HiFi Subjectivist ¦ Audio Forum ¦ NVA User Group

I am very shortly pressing the pause button on my system upgrades and turning my attention to improving the sound of my room. With its low ceilings, L shaped configuration and lack of soft furnishings this offers a lot of scope.
Any thoughts or feedback on your experience would be most welcome, thanks Paul

You need more soft furnishings, book cases with random non flat surfaces to disperse reflections. But i suppose it always depends on what problems in your view already exist. Your cubix speakers are different to normal point & squirt with the mid bass firing upwards. Distance to floor and ceiling comes in to play.

It all depends on how serious you are about it and how far up your own arse you want to go (no offence intended). I believe in having the clutter of life in a listening room to be adequate for most. I have only ever had problems in emplty rooms with parallel walls and minimal furniture.

If you have bass modes which bother you then this is much harder to deal with. Bass acoustic treatments need to be very large and ugly to do anything. Cubes have no baffle step correction so rely on room gain and proximity to a wall to boost the lower registers. If you have an audible bass hump then play around with positioning. Minidsp is said to be the answer to all our prayers. I don't intend to find out but you might differ.

I have no experience with a set up in a L shape. How low is a low ceiling ? Lower than average (just over 8ft) ? Semi omni works fine with a 8 ft ceiling height - depending on how high you have your speakers set and the distance from mid bass to floor and ceiling.

All of that is my opinion which may or may not be complete nonsense.

I have some experience of room treatment but not in a domestic environment. It does what it says on the tin but, in the large room involved, it wasn't enough. Keeping the curtains covering the walls between windows proves to be as effective but wall hangings will be required to really dampen it down.

Soft furnishings are much easier to rearrange and, in a domestic environment, carpet works well.

Wool carpet not nylon or poly. Wool rugs. Books, LPs, lined thick curtains, wall hangings. Sofas made from natural materials.

What worked best for me was to have most of the above at the hi-fi end of the room and keep the listening area relatively undamped.

You'd be surprised how much improvement can be made just through placement of furnishings, bookcases, lp shelving etc.

My house apart from my study is minimalist by design and therefore it could be said I am the architect of my own problems, I have no clutter, no curtains, only carpet on the stairwells and landings, My ceilings are only 7' 6" tall and the room is relatively narrow at 9' 6" and its the best room in the house which is not saying much The listening room does have a big rug and a big sofa but thats about it re soft furnishings.

The bass is decent and I have invested a lot of time experimenting with the Cubix positioning and its true that a move of a few inches does make a noticeable difference, the Cubix sits on Richards original , very heavy Cubix stands and with the spikes they are circa 11" inches from the floor tilting slightly upwards.

The catch 22 of my narrow room is that to get a reasonable sound stage I have to keep the distance as wide as possible however this in turn means means the side facing tweeter gets closer to the side walls. Right now they are only 1' foot away although the toe in angle means the sound reflections are not as acute as you might think.

If I increase the gap between the side facing tweeter and the side wall the sound stage reduces and before you know it the whole presentation becomes locked in to a "central" mode.

Right now acoustic room treatment feels better than :-

a) selling my Cubix and getting traditional speakers
b) moving house,
c) using head phones all the time
d) giving up on music

So please keep your replies coming, thanks Paul

The only real experience which I've had was at a friends house. His seating position was up against the back wall, putting one of those foam diffusers on the wall behind his chair at head height certainly improved the sound.

I have 2 experiences to recount:

In my own room, I have sited my MA PL200's according to the Audio Physic methodology and they sound really good. Imaging is great, the bass is tight and controlled. The whole experience is delightful. There is a marginal improvement by closing the heavy (and rather tatty) velvet lined curtains in the bay behind the speakers as the bay is lined with window glass that reflects sound.

In my son's room which is considerably smaller, his Mission SX2's (no longer made which is a shame) fire across the width of his room and his seating position is close to the back wall. Although the bass is not as tightly controlled as mine, it is very impressive for such small speakers and I could live with it. The stereo image is 3 dimensional and the overall effect is really excellent for what it is. The only problem is he tends to spend most of his time playing computer games through it. Pity!

TheMadMick wrote: ↑Tue Jul 07, 2020 2:25 pm ... The only problem is he tends to spend most of his time playing computer games through it. Pity!

I was so proud the first time I found a Bad Company cassette missing, and subsequently discovered it in my son's room.

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Many thanks,

Paul