New peice in Pogue-land...

[hermanv]

I have a pair of ReQuests (wana trade?) in a small room. Because the room was small I couldn't place the speakers far enough from any walls to get the most out of them. They are only 4 feet (the faces) from the back wall and about 3 feet from the side walls to the nearest speaker edge.

I experimented with various absorbent things behind the speakers and almost everything I tried helped to some degree. I ended up purchasing a high wool content carpet underlayment which now hangs floor to ceiling behind each speaker. The wool wraps the corner for about 4 feet into the room and about 5 feet from the corner behind the speaker. In this room I had poor light and walnut paneling so the overall color of the wool is very similar and the hangings are not visionally objectionable.

Sound Labs sells an absorbent self supporting panel designed to go behind their speakers so clearly we are not the first to have experienced this problem. Please devote some effort because in the end these speakers will reward you with first class sound.

ps. When I added the ESL to my system, some upgrades became obviously necessary the MLs are not forgiving of upstream faults.

[E-Stat]

Sound Labs sells an absorbent self supporting panel designed to go behind their speakers so clearly we are not the first to have experienced this problem. Please devote some effort because in the end these speakers will reward you with first class sound.

I second that notion. All bipolars need to have the back wave controlled for the best imaging and bass response. You don't want a giant Bose effect here as it will only serve to lose focus. I use a combination ot DIY bass traps, distance, and wall panels.

Your situation will likely be a bit easier since the woofers direct their energy primarily forward.

rw

[thepogue]

and I did make some headway. First I've got a Cheskey set up CD and I used it for working on the toe-in anoung other things. I pretty comfortable that my toe-in at this point is 95% there but I was surprised to see how far off I was…As far as the bottom end I've got a good handle on that by using a test tone (a 100 Hz I think) to find all the cancellation areas in which I only found one…funny thing is it’s right the doorway where you enter the room….so anybody walking in and not "coping a squat" would be standing in one of the biggest dead zones in the room. My seated position was just a tab bit strong but nothing I can’t live with. I’ve got quite a few sound absorbing panels which I can use if needed. I think what I’m hearing from last night is that although my stereo center is pretty much dead on I’m still hearing more information (or is seems) from the left channel. Nothing overwhelming but I can hear it. It's also the speaker side that has the most room on it’s outboard side (2’) as opposed to the right speakers outboard side has but a few inches to the wall. I think this will certainly make for some interesting tweaking in the coming months.

I must add that now that I’ve got several hours of critical listening I’m happy to report that because I’m listening more to the music (as opposed to the speakers) I’m very much enjoying them…female vocals are just astounding!!! I had a friend stop by and he stated (after 5 songs or so) that he’d never heard music sound so "real". And although he’d not what I would consider a "audio type" (e.g. a nut!) he is a fine musician (and has good ears) so that did meant a lot to me. It’s always good to get that outside opinion especially when your really fixated on things getting set-up correctly you (we) tend to forgo listening to the music…so with all that said, they sound fantastic….still not 100% but they are real heavyweights!

As far as upgrading my other equipment I’ll have to wait on that…maybe next year or if something falls out of the sky I’ll consider it. I’m still hunting for that LP cleaner bargain…but that goes without saying more to come

Peace, Pogue

[thepogue]

I'm goin' to cut n paste the above and move to "speaker-land"....come on boys...the beers this way...