My Music/HT room is a 5m x 4m rectangle, I have French doors at one end and a large floor to ceiling window at the other end which takes up most of that end wall.
Because of both ends being glass I was forced to set up my HT and speakers facing across the room and not along the room, everything is positioned symmetrically within this room i.e. the distance from each speaker to the end walls are identical. Not the best for standing waves etc I know but it is what it is. The room is on a slab and carpeted, facing the system is a long sofa, I mean really long, the sofa sits about 600mm off the back wall and the speakers are 2.7m apart
Now this has not been a problem in the past, movies are great and my music has been glorious, but just recently I’ve picked up on, and now can’t stop hearing something that is actually difficult to describe, a low frequency resonance, an ‘in your face’, pushed to the front emphasis on certain low notes that has become damn right annoying.
I’ve recently upgraded from a pair of Acoustic Energy AE1’s, although a seriously sweet sounding bookshelf monitor, they just didn’t have what it takes when cranking out some Led Zep or Floyd, so I was on the look out for something to give me more bang when I wanted it. I wasn’t really looking for floorstanders as I felt that they would have been overkill in my environment (this has now been proven) and so had the opportunity to try a pair of second hand B&W 805’s, now these aren’t going to blow doors off but they increased the bass massively and sounded fantastic too so I bought them…………
Now here’s the confusing bit, all I remember from when I first played them was that I was in heaven, they sounded so good that I cancelled a home demo of other speakers as I’d made up my mind, I had to own the 805’s, but recently I’ve started hearing this emphasis of lower notes that seem to make these notes more powerful than all of the other notes, does that make sense?
Not all music by any means, not all tracks but there are most definitely albums and or songs that I’ve stopped listening to now as I know that they have a lot of, and emphasise, these low frequency notes in an uncomfortable and annoying way.
So my first thought was my speakers were failing, I approached my local West Coast Hifi in Joondalup who I want to give kudos too as they loaned me a pair of $4000 B&W CM9’s knowing that no sale was pending and for no other reason than to help me identify my problem, great guys.
Well it didn’t help me identify what the ‘problem’ is, but it ‘did’ take my 805’s out of the equation as it took exactly 30 seconds to realise that these bigger beefier more bass inducing speakers only exacerbated the problem, infact they were horrible.
So now I’d convinced myself that it was all down to room acoustics and I could relax and think about acoustic treatments for the room. I told myself that “Surely the fact that I’m firing these across a space of lets say 3m once they are pulled out for a listening session is the reason why I’m getting this horrendous low frequency issue” yes?? Well to prove this to myself I decided to move them to one end of the room and fire along it’s 5m length, so a quick pair of longer speaker cables later I have them at the window end and I leave open the French doors at the other end and hit play…………………….
No improvement whatsoever, not a bit, the exact same notes are giving me the same overly blown emphasis… Now I’m confused, so I decide that it must be the amplification, so I reconfigure my kit in every way I can…
I went for pure Meridian, the CD transport and DAC into a Meridian Pre-amp and Meridian monos, and I had the same problem…. So I remove the Meridian from the chain completely and wire the 805’s directly to the Denon AVR and then play the CD via the CA 751, and yet I have the exact same problem..
And that is where I am at the moment, confused as to what it causing it, I’m still erring toward room acoustics but did think that moving the speakers to the end of the room would change characteristics somewhat and when they didn’t it left me bewildered.
So my question which in reality is very difficult for you to answer is, do you think that what I am describing is the result of standing waves? I have now tried various equipment configurations and even swapped out the speakers for different ones so I can’t think of any other reason for it.
What I don’t understand is how I never noticed it before, was it always there with my 805’s but I was so lost in the overall goodness that I didn’t notice it, and it’s only since I’ve picked up on it that I’m now tuned to it? And the more I’m tuned to it the more I notice it???
Who knows but I know one thing I’m currently pee’d off and really need to fix this somehow
Any suggestions please?
Has anyone else suffered what I’ve so poorly described, and if so, what was it and how on earth did you fix it?
Thanks for reading, if you have stayed with me for this long then you deserve a medal, or at least a cup of tea
Thank you in advance for any input that may help me.
Regards
Dave




















