Please note that I have followed Sandy's tips online. I have read the manual as well. I am very very close to the equilateral triangle that is talk about. I have tried them more narrow between the towers and a longer distance to seating. The phantom center affect does seem as strong as I expected it to be. Rooms is about 16ft wide and roughly 45 feet long (about 8ft tall). I am seated about 13.5 feet back from the speakers. The are about 12 inches from side wall and rear wall presently. They are toed in to just behind PLP. I have tried messing with the amount of the toe in/out.

Possible issues. Limit accoustic help. Finished basement. Drywalled. Large Sectional and an Large area rug are about all I have at the moment beside some of my daughters toys one one side! HAHA. Or maybe I am just expecting too much? The soundstage seems pretty darn good. But there seems to be a lot of voice from both speakers and not so much a phantom center.

Any thoughts?

Hi @ForKyleigh. Welcome to the forum and to your new ownership of the T Refs. I'm not certain of the issue or problem you're looking to solve or improve, but based on your description I can offer what I think should produce a positive outcome sound quality wise. IMO, your speakers are to close to the side and back walls. Try placing them three feet from the back-wall and two feet from the side walls. Your toe in/out just behind the PLP should be fine. And of course, if you can remove (at least temporarily) any "toys" or other obstructions within the sound field that too would help. Best and good luck

Hi ForKyleigh!

I agree with GDHAL that you should experiment with moving your speakers farther from the walls. Remember that any sidewall or ceiling reflections will produce a secondary wave that can smear the primary wave and mess up imaging.

If you can clap your hands and hear flutter echoes, that's a sign your room is probably too live and doesn't have enough absorption. If so, boundary reflections could be strong enough to muddy things up. You might experiment with putting some sound absorption on the walls to see if that helps. If you have a concrete floor (basement and all), that can be tough. If you have room for more area rugs with thick pads, that might help. 45 feet is a lot of boundary area. Try a thick pad under your existing area rug.

If your sectional has a reflective surface (like leather), that can reduce absorption. Mine is microfiber and more absorbent.

Beyond that would be attacking the primary reflection points with absorbers/diffusers, something I don't do, but my room is sufficiently dead, I think.

Good luck! I think some careful experimentation will help you solve the problems.

Charlie

ForKyleigh,

I've been thinking about your problem. That hugely long room may be hard to get under control. One thing you can consider is sectioning off half of the room using a heavy velour curtain. If you use something like grommets, you can easily sweep the curtain to the side when not needed. Heavy velour is not cheap, but it would do a great job of absorbing higher frequencies and reducing acoustic reflections. Just a thought.

Charlie

charliehatch wrote: ForKyleigh, I've been thinking about your problem. That hugely long room may be hard to get under control. One thing you can consider is sectioning off half of the room using a heavy velour curtain. If you use something like grommets, you can easily sweep the curtain to the side when not needed. Heavy velour is not cheap, but it would do a great job of absorbing higher frequencies and reducing acoustic reflections. Just a thought. Charlie

Interesting suggestion. I have a similar situation in that my room dimensions are 12ft wide, 32ft long, 8ft feet high ceilings. In my case, I'm considering using a duvetyn curtain because I'm wanting to better control sound and light.

GDHAL, I hadn't heard of those curtains, thanks. I would think the heaviest ones would have the best acoustic properties, and they may be a more cost effective solution than velour. By the way, I found an excellent resource on rooms and acoustics: Everest and Pohlmann, "Master Handbook of Acoustics", 6th Ed., available at Amazon. There is data on the actual absorption characteristics of different curtains, along with a zillion other things. The chapter on Comb Filtering is worth the price of the book. Comb filtering will also affect imaging.

ForKyleigh, after more thinking, it occured to me that you may not be sitting in the exact acoustic mid point between the speakers. The stereo image can be quite sensitive to listening position, and for best results, you must sit on the exact midplane between the two speakers. If you haven't already, carefully measure the distances from the front and side walls to the speakers and make sure they are equally positioned. Then measure the distance from each speaker to the primary listening position (PLP), and adjust your PLP to be in the middle (both distances to the speakers equal). This provides a starting point. After doing this, to confirm, I use mono pink noise (or white noise) and move my head from side to side. If you listen carefully, you should hear a symmetric change in the quality (actually spectrum balance) of the noise as you move your head from side to side. Adjust your LP until the sound change is as symmetric as possible. You can also listen to pink noise that is out of phase; if your PLP location is correct, the out of phase noise should not appear to come from any particular side.

I know this sounds pretty anal, but I've learned that imaging quality can be sensitive to only a few inches of PLP position error. Recently I found that, by moving my couch backward a little over 2 inches, the imaging sharpened! (Probably because of asymmetric side wall reflections.)

No, I haven't installed the head brace....yet.

Charlie