Basic setup

PS Audio

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<!-- #thumb --> <p>So now that we know our musical library fairly well, what do we do with this new-found information? *How do we use this familiarity to help us affect change or experiment with different settings?</p>
<p>I’ll begin to walk you through a simple setup that I might be working with as an example so you can see.</p>
<p>We have two music rooms at the office, number one and number two. *In Music Room One we have the big reference system I have been writing about, based upon the Infinity IRS. *This sets the standard within the building and what we use as our go-to music setup.</p>
<p>Music Room Two is much smaller and more like something you’d possibly have in your home. *I am just now installing a pair of Thiel two-ways (SCS4-T) into the room. *There’s no possibility they will ever sound like that of Room One – and that’s never been the intent. *However, I do want them to have the same characteristics within their limitations and this is what I set out to do.</p>
<p>The first type of music I put on in either room is something simple with a voice. *Voices are for most of us easily identifiable relative to an instrument. *Let’s use our Diana Krall example again. *In Music Room One I get a clear sense that she is halfway between the front of the loudspeaker and the wall behind the speakers. *Her voice hovers in perfect space at about the right height and size (as long as I have the volume set properly). *The room she is playing in sounds to me a certain size that I am sensing. *That’s about all I need.</p>
<p>I play the same cut in Music Room Two and it shouldn’t take too long to reposition the Thiels to achieve the same basic feel. *What I am changing is the distance between the wall behind the loudspeakers, the distance between the pair and the toe in angle of the speaker.</p>
<ul><li><span>Distance of the speaker pair from the wall behind them controls the amount of depth or space we allow to help the illusion of soundstage. *Pulling the speakers away from the rear wall too much loses the soundstage boundaries and palpability; too little and there’s not enough “space” for the soundstage to exist. *The soundstage should always appear behind and at the loudspeaker pair, never in front.</span></li>
<li>Distance between the pair controls the width of the soundstage, the center image and, perhaps more important, the tone of the voice. *Closer together the upper midbass is coupling better between left and right and the voice becomes fuller sounding – further apart the opposite. *You want the perfect balance.</li>
<li>Toe-in (angling the speaker pair inwards towards your listening position) puts the tweeters in a more direct path with your ears and will help solidify the center image. *Always use extreme caution with toe-in as less is usually better. *I try never to toe-in if I can avoid it – preferring instead to play with the distance between the two speakers until I get the best I can between proper tonality and palpability of the image. *Once that’s dialed in as best I can, then (and only then) do I judiciously toe in to achieve the finishing touch on image stability. *Too much toe-in can flatten out the depth and width of the soundstage you worked hard to achieve.</li>
</ul><p>If by these methods I can get a close approximation of what I remember the track sounded like in Music Room One, I am halfway there. *Unfortunately, I cannot get the same illusion of soundstage from the little Thiels no matter what I do. *So what’s my next step?</p>
<p>Tomorrow we’ll look at what we can do to improve the Thiel’s performance as we roughly dial them in to sound similar to the IRS.</p>
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