Wonderful news, I got the wife’s approval to setup my office/loft as “dedicated” listening room. To us, this means placing the speakers, gear, seat, etc. for listing instead of normal aesthetics. The biggest problem now is that the room is very odd and would appreciate all the guidance I can get as a relative new guy. I’m a bit worried the room is too odd and I won’t be able to ever get it sounding very good.
I not only would love general guidance on placement but also need help finalizing the size of the three stands I will be building to hold the electronics and keep my wife happy per our new agreement. I feel like the width of the room is a limiting factor for me and I’m worried I’m making these too wide but my wife has a design she likes and I’d sure love if I could pull it off in exchange for her flexability.
The design she likes for the stands would be three 23” squares with 2” frames and one shelf giving me 10” at the bottom and 7” above. With 2” between each stand, this would take up 73” of the 119” wide back wall. My speakers are Magnepan 1.7i’s which are 19” wide each, so I’m wondering if I need to try to narrow the design to save a bit of width. The speakers do need to be around 3 feet out into the room and are dipole speakers, so I am unsure about placing gear behind them. I could really use advice here before I start cutting wood. At the same time, I’m chomping at the bit to get everything setup and already bought the wood this afternoon to start the build.
I have included a picture I quickly mapped out of the room with dimensions, though it is not to scale. Ceilings are 96” high but they start to slope downward about halfway back. The listening area is a loft on the second floor with the back half of the room open to the below house. The stairs have railings but not full walls and I figured the back half of the ceiling sloping down and the back half of the room being open to another floor with a lot of room would be good for the sound. However, with the narrow and uneven side walls and everything going on, I’m concerned I won’t be able to get a good setup in here. Please be honest with me. If what I’m trying to do does not fit or I need to rearrange things, please let me know.
Given your limited space for the stands, you might want to consider building up instead of out. This would give you more options for placing your Maggies.
Being a woodworker and similarly restricted for space, I came up with this. Some may argue that a tower design isn’t the best. I won’t.
RobH, I love your design. Great proportions and an element design that you pulled off beautifully. I really like how you angled your posts, which I have not seen anyone do on a audio rack before.
Thanks you everyone else as well for the help. I know I have a lot to learn and will take a look for the suggested book to try and get started. Unfortunately, I neglected to mention one of my constraints. On the back wall, there is a window my wife does not want my gear to obstruct. The window starts at 25 inches, which is why I was trying to stay below that with the 23” cubes on 2” isolation footers. I was trying to make it sound like I had more leeway from my wife and I knew a window between the speakers is not ideal, so I did that cool guy thing and did not mention the embarrassing part. Sorry.
Anyways, from watching some of Paul’s videos, it seems he would recommend putting the amps under the window and the rest of my gear to the side of the seat on a stacked rack like RobH’s stand.
If I did something like that. The amps would take up more like 42”-46” and I could bring the speakers in away from the outside walls more. The downsides to this is my wife told me before she does not like racks that look like equipment racks instead of furniture. I like the SolidSteel racks, but I showed her one and she was not kind. I’d have much better luck with something along RobH’s design, so maybe I need to try and come up with something for her. I also only have about 52” between the side wall and the arm of the listening chair. Putting a rack there is going to restrict the ability to walk around that side and may be awkward. It also rules out a side table for my seat most likely, which would be nice to have. I would also need to plug the amps into the wall instead of the PS Audio Power Plant and I would need to buy a decent pair of long interconnects that could reach from the rack to the amps. Not necessarily deal breakers, but not ideal.
So I guess the question is if moving the Magnepan speakers inward away from the outside walls would make a large improvement in sound. Or, can I get good sound with them that far to the outside of the room. I think with my initial setup, I would have about an equal triangle listening position to the speakers. If I move the speakers in, I could move the seat in a bit too. I’m guessing my wife would prefer that actually as it would open up more of the walkway behind to the stairs.
This morning I have been considering making the frames 23” H x 20” W, which would save me a total of 9” of width. This would give me about 10” of space between the edge of the speaker and the wall, while slightly toed in. Is that enough for Magnepan’s? I’ve been told that as panel speakers, they are very directional relative to cone drivers. Not sure the wife would love the frames being slightly taller than they are wide, but it would still fit my gear and give the speakers more room.
Well done. One of my wood working instructors idol was Krenov. He had multiple books related to him and his cabinets that I would flip though. I guess that makes him one of my main inspirations too. I was told he had an incredible wood collection that allowed him to pick each piece based off how the grain would fit what he was making, which was my instructors big love of his work. It was not simply the elegant shape, it was how the grain moved through those shapes and added movement or flow.
I got a chance to go over plans with my wife today and she has given me more freedom and is being very supportive. I can now cover the window and go above 25”, allowing me to narrow my stand and move my speakers inward.
Current plan is for a 54” rack that will have a 10” shelf, and two 7” shelfs with two pieces per shelf. That would give me around 14” of space from the outside edge of the panel speaker to the wall. Probably a bit more since they will be toed into my listening position, which would only be around 6 and a half feet from the speakers if in an equilateral triangle.
Could I get people thoughts on if this would generally work or if I’m still going to have issues? Any suggestions? Thanks again for the help.
Well, you are working within a limited, closely-defined area, so the more space you can leave for options and placements, the better.
As for the 6.5’ listening spot, recall @aangen’s statement that, “Nearfield listening solves so many room issues.” I doubt I have any more distance than that from my 20.7s, and I can’t complain.
Given the unpredictable nature of your room I’d recommend experimenting with different setups before cutting wood. You’ll find your own solution, but for my limited budget the Pangea Audio racks are perfect for their price and flexibility.
For stacking between speakers, the advice I received is to keep the rack height below the mid/tweeter height to provide a more uniform front wall.
One thing I found with treatments is lot of conflicting opinions and recommendations and canned solutions for ill defined problems. Everything needs to be filtered through your specific situation and sensitivities. If I’d only known then what I know now I’d follow my own advice to hold off on any treatments until being satisfied with the basic setup and, by using REW or similar, able to define the remaining problems needing to be addressed. DSP/PEQ to trim peaks and subs to fill nulls. I’m not following this last bit of advice but I don’t mind the consequences for my listening habits.
Jim Smith’s “Get Better Sound” and Paul’s “Audiophile’s Guide: The Stereo” are both excellent references but I found Ron Brenay’s New Record Day LOTS to be much more practical because my leaden ears aren’t as sensitive to the relatively small changes in speaker placement (and other changes) that many others hear. I had to spend a lot of time and too much money figuring this out.
To understand where I’m coming from, this is my 11’x14’ asymmetric shared space at one end of a ~14’x20’ room. OB Spatial Audio M4 Sapphires. The RH speaker is about 30” from the side wall to the edge of the baffle / 36” to the center. The LH speaker opens up to the rest of the room that is my office space. Both are 33” from the front wall to baffle center. The primary LP is about 4-1/2’ from the rear wall leaving a set up of 64” between baffle centers and 78” to the primary LP - spitting distance to Jim Smith’s 83%. My flexible seating (a freaking folding chair) means I can easily move into Paul’s recommended equilateral triangle.
+1 for Al’s near field recommendation but I find both seating positions satisfying in their own ways with the nearer position providing a bit more enveloping sound field for certain recordings.
The end result of all this is a sound stage that is very open and wide to the left, limited to the right, and deep but not particularly well layered. I think depth and layering are primarily equipment and setup limitations but also related to my hearing that, through a lot of experimenting, I found is is a big reason for the limited RH stage width.
I am sure you can design a very satisfying space but it might take a bit of patience.
I found a room calculator that suggests I should have the center of each speaker ~33.5” from the side wall. I’m thinking that would result in about 6” of 19” of the panel speaker overlapping the gear.
Would I be better off with the dipole speakers in their ideal width from my side wall but overlapping the gear, or closer to the side wall with no overlap?
I have Maggie LRS speakers. 25” from side wall on the right; the left side opens to another room. But 50” from the front wall. That is the key. Slight toe in. About 6.5 feet from my chair. Maggies have a figure 8 shaped dispersion of sound so the more distant the front wall the better.
When you determined the distance from the sidewall did you have the ability to identify these speakers as dipoles? I ask since they have very narrow dispersion and my understanding is they can be placed closer to the sidewall than a typical box speaker. I would investigate something behind the speakers to tame the back wave (the dipole part).
One other thing, I would try to keep the equipment rack low between the speakers. I think you are going that way which is a good thing.
