Need help with choosing new floorstander speakers

WaynesterUK

WaynesterUK

Audioholic Intern
Hi guys

well I got new speakers
Came home and set everything up
realised I had rear surround sound speakers around the wrong way for 2 years! What an idiot!!

anyway... I ran Audyssey but may do it again late tonight as there were feckin cars driving past my apartment and the flat above me has kids who decided they wanted to speak loud and run about..!!! It’s normally dead quiet!! Can’t get silence anywhere!!!

Here are the images I took of the setup and also my subwoofer setting as Audyssey told me to set it to at 50% gain... I left the crossover level to the far right position?? That right? How do these settings look?

I may run Audyssey at 11.30pm tonight when it SHOULD be quiet

As far as my coffee table in the way... I do need it!
I Can’t really put in anywhere else... so need to get my Centre speaker higher I know...
 

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Pogre

Pogre

Audioholic Slumlord
Did you leave them set at large? You're not using any bass management with your front stage at all the way you have it set now. I put my speakers to small and run a 80 hz crossover for everything.
 
Pogre

Pogre

Audioholic Slumlord
I always set my speakers to small and never use LFE + Mains.

I couldn't agree more with @ryanosaur about the large/small settings should just be "bass management on or off". It just creates confusion and guys like you see the word "small" describing their tower speakers and somehow think it means your speakers are lacking. That is not the case. Bass management is a very good thing imo and you'll want to use it anytime you're incorporating a sub.
*cough-cough*

:p ;)
 
Pogre

Pogre

Audioholic Slumlord
You know, I just had a thought. I'm wondering if you're preferring your speakers large because that little sub just ain't cutting it. It might actually sound better with your speakers full range...

Here's a thread from not too long ago and the op has a Q Acoustics 5.1 with what I believe is the same sub in white.

3060iarcticwhite.jpg


I think page 2 is where @PENG commented that he thought I was making a joke, posting an image of a toaster oven! If you read through that thread there's a pretty good discussion about that subwoofer tho. It is the weakest link in your chain right now. You have to hear a good clean sub to understand it. It was an eye opening, "this is the next level" moment for me. I've owned crappy subs.
 
B

Beave

Audioholic Chief
Generally we wouldn't recommend leaving the speakers set at "large" when one is using a subwoofer.

With a good sub, the setting for front l/r and center and surrounds should be "small," with a crossover of 80Hz.

In this case though, it's possible that you might like it set this way - front to large, but NOT center - because your towers might equal or surpass the bass capability of your subwoofer.

Experiment with it each way and see what you prefer.
 
WaynesterUK

WaynesterUK

Audioholic Intern
If I did put the 2 front MA Bronze 6 speakers as LARGE, what would I set them at? Their frequency is 34hz to 30khz

I’ll experiment today
 
WaynesterUK

WaynesterUK

Audioholic Intern
At the moment.. everything sounds good, but if it may sound better in LARGE setting on the speakers, may be worth a try :)
 
Pogre

Pogre

Audioholic Slumlord
At the moment.. everything sounds good, but if it may sound better in LARGE setting on the speakers, may be worth a try :)
I only said that because in your images you have them set to "large" and it seems to be a sticking point...

The best solution would be to replace that sub and use the small setting.
 
William Lemmerhirt

William Lemmerhirt

Audioholic Overlord
If I did put the 2 front MA Bronze 6 speakers as LARGE, what would I set them at? Their frequency is 34hz to 30khz

I’ll experiment today
If you set them to large, you wouldn’t set them to anything. They’d be running full range.
 
KEW

KEW

Audioholic Overlord
Nice looking room!
1) Definitely should have speakers set to small (but Pogre makes a point about your sub possibly being especially inept)!
2) Leave Audyssey Dynamic EQ on, but turn Dynamic Volume off! As a simplified explanation, Dynamic EQ increases the bass to mid-range balance as you reduce the volume so you still get a full sound at low listening levels. Dynamic Volume compresses the audio signal, so the difference between a loud and soft sound is reduced this is not something you would usually want for home listening (it is a common and more useful feature in many cars where road noise would cover up quiet sections, but if you turn up the volume, the sound would blast you out of the car when it got loud. Classical music is the most common example of wide dynamics between quiet and loud - much of modern music is created/mixed with the idea that the listener is using earbuds where there might be a fair amount of background noise. Exeriment for yourself, but most agree that Dynamic Volume should be avoided!
3) That glass coffee table positioned midway from the mains is really setting off my OCD. If it really needs to stay, consider putting a small rug on top of it (Austin Powers voice on) - "Shag, baby!" But seriously, at least consider putting some throw pillows on you sofa and moving them to parts of the coffee table (ideally where the reflection point from your mains are) that you are not using when you are listening. Anything you can do to absorb or scatter sound-waves reflecting off of that glass surface will help. Re-run Audyssey with the pillows on the table.
You might do a test to understand why it matters so much - simply listen with, then set the glass aside and listen again. Ideally, you would run Audyssey for both situations, but for a general "quick and dirty" test, run Pure Direct! What is happening is all high frequency (and much mid) gets reflected to your ears arriving microseconds after the direct signal from the speakers. The timing is close enough that your brain does not recognize it as a reflections (as it would a reflection off of the ceiling) instead, the attacks and releases of sounds are being "smeared" over that extra time, (perceptually) reducing the level of detail that your speakers are capable of!
 
KEW

KEW

Audioholic Overlord
If I did put the 2 front MA Bronze 6 speakers as LARGE, what would I set them at? Their frequency is 34hz to 30khz

I’ll experiment today
Set to small with crossover at 80Hz!
80Hz might not be the best (you can tweak that later) but it will give you a general sense of the difference between reducing the bass to your mains and asking them to play full range.
The science here is your woofers are probably designed to play from 34Hz to ~400Hz (wherever they cross to the midrange). That is no easy task as the motion required to produce a 35 Hz signal at volume is pushing it to extreme limits while it is also attempting to cleanly reproduce the rest of the content up to 400Hz. Consider it is also being fed 20-30Hz signals (which it cannot do with any authority), but will still attempt it!
A subwoofer is generally not designed top play over somewhere around 150-170Hz, but is optimized to play those low notes that are somewhat taxing to your mains. So the idea is to let the speakers do what they do best, and let the sub do what it does best!

I have not looked at the details for your specific sub, but I assume it has a larger driver than your mains and it would be a sorry sub, indeed, that can not perform better in its specialized area of low frequencies than a driver that has to add an extra octave or more on the high end! Where you have the sub positioned in your room can also have a huge impact on how it sounds! Here is a good video on that.
 
William Lemmerhirt

William Lemmerhirt

Audioholic Overlord
@KEW
It’s a dual 6-1/2 “ported”. I can’t find a FR spec anywhere. My guess is f3 is between 30-35. My hunch is still, that the monitors offer much more DR than the 3070 ever will. It’s probably pretty darn good in a bedroom or den, but I would only consider it for that, and definitely not HT.
 
Pogre

Pogre

Audioholic Slumlord
Post

*I kept getting error messages when I tried posting earlier...

Screenshot_2020-05-30-09-36-14-1_copy_1023x586.png
 
Pogre

Pogre

Audioholic Slumlord
Here’s my sub specs
The fact that they don't even publish the frequency response says something in and of itself, I'd say, lol.

140w amp, dual 6' drivers? I'll bet you're struggling to get anything meaningful below 40 hz from that thing. Consider that a "sub"woofer should be able to produce frequencies below (sub - 20 hz) threshold of hearing and that makes your sub more of a mid bass module. You my friend, are in for a pleasant surprise.
 
ryanosaur

ryanosaur

Audioholic Overlord
They list the 3060s as -6dB at 35Hz. They do not list any info, even in the manual for the 3070s.

Sketch A.F.

Edit:
Interstingly, they list the crossover frequency on the 3060 as being the same as the FR... If that were to hold true for the 3070, the bottom end would be a grossly underwhelming 50Hz @ -6dB! If true... this isn't just sketchy, but should be a crime!
 
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Pogre

Pogre

Audioholic Slumlord
Specs of my Monitor Bronze 6’s here
IF <---(big if, since they don't specify in specs it's hard to say), the -3 dB FR of your main speakers is 34 hz I would not be surprised if they're equally, if not more capable than that sub.

I do not think that means you should just set your speakers to large and be done with it. You'll likely still get better performance with a crossover, but that sub has gotta go.
 

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