The Larsen 9 Loudspeakers: Ignoring the Room Around Them

[tmallin]

Under the category of "do what I say, don't do what I do," I urge folks to try using a bare wire connection to Larsen speakers, rather than banana plugs or any other termination method that impairs the ability to get the speakers as near to the wall behind them as possible.

The locking banana plugs on the speaker end of my Blue Jeans Cable Canare 4S11 speaker cables make it impossible to get the back of the Larsen 9 speakers any closer to the wall than about 1 9/16 inches. That's because, even with the angled binding posts of the Larsen speakers, the locking banana plugs stick out rigidly from the back of the speaker quite a bit more than the binding posts themselves do.

I estimate that if I were using bare wire connections with these same Canare 4S11 cables I could get the back of the Larsen 9 speakers within an inch of the wall behind them. The Larsen manual and reviews suggest that while up to three inches of distance is permitted by the design, the bass extension is better the closer you can get the speakers to the wall behind them.

While, compared to lamp cord, the Canare 4S11 cable is fairly large in diameter at 3/8 inch, it is not nearly as large in diameter as a lot of audiophile speaker cables. Also, internally a single 4S11 cable has four identical 14-gauge stranded copper wires. Each one could be connected to one of the four binding posts, allowing a single 4S11 cable to be bi-wired to the Larsen 9's two sets of binding posts.

If you do try a bare-wire connection, I strongly suggest treating the binding posts and bare wires with Caig Deoxit Gold fluid before making the connections. This will greatly forstall any oxidation of the bare copper wire connection, making such a connection more permanently satisfactory.

I do not recommend tinning the bare copper wire with solder before making such connections. My prior personal experience, as well as the reports of many others who have tried this, find that tinned-wire connections just don't sound as fine as bare copper connections. I regard the decrease in sound quality of tinning as outweighing the prevention of oxidation and corrosion provided by the tinning.

 

[tmallin]

If you are thinking about bi-wiring a pair of Larsen or any other speakers, here's a caution about bi-wiring. When I've tried it with other speakers, it definitely does make a sonic difference, but I have not always been pleased with the sonic difference. For a couple of examples, many years ago I liked the sonics of bi-wiring the Gradient 1.3 speakers a lot. I bi-wired and bi-amped the AR-303a speakers the first time I owned a pair 15 years ago back when I lived in my prior home. But I was always bothered by brightness from them in that set-up. These days, I did not bi-wire the AR-303a speakers in either my Blue Room or Audio Room set-ups and there has never been any noticeable over-brightness. I chose not to try bi-wiring the Larsen 9s due to my most recent experience with bi-wiring.

So if you bi-wire and notice excess brightness or some other problem, try single-wiring instead. I have no over-brightness at all with single-wiring of the Larsen 9s.

Also, with single wiring speakers like the Larsens which have two or more sets of binding posts which make them capable of being used in bi-wiring, tri-wiring, bi-amping, and tri-amping configurations, I have always found that connecting the speaker cables to the bass binding posts and using jumpers from the bass binding posts to the other binding posts sounds better than connecting the speaker cables to the treble or midrange binding posts.

 

[tmallin]

You know that my home Audio Room in which I listen to the Larsen 9s is quite small, measuring as it does a mere 161 5/8" long, by 132" wide, by 103.5" high. This is probably smaller than the rooms used by most audiophiles. But, still, I have found the Larsens to perform remarkably well with much less absorptive room treatment than is necessary to get the best performance possble in this room from other speakers I've owned and used in this room over the last ten years.

The author of The Absolute Sound's review of the Larsen 9, Robert E. Greene (REG) is now on record in his forum that for optimum perormance--to maximally create the reflection free zone which is the goal of the Larsen design--the speakers should be much farther from the side walls than the 38 inches I can manage in my small room. REG's room at the time he did his Larsen 9 review had a long wall of 27 feet (about twice as long as my "long" wall) which allowed him to place the speakers some 9 or 10 feet from the nearest side wall. He says that if one has them placed on a much shorter wall, one is going to hear much more early reflection sound from the walls on either side than is intended. This, he says, will affect the imaging quite a lot. While I like the imaging the Larsens create in my room, REG thinks that this imaging is not representative of what the speakers usually do or what is intended.

I'm fairly certain that the majority of home listening rooms do not have a 27 foot long wall allowing the Larsens to be placed 9 or 10 feet from the nearest sidewall. Larsen's instruction manuals for its other models (I have not located a manual for the Larsen 9; link is to the Larsen 8 manual) say to provide a minimum of 50 centimeters from the near side wall. That is less than 20 inches. As to this statement in the Larsen instruction manual, REG observes that manufacturers almost always minimize the ideal placement requirements. For instance, Quad used to say that all you needed is a meter from the wall behind. But in actuality dipoles do best way out in the room--at least seven feet or so, and according to one view at the 1/3 point along the diagonal of the room--which in a typical size room is pretty far out into the room. But of course if one said this were required few people would buy the speakers!

REG's observations seem reasonable. REG has also said that he doesn't think any speakers can really sound optimal in a home listening room as small as mine. That may also be true, but those of us with small listening rooms have to do the best we can with what we have.

REG acknowledges that in a small room one of the best ways to listen is to listen from close to the speakers (the near-ish field I often talk about) with the speakers toed in to point at your ears, and with lots of absorption in the room to counteract early reflections from necessarily close-by room surfaces. These steps are all aimed at minimizing the destructive-to-musical-enjoyment early reflections of sound from the listening room surfaces. And this is what I've practiced with other speakers in my small listening room.

It's in that context that I'm thrilled with the ability of the Larsen 9s to perform so well even in my small room with far less need for added absorptive room treatment, no need to treat the floor reflection, actively using the ceiling reflection to enhance the sound quality, not requiring toe-in, and, because of their requirement of close-to-long-wall placement, visually and physically opening up my small room, making it visually and sonically seem much larger.

Other reviewers beside me have raved about the sound of Larsen speakers situated much closer to the sidewalls than 9 or 10 feet.The Australian reviewer of the Larsen 9 speakers found that he "glimpsed Nirvana" at 75 cm in his narrow room; that's less than 30 inches. The opening paragraph of Alan Sircom's Hi-Fi+ review said of the Larsen 9: "These high-performance speakers are perfect for smaller listening rooms."

And REG's opinion only means that other listeners, those blessed with larger listening rooms than mine, can look forward to hearing even better, more realistic sound from the Larsens than what I've reported. That's great news for such listeners.

In my small room, the closest-to-sidewall edge of each Larsen 9 (where the tweeter is) is about 38.5 inches from the near wall. This is further from the sidewalls than with any other speaker set up I have ever had in this room.

Using a Clap Track and radio announcer voices, I have experimentally determined that each speaker's reflection off the near sidewall does not significantly contribute to slap echo. Only the far speaker's reflection creates a bit of slap echo. I thus only damp the areas of each side wall where I see reflections of the far speaker's tweeter with four-inch-thick acoustic foam. That damping significantly reduces slap echo since that speaker's tweeter is aimed at the far sidewall. With the Larsen speakers flat against the wall behind them, the tweeters are toed in by 45 degrees and are "shielded" at least in the treble from radiating in the direction of the near side wall by the cabinet construction around the upper drivers.

With ordinary speakers, one typically toes in the speakers so the tweeters are aimed at your ears. With an equilateral triangle set-up of speakers and listener, that's only 30 degrees of toe in compared with 45 degrees with the Larsens. Also, most speakers do not physically shield the near side wall from driver radiation the way the Larsen cabinets do. There is no area on the near side wall from which one can see from the listening position a reflection of the drivers. (The same is true for the floor.) That is not so for most other speakers. My point here is that if what I am hearing in my room from the Larsens were a product of reflections from the side walls or other room surfaces, other speakers would also create such side wall reflections and I would have heard similar staging and imaging effects from them. The fact that I have not heard the Larsens' unique way with imaging and staging suggests to me that something other than side wall reflections is in play.

Still, as REG observes, better is better. The longer one can wait for the side wall reflection to arrive, the better the sound. Thus, if you have a larger room than mine and can place the speakers much further than I can from the side walls, you probably will like the Larsen sound even more than I do.

 

[tmallin]

Here's a slightly different way to describe the excellence of the Larsen 9 sound compared to all other speakers I've used in my small audio room. The unique strength of the Larsen presentation is in the part of the frequency range where the melody, meat, and guts of the music reside--say 500 Hz and below. Everthing about the presentation of sounds in this frequency range is clearer, better defined, more textured, more detailed, and subjectively much lower in distortion.

Because of this, pianos, organs, drums, bass viol/electric bass, all voices solo and massed, lower strings--all these benefit enormously in realism compared to all other speakers I've heard in this room.

Other speakers may well present the "salt and pepper" of the music --the upper harmonics or overtones--just as well as the Larsens and sometimes with more apparent detail in the upper frequencies. Still, even in these upper frequencies the Larsens unify the upper harmonics with the fundamentals and melodies so that they are of a piece and emanate at the same time and from the same place on the stage as lower tones and without annoying "hash" from listening room reflections.

 

[kjartanb]

@tmallin
I can understand your enthusiasm for the Larsens. I heard the Carlsson OA 51 and 52 in the early eighties and was quite impressed. It took me a while to get on the bandwagon but approx 20 years ago I renovated a pair of Carlsson OA 50s for my son. Then some years later I needed speakers for my living room ( I had Altec votts with 18” subs in my then dedicated cellar listening room). I got some nice used valnut Carlsson OA-52s and modifyed to latest Larsen 2 spec ( new everything except the wall mounted cabinetts), and was quite happy with them. Later I had to put my Altec horns into storage and use my cellar as an apartment for a family member and use the living room for music and movies. When looking for compact subwoofers to go with my wall mounted Carlssons I found some demo models of Larsen 8.2 for sale for a reasonable price, so I bought them un heard. I have now used them for several years, and understand well your enthusiasm. Everything sounds good. No listening fatigue. I use, for the moment, class D amps, either IcePower 1200as2 modules or biamp with 2 pairs of IcePower 200as2 modules. There is a slightly better resolved bottom end in biamping even if the IcePower1200 are far more poverful than the IcePover200s. The Larsens do everything well. Once in a while, especially on movies and large orchestra I miss the huge dynamics and slam of the horn setup but the Larsens will probably be the speakers following me from house to apartment.

 

[Duke LeJeune]

"There is one oddity, or so it seems to me. Namely there is a perceived (by me) excess of energy around 600–650Hz. This shows clearly in the steady-state room sound, though it is less obvious in music material, though still perceptible. But it is easily adjusted if adjustment seems called for.... If you want less 600Hz, just go for some EQ, which is in fact easy to arrange accurately in this case." (REG)

True again. Neither of the other reviews of the Larsen 9 mentions this, but REG’s reviews of both the 9 and 8 mention this oddity. Stereophile’s review of the Larsen 8 also mentions it in John Atkinson’s measurements section and Atkinson says it is quite audible to him. The Stereophile measurements of the Larsen 8 also show this peak in the frequency response graphs.

I suspect that the 650 Hz peak was a deliberate choice to fill in the cancellation notch in that same region that would normally arise from the bounce off the wall immediately behind the speaker. So theoretically the direct sound would not have that peak, but the power response would. When the peak is removed via EQ, there is a dip in the direct sound but the power response is smooth in that region.

(Stereophile's simulated anechoic data for the Model 8 shows a dip about one octave higher, and I'm guessing this was compensation for the anticipated wall-bounce peak in that region.)

The direct sound has a disproportionate, but not dominant, effect on the perceived tonal balance. Perhaps when John "voiced" that frequency region of his speakers he prioritized getting the direct sound right. I can't help but wonder whether the "ideal" might be part way in between optimizing for the direct sound and optimizing for the power response. Any thoughts on that?

One reason the Larson 9 and other Larsen speakers ignore side wall reflections is that, also due to the unusual cabinet design and driver mounting of the upper drivers, there are no areas on the near side walls where those drivers of the near speaker may be seen from the listening seat reflected in a flat mirror mounted on the near side wall. Only the far speaker's reflection may be seen and that speaker is, of course, much farther from that sidewall, making that reflection much later in time and thus less sonically obnoxious, even in a small room.

Yes, Earl Geddes is a proponent of avoiding the first ipsilateral (same side wall)) reflections while promoting the first contralateral (opposite side wall) reflections, as the latter not only arrive significantly later in time, but also are processed by the ear/brain system as "spaciousness" with no undesirable side effects because they arrive at the opposite ear from that speaker's first-arrival sound.

Even from the near-ish field, with [non-Laresn] speakers aimed at my ears and lots of absorption on the room surfaces, with ordinary speakers I still hear something which sounds far more contaminated by my listening room acoustics than with the Larsens and relatively little room treatment, listening further back from the speakers and with no toe-in of the cabinets.

Agreed. I really like the way the Larsens work WITH the room, instead of requiring that the listener figure out how to OVERCOME the interaction between the speakers and the room.

 

[tmallin]

@tmallin
I can understand your enthusiasm for the Larsens. I heard the Carlsson OA 51 and 52 in the early eighties and was quite impressed. It took me a while to get on the bandwagon but approx 20 years ago I renovated a pair of Carlsson OA 50s for my son. Then some years later I needed speakers for my living room ( I had Altec votts with 18” subs in my then dedicated cellar listening room). I got some nice used valnut Carlsson OA-52s and modifyed to latest Larsen 2 spec ( new everything except the wall mounted cabinetts), and was quite happy with them. Later I had to put my Altec horns into storage and use my cellar as an apartment for a family member and use the living room for music and movies. When looking for compact subwoofers to go with my wall mounted Carlssons I found some demo models of Larsen 8.2 for sale for a reasonable price, so I bought them un heard. I have now used them for several years, and understand well your enthusiasm. Everything sounds good. No listening fatigue. I use, for the moment, class D amps, either IcePower 1200as2 modules or biamp with 2 pairs of IcePower 200as2 modules. There is a slightly better resolved bottom end in biamping even if the IcePower1200 are far more poverful than the IcePover200s. The Larsens do everything well. Once in a while, especially on movies and large orchestra I miss the huge dynamics and slam of the horn setup but the Larsens will probably be the speakers following me from house to apartment.

I am not set up to bi-amp my Larsen 9s. I have not even tried bi-wiring them, but have thought about trying that. My speaker cables, the Blue Jeans version of Canare 4S11, have four identical 14-gauge wires internally and can thus be used for either single- or bi-wiring with just one cable. But I've been so thrilled with the single-wired sound I have yet to experiment.

 

[tmallin]

Duke, thanks for your thoughtful comments. As for the 650 Hz subjective and measurable peak, I really have not measured the speakers to see what my own OmniMic V2 measurement system would show in my room.

Subjectively, in my room to my ears and with my set-up, with some music and definitely on pink noise, applying my Lyndorf TDAI-3400's Room Perfect removes some forwardness in this frequency range. Pink noise sounds basically perfect/uncolored with Room Perfect engaged, but with it bypassed a forward coloration is clearly audible. For me, this coloration is something I sometimes thought I noticed on music before I corrected the response with Room Perfect. But after hearing the effect of Room Perfect on the coloration and A/Bing quickly a few times, the nature of the coloration became more obvious on music.

This coloration, while clearly audible with some music and always with pink noise, is not subjectively obnoxious enough to demand fixing. Some may even prefer the forwardness since it can tend to, for example, subjectively move centered pop and other vocalists a bit closer to you without introducing the subjective brightness which a peak in the presence range (around 2 kHz to 4 kHz) would impart.

Still, one of the beauties of the Larsen 9 sound is that the sound is relaxed and non-aggressive, not demanding equalization from track to track as so many other speakers do. Most everything sounds "right" enough to enjoy as is. What Room Perfect does to the 650 Hz peak is to remove enough of it to further enhance this quality without causing the sound to be uninterestingly recessed. As I noted, pink noise sounds perfectly smooth with Room Perfect engaged, as subjectively smooth and uncolored as I've ever achieved in this room with any speakers.