Very strong! Great looking room and great choice of gear... particularly impressive for someone that considers themselves new to the hobby!

pdreher March 13, 2010 01:29

That is a really nice system you have. How are the Finn speakers? Verity Audio speakers are high on my wants list but I think high low $$ and high €€ makes verity audio speakers a bit expensive here in the Nethelands.

mordante March 12, 2010 20:32

Please forgive my ignorance as I am new to this hobby, but can you provide some insight as to why your toe in is what seems to be pretty severe? It could be the camera angle, but I am curious as I am experimenting with toe in myself and the more severe with my speakers, the more "edgey" the sound becomes? Your thoughts?

jimbojrjb December 03, 2009 21:41

Monte - your room is quite easy on the eyes. Nice use of that red accent colour and white rear wall behind the listening chairs.

Would you mind if I made some recommendations or passed some ideas along based on my basement 'man cave' experience?
* It appears that you're firing the speakers across the room's width and as such restricts the distance behind the speakers and the front wall, and also places your listening chair(s) too close to the rear wall to benefit from the diffusion. The consequence is a shallow soundstage depth and too much bass off the back wall right near your ears which ought to muddy up the sound and put the sound spectrum out of balance. SO, have you considered rotating your system 90 degrees clock-wise so speakers fire down the long wall (room length)?
* Your room has a LOT of mid-high frequency absorbing items like wall-to-wall carpet, big furniture, entire front wall etc. While a "live" or "dead" sounding room is your preference and no one elses, you might consider removing some of the mid-high freq absorbing items. For example make bass traps from the OC fibreglass that is currently on your front wall. When rotating your system 90 degrees you won't need any or much absorption on the side walls. I'd suggest you either go with reflective side walls or diffusion not more absorption. Unless your absorption is a minimum of 4" thick, anything thinner will throw your frequency spectrum off balance by attenuating the highs and not touching the bass and lower mids which is tantamount to turning down the tweeter volume.
* the RPG Skylines which look like the 7" version are good for your back wall but sit at least 4ft from them to properly work, OR put them on your ceiling's 1st reflection points to help raise the apparent ceiling height. The 7" well depths will only work effectively down to about 1KHz with is about half the 1KHz wavelength. So I would recommend either buying more of them for the back wall and put bass traps below them so as to balance the treatment across the entire frequency spectrum. If you can saw a piece of wood then I would highly recommend you consider a DIY Skyline project that will result in much better looking and much better functioning Skylines. I have 10.5" depth Skylines and soon will be building 18" depths for the side and rear walls while my 7" RPG Skylines are for the lowish 7ft ceiling I have. The deeper the cell depth the lower the frequency it works to. Try and make your Skylines work down to between 500-300Hz with is a typical transition zone frequency where bass traps would take care of the frequencies below this transition zone.

Net Net:
* fire speakers down room length
* build a DIY Skyline or get deep QRD diffusers for the back wall to work down to the room's transitional frequency of 300-500Hz (which is a range of only about 8-9 semi-tones)
* put bass traps in all 4 room corners from ceiling to floor and below the Skylines on rear wall
* remove as much mid-high freq absorbing items as possible; consider turning your current OC fibreglass front wall into bass traps
* make your front wall reflective or diffusive to make the musicians closer to you while bass traps in the front corners will help deepen soundstage depth.
* Be sure to know what kind of bass trap you buy or build as placement varies by kind of trap. A fibreglass resistive kind needs to be pulled out from the wall and is most effective at one-quarter the wavelength. So for the 500Hz transition zone frequency, that one-quarter wavelength is about 6.5" so start the edge of the bass trap out from the wall at 6.5" and continue the trap into the room as far as asthetics will allow.
* more your RPG Skylines to the ceiling to raise the apparent height or move them to the front wall.
* keep side walls reflective or experiment with diffusion or absorption at 1st reflection points. Reflection and diffusion will result in a wider apparent source width whereas absorption (4" minimum) will make the soundstage width more narrow -- personal preferences prevail.

Hope this helps.

kevinzoe December 01, 2009 00:46

Very impressive system, espeicially for someone new to the hobby. I have a Monbrison and I am contemlating Verity speakers as well. Did anyone assist you? If they did, count them among your best friends. Enjoy!

aronsss November 20, 2009 02:41

Hi Monte. The acoustic treatment is an interesting solution for your placement constraints. I'm limited to about 28" from front baffle to the wall, which sorely limits my speaker choices (I'm shopping a bit now). I fear room treatments are not on tap for my living room, however. John

jdoris November 19, 2009 14:53

very very nice Monty. the 30/30 has always been a dream amp of mine & I always wondered what preamp would be the best match. how'd you land on the Shindo & have you tried any others? I know the Doge 6 is special & the P3 is exactly what I'd buy when I get back into vinyl after a 25yr hiatus. congrats & enjoy!

pehare November 18, 2009 21:22

Congratulations on a great-looking room and system. I was wondering how you find the Benz-Rega combo, as I've been tempted to spring for the HO version (currently using the Exact2 on a P5). Also, have you found it necessary to raise the arm with a spacer? Thanks.

mahlerfan November 18, 2009 19:29

Hi John,
Thanks for commenting. Good eye! So, Verity suggests that based on my distance from the listening position (<10 feet) and my ceiling height (they recommend placement of the Finn from rear wall as follows: front baffles being ceiling height X 0.62 = distance from wall), that the front baffle of the Finn should be about 49 inches from my rear wall. In the pic, they are about 40 inches. I can (and often do) move them out a little more when listening solo. In general I think I get away with cheating a little bit because that rear wall is completely made of acoustic absorbing Owens Corning 705 rigid fiberglass covered in acoustically-transparent fabric, so the rear-firing woofer on the Finn isn't faced with the typical sonic reflections on the same level as, say, typical drywall. I deadened that wall purposefully to try and compensate for lack of depth in the room (and also because it is a basement wall that untreated was poured concrete).

My problem is when I try to create a little larger listening area to encompass two chairs side-by-side about a foot apart from one another. Given my space constraints, I've found moving the speakers back just a little and towing them in more has created a little wider listening area. I'm still experimenting with placement to find the best solution for a wider listening area, but so far that seems to yeild the best results.

monte_15 November 17, 2009 05:41

Nice work. :) Looks like you gave the Verity's set up pretty near-wall. Are they at their best that way?

John

jdoris November 16, 2009 12:57