Rug
I bought myself a 7ft x 4ft cotton rug 2 days back.
I can't really comment on how much better it made the music sound, but my feet love it! The listening area feels more warm and cozy too.
Room placement
I had been doing a bit of reading on room placement and experimenting in my room over the last 3 days. (I'm afraid that I'm what I call a "Compulsive Tweaker"). Yesterday, I managed to find what I think is the best compromise of all factors.
I could not implement the standard "Rule of thirds" simply because of the way the room is. I had to draw some compromise between audiophilia and practicality. I simply couldn't push the speakers forward from the wall behind them beyond 24". I also could put only a 14" gap between the speakers and the side walls. I had to use this as a constant and work the rest of the placement around this.
The biggest (apparent) advantage I had with the room was that the room was not a perfect rectangle. The wall I face as I listen to the speakers is narrower by about 1.8ft than the rear wall. So the room tapers into the wall I face. The room is in the shape of the Cardas "
Golden Trapagon". My room is very much like the last illustration on the page -- the second Golden Trapagon, though the dimensions differ: about 9ft and 10.9ft wide at the short sides, and about 18.3ft long between the mid-points of the two short sides.
Before yesterday's overhaul, I'd kept the speakers 70" apart, with the rest of the speaker placement as mentioned above. I was sitting at a distance of 91" from the midpoint between the speakers. This position put me about 115" from the front wall of the room, and about 105" from the rear wall of the room. The speakers were toed-in so they were facing me perfectly. This was the best-sounding setup till yesterday. The problem with this setup was that the bass response was a bit weak and there was a bit too much detail for my comfort.
A couple of days back I read about the
38% rule as described in the Real Traps website.
Yesterday I tried this out. Though I didn't follow the percentage or the toe-in illlustrated there perfectly, I was able to arrive at a real sweet listening position.
I started by moving my listening position to about 83" from the front wall (wall behind the speakers), which is 38% of the room length. I left the speakers exactly as they are, including the toe-in. This made the speakers face a little away from me (not 100% toed-in) as I was closer to them than I was before. At this position I found the bass to be excessive, and I felt I was sitting a little too close to the speakers for comfort.
I pulled back my position till I felt the bass sounded balanced with the rest of the music. I hit the perfect sweet spot at a distance of 90" from the front wall. This would make it a bit under 41% of the length of the room (as against the 38% ideal). At this distance more than just the bass sounding right (and the detail getting toned down)
everything sounded just right. The music as a whole sounded very cohesive and it was exactly as I wanted it to be. I still felt I was sitting a bit close to the speakers, but after a pretty long (for about 6 hours after setting this up
) and
very enjoyable session, I felt very comfortable. I went to sleep at about 4.00AM a very happy and contented man
This is how things look like now:
I could not try the position 38% from the rear of the wall as there is a bathroom jutting out half-way into the room at the rear end, leading to bit of confusion about what constitutes the rear wall of my room (for room-placement purposes). The bathroom also causes the 38%-from-rear position to be a
very inconvenient placement of the couch as far as moving around the room is concerned.
I've been listening to Patricia Barber's "Cafe Blue", "Nightclub" and "Modern Cool" constantly over the last 2 weeks, and I used these albums (esp. "Nightclub") to get the setup right, and to affirm the choice of room setup.
Sorry for a really long post. I just realized how long it is.
