Help in speaker positioning and acoustics treatment

renjith lal

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Hi all,

I just moved to a new apartment and I have a tricky living room. I am attaching the plan view and pictures of room.
I need help in speaker positioning and for acoustic treatment. My first priority is to identify the best position for speakers and listening position.
I am attaching the layout of living room.
One issue I feel is there is no symmetry between left and right side and right side opens to kitchen and dining area.
I have only two front tower speakers now. I can position the couch at 38% from rear wall.
How much distance I should keep between the left wall and speaker?
Please let me know what is the best position for speakers and what acoustics treatment I should do to improve the sound.

Thanks
 

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Hello Renjith,

Let me give it a try:

Room placement:

The placement of the chairs with respect to the TV stand and the sliding doors looks fine to me.
Good that you have space to move your chair back or front as needed.
You have a two chair recliner. Make sure either of the chairs is exactly at the center of the two speakers. That chais is going to be the stereo listining hot seat or sweet spot as they call it.

Speaker placement:

Make sure that that TV trawller and the two tower speakers are symmetrical w.r.t. the side walls.
Pressing it close to the trawller or away from it will increase the distance of the speakers from the side wall and will result in shifting the sweet spot either close to the TV or away from it. But keep symmetry w.r.t. the trawller and w.r.t. the side walls in mind.

Questions:

1. Does your room echo when you talk very loudly? if yes, then you will need to treat your side walls and back wall with sound absorbing panels
Even otherwise looking at the room, I will strongly suggest treatment to the back wall. The details of these can be looked into after you answer my question and after I get measurements.

Regards,

Ravindra.
 
Thanks Ravindra for your reply.

Luckily in room there is less echo. Floor is carpeted and ceiling is not smooth. They used some paints which is not smooth.
I will place the main seating position at the center of two speakers.
But on one side I have side wall and other side it is open so I am not able to maintain symmetry, left side will have some bass reinforcement. I will try to move the left speaker away from side wall and away from front wall.I will try not to have same distance with side wall and front wall for left speaker.
One good thing is I can place the listening position away from back wall and even can follow 1/3 rd rule.

I am planning to use some acoustic panels on left side and may be some bass traps if needed.
Since rearwall is far from listening position do I need to treat it?

I have another question while treating which wall is more important front wall or rear wall?

Thanks
Renjith
 
HI Renjith,
Since the room is on the smaller side, try a corner placement..is speakers firing in diagonally .
 
Thanks Ravindra for your reply.

Luckily in room there is less echo. Floor is carpeted and ceiling is not smooth. They used some paints which is not smooth.
I will place the main seating position at the center of two speakers.
But on one side I have side wall and other side it is open so I am not able to maintain symmetry, left side will have some bass reinforcement. I will try to move the left speaker away from side wall and away from front wall.I will try not to have same distance with side wall and front wall for left speaker.
One good thing is I can place the listening position away from back wall and even can follow 1/3 rd rule.

I am planning to use some acoustic panels on left side and may be some bass traps if needed.
Since rearwall is far from listening position do I need to treat it?

I have another question while treating which wall is more important front wall or rear wall?

Thanks
Renjith

Speakers throw sound almost entirely into the room. That sound should not hit the back wall and reach you as prominent reflected sound.
So, treatment to back wall, I feel, is a MUST in your case. Light treatment to the side walls in the form of panels that look like wall hangings will also help to t great extent.
Breaks in the ceiling that look like beams from left to right will also help as much as treatment to back walls. But it will be cumbersome to do it.

Good luck and happy listening!

Regards,

Ravindra.
 
HI Renjith,
Since the room is on the smaller side, try a corner placement..is speakers firing in diagonally .

Thanks for the reply.
I thought about it but diagonal placement becomes bit odd and practically not feasible.
 
Speakers throw sound almost entirely into the room. That sound should not hit the back wall and reach you as prominent reflected sound.
So, treatment to back wall, I feel, is a MUST in your case. Light treatment to the side walls in the form of panels that look like wall hangings will also help to t great extent.
Breaks in the ceiling that look like beams from left to right will also help as much as treatment to back walls. But it will be cumbersome to do it.

Good luck and happy listening!

Regards,

Ravindra.

I will try to do some treatment for rear wall. Here some of the walls are dry walls hence I need to see the feasibility of hanging the panels.
 
For movies my AVR supports Dirac room correction, it will address few things but I want to do best pssible placement of
speakers before that so that there is less dependence on room calibration.
 
Any chance of moving the set-up so that the TV cabinet is against the kitchen wall and the sofa directly opposite?
 
Any chance of moving the set-up so that the TV cabinet is against the kitchen wall and the sofa directly opposite?

It can be done but the distance between speaker and listening position will be very less and recliner/listening position will be very near to rear wall.
I am not sure you meant this or the dining wall?
 

Ok. The distance between walls is only 10 feet and 6 inches, that is my worry and listening position
will be very near to rear wall. I should have thought about the layout before selecting the apartment.
Initially I felt it is a big room and I can use it easliy.

So you are not favoring my initial location at all and what about if I flip my listening position towards sliding window and speaker at the
other side. Only issue is how to manage the traffic and I guess it will be difficult to do that.

Thanks once again for your support.
 
...listening position will be very near to rear wall.
The nearby boundary will result in boosted bass, but the room correction in your receiver should be able to pull down those peaks.
So you are not favoring my initial location at all...
Only because of the asymmetry. Even in this day and age of surround sound, the front soundstage remains critical: that's where your attention will be focused, whether listening to music or watching a movie. As such, the front soundstage should be as symmetrical as possible.

Your layout has a wall right next to your left speaker but open space next to your right speaker, which makes for a lop-sided soundstage. Rotating the set-up 90 degrees doesn't make it perfectly symmetrical, but it does push the side walls far enough away that it won't be noticeable (the front soundstage will appear symmetrical). Also, with the room no longer being narrow, the surrounds are farther away and will sound more enveloping (less distracting).

Finally, this is not a dedicated home theatre room or recording studio. It's a residential space and should allow for good traffic flow. Even with AV gear there, a living room should still feel like a living room. Not unreasonable to balance acoustics with aesthetics.
 
The nearby boundary will result in boosted bass, but the room correction in your receiver should be able to pull down those peaks. Only because of the asymmetry. Even in this day and age of surround sound, the front soundstage remains critical: that's where your attention will be focused, whether listening to music or watching a movie. As such, the front soundstage should be as symmetrical as possible.

Your layout has a wall right next to your left speaker but open space next to your right speaker, which makes for a lop-sided soundstage. Rotating the set-up 90 degrees doesn't make it perfectly symmetrical, but it does push the side walls far enough away that it won't be noticeable (the front soundstage will appear symmetrical). Also, with the room no longer being narrow, the surrounds are farther away and will sound more enveloping (less distracting).

Finally, this is not a dedicated home theatre room or recording studio. It's a residential space and should allow for good traffic flow. Even with AV gear there, a living room should still feel like a living room. Not unreasonable to balance acoustics with aesthetics.

Thanks for all the suggestions. Though I have an AVR with good room correction (Dirac) I have only two left and right speakers. I dont even have a sub. May be I will add a sub later if needed. I can easily add surrounds but again as you said it is a living room which is stopping me.

End of the day as you said since it is a living room I need to find some balance. I need to hear and compare all the positives and negatives and decide.
 
I can easily add surrounds but again as you said it is a living room which is stopping me.
If you put them in the corners, they won't be noticed (visually). Adding a pair of surrounds to your current set-up will be the most audible improvement to your system (more than adding a sub, more than adding a centre speaker).
 
Hi All,

I spent some time reading about REW. Though I was familiar with
Dirac and Anthem room correction it took some time to understand the REW process thanks to few of our forum members.
I just did measurement (first step) using REW.

I am attaching the plots.
Blue color curve is left speaker alone and red color curve is right alone and green curve is combined left and right.
I couldn't find the way to rename the curves in REW.


20_20kHz.JPG20_300Hz.JPGwaterfall_graph.JPG



Now I need to improve the response or fix room issues.
Can you guys suggest me how to proceed from here. I used my Arcam mic and calibration file for using with REW.
Room ambient noise was in 45dB roughly.

Thanks
Renjith
 
I couldn't find the way to rename the curves in REW.

You can do that on the left hand side corner of the REW screen once you take the measurements.. Just rename the curve in the small window..

Do you feel bass in the room?..

Now I need to improve the response or fix room issues.

There seems to be a peak between at 55Hz and few more above 100Hz - 200Hz.. For taming the 100-200Hz, you can add broadband absorption in the room before EQing with Dirac on the AVR..

You have plan of adding subs?..
 
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