The Missing Sidewall-help!

Posted by: justlisten on 10 May 2017

We have moved into a new home and have set up our big system, with new speakers that are wonderful, BUT....there are only two walls we can place the speakers on and in each case there is the same problem.

On either wall one speaker will end up 4 feet away from a side wall while the other speaker will be 15 feet away from the side wall, and the speaker within 4 feet of the side wall will dominate the sound stage, especially so in the case of the human voice. So we have some of the best semi-mono sound we have ever heard, but after 4 days of moving speakers every way we can, and even bringing in other speakers from our bedroom system to test if it was the speakers, it wasn't, and making double double sure we have polarity right, we have, we have reached a wall.

No there is no balance control on our integrated amplifier and no we have no digital signal modification in our stereo system.

We have never had this problem before as in prior houses there were either side walls, or, the side walls were equally so far away that they didn't change the dynamics of the speakers.

Thanks for any help, going for a long bike ride to burn off the frustration, and no headphones are not an alternative.

Posted on: 13 May 2017 by Marksnaim

Great to hear you enjoying your system so much. It's been my experience that larger speakers can work very well in smaller rooms. My Isobariks work wonderfully in our front room which is only 13 x 11 ft firing across the room and with less than perfect positioning. By the same token I've heard small speakers fill huge rooms very well. Thinking here of Linn Kan in the original London Sound Organisation dem room which must have been at least 25ft long if not more. The down side of course is aesthetics. But with that view I wouldn't be looking at the speakers. 

Enjoy.

Mark

Posted on: 13 May 2017 by justlisten

Marksnaim the view and the open space room kept us coming back to this home and then we won the bidding war and now are slowly settling in. Having the music side of this heart of the home room done is a great weight off the chest. Once furniture finally settled we could see there was room for our old large speakers and we retrieved them back before they were sold.

It is a funny thing about speaker size as in an even smaller room I have a pair of Klipsch KG 3.5 speakers that I have had fully tweaked out which are sitting in the rooms corners adjacent to my desk angled in and about three feet on either side of my chair as I type, they work wonderfully. I call them my world's largest headphones! I picked up a Nait 3 recently and once again they did the Naim thing, 30 watt Nait replaced wonderful vintage 105 watt and it wasn't even close, Nait hands down.

I think this system works because it is a front ported, two speaker system. Like the Tannoy's these are also high efficiency speakers. There is something about such a speaker that to us just make the music come alive. Having had a Kenwood integrated with power meters it's amazing how much music we play at less than a watt of power and at 5 watt peaks how loud you get.

Final nice thing is we are currently sans TV, there's so little to watch, but will be adding for Grandchildren to watch movies with, and we can put it on the other wall where it's never in the way of the view. TV, out of sight, out of mind, we like that.

Posted on: 13 May 2017 by Marksnaim

I agree regarding the TV. Unfortunately with teen and younger children the TV often wins out in our house. When my extension is finished that might change and although my view won't come up to your standards it'll be nicer looking at the back garden rather than watching people walk up and down the road.

A friend had a Nait 3 years ago with his LP12 and Castle speakers. Great punchy amp as I recall.