Wall behind a Planar speaker

Chuck Lee

Well-Known Member
Feb 5, 2015
84
7
238
What I have found to work with my Acoustat X is to bring them out into the room about 8' from the wall behind them which I've treated with 6- 2x4x3.5 inch professionally made absorptive panels.

GIK corner traps from floor to ceiling also made for a much better listening experience than before with no room treatment.

What really kicked things up a notch was placing a 6' ASC half trap exactly in the middle of the speakers but not placed on the back wall.

It is on the same plane as the speakers evenly spaced between them and as far out from the wall as the speakers.

I know the rules of stats, so I have no audio gear or racks between my speakers -but- placing the trap between them as I've done(by experiment) is quite good.

Things just tighten up and snap into focus,the image between the speakers is more defined,perhaps due to less crosstalk information?

It's worked so well for me,I thought I would post for others to try.
 

Mendel

Well-Known Member
Feb 13, 2012
209
149
948
GTA
I have recently added Acoustat Spectra22 to my 11X14 mancave. I was worried I might not have enough room but it has actually worked really well.
My front wall has two 2'X4'X4" absorption panels on either side of a 60 inch TV basically behind the speakers. I installed these for the previous speakers, Totem Hawks. I have experimented with the panels on and off the wall and in my small room I prefer the sound with the panels up (front wall absorption). It is just too splashy and unfocused without the absorption. The Spectras are about 3 1/2 feet from the panels. If I had twice the distance to the back wall things might be different I'm sure.
 

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Mendel

Well-Known Member
Feb 13, 2012
209
149
948
GTA

BobM

Well-Known Member
Feb 5, 2014
169
9
150
64
Long Island, NY
So you've created a planar MTM configuration. Cool.
 

Fred

Well-Known Member
May 31, 2010
296
5
365
Covington, LA
My 1.7's are set 3 feet off the front wall and 2 feet off the side walls. Listening position is 8 feet out with 2 feet of air behind. You may have guessed, the room is not that big. But I can attest that the setup as seen sounds superb. I did a lot of experimenting with toe in, no toe in, panels angled back or standing straight. I've settled on a slight toe in with the panels standing straight up with the tweeters oriented to the outside. That arrangement produces a wall to wall soundstage. No treatments directly behind the panels, but treatment inside of them and on the side walls. I generally listen with the door closed, but haven't had the opportunity to hang a panel on the door as of yet, although I do have a panel behind the left listening chair with is directly next to the door. I do need some sort of bass trap behind the right listening chair as that is the one location that shows noticeable bloom. My setup attests to the fact that you can make Maggies work well in a smaller space although I readily admit they would probably sound even better if I was able to commit more cubic footage to the equation. Alas, I cannot.

Magnepan 1.7's.jpg


:)
 

MrAcoustat

New Member
Jun 5, 2012
847
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0
78
Quebec Canada
My 1.7's are set 3 feet off the front wall and 2 feet off the side walls. Listening position is 8 feet out with 2 feet of air behind. You may have guessed, the room is not that big. But I can attest that the setup as seen sounds superb. I did a lot of experimenting with toe in, no toe in, panels angled back or standing straight. I've settled on a slight toe in with the panels standing straight up with the tweeters oriented to the outside. That arrangement produces a wall to wall soundstage. No treatments directly behind the panels, but treatment inside of them and on the side walls. I generally listen with the door closed, but haven't had the opportunity to hang a panel on the door as of yet, although I do have a panel behind the left listening chair with is directly next to the door. I do need some sort of bass trap behind the right listening chair as that is the one location that shows noticeable bloom. My setup attests to the fact that you can make Maggies work well in a smaller space although I readily admit they would probably sound even better if I was able to commit more cubic footage to the equation. Alas, I cannot.

View attachment 19680


:)

Dear Fred i have been living with panels for over 30 years and to ME you have done EVERYTHING right, 3 feet from the rear wall - 2 feet from the side walls - slight toe in - and tweeters oriented to the outside, you are also correct Maggies can work well in a smaller space but give them more space if you have it and they will SHINE, learn to live with what you own you sir have a GREAT setup.

PS: Don't know if you ever tried it just curious 1chair ( lazy boy ) in the SWEET SPOT. :)

Keep It Simple 1600x1200.JPG
 

Fred

Well-Known Member
May 31, 2010
296
5
365
Covington, LA
Dear Fred i have been living with panels for over 30 years and to ME you have done EVERYTHING right, 3 feet from the rear wall - 2 feet from the side walls - slight toe in - and tweeters oriented to the outside, you are also correct Maggies can work well in a smaller space but give them more space if you have it and they will SHINE, learn to live with what you own you sir have a GREAT setup.

PS: Don't know if you ever tried it just curious 1chair ( lazy boy ) in the SWEET SPOT. :)

View attachment 19681

Thank you for the kind words. I appreciate it greatly. In fact, I have considered relocating the audio room to my office room, since I don't use that room very much these days. Basically it would be a room swap. That would give me over 900 cubic feet of additional air. The ceiling is 12 feet in that room, not to mention a few extra feet in each direction, and the floors are wood. Two problems are a large and tall window that's in the center of the front wall and a double door that's the entry point. The real problem is that the room is directly adjacent to the main living area which is where the 7.1 setup is. My wife, being a TV and movie addict, is always using the room. I'm not sure I could deaden the sound that would bleed into her space without killing the room acoustics in the audio room. So I've just sort of dropped the idea. :(

As for the chair idea, I have already decided to ditch the 2 chair setup in favor of this:

Eames Chair.jpg

I'm hosting an audio club meeting at the end of May, so I need to keep the 2 chair setup until then. I'll order the new chair in June. :)
 

MrAcoustat

New Member
Jun 5, 2012
847
7
0
78
Quebec Canada
I'm hosting an audio club meeting at the end of May, so I need to keep the 2 chair setup until then. I'll order the new chair in June.

PS: Be sure to use ONLY one chair for your audio club meeting and have your guests switch places WHY ??? because there is ALWAYS only one sweet spot no matter how big the room,this room is 19x30x13 feet with 3 lazy boy chairs 1 right 1 left and 1 in the middle ( sweet spot ) the panels are 41x102x12 and weigh 800 pounds they image like crazy BUT still the best place is the sweet spot.

Jocelyn 01.JPG
 

Tom B.

Member Sponsor
Jul 10, 2011
158
28
933
Fred-

Very nice......

You said:

I've settled on a slight toe in.......

View attachment 19680


:)

If the picture is current, your toe in appears more than slight. I would have suspected an imaging offset for either listener, or least by my own notes from the last time I experimented with toe in as such.

Tom
 

Big Dog RJ

Well-Known Member
Feb 2, 2012
1,242
463
1,155
Melbourne
Awesome system Fred! Very nice gear and I love that turn table with the big mac amp. Having a big mac amp next to a TT is always something special and will definitely sound outstanding with ribbons. I can see you listening to music on this system for hours. .. any scotch or cigars by the way? I'm off the scotch for awhile since I've run out. On beer at the moment, Australian Coopers pilsner, great stuff!

just to mention though in my experience with panels having owned several iterations of maggies, mgiiia, mg3.3/r, mg3.5/r and the last one I had before acquring Quad stats, the mg20; I notice in nearly all my set ups, having the components laid out at the back horizontally as low as possible delivered the best soundstage. Having the system placed to high interfered with imaging, especially with panels. The Quads are even more critical and so I have the entire system laid out virtually on the floor on one shelf per component way back as close to the back wall.

When I had dynamic driver type speakers such as Sonus Faber, Vandersteen, Infinity and Wilson I noticed that having the system stacked up in the middle wasn't as critical compared to panels being di-poles. What I learnt about panels is that you have to let plenty of space around them to free and open the soundstage.

Anyway, I am sure that not everyone has the ample amount of room to do this. As long as you're getting that tremendous depth that maggies are capable of and the musicality, that's about all that really matters.
Cheers mate, enjoy!
RJ
 

DonH50

Member Sponsor & WBF Technical Expert
Jun 22, 2010
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306
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Monument, CO
Most panels radiate as line sources as frequencies go up and thus radiate little off to the sides (and top/bottom). The back wave is an issue, however, and the likely reason placing equipment in the middle made such a difference. I noticed the same thing and eventually figured out why. That is another reason I prefer to damped the wall behind the speakers; then, it doesn't matter that I have an equipment rack (or big TV) between the panels. It also allows you to place them closer to the wall behind.

Caveat: Quad uses a special pattern in their panel to make the radiation pattern more conventional, a mixed blessing IMO, and some designs such as Martin Logan use curved panels so do radiate more broadly (ditto).
 

Fred

Well-Known Member
May 31, 2010
296
5
365
Covington, LA
Fred-

Very nice......

You said:



If the picture is current, your toe in appears more than slight. I would have suspected an imaging offset for either listener, or least by my own notes from the last time I experimented with toe in as such.

Tom

Thank you for the input Tom. I always appreciate observations such as this. I didn't take any notes when I was initially experimenting with placement. I just did it by ear, but in retrospect, having written down my observations would have been much better. I will do some more experimenting with toe in (or toe out in this case) to see what happens.
 

Fred

Well-Known Member
May 31, 2010
296
5
365
Covington, LA
Awesome system Fred! Very nice gear and I love that turn table with the big mac amp. Having a big mac amp next to a TT is always something special and will definitely sound outstanding with ribbons. I can see you listening to music on this system for hours. .. any scotch or cigars by the way? I'm off the scotch for awhile since I've run out. On beer at the moment, Australian Coopers pilsner, great stuff!

just to mention though in my experience with panels having owned several iterations of maggies, mgiiia, mg3.3/r, mg3.5/r and the last one I had before acquring Quad stats, the mg20; I notice in nearly all my set ups, having the components laid out at the back horizontally as low as possible delivered the best soundstage. Having the system placed to high interfered with imaging, especially with panels. The Quads are even more critical and so I have the entire system laid out virtually on the floor on one shelf per component way back as close to the back wall.

When I had dynamic driver type speakers such as Sonus Faber, Vandersteen, Infinity and Wilson I noticed that having the system stacked up in the middle wasn't as critical compared to panels being di-poles. What I learnt about panels is that you have to let plenty of space around them to free and open the soundstage.

Anyway, I am sure that not everyone has the ample amount of room to do this. As long as you're getting that tremendous depth that maggies are capable of and the musicality, that's about all that really matters.
Cheers mate, enjoy!
RJ

Hi RJ. No cigars for me, but I make a point to never run out of scotch. Particularly since I don't drink much beer these days. I think your observations are valid. Unfortunately I just don't have the square footage to do much else. I would like to get the BR-20 in a rack and move it off to the side, and the rearrange the racks to lower the TT a foot or so, but I just can't make it work in this layout. As I mentioned a few posts up, I do have a bigger room that I could move into, but domestic bliss is the impediment there. Sad really.
 

Fred

Well-Known Member
May 31, 2010
296
5
365
Covington, LA
Most panels radiate as line sources as frequencies go up and thus radiate little off to the sides (and top/bottom). The back wave is an issue, however, and the likely reason placing equipment in the middle made such a difference. I noticed the same thing and eventually figured out why. That is another reason I prefer to damped the wall behind the speakers; then, it doesn't matter that I have an equipment rack (or big TV) between the panels. It also allows you to place them closer to the wall behind.

Caveat: Quad uses a special pattern in their panel to make the radiation pattern more conventional, a mixed blessing IMO, and some designs such as Martin Logan use curved panels so do radiate more broadly (ditto).

Greeting Don. As you can see, I do have some dampening on the front wall, but I do still think that if I could lower the equipment a bit, it would allow the speakers to breath a bit more. But, as you can see from the conversation we're having, I'm kind of stuck between a rock and a hard space. I knew I should have bought a bigger house. LOL.
 

DonH50

Member Sponsor & WBF Technical Expert
Jun 22, 2010
3,947
306
1,670
Monument, CO
No worries, it was a general comment in response to "Big Dog RJ"'s post, not directed at you (or anyone) in particular.

It's hard to tell perspective from your pictures but placing treatment so that the sound waves from the back of the speaker panels radiate into the absorbers (or diffusers) will mitigate the impact of the equipment in the center. It really comes down to how you like the sound with more reflected sound from the room. That provides more "space" but also more impact on frequency response, imaging, and so forth. I have had many setups over the years and in a large room prefer to reduce the amount of sound treatment but not eliminate it. In a smaller room I much prefer the sound with more treatment. Imaging is much more precise, sweet spot is wider, no (or less, anyway) comb filter effects to corrupt the frequency response, etc.

All IMO! - Don
 

Big Dog RJ

Well-Known Member
Feb 2, 2012
1,242
463
1,155
Melbourne
Hey Fred, tell me about domestic bliss! This is one area that we "men" fail very badly at... However, on the bright side, it is the very reason our partners are still with us!

Mine is a sweet little thing but can get extremely fiery in a blink of an eye, quicker than a stat panel! She also does love the music, especially simon garfunkle, nat King Cole and some newer artists such as alcia keys and ed sheerin. So low and behold righ in between the panels is a dam tv (led screen) and that's not moving anywhere. The imaging and soundstage are great but that screen really ticks me off... what to do, got to love em!
Cheers, RJ
 

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