I tried to explain with a sketch what I meant in my post before. The oval area is the extent of the soundstage, the small lines are your speakers and the seat.
What I think you roughly have is 1.
What I think you could achieve is 2.
What would be most fascinating is 3.
What can be achieved with equipment just putting a soundstage far back is 4.
What can be achieved with equipment capable of imaging more to the front is 5.
I think it gets obvious that neither buying a book, disc, accessory or even new equipment considerably changes something within the limitations of these kind of placement options. And it’s free
He did mention the tweeters are 130cm from the front wall.
Dividing by 2.54 to get inches, that is 51 inches or 4’-3" from the front wall.
From the original photo and the dimensions, it looks like he already has something closer to diagram #2.
But I agree with you in some of the other photos posted later the speakers appear closer to the front wall than the original photo and original dimensions, closer to your diagram #1.
Hi Thanks. I have #2 now. #3 looks like nearfield listing to me. I will try it if it’s good I am screwed Just bought very expensive 2m speaker cables also my speakers are very large.
That way, every speaker sounds good. The work the system does involves some virtuality. 3-4-5 is not possible for most of us. It did not leave much to the system either.
Is basically what you mean “the sound with such a placement then is so good, that it’s no fun anymore to tweak around with the gear”? Would you prefer a much worse sound of a bad placement with just tiny improvements possible by spending a fortune?
Just kidding!
Yes that’s what I said, a setup of 1/4 of the price placed like 3 and even 2 will sound much better than the 4 times expensive setup placed like 1. That’s why I personally wouldn’t spend much on a setup in a scenario 1. I know that most have no other placement options and anyway spend a lot of money on it. Well, it’s a hobby.
And it’s not that every speaker/setup sounds equally good in a placement 3, you just have a similar, much further back soundstage placement. Everything else (the kind and extent of imaging, dynamic capability, bass accuracy and many more characteristics) get equally or even more obvious. Everything regarding sound staging and imaging can be really evaluated properly first time.
What I would do if I couldn’t place my speakers properly?
I would buy something like those, put them wide into the room with a long speaker cable.for every serious session and hide them to the wall again afterwards.
Try to fix the problem by breaking it down. Listen to the same speaker as yours in another environment. Play with the angles of the speaker. While doing this, try changing the vertical angle as well as in-out. Do these by removing the acoustic materials you used while making them.
That thinking should BE the box as it’s more essential than buying stuff to solve general geometric limitations
Not that I’m an instance to judge about concepts like the Sumiko…but it sounds worthwhile to optimize things (as do some other, similar speaker placement concepts).
Just don’t expect that such procedures change “no depth available” to “now I have depth” when using the same speakers enz. wall distance.
You should hear quite the same depth with nearly any speaker in a proper placement scenario and you probably hear quite the same limited depth with any speaker in a bad one. With those placement procedures you just can make a good placement scenario sound magic.
I say if you place your speakers/seat in a triangle with the front wall/speaker distance quite the same as the listener speaker distance and just angle them inwards so that you see along the inside wall of the speakers, then you get depth with quite any speaker and equipment. This should give you a starting point from where you come now.
This doesn’t mean, everything sounds equally good in this same better scenario. That’s why I made another sketch with 3 equivalent positionings of speakers, but different quality of the soundstage.
The lowest quality starts left. You have a diffuse wall of sound somewhere near the front wall with extreme variations in depth (e.g. a violin more in front than timpani) sounding obviously from a different distance. But you’re hardly able to distinguish the distance between a clarinet and a cello. Many sounds still occur from near the speakers.
The next best is in the middle, which is what many high end setups don’t surpass. You have an elaborated soundstage where you can more or less pin point identify certain instruments. But those instruments or singers sound flat in their position, like just a sound coming from there. The soundstage consisting of many instruments has a certain dimension, but the single instruments have not.
The third then is the best of the three. Imaging landscape is similar or better than in the example before, but now each instrument or singer has a 3D spherical aura around. Everything sounds airy and embedded in room and instrument ambiance. You think you can touch the singers or instruments. This only makes things sound real, while the soundstage mentioned in the example before seems rather artificial and analytical in comparison.
So a great placement situation still leaves potential for improvement of components and speakers.
I guess you should probably reach at least an early status of the second example with optimized placement and later more, as soon as equipment improves.
Very important for bass absorbing (can also be done by normal furniture, record shelves etc.) if room is problematic and/or listening is not near field and/or speakers have a wide radiation pattern.
Always good in the rest of cases.
But again:
If you have no depth, it doesn’t come by room treatment. Depth and imaging (among others) improve with it when it’s basically present, even when having strong first reflections.
Unless you use speakers made for providing depth when standing close to the wall, the most obvious depth experience is mainly a matter of front wall distance imo.
After looking again at your pictures (the first with a usually sufficient distance of speakers to front wall if you don’t sit too far) and the second ones with a very close to the wall positioning of the speakers, and your asymmetric ceiling and the lot of stuff and windows in the room I’d tend to really give near field listening with a larger speaker/wall distance a try. You must get depth then and not just a center image at speaker level. But you said you tried a lot of positioning already…no clue what’s happening in your room…might need a voodoo priest. In such cases I usually recommend to check very basics like speaker channel or phase connection confusion, power phase of all components. Then I’d try to borrow different speakers for a test, then amp etc. Crazy problem. Or maybe you have depth [in relation to the wall distance) but expect too much
Just bought very expensive 2m speaker cables also my speakers are very large.
