GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

Audio Discussions
Topic: Headphones and subwoofer

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Posted by decoud on 03-23-2014
fiogf49gjkf0d It has been mentioned here before that playback in cars can sometimes sound excellent, despite improbably simple implementations. Does anyone have any general comments on the elements that work well in very small spaces? The space I have in mind is a 2x2x2 metre cube.

Posted by Paul S on 03-23-2014

Consigned to the root cellar? In such a small space, "cranking it up" is a relative term, but I think this could be more interesting than headphones. Anyway, there's no substitute for trial and error. I would say, basically, use a good front end and play with speaker/amp combos. While this appears to be a perfect fit for FR SET, like a 45 (or, list your favorite here), it could turn out that the sort of "non-breathing" speakers that best serve a space like this need more power in the end than one would initially suppose. Maybe try some small, nearfield monitors, like Harbeth, etc., or even the small (self-powered) Audio Engine. Nice head scratcher, but you will simply have to keep cutting and pasting until you get it where you want it. One hurdle I see going in is the inescapable "progressive back loading" of the drivers, resulting in a sort of dying swan dynamics, also affecting tone, etc. Depending on how much you plan to load the room, you might have to give up some things in front in order to have acceptable performance as the pressure increases.

Best regards,
Paul S

Posted by rowuk on 03-23-2014

I have never experienced anything close to "excellent" sound in a car - even without the engine running.

The reflections and resonances do not kill the music, but the presentation is really DEAD. The problem is how our hearing works. Reflections that reach our ears before 10ms really confuse our brains capacity to blend problems out.

I think with a room this size, I would try and limit horizontal dispersion as much as possible - even to the point of headphones and a subwoofer.

Posted by decoud on 03-23-2014

Thank you both for your thoughts. The space is interesting: not a cellar, but a sleeping area just big enough to fit a super king size bed, with one of the walls being half open, so it would not pressurize quite like a fully sealed room. Further, it is covered in soft furnishing on all surfaces so reflections will be attenuated though of course they will not be eliminated.
The defects of the arrangement are plain, the question is whether there is any opportunity to turn some of these idiosyncrasies into positives. Though just putting in a pair of monitors would be a natural choice I wonder if this is one situation where a single full range driver might actually work. They will be driven by a full range Melquiades and the use will be for nothing more complex than chamber music, indeed it will be mostly single instrument.

Posted by Paul S on 03-23-2014

Decoud, you will only know if you try it, but my long experience with the Lowther makes me doubt its suitability for your situation. Perhaps there are other, more suitable single drivers, I don't know. While I have no idea at all what you want to wind up with, something "pre-tuned" for that small space seems most likely to me. In any case, you might not want to listen up on top of many of the current single drivers. I am not sure what it would take to wind up with an acceptable balance, but it might take some sort of electro-mechanical artifice.

Best regards,
Paul S

Posted by Romy the Cat on 03-24-2014

Well, there are two aspects of this question: The listening room of around 4 sq meters and listening room in bedroom. I do think that they are different categories.

A small size listening rooms from my point of view are not a problem and I do think that it is perfectly doing to get there fine sound. The small rooms have very short reverberation time, very short first reflections, too much direct sound and no room for bass development. Taking all of it to consideration it is perfectly possible to deal with it.

The sound in bedroom is totally different story. Are you sure that you want to have full of high objectives sound in your bedroom? For all intended person bedroom is not the location to be if music is your objective. It is fine that you want to have better sound in bedroom but how much seriousness you are willing to invest into this “better”. I have a very bad sound in bedroom, I would like to have better but over the 4 year that I love with my current bedroom I made zero efforts, and I do not think that I will doing it. What personal benefits, I will get if I make sound in bedroom better? I truly do not have an answer to this question.

The Cat

Posted by decoud on 03-24-2014

Yes, listening to orchestral music in bed seems all wrong, indecent almost, hence my saying chamber music at most. So what matters here most is tone, and then primarily MF and upper bass. So the ambition is low, and I am after a simple solution prioritizing these things, but the question of general interest is whether anyone has found an elegant way of turning the constraints of space into a virtue. In fact, Romy, I am sure you wrote somewhere here about experiencing unusually good playback in a car once, though of course the implicit criteria may have been different.

Posted by Paul S on 03-24-2014

The small room "solution" might well be related to the car "solution", such as it is. I have been thinking along those lines to this point. Whatever, the idea is to wind up with a satisfactory experience. For me, being wowed at first usually means I will hate it over time. For the simplest (and likely the least expensive) "solution", I agree with Robin, (re)consider a "simple" pair of headphones.

Best regards,
Paul S

Posted by Romy the Cat on 03-24-2014

decoud wrote:
So the ambition is low, and I am after a simple solution prioritizing these things, but the question of general interest is whether anyone has found an elegant way of turning the constraints of space into a virtue

Well, I think it is about a balance between ambitions and the desire to do something with own hands. The desire to have a better sound are given, the question is how much efforts (time, money, blood etc…) you are willing to invest. I do not know how you, I can tell only about myself.
Bedroom is happens is not only the place where we sleep but the place what I sometimes work, read, watch TV, eat, wiffy does dzin-dzin, play with Cats, aimlessly spend time… in bedroom we unfortunately spend much more time then we are willing to admit. Naturally we would like to have good sound in there. In fact Amy did complain many times that she married an audio freak but we have no good sound in bedroom. A normal audio guy shall recognize it as a super stimulating encouragement but it for some reasons does not happen with me. Believe me or not we have a regular 48” TV on the wall with horrible default sound and we have Amy’s Bose iPhone -driven integrated amp on a nightstand. That is all music that we have and leaving over 2 years together I did not make any attempts to change it. Strange, isn’t it?

The fact that I did not change it does it mend that I did not think about it. I have no problem to bring a good monitors in there but it would requires an amplification, own remote control and integration with TV, DVD player, streaming player and iPhone. If you think that am willing to build a whole new setup in bedroom then you are mistaken. So, the best solution for me would be some kind of active integrated devise, some kind of sound bar. The problem that sound bars today are kind of strange and I did not see what I want.

Here is what I want:

1)    Blewtooth
2)    Source-sensing 2-3 lines input
3)    Power amp build-in
4)    lines input sensitivity adjustment
5)    Do not go very low, let say no lower than 45Hz
6)    Automatic on/off
7)    Actual good sound
8)    Volume synchronized line level output
9)    Black color without any chrome bumpers.
10) Ability to be consoled by single click from my external remote
11) Have FM tuner
12) Have iPhone and Driod stations.
13) Ability to play CDs (probably I can do it from DVD player but it is inconvenient)
14) Do not cost $1000

I was looking and I did not find any. The high-end sound bars that have a lot of good features but they cost a lot and they are full-range bars with rubber bass driver and very bad MF. So, I did not find any off the shelf solution and I am not willing to go DIY direction for bedroom.

Posted by rowuk on 03-24-2014
fiogf49gjkf0d Perhaps a vintage tube radio with an auxiliary input or two? No DYI, a bit romantic, can have very good tone - especially if electrically cleaned up a bit. I have a pair of JBL LE8s that could very well be a solution for the bedroom.

Posted by Paul S on 03-24-2014
fiogf49gjkf0d It's been a long time, but one might be able to nearly balance Diatones or LE8s in that situation. Dunno about the Milq in this situation, however, given the likely need for some sort of LF-ish boost. Is one of the walls framed/hollow? Best, Paul S

Posted by decoud on 03-24-2014

Paul, yes behind one of the walls is a large volume cabinet, and one of my thoughts was to put a full range driver there, controlling the enclosure as necessary, and taking into account that I am not after amazing LF here. In space that small it would be good to eliminate visible boxes, charming though a vintage solution might be. Indeed, even if the black "do-it-all machine" Romy is after existed (I would add that it must be matt-black, incidentally) I would want to find a way of integrating it so it is flush with the surfaces. Again, cars are where these spatial constraints have been addressed even if to poor criteria...perhaps I need to check how it is done in a Bentley...

Posted by Paul S on 03-24-2014

Yes, the car audio guys have addressed the space issues, for better or for worse, and this is why I keep revisiting that and the power "issue". Neither the Diatone nor the LE8 drivers are all that efficient, really, and both want large-ish (by modern standards) boxes. Sure, the room is quite small, but if you wind up using some sort of "correction", this is where the extra power comes in/goes. The correction might be vintage analog; I think some such models were tossed out in one of Romy's threads, a couple of years back., and they still turn up occasionally. I guess you could also check out the WE 755 as a driver you might be in a small room with. Another strategy might be old radio speakers, keeping in mind that these are probably not candidates for serious "shaping" with a booster.

Paul S

Posted by scooter on 03-25-2014

I used a set of 2-way near-field monitors and a decent sealed commercial subwoofer in a study room that was quite enjoyable. Mostly listened to FM. That room was not much more than 3m x 3m with lots of alcoves, slanted ceilings and a thick nylon rug. There is no getting around the inability of music to scale in a small room. And getting the subwoofer to properly integrate with the room and the monitors was a real challenge. I would disagree with Romy here as I thought the ability to play below 30hz helped scale a small room, although it still sounded a bit "contrived." Maybe all bets are off at 2m x 2m. But if you are going to be in bed maybe an antique FM radio or some headphone setup might make more sense. You can see my post here on the FM radio and headphones I sometime use to sleep with. ~$250 for a lot of enjoyment.

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