Maggie's Blog

29 Apr 2010

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I had an interesting experience with the Magnepan MG3.6' speakers and need someone to talk to!

I have added the stands with spikes and I decided to start on room treatment to see what I could achieve with stuff at hand. I 'borrowed' several foam rubber mattresses, collected several doonas etc and placed them at the room's primary reflection points.

Well, it sounded so different in the bass. No boominess at all in any part of the room!!! What happened to the room nodes?

Why doesn't the sliding door rattle any more?

Why doesn't the toilet room act as a 150 cu ft passive radiator any more.

Why can I stand on the slate fireplace hearth without being knocked down by the bass reinforcement.

Bloody hell - what's happened?

Must be the strategically placed rubber!

So OK, I decided to move/remove one piece at a time to see which of the bits was the cause.
Removed one piece - same. Removed another piece - no change. Removed another piece - the same. Seeing a trend here?! Eventually all the rubber and doonas were gone but still the bass/room nodes hadn't returned. Que!

I then realised that I probably hadn't played any music since we added the stands.

So it seems that the profound change was due entirely to the stands.

I've changed speaker positions a million times before with little or no effect, so its almost entirely the result of the now braced and spiked stands.

OK, so what else changed...?
I checked all connections in case a woofer lead had accidentally come loose?
Nothing out of phase?
Checked settings on the sub.
Checked profiles and equalisation on the DEQX; all fine.

So it must be due to...

1. The speaker base is now much heavier. As well, the spikes have the speaker solidly grounded to the concrete underneath the carpet, rather than floating on the carpet as was the case.

2. The speakers are 1.5 inches higher off the carpet. Shouldn't matter to that extent.

3. The speakers are 1.5 inches closer to the listening chair, .5 inch further from the side walls and 1 inch closer together. [unlikely cause since I have moved the speakers often]

So there you have it.

What room treatment will be effective now, since it seems that my rubber mattresses have little or no effect.

I'll have to up the voltage switch inside the DEQX so that volume control isn't set to max all of the time! I was already playing it at either the top of the purple range or the bottom of the white range (-10dB from max) so now without the boom I can play it even louder.

Looking forward, in the fullness of time, to seeing what the DEQX calibration measurements have to say about it all.

Its just been a couple of days, so its just sort of sinking in. I didn't jump straight in to print in case it was something stupid that I had done, but it seems the change is real and permanent.

Yes its good. Probably more consistently smooth through the frequency spectrum and I don't have to fiddle with the handset equalisation for some CDs now. The bass could often sound a bit disjointed previously but now it is blended much better, with the Maggies and the Velodyne sub working as a cohesive unit.

Playing Era 2 at the moment. Its a CD that I didn't like playing much because everything in the room rattled even at moderate volume levels.
It too sounds good now.

Cheers
Peter F

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