modern speakers too detailed?

[starshaped]

I have tried to improve the sound of my system several times. I have bought the latest Castle Durhams (in the past), tried kef (Q range), BMW and now Monitor Audio (silver RS1)

This is going to sound really strange but they all sound too clean and polite.

I have a rotel 855 CD player and budget acoustic solutions amp and also a technics record deck.

Had the Monitor Audios a day and fed up already. Played through the freeview box for BBC6 digital, the sound is too clean and smooth, the speakers just blanket everything in a sterile soft, warm, dull, lifeless sound.

There is no edge or texture to the sound, just a woolly plodding that's sounds detached and sucked out.

Switched over to the CD player to play the last album by the House of Love who are an indie band, but you wouldn't know by listening to it on my system it sounded as though they were playing guitars with elastic bands whilst treading on eggs shells. with drums made of cloth, its that bad! Not matter how much i turned it up i couldn't get the sound to harden up and have an edge.

Before you blame it on the budget amp, i had a rotel 1062 which had the same effect, when paired with some of the latest Castle Durahms speakers.

Now what i haven't mentioned is that before i tried again with the Monitor Audios i have been using as a stop gap, a pair of £ 30 tangent standmount speakers which are just a little larger then your average satellite standmount.

The build quality is surprisingly good and i have actually enjoyed the sound
which narks me somewhat!

Anyway i disconnected the £ 350 Monitor Audios and put the little Tangents back on the stand. My speakers stands cost twice amount of the tangents and i was using some new qed silver xt speaker cable which cost as much as the tangents!

The Tangents obviously did not have the same scale but the sounded darker and not as clean with more of an edge. I turned up the volume and tried turning down the treble and i got a balanced sound. Maybe its because a small very budget speaker is calibrated to only play at normalish volumes, so by me pushing up the volume the little drivers harden up and gave the music and edge that was missing. But it certainly was better and i enjoyed listening to the CD that was dull mess with the Monitor Audios. The drums and percussion hardened up and werent all clean and fuzzy.

So i quite perplexed, i dont know what the answer is, evey speaker has done the same thing and the one pair of speakers that actually sound okay are
£ 30 budget speakers from currys!

It just seems as though the new speakers are just too revealing and maybe broadcasts on digital radio are deliberately calibrated for crap speakers..i dont know!! ?? But then what about CD replay?

They all seem to just take a signal and clean it up too much. Well thats my experience in my room.

Having said that my mate has got some kef speakers and they sound fine in his house. So i give up!

Has anyone had an experience like this?

Maybe i should buy a pair of decent older type speakers that are not as detailed as the newer ones any suggestions?

[locomk]

I like the c-cam tweeter sound. Monitor audio speakers need about 50 hours of break in time to sound their best. if you don't break them in properly, the woofer doesn't create a well balanced bass with the tweeter.

[Paul H]

What sort of room is your system in? Size, furniture, wall treatment if any?

It may be the room acoustics that you don't like.

Paul

[starshaped]

room stuff

Hi Room is about average size and rectangle firing across. Its 14ft by 17ft.

The speakers back onto a solid wall, (on fully welded appollo stands about a metre from the wall) my sofa backs onto a stud wall. I have tried the other way round and it makes no difference. I have quite a few things in the room, but no more then usual. It must just be some weird thing to do with my room, thats all i can think of. I would have thought that usually the problem is the other way round and people find their systems to hard and want to soften it (the room) so i dont know what i can do really !

[Shawn Parr]

Maybe I'm mis-interpreting your descriptions, but my guess would be that you could use some bass trapping. If you aren't intimately familiar with acoustics and such it can seem a bit backwards, but putting in traps to absorb bass frequencies will allow for more accurate bass in the room.

Most rooms, especially square and rectangular ones have quite a few frequencies where bass waves can end up canceling each other out. By removing excess bass the cancelation is lessened.

[Shane Martin]

Try listening to the speakers on Vinyl

[starshaped]

vinyl

Interesting you should say that. The vinyl sounds better actually.

Strangely enough my first pair of speakers i had were some old Castle Durhams that i had for 15 years.

They could so quite wooden hard and compressed on half off my vinyl collection, now its all listenable! And the speakers certainly sound best with this source.

I had the speakers on to tonight playing through my TV. The sound was horribly over warm and soft. When i unmuted the TV (which is nothing special just a 28inch tatum flat screen) the sound from the TV had a sharper treble and gave the sound some hardness and edge, back to just the speakers and its a warm with no bite in the treble, just a dull weightless soft sound.

I read the reply about bass traps in the room, but i really dont want to start spending money changing my room around. Perhaps i need to go for a very neutral sounding speaker, or one that has a tendency to sound hard..which may so okay in my room any ideas?

Has anyone else had this experience or is just me? I feel i am going mad!! h:

[Shawn Parr]

If your room does have bass issues (most non-treated rooms do) no speaker choice can correct that.

There are very inexpensive options for DIY traps, and there are many types with many shapes so re-arranging may not be necessary. The key aspect is volume, so if you don't want traps that are very deep (i.e. take up a lot of space in the room) you can build larger surface area ones that are flatter. DIY is extremely cost effective compared to purchasing, one can easily save up to 90% by doing the building yourself.

How much trapping you might need depends on your room, how it is constructed, other rooms/closets nearby, and what it is furnished with. It may be possible you don't need much or any, but in my experience that is unlikely. Just my .02.

[Alaric]

Just a maybe-some of my all-time favorite music sounds horrible on a decent quality stereo. Sometimes production values are not all they could be. Led Zeppelin is a "classic" band , but their recordings tend to sound like poo.

[dyazdani]

Just a maybe-some of my all-time favorite music sounds horrible on a decent quality stereo. Sometimes production values are not all they could be. Led Zeppelin is a "classic" band , but their recordings tend to sound like poo.

Yeah, my LZ stuff sounds terrible...

[dyazdani]

It may be possible you don't need much or any, but in my experience that is unlikely. Just my .02.

I'd add HIGHLY unlikely...

[starshaped]

If your room does have bass issues (most non-treated rooms do) no speaker choice can correct that.

There are very inexpensive options for DIY traps, and there are many types with many shapes so re-arranging may not be necessary. The key aspect is volume, so if you don't want traps that are very deep (i.e. take up a lot of space in the room) you can build larger surface area ones that are flatter. DIY is extremely cost effective compared to purchasing, one can easily save up to 90% by doing the building yourself.

How much trapping you might need depends on your room, how it is constructed, other rooms/closets nearby, and what it is furnished with. It may be possible you don't need much or any, but in my experience that is unlikely. Just my .02.

Well thats sounds interesting, but i cant see how you can determine which treatment to use, for example if i put a load of egg carton shaped stuff on my rear wall is that going to make make speakers sound less warm? How on on earth to a determine where to put it in the room, how much to put and which type? We are talking seriously advanced physics here, and me randomly putting a different shapes up on the wall doesnt sound very scientific to me and considering i failed physics at school i wouldnt have the foogiest idea where to start.

Anyhow if the room is at fault, how come to the sound from the TV doesnt sound overly warm and tizzy? How come my my small cheap tangent speakers sound balanced? How come my small portable tape deck sounds fine in the room? The tape deck for example is quite a hard bright sound, but the sound doesnt mysteriously change when i take it in the front room.

i find it all quite strange, but interesting netherless!

suspect most room treatment is to soften the sound rather then make the treble sharper

[gross30]

Just my 2 cents worth on the Monitor speakers. I have a set of S9i's and they took a while to get accustomed to. They have since been moved to rears and replaced w/ 801 s3, but after awhile they did sound excellent. Even though my room accoustics are horrid, it's all I could do with the room I had, but I really enjoyed them as mains until I went w/more power and larger speakers etc. As for the Zep comments, the 801's really let you know about recordings and their quality. As much as I love to listen to Zep, there is only a limited amount of songs you can really let loose on, but man did they sound great 25 years ago on mom and dads Akai system. Good luck on your search for "the" sound.

[Shawn Parr]

suspect most room treatment is to soften the sound rather then make the treble sharper

Actually, if you have rather hard surfaces, absorbing high end sound could make the treble sharper as it will remove extra energy that is causing cancellation.

Egg crate type foam can be very pretty, or ugly, but is typically rather ineffective at real acoustic problem solving.

Look into corner bass traps, real traps (that is a brand name that you can also DIY), there are some drum style traps, and you could look at RPG stuff (another brand name - $$$$ but really good stuff). I personally would avoid Auralex and other 'foam' acoustics brands.

With bass trapping, start with corners (bass builds up there in most rooms), and just move them around until things sound better. Yes you can do a lot of studying and use a lot of math to figure it out, but the last time I worked with an install I just sat the traps against the wall and moved them about until the room sounded right.

Higher end absorption requires a few panels per wall, preferably spaced out so that they are not directly across the room from each other (i.e. so that sound reflected directly off the right wall will get absorbed on that part of the left wall and vice-versa). You don't want to kill your room so 30% coverage maximum would do it. Also more absorption behind the speakers can be very effective. If you want to go all out you can look up DIY diffusers for behind your listening area. Diffusers 'break up' the sound and scatter it, which weakens the energy so that it doesn't keep in the room as long, and allows for control while making your room more live instead of more dead.

Either way, you can get acousticians to help, but just building a couple of traps and diffusers and playing with them will do wonders.

[Karma]

HI Shawn,
It seems that you are using the term "diffuser" and egg crate modifiers to mean the same thing. In fact, a diffuser will not absorb energy. They are intended to break up a focused beam much the same way a piece of cheese cloth will soften a flashlight beam. They, by thenselves, do not alter the the spectral balance in a room. Effective diffusers are quite expensive and have definite frequency range limitations. That's why good diffusers are almost always used in recording studios and not in home listening rooms. Well designed diffusers are mathematical art.

Absorbers, like Sonex, are sonic black holes within their frequency range. They can be very effective solvers of difficult problems. They must be used with caution because it is very easy to over compensate the rooms spectral balance and you end up with a over damped room.

Personally, I don't normally use Sonex panels because they are too effective in the average room. That, plus they are ugly, IMO. But, there are some cases where they are the only answer.

It is best to use a mixture of diffusers and absorbers to properly balance a room. In place of radical solutions like Sonex, one can use heavy wall hangings to good effect. Don't forget carpets and drapes.

Sparky

[Shawn Parr]

Hey Sparky, great information, although I don't know why you thought I equated them. I thought I explained the difference in much the same way you did.

You are correct that creating diffusers is much more math intensive than creating absorbers, however you can find simple formulas to create DIY diffusers for home use that will work very well. For instance, check out this site. For the most part this is what RPG sells and calls Abffusors. The main difference is that they cloth cover them to add some level of absorption to the diffuser. Since they are wood with just a layer of cloth they really have very little absorption except for rather high frequencies. Most frequencies do end up being diffused.

Building a hard wood version of that using the calculator above can help someone clean up the acoustics of their room without just deadening things. It is really easy to go too far with absorption. It can get a bit tricky as different woods will have slightly differing character depending on their density and porousness, but if you are doing it as a home DIY project just about anything is better than nothing in most cases.

[bigburner]

Yeah, my LZ stuff sounds terrible...

Danish, you are taking the micky aren't you? If not, I suggest you get yourself down to your favorite DVD retailer and buy this little beauty quick sharp.

I watched the Knebworth concert on this DVD earlier this evening. Oh yes... Excellent SQ.

[Alaric]

Ooookay. If there are some decently produced Led Zep CDs out there I would appreciate knowing what to look for. I have yet to find one that comes close to my vinyl , and I have many CDs that just plain sound better than my LZ vinyl. Heart and Pink Floyd CDs sound better, by orders of magnitude, than all but my half-speed masters and I love Led Zeppelin. My LZ CDs just sound muddy and tinny all at the same time. The best LZ I have is live and on vinyl.

[audioqueso]

Try Klipsch. Fun speakers.

[aud19]

Ooookay. If there are some decently produced Led Zep CDs out there I would appreciate knowing what to look for. I have yet to find one that comes close to my vinyl , and I have many CDs that just plain sound better than my LZ vinyl. Heart and Pink Floyd CDs sound better, by orders of magnitude, than all but my half-speed masters and I love Led Zeppelin. My LZ CDs just sound muddy and tinny all at the same time. The best LZ I have is live and on vinyl.

The Zeppelin CD box set is pretty good, though I've never compared it to vinyl.