Planar speakers in middle of room

[Fitz]

I have a rather cramped situation that requires somewhat creative furniture placement, by using a single room as a bedroom, electronic workshop, and listening room. As it is now, things are fairly good and the speakers (Maggie 1.6) sound wonderful. However I want to build a new workbench that is significantly larger, and it would require getting rid of a set of shelves and making the room too cramped, or rearranging furniture to make better use of the middle of the room rather than everything against the wall.

Moving the listening position near the middle (by setting the desk in the middle so I could listen from there) is a no go, because there is a massive bass null and other irregularities in the sound there no matter where I put the speakers. However if I move the speakers (and TV) to the middle, that would free up the wall behind it, which would be a huge improvement in space. The problem is how good will they sound like that? My gut is telling me they'll sound great there, but I'm still a novice with planars so I don't have much experience to judge from. Have any of you ever used a set of planar speakers near the middle of the room, or otherwise several feet from the wall? I can temporarily pull the speakers out enough with the current room layout to get a crude idea of how it would sound, but I'd love to hear any feedback from somebody who has more experience listening to planars like this.

Thanks in advance!

[HeadphoneAddict]

I used some Quads ESL57 back in the 80's in med school set up in the middle of the room (about 5 feet off the walls) and I did need to use a MK subwoofer with them for the best sound, but otherwise it worked well after fiddling with it for a while. They also sounded better if they were higher up off the floor. I did have a spectrum analyzer to help me find the best position, but then got tired of it and ended up with some Polk SDA CRS which worked out better for me in the long run. I think I miss my 250 watt Heathkit power amp more than the Quads, but I still have the Polk 23-24 years later.

[swt61]

I think in generall they'll sound fine.

I have heard Martin Logans well into the middle of a room, and they sounded great. They did have a dynamic woofer however.

I think what may also be important is in which way you orient the speakers. I'd be relatively sure that they'd sound best with the livelier end of your room behind the Maggies, and the deader end of your room out in front of them. Is that possible?

[Fitz]

Well Dan also confirmed that they should do great way out into the room like that, so the plan is to tonight or tomorrow pull them out to see how they sound here. As they are right now there is plenty of bass, actually a bit of tilt towards the bass, so if it has similar or slightly less bass it'll be fine without a subwoofer. There's not really much choice for arranging other things around it, the two options are basically a mirror image of each other. I'll probably have the desk & workbench behind them, so the backwave should be diffused but not absorbed (I tried some foam panels for absorption for the fun of it once, absolutely killed the sound). Crap, gotta get back to work now...

[Dusty Chalk]

If it's any consolation, I have the same problem (large master bedroom acts as bedroom, den, and living area). I use omnidirectional speakers more or less in the middle of the room.

[grawk]

The bedroom in the house I lived in before alaska was that big. 27x20.

[Dusty Chalk]

Actually, it's not that big. I think it's 11x13.

[Fitz]

Yeah this room is somewhere in the neighborhood of 13x14, give or take a foot. Looking at a scale drawing on graph paper with pieces cut out to represent the furniture, it should work beautifully from a functional standpoint, separating it into "work" and "relax" areas. I may enhance that effect by hanging one of my tapestries behind the speakers to further divide the room (they're thinner and more acoustically transparent than the grille cloth on the speakers, so no problems there). After I wind down a bit I'm gonna pull the speakers into the middle to do a test run before rearranging everything. Thanks for the input guys, I'm quite stoked that I'll be able to pull this off.

[grawk]

My understanding is 13x14 is WAY too small for those maggies. But if you like them, then cool

[Fitz]

I've seen a lot more people using them in smaller rooms than this than in bigger rooms.

Also I remember somewhere somebody tried a pair in three different rooms, and liked it the best out of the smallest room. I don't remember the dimensions though.

[Fitz]

Ok, I've been playing with the speakers a lot and thought it would be good to post an update here. Nearly everywhere I can reasonably move the speakers in the new position results in bass that is frankly terrible, lots of boom and overhang between 30-40Hz, with a suckout in the midbass. However, I also get much more holographic imaging, and with a little EQ to smooth out the room's effects on the midrange and treble, absolutely wonderful sound overall. The problem is even with the bass reduced to where it's flat out to 30Hz, it still has that nasty slow decay that muddies up the sound; it looks atrocious on a CSD plot (only 10dB down after half a second in some positions...).

Normally I would just say fuck it, move it back to how I had them before, and leave it at that, but I'm really digging the space I have with the new layout where I can't bring myself to go back at this point. Tonight I just started experimenting with cutting out the bass below 40Hz, and the sound became much clearer and more immediate even without moving the speakers back to one of the "better" spots. I hadn't really considered trying that before, since I like the Maggies' full range abilities, but having it roll off at 50Hz instead of 30Hz is a relatively small price to pay if I can keep all the other positive attributes in this new arrangement.

[grawk]

You can always augment with a sub later

[Fitz]

Yeah, I'd have to buy/make a different amp so I could cross-over the signal though. Right now I'm feeding it the signal with the bass cut already in place, which wouldn't work too well if I hooked a sub up to it as it is.

That could be a fun project though, build a preamp with an adjustable (digital?) crossover, and a digital processor loop so I could put the EQ in line with it to smooth out the inevitably non-linear bass and any other room issues (without suffering the multiple ADC/DAC conversions using a preamp with a regular tape loop).

For now though I'm going to put the speakers back where I last had them sounding good and listen to them there with the bass cut to see how it goes.

[feckn_eejit]

You can always augment with a sub later

seconded, this strikes me as an ideal solution... though you will need a hell of a nice sub to keep up with the delicious planar bass...

[Fitz]

Yeah well I'm sure if I could find a good spot for the sub, it would sound a hell of a lot nicer than the boom-boom-bass the Maggies are making trying to play the 30-40Hz range in their current position. I never would've imagined I'd be having that problem with these speakers.

[luvdunhill]

I hadn't really considered trying that before, since I like the Maggies' full range abilities, but having it roll off at 50Hz instead of 30Hz is a relatively small price to pay if I can keep all the other positive attributes in this new arrangement.

Just a random suggestion. Try putting them basically perpendicular to the floor with no toe in.

[feckn_eejit]

Put my IIIas in a near-field type situation in a 10x12 room once... the bass was RIDICULOUS!

Just a random suggestion. Try putting them basically perpendicular to the floor with no toe in.

...pretty tough for them to be anything other than perpendicular to the floor on stock stands methinks

[Fitz]

Just a random suggestion. Try putting them basically perpendicular to the floor with no toe in.

I normally have the speakers straight up and down, and already tried no toe-in at several points. No toe-in causes a tilt EQ reducing the higher frequencies without affecting the bass, but makes no difference otherwise, and perpendicular or tilted doesn't seem to significantly affect the frequency response or decay either. Believe me when I say I've done a lot of expermenting with positioning front/back, left/right, closer/further apart, straight/tilted, flat/toed-in, etc within any reasonable area around the new speaker location.

Put my IIIas in a near-field type situation in a 10x12 room once... the bass was RIDICULOUS!...pretty tough for them to be anything other than perpendicular to the floor on stock stands methinks

I have the Sound Anchor stands, so I can tilt them pretty far forward or backward. This isn't really an issue of them being nearfield so much as their current position in the room is hitting the room modes in all the wrong ways. I actually first auditioned these in a very nearfield setup (maybe 4 feet away?), which had the most realistic imaging I've ever experienced and haven't yet been able to reproduce in my own setup, but the bass wasn't overwhelming at all (it was in a very large room however, inside a furniture store to be precise).

[Dusty Chalk]

Thanks for posting an update, I was about to ask.

... Nearly everywhere I can reasonably move the speakers in the new position results in bass that is frankly terrible, lots of boom and overhang between 30-40Hz... The problem is even with the bass reduced to where it's flat out to 30Hz, it still has that nasty slow decay that muddies up the sound...

Time to investigate "room treatments". Sounds like you have a serious standing wave problem, and it's possible to solve that with fancy DSP-based room-correction, but not with simple EQ. Believe it or not, it's much easier to get consistent results by treating the room.

I would start with the corners. Even something as simple (albeit expensive for "just foam") as the Auralex LENRD bass traps made an improvement in my old room.

[JBLoudG20]

[Fitz]

It would need to cause some major absorption as low as 32Hz to be effective here, is there any way to get that with bass traps without something obscenely large? Plain foam in any practical size wouldn't be thick enough at those wavelengths, but I've no experience with actual bass traps or helmholtz resonators, so I have no idea how well they would work for me. I have some flexibility in placing things thanks to the new furniture arrangement, but not necessarily in the most convenient places (both corners by the listening position are no go, although one might eventually get freed up if I switch to a normal CD rack instead of the spinner rack now that I have room).

[ingwe]

Bring em over to my place; I'll take good care of them.

[Dusty Chalk]

What about up towards the ceiling?

...corners are the most crucial, so this arrangement will be surprisingly effective.

Also, check out Ethan Winer's Bass Traps, I'm sure he has the information somewhere on his site...okay, he doesn't even bother measuring below 50Hz...that's not a good sign......

[Fitz]

Upper corners I can do 3 of 4 (right side behind the speakers, that extends out a little to meet the hallway so there's not a proper corner there), but considering that this is dealing on the deep end of the scale with massive wavelengths, it would definitely need some measurements to back it up before I invest any time or money in it. That's why I didn't really consider it much before, because of the scale required to deal with frequencies this low (the already fairly big 2' long foam corner wedges on that site from the picture only show ratings down to 125Hz that I can find).

[Dusty Chalk]

Yeah, it's a function of the wavelength and the thickness of the foam, you're right. I don't know if Ethan Winer has the actual formula on his site, but it's discussed on there somewhere. link

...or you could just ask him -- he was very active on there the one time I went on there, and honestly admitted he didn't know a lot about sound proofing when we realized that that was what my question was ultimately about. He says he specializes in low frequencies, and loves to share his knowledge with DIYers so that they can do it themselves.