path from the speakers to your ears. If the tonal balance sounds a bit rolled-off on top but otherwise natural from out there, then my assumptions are probably wrong. If the tonal balance sounds like there's emphasis in that lower treble region, then it's probably that radiation pattern thing. (That's called the L.I.A.R. test... it stands for Listening In Another Room, and ime is a good predictor of long-term enjoyment provided that the speakers sound good in the sweet spot as well.)

Rod, I agree with you. I love the newer Focal tweeter,(like the Sopra), but I always found their older design to be a little bright for my ears. I saw that you don't listen to bass heavy music, so I agree with Alex that the Raidho speaker should make you much happier.

Focal's inverted dome has broad high frequency dispersion, in addition to their limited low frequency and Focal's voicing, can create an acoustic nightmare in a reflective room. Look into either room treatments(carpet, heavy drapes), warm sounding gear(tube pre, dac, etc...), or a more appropriate speaker for your room.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150620...ab_miniutopia/

I think we just heard from Duke L. If that is who I think he is, his post should be taken with extra consideration and seriousness. Duke L manufacturers speakers.

Duke, do you think room EQ would help? Many of the box speakers that I have looked at generally cross over in the 2.5K Hz range. Do you think the problem you described above would be a problem with other speaker brands that x-over at that frequency?

Seems like the room is a major contributor. That's why I suggested the DEQX. Do you that gizmo might help.

Of course, not much discussion on the OP's other gear. Haven't given much thought about equipment issues.

Regards,

BIF

The DEQX will definitely help in a trouble room. It helps with time delay associated with a trouble room (like an "L" shaped room), it helps with problematic room nodes and much more as you know.

Originally Posted by Duke

What you're hearing may be a radiation pattern issue.

The Micro Utopias combine a 6" woofer with a 1" tweeter. I would guess the crossover is in the 2.5 kHz ballpark, but the exact frequency doesn't really matter.

Let's assume the Micro Utopias are approximately flat on-axis. Off-axis, the midwoofer will be beaming in the crossover region, whereas the tweeter will still have a very wide pattern. So at the bottom of the tweeter's range, ballpark 2.5 - 5 kHz, you'll effectively have excess off-axis energy relative to most of the spectrum. In fact, the ultra-rigid cone Focal uses for their midwoofer makes the off-axis energy discrepancy in the crossover region even more pronounced (just about everything in speaker design involves tradeoffs). And unfortunately the ear is most sensitive right smack in the region where we have this excess off-axis energy (2.5-5 kHz), which will reach our ears via reflections and skew the perceived tonal balance accordingly. I may be wrong of course, but that's my best guess.

The solution isn't easy. If you try to absorb the excess off-axis energy at the lower end of the tweeter's range, you'll end up absorbing even more energy higher up the spectrum. Not good. If you crank in a compensating dip via EQ, you'll lose some of that upper harmonic richness and detail that's presented by the first-arrival sound. I think your best bet (short of "new speakers") would be to listen nearfield, so that the speaker's first-arrival sound is much louder than its reverberant sound at the listening position. The downside of this would be a "drier" presentation, but I think it's more likely to be a net improvement than the other two options.

Of course there's "get new speakers", but if nearfield listening is practical, might as well give it a shot first.

One easy test you might try: Put on a song that spotlights the problem, turn the volume up a bit louder than normal, and walk out of the room, listening through the open doorway with no line-of-sight to the speakers. From out there, all you can hear is the reverberant sound - there is no direct path from the speakers to your ears. If the tonal balance sounds a bit rolled-off on top but otherwise natural from out there, then my assumptions are probably wrong. If the tonal balance sounds like there's emphasis in that lower treble region, then it's probably that radiation pattern thing. (That's called the L.I.A.R. test... it stands for Listening In Another Room, and ime is a good predictor of long-term enjoyment provided that the speakers sound good in the sweet spot as well.)

Excellent advice, Duke!

Originally Posted by Bifwynne

Duke L manufacturers speakers.

Yes, and unfortunately that means my perspective is likely to be skewed... I tend to mostly look for the role speakers might play in this or that problem. I'm kinda like the guy whose only tool is a hammer, so every problem looks like a nail.

Originally Posted by Bifwynne

Duke, do you think room EQ would help? Many of the box speakers that I have looked at generally cross over in the 2.5K Hz range. Do you think the problem you described above would be a problem with other speaker brands that x-over at that frequency?

This is just my opinion:

I'd never want to use room EQ north of 200 Hz. If you do use any EQ north of 200 Hz, I'd strongly suggest doing the exact same thing to both speakers, rather than EQing them independently (which is part of what I take to be implied by the term "room EQ"). Don't screw up the first-arrival sound for the sake of what an ungated omnidirectional microphone is telling you.

That being said, it's probably possible to come up with a gentle "compromise" curve that introduces some on-axis dippage at the lower end of the tweeter's range. Many designers do that in their passive crossovers, but it still doesn't fix the discrepancy between the direct and reverberant sound in that region, which becomes more pronounced as the midwoofer cone becomes bigger and/or stiffer. Imo if this is indeed what's going on, it would be an acoustic problem that calls for an acoustic solution, and that has to happen at the speaker design stage; it really can't be fixed via EQ'd after the fact.

One of the best stand-mount speakers I can recall was the sadly-discontinued Cliffhanger Bulldog. It was a three-way in a league where just about everything else was a two-way. The fairly large dome midrange in between the woofer and tweeter gave a smoother off-axis response than most two-ways, which imo matters. Or you might look at two-ways that use a smooth shallow waveguide around the tweeter, which reduces the radiation pattern discrepancy in the crossover region. These are becoming more widely used. In my experience, beware of "stepped" (as opposed to smooth-sided) waveguides, as they're using diffraction to get a more uniform radiation pattern, and imo that creates more problems than it solves. The devil is in the details.

Originally Posted by Jim Smith

Excellent advice, Duke!

Thank you Jim! That means a lot coming from you.

Originally Posted by rdysan

In the meantime, I have a friend who has kindly offered to loan me a pair of Spatial Audio M1 Turbos to see what difference an open backed speaker option might make, versus a cabinet. From what I have read they are more forgiving of room acoustics – I’m intrigued to find out.

If the problem is indeed off-axis radiation pattern "flare" at the bottom end of the tweeter's range, then the Spatials should be a significant improvement in that area, as they have very good radiation pattern uniformity in the forward hemisphere. I have a great deal of respect for Clayton Shaw as a designer and as a person.

In a different setup, where the direct sound was more dominant, the Focals would really shine. Focal is very highly respected among recording engineers for their nearfield monitors.

I think Duke and Face's answers are the most helpful. Focals seem to do best in damp rooms. Recently I heard some big Focals (forget exactly which model) in Boulder Amplifier's listening room, which is extremely damp, way more than most any room I've ever been in and the Focals sounded great. Previously they tried Wilsons and said they sounded really dead, not good at all. It's really important to take the dispersion pattern of the speaker and the character of your room into account when choosing speakers. Personally, I prefer speakers with a tighter dispersion pattern which give you more direct vs reflected sound and does not require as much room treatment to sound optimal. They should also have a smooth off-axis response which can be seen in polar response graphs. In the case of the Focal you can tell from the size and driver type that it's not really possible for them to have a smooth off axis response at the crossover point, which Duke explained very well. One solution to this for the Focal would be a waveguide for the tweeter that matches the dispersion pattern to the woofer at the crossover point.

tl/dr... more room treatments or different speakers.

I had the same problem with the vocal and a carpet between the speakers solved the problem mostly.