Despite buying a 2nd home outside of the city, I'm still stuck with a.. wait for it... small, square listening room! D'OH! Oh well, time to try to optimize around a mini-monitor midfield setup.
Playing around with room treatments so far, sounding pretty good. Tamed the early reflections on the sidewalls, adding some diffusing panels to the front wall, trying to figure out what to do with the rear wall. Going to mount some panels to the ceiling next.
The other counterintuitive experience I continue to have is better sub-bass by keeping the REL on a platform. Whenever I have an REL sub coupled to the floor, I get some kind of node activation and the room rattles with sloppy, overblown bass. Keeping the REL on a platform keeps the bass tight and snappy, but deep enough for my needs.
@tomaswv Hi Tom, I didn't really have any experience with Morrow ahead of getting the SP7, I'd just heard a lot of good things about them. I had been using Audioquest Type 4 and figured it was time for an upgrade - and man, did the SP7 deliver. I love those wires. The difference was immediately audible - they were cleaner, clearer and richer, and my system sounded all the better for it. I heartily recommend them.
Unfortunately, moving my rack to the side of the room now necessitates a 20' run of cable, so I have to figure something else out because a wire like the SP7 would be stratospherically expensive at that length. Right now as a temporary fix I'm using Canare 4S11, which sound good, but man do I miss the Morrows. Hopefully I'll get a new set in there soon.
@emergingsoul Thanks for your comment. I hadn't thought about adding more details on the components, that's a good idea, so I'll flesh that out a bit in the system description. I am experimenting with the sub now to see if another position other than the front wall corner works better. I actually seem to like it quite a bit on the sidewall exactly parallel to my listening position!
I am going to add another sub, I think, as REL themselves don't advise running one sub with monoblocks. I'm essentially getting one channel of bass right now, since you can't wire a single REL to two mono blocks.
@baylinor thanks for the advice! Indeed, listening position is only about 3’ from rear wall. Right now I have a couple of the GIK “impressions” series diffuser/absorber panels behind me, but I think they’re doing more absorbing than diffusing and I intend to put something more diffusive behind me. I’ve been looking at the GIK quadratic diffusers, for example.
And thanks for the tip about the bass, am definitely going to give a couple of corner traps a try!
@highend64 Thabks for the tip, will try. I like my REL subs but I’ve had very odd experiences with them. As I listen right now I have the crossover set to 30Hz and the volume at about 9:00 o’clock. It is putting out a very reasonable amount of bass at this level! If i increase the crossover - which, given the Harbeth’s frequency response, it seems I should be able to do - it produces overwhelming bass that muddies the midrange, even if I turn the volume down to almost a minimum. In fact, this is going to sound crazy, but if I run the REL at the lowest crossover and the lowest volume, there is still a very detectable amount of output in the room. This is an experience I’ve had with the REL in both small rooms I’ve used one in. I assume it’s the room producing this effect!
@honeyooi I have owned two Harbeth speakers previously - the SHL5 and the C7-ES3. Both of them were great speakers in their own way, but neither of them fully disappeared into my small room the way the P3 does. The P3 being sealed also really helps with placement and controlling the bass in a room this size. I thought I wouldn't be into a mini-monitor, but I am pleasantly surprised!
@wr_aspire Thanks for your comment, and your point is well and humbly taken - I am lucky to have a dedicated listening room at all, which is a luxury.
For many years I had a similarly sized room in my NYC apartment, and I did at times have floor standing speakers there - among others, Vienna Acoustics Mozart Grands, Gallo Classico CL-3, Martin Logan electrostatics, a pair of custom floor standing Omega Super Alnico Monitors. They all worked in the space to some extent - some sounded very good indeed - but none of them were able to disappear in the room the way the P3ESR can. Of course, maybe I just haven't tried the right speaker. I am game to try a floorstander again; what models would you recommend for a room this size?
