Pictures of your speaker system

I agree, even with without ideal corner placement the AN-E are getting enough reinforcement from the front wall to provide acceptable bass without the subwoofers engaged. With the subwoofers turned on the sense of space/envelopment is more pronounced, and there's significantly more low-end impact, but I wouldn't consider it strictly necessary.

 

I heard it as Erin described it, with the left being imaged and focused (his terms) (I think I normally hear the terms "soundstage" and "imaging" instead of "image" and "focus").

I played the video from my Mac laptop through AirPlay to my Linn Klimax DS/1 which has Linn's room correction (Space) enabled.

I've included the measurements of the FR/FL from Anthem ARC. These do not go through Linn Space. It's clearly visible how the left's bass is goosed by its proximity to the wall etc.

 

I purchased a 4-panel Japanese-style room divider and set it up equidistant from the right speaker as the wall to the left. The difference is not completely transformative but it is there. Images that used to hang somewhere just to the left and to the front wall are now present about a foot to the right and a bit more forward. There's an appreciable decrease in spl when moving from within the boundary of the room divider to outside it, and there is a nice increase in sonic density at the listening position. For the $150 it cost I think it was a great upgrade.

Ideally I'd be able to put a wooden room divider with shelves in it's place and mount diffusion panels to it, but that would trade off with ease of moving in and out of position to the annoyance of my wife and children who expect it to be folded and resting against the front wall when not in use.

 

My friend came over with his measurement rig and we fiddled around with the sub placement again.



long rectangular room roughly 16x30, mostly glass on the long side
KEF LS60 on the short wall
right speaker in the right corner against the glass,
left speaker kinda in the middle (no other location possible)
couch about 10-12 feet back
mild toe in, crosses behind the couch
KEF KC92 sub (on loan) located behind the couch, closer to the wall/glass side

Sub placement was really limited by the couple spots that were "out of sight, out of mind". That red line was the best deep response we got out of the two dozen trials, but that was measured 5 feet behind the listening position lol.

Speakers high passed at 60Hz, sub low passed at 80Hz. Kinda weird, I know, but that seemed to provide the best sound both by ear and with measurements. Mini bonus with the mains reaching lower is that even with the sub right behind the couch all the bass felt like it was coming from the front.

My friend did bring one extra car sub that we putzed around with in different spots. A few configs we tried:
- KC92 under the coffee table (which was the previous location we found that worked best), car sub n front of left speaker
- KC92 coffee table, car sub behind couch left side, then later right side
- KC92 behind couch both left and right side, car sub on the other

Ultimately, we left the KC92 behind the couch on the right closer to the wall. Having the second sub did not seem to make too much of a difference aside from simply adding more power into the room and extending into the 10Hz range, and the few spots we tried only seemed to move the nulls around rather than eliminate any.

Even the spot for the KC92 right now behind the couch, I'd say it's a tossup whether it's better than under the coffee table or not. There's a little more tactility but I'm not convinced it sounds better on the couch. Maybe better at the back of the room in the kitchen somehow.

 

Everyone here posting nice pictures of their setups and living rooms, blah blah blah. This is my basement.


Yorkville U15 tops
Yorkville UCS1 subs underneath
Two QSC 4 channel amps (two each for each top, one for each sub, two channels left as spare)
egg crate for cables
fancy Prism Lyra as my dac because why the hell not, and the crossover had TRS cables plugged in already and I didn't want to putz around finding adapters.

The tops have a horn and 3 mids mounted on a cone in a time aligned "unity" configuration, and a 15" woofer, sensitivity 98 dB/1W.
The subs are 15" horn loaded beasts, only reaches down to 37Hz at -3dB, but who cares when you have a ridiculous sensitivity of 102 dB/1W

The sound is... strong. Horns meant for outdoors or auditoriums do not play well in a basement with concrete and bare drywall all around. Not exactly "bright", but it's like you can feel this sheer pressure force assaulting you. Especially along the right wall, not just the bass it was strong everything. Hence I hung some old jeans in front of the horns. Just a single leg. Both legs made it muffled.

I can only turn the dac to about 20% before it gets uncomfortably loud. About 40% hits the pain threshold. Listening is about 10%.

But y'know, the speaker/sub spacing was just weird enough that it caused a huge null in the bass frequencies at all sorts of spots throughout the room. The solution? Two more subs! Good thing I had those two spare amp channels.



These are Behringer B1500 that I've had for twenty years now. They don't sound that great, less output and kinda muddy compared to the Yorkies, but the important part when I first got them was that I could fit both into my car. When I went to buy them from a dude, he had those and a pair of JBLs available. I vastly preferred the JBLs, but literally could not fit the second one in my car. Oh well, ancient history now.


Anyhow, adding those subs actually did a really good job of evening out the bass response in the basement. Still have no idea what I'm going to do here. Really I just wanted to test the equipment out since I haven't turned anything on since 2019. Maybe I could mount a tv on the wall, set up a home gym behind the telepost, something something. This may be their permanent location. It took two people to get those Yorkie subs down the stairs with mild difficulty. Going up will present challenges.

 

Interesting Jl factor there. The angle of the crease in the left-leg channel is critical?

Seriously, though, that's quite a blank canvas you have there. You could have a complete home-cinema room if that's your thing.

Don't your ears (and eyes) cry out for soft furnishings?

 

We moved in a year and half ago and the basement was unfinished. I put spray foam on the walls and rough drywall (no mud or paint yet), and batt insulation into the floor joists above. Electrical outlets also installed around the perimeters at the same time I upgraded the house panel (should have done a whole-home surge protector but forgot; oh well, our grid here is very stable anyways).

I've got some costco "acoustic" panelling that I was thinking to install on the wall (link) behind the gear. You can't see it in the picture but I've got a rollup projector screen on the ground that I snagged from work. I could get maybe 90-95" on there, but then again for the cost of a decent projector I'm really not much better off than a tv these days.

We haven't decided what we're doing with the basement yet. Maybe just install some heavy curtain for now to cut down on the reflections.

 

Are you insinuating that this isn't a nice picture?

Main thing I'd change is to get rid of those fluorescents -- they induce headaches in me. And the effect they have on colors - it's like being in a zombie movie!

 

I don't even have a chair down there

The lights are LED actually, and those are an upgrade from the ancient fluorescents that were there before (ancient things that buzzed and flickered and took 5 seconds before they'd even turn on). Another costco special, bought a half dozen of them, and it's a hack job with the wiring and they're only mounted with these little screw in hooks to the joists. I'll mount something better once I put in an actual ceiling

 

I've been entranced by some recent experiences with quite large Oswald's Mill Audio and Cessaro horn speakers and wished to be able to get some of that experience at home. Unfortunately, big multi-way horn speakers need a lot of room for the soundstage to become coherent so I didn't think this was possible in a normal NYC apartment.

I'd been following A for Ara in instagram for some time and made an appointment to visit their studio since they were only a 2 hour drive upstate. Their FS-1 model ended up being exactly what I was looking for and, lucky for me, they'd designed this model (as well as the bigger brother FS-2) to have a very capable compression driver handle nearly all of the frequency range. During my visit I was told to shuffle forward on my knees to see how close I could get to the speakers before the soundstage collapsed and they sound great anywhere from mid-to-near field.

It's been so fun getting a pair into my space and hearing how much the horns take my room out of the equation. This is a big departure from the wide spray of the Ellipticor speakers I had before where treating first reflections completely changed the listening experience. The compression driver is extremely speedy and responsive and the bass cab is sealed.

I'm really enjoying how explosive the dynamics are. This and the high directivity single point source handling ~300-20,000hz makes for psychedelic imaging precision that's really addictive to listen to.

I tried to avoid DSP with my last passive 2ch setup but this active package has me thinking that DSP can be good if holistically designed from the ground up with a digital crossover in mind. It means I need 4 channels of amplification but I believe this makes for easier loads on amps.

I've been taking time to dial them in and it's been a bit of a learning experience but it's been a fun ride so far. The just one more album force is strong.

 

I think we need a 2xEpic emoji to go along with the ROFL emoji thought.... those are so dang perdy.