So you hear a lot about the room effects on speakers and at least it seems to me it’s mostly about how walls and other things affect speakers or even ceilings maybe in somewhat medium sized to small rooms. My system is set up in my living room slash dining area it’s a large open space I’d say 50 feet front to back. There’s 50 feet of space between the right speaker and the nearest wall and probably 10 feet from the left speaker in the nearest wall Speakers are about three feet from the back wall
I’m just curious what people’s thoughts are on larger rooms I mean don’t see myself putting up any treatments It’s my living room and I have to live there But in general our larger rooms better like you don’t have to worry about room effects so much Are there disadvantages to large rooms
Funny @rower30 just posted a similar thing in his thread. New speakers and right was near a wall and left was not. A simple heavy tapestry seemed to help a ton on the wall that is close to the speaker. Not much else.
That is a big room. Filling it with deep bass may be hard. But your reflections get easier IIRC. Note sure if that makes the null voids easier to handle. No experience there.
My room is not as big, but has a high sloped ceiling and 33’ in depth. The right side of the speaker is open too. The left speaker is 2.8’ from the wall. I use live plants, diffusion racks and panels behind. That is all I have and I got clear image and pin-point soundstage. Bass is deep and clear without muddy too.
In general bigger rooms are easier to setup speakers, I believe.
If you want the bass to be most linear, usually get the speaker 4-5 feet from the wall behind them. My experience in a 14 x 38 foot room with all the speakers placed in there.
My room is L-shaded so each side is not the same. If it is symmetrical, it will be easier to adjust the bass. I can only somewhat adjust the treble with the wool rug to center the image. Bass is as bass does and ignores the treatments. Positioning in the room (away from the rear wall) is what helps the most.
If my ears told me that my space could use a little more charge retension then I would try renting or borrowing a multi panel fold like a jaded type decorative room separator. Convince the big boss that it’s temporary and fold it up after your listening session.
I have an asymmetrical room for my listening and just this past week tried Claude design to help with speaker placement with surprisingly good results. Not perfect, but my system sounds better than ever before. It pointed out where I have room reflections, where to use defractors, defusers, and absorbers. It also showed me what room nodes I should expect. It took me about an hour to enter the dimensions of the space, floor type, furnishings and room photos I uploaded. Even with the photos, it created an accurate to scale diagram of the current as built state and several recommendations for speaker placement and toe in based on the main listening position. Kind of a fun little journey with AI.
Move speakers away from the front wall really helps the soundstage and bass, and a deep room benefits from that even more so. My FR30 is almost seven feet from the wall, and that makes everything sounded more realistic.
Even at this distance, I need to lower the triple cell honeycomb blinds to do any serious listening. These thick blinds act as absorbent and diffuser at the same time. But if the speaker is closer to the wall, I need get panels designed for such purpose. But that will never happen in this house.
After reading your comment I tried doing some online research on Claude Design. It appears to be an AI prototyping tool but seems way too general for me to get the kind of results you describe. What is your secret? Is it interactive as chatGPT is? Is it as simple to use as submitting floor plans, photos of the room, etc and a narrative to say what you want it to do?
Prompting is key using Claude Design as is the case with all AI tools I suppose. I have subscriptions to both ChatGPT ($20/month) and Claude ($100/month) and Claude is significantly more feature rich when I insert the same prompts with both tools. Here is an example of the Claude Design output. What is really interesting and not reflected in the screenshots below are expected room nodes based on room dimensions along with second order reflection points to contend with. I did ask Claude to give me recommendations based on the Wilson method, its AI recommendation, and the so called Jim Smith (RIP) method for comparison. The output gave precise recommendations on speaker placement and toe in. My next effort will be to run an REW sweep (next weekend) and upload those results into Claude Design.
Claude Design does more than I would have guessed! What is really cool is being able to take its suggested setup, run REW measurements, and feed those into Claude for refinements! I have REW but I have been shoving speakers and listening chairs around my room for months now trying to find optimum positioning by ear. For one thing, looking at impulse responses I have a spike at 5.6ms that I have not been able to resolve.
Thanks for showing me this --and I want to add that you have a beautiful space for your gear! Very nice! Your speakers look to be Wilson Sasha’s which I have been dreaming about lately!
very cool. in some ways your room is like mine. pretty big open space. on my right side i have at least 30 feet before a wall and on the left 20 before a window. my speakers are about 3 feet from the wall. they have down firing ports so am thinking thats enough
One thing i notice from the diagram is pretty significant toe-in. way more than I would expect. are your speakers toed-in that much in reality, hard to tell from photo.
Where do you sit to enjoy the virtual imaging in this room? Some rooms are VERY hard to arrange. I’m luckier in that my basement room is just the hi-fi. I honor anyone that can combine living spaces with the stereo. Some friends with rooms like this have a side chair they pull in off the wall to center stage!
--
Use the LEAST toe-in to get the most solid center image. This preserves the WIDTH of the sound stage and imaging outside the speaker’s edges. A few type of speakers need radical toe-in by design (MY CWT 1000-40’s) or ZERO (MY ACORA SQC-5.2D’s). It depends, you have to listen. And, that calculated “ideal” sitting ratio is “approximate”. My ACORA’s do better slightly closer than the formula, but not radically so, 12" or so. Again, LISTEN don’t just do your homework on paper, use the results in the real world as a proper check.
--
You may have to do this iteratively as the seated spot changes the toe-in and the opposite. I selected the best seated distance for IMAGE size, and with the ACORA, toe-in was always ZERO so it was like cheating!
The right is 10.4 degrees and the left is 13.9 degrees with no real left wall boundary for reflection yet the right plays off the right wall area, hence the difference. The Jim Smith method recommends a further spread and 26 degree toe in (second image). Futzing with these speakers the last two years making incremental changes, the as built reflected in the image above is as locked in and harmonious as I’ve ever heard these speakers with wicked depth and breadth of image stage to astonishing details, not just the center image but depth on either side of center is pretty uncanny. What I do not have, due to no close ceiling for bounce is more realistic height. Because the Sasha’s are a single mid driver with no ceiling bounce the image height feels more like I’m sitting further back in the stadium so to speak.
My reference track on a reference level system, is Michelle by a cappella group the Kings Connection where the singers feel like they are ten feet way and standing on three rows or bleachers with a strong sense of depth height and width. I can’t find on digital but on vinyl, this is a wonderful Beatles rendition of the original from Paul McCartney and John Lennon.
