General Speaker Advice and Recommendations

Some of the Focals are warmer because the ringing is tuned to smear itself and there is probably some weird phase shift going on. They’re just fragile and of inconsistent quality and sound. The Shapes don't have awful cabinets and ports like the old ones either but still have the crappy Chinese plate amps. The Arias are similar and you can use better amps but they have the gross front port.

 

Well I guess I don't know any better since those are the only "Hi-Fi" towers I've ever listened to and the Arias are a marked improvement. I'm happy with how they sound and until I can try something "affordable" that sounds better, ignorance is bliss.

 

Yesterday I got a great deal on some Acoustic Zen Adagio speakers. I was perusing Craigslist last week and saw them for 1850 locally. Went out there with @famish99 to check them out, and came home with them.

The reason I didn't get speakers much sooner though, is that I'm living in an apartment, with concrete floors and one giant, open, living space of kitchen and living room. I was super worried about acoustics here and so I was just sticking with headphones till now.

Well, getting them setup, I realized the room wasn't as bad as I was expecting, but it can definitely still use some work. I am planning on getting a rug, or maybe a giant carpet remnant(would one be preferable to the other for sound?) and am also looking at wall and ceiling treatments. At first I was just looking at the one foot acoustic foam squares you can get on Amazon. Are those effective at all or a waste of time? Should I just go straight for actual acoustic panels instead? I was thinking I would get a couple for the space on the wall behind the speakers, on the wall behind the listening position and then maybe install some on the ceiling at first reflection points as well.

Also, since I only have this one space to use, I have my 77" oled tv between the speakers. It is a foot and a half or so from the wall, and the I have the speakers out probably an additional foot and a half in front of that. Is there anything I should do for the space between the tv and the wall? I already noticed an improvement by putting a blanket over the tv while listening.

thanks for any help. Diving back into speakers is fun. It had been so long since I heard a nice speaker setup. The last time I had one was in 2014 before I moved to Korea. You spend enough time without it and you start to convince yourself headphones are good enough, but going to hear Famish's Fortes really showed me how wrong I was, and that was what made me decide to go look at the Adagios id seen earlier in the week on CL.

 

@SoupRKnowva room is rather large and irregularly shaped so it doesn't have any glaring bass modes, but is hard surface hell so I mostly thought foam would be good enough since it would help cleaning up the mids and treble, but I am curious about what others have experienced. Last time I had a situation like soup, I Dirac'd it better.

 

foam is really poor in coefficient absorption vs proper fiberglass. I think your much better getting the real things, thicker the better. DIY is very easy and extremly cheap compared to any commercial offering,
GIK offer DIY frames and acoustic material. buying a couple of those frames and building them yourself for the early reflection points would be extremely cheap (about 50$ per panel 24" x 48") 4 inch thick. GIK offering are decent though if you dont want any diy

 

I did some treatment in my listening room to good effect, see here.
Relative to your situation, some suggestions

concrete floor is tough - carpet remnant is a good start, but I'd also get underlayment foam a little smaller than the carpet for additional absorption

the speakers are far enough away from the wall that I'd put rear wall treatments pretty far down the list - the TV is further forward and more reflective than drywall, so blanket makes sense

you'll probably end up wanting to try panels in steps - start at 1st reflection points, but depending on how far away those are from the speakers, might need to be bigger than mine.

For walls & ceilings, you're in an apartment, so I'd think you'd want something cheap and easy to hang

Using the batting I used is pretty inexpensive for experimentation. And you can then make them into finished panels for really cheap if you're willing to do a little DIY. Don't use wood framing like I did, I have since realized I could have come up with the same final product just cutting up some bicycle boxes and burlap or curtain material. If you want construction info, let me know.

 

For large reflective rooms diffusers are a good idea. Diffuser can double as a designer rack/shelf.
Soft furniture and carpets won't hurt.
Bass traps (absorbtion) are ugly and not practical for much else.
Then, covering everything with a few inches of absorbtion kills the top end, and bass and low mid problems will persist.

 

covering every inch is never a good idea. anyone who would do this would find the room extremely uncomfortable to be in. only treat the early reflection points. and for every bass traps that are in the corner or out of the 1st reflection points, you need to put kraft paper over it (under the fabric cover) in order to to make the room too dead)
agreed with diffusers, problem is you need a large room, very large

 

I'm moving to a new place in March and looking for advice for a speaker/TV setup. Main objectives are (1) good design (not too conspicuous, fewer components preferred) and (2) sound quality for mostly TV/movies + background music for reading and dinner parties. Don't think I'll use it for too much serious listening.

Currently thinking of pair of floorstanders + integrated amp/DAC for total budget of 5-10k EUR. Was looking at Piega because the speakers look really nice. Or the Hegel H390 integrated with DAC. Sceptical about incremental benefits of 5.1. Living room floor plan if helpful (metrics are in meters).

 

Grab a couple packs of these, and cover them with this or straight up burlap, it's about as cheap as you can get for something that'll actually work above 200Hz. Hang them at first reflection points, and play around with sticking them in the corners as pseudo bass traps, or prop them up in front of the TV screen to see if masking that surface makes a difference. I wouldn't worry about adding adsorption to the ceiling since the MTM array does a good job at managing vertical dispersion. Floor bounce is more about mids/midbass, as it's more like corner reinforcement in that it's a function of the distance from the floor from the acoustical center of the lowest woofer in the speaker causing disruptive interference/boundary reinforcement at certain frequencies.

My cheapo DIY acoustic panel recipe is this:

• grab some 2x4 foot pegboard project panels from home depot
• grab a can of 3M high strength 90 spray adhesive
• spray HS90 on the pegboard then affix the acoustic rigid fiberglass panel to the pegboard
• spray HS90 on the OC 703 and the back of the pegboard panel
• stretch some kind of fabric over everything

 

Your image disappeared @saint.panda. Try hosting on imgur and then adding an image tag to your post like this:

Code:

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/m33Xm0U.jpg[/IMG]

 

Fixed, thanks.

 

Not sure if bad signal to noise ratio, but for those who have a similar objective (i.e. simple setup with few components), my research has led me to order the new Buchardt A700 floorstanders. Wireless active speakers with built-in DAC. There's also the A500 at half price for bookshelves that supposedly go down to 25hz. Pretty good reviews and room correction similar to Sonos (app-based).

 

I'm looking for advice on smaller speakers that will work well with a single Aegir and Saga (read higher than 90 dB eff and 6 ohm average?). I have a smaller listening space 15' x 10' with plans to put speakers on stands along the long wall. I'm not worried about bass and my priority is great imaging. I've considered powered monitors but I'm finding that most use digital preamps and I don't want my analog chain converted to digital and then back again. I currently have a pair of OSMTM that work okay but I would like to greatly improve detail and imaging. Thanks for any assistance.

 

These come to mind, but I'm also curious to see what other replies you get:

• Klipsch RP-600M [link]
• Tekton Mini Lore Monitor (call for wait time) [link]
• Seas A26 kit from Madisound (based on the Dynaco A25) [link]
• Joseph Crowe No. 1159 (DIY, kit seems to include cabinets only, double check the sensitivity) [link]

This thread might give you some ideas too: [SBAF High Efficiency Speakers for Low-Powered Amps Thread]

 

Budget? Most normal under $1000 a pair powered monitors in the pro/consumer space are analog input, not digital. Not sure what you mean by digital preamp, but many do use digital amplifiers, although there are some that use class AB.

As for imaging, the best way to enhance is to treat that wall behind the speakers with damping. Imaging changes a lot based on amount and placement of damping panels for example . A bare wall will be the worst with a fair amount of smearing or "wall o' sound". Speakers with less dispersion, waveguides, horns will suffer less but it is still a good practice to use some sort of damping on the front wall.

 

Budget, up to $2K. In terms of the studio monitors, maybe I’m wrong, but from my understanding of the ones I’ve looked at that use DSP (Dynaudio, Eve, LS50 Wireless ii) the analog input is converted to digital, processed and then fed to the amp.

 

The only recent powered monitors that come to mind that use analog crossover (no DSP) is the Elac Navis, which are supposed to be pretty good, based on the reviews at least.

**ducks under the object thrown from @bixby**

Other than that, this is a tricky problem (high sensitivity passive bookshelfs that are refined and image well). Since you’re putting these on the long wall, I assume you’re going to be sitting fairly close - do you know approx how close? Because you might not actually need high sensitivity, even with Aegir, if you’re sitting pretty close and you don’t listen super loud. Also, to get great soundstage and imaging, you typically need to get them out from the walls behind them somewhat, so possibly even making them even closer. If you end up being 6-7 feet away, you might be able to get away with an average 86-88dB speaker.

Edit: Another powered montitor that’s all analog , class A/B amps, and well reviewed, is the Acoustic Energy AE1 Active, but not sure of their availability in the US.

 

What are your thoughts on synergy with Aegir + Saga and an 86--88 dB speaker? It seems like that could be marginally ok in nearfield, but perhaps pushing it for a midfield setup. I would be slightly more optimistic about that route if Gaspasser was running Freya instead of Saga.

 

I would want it to be a REAL 86-88dB sensitivity, not just what the manufacturer rated. Find measurements on Stereophile or Soundstage or elsewhere. A lot of 86-87 dB rated speakers are more like 83-85 when measured. And yes preferably 87 or 88 as well (86 may be pushing it). And it does depend on how loud you like to listen. If you listen around 85-90dB at the most, I think it’s possible in midfield - but yes, the gain in the preamp could reach its limit. A lot of factors here, but some people who say they don’t listen loud have been able to run single Aegir with average sensitivity speakers in midfield to their satisfaction.