welcome my name is christopher and i am the community manager here in dynaudio. i will be your host today where we shoot our ask the expert session which is with otto we will just jumpright into the first question
which is from udo holzmann. otto, he has sent us an image on facebook facebook where we cansee his large hi-fi setup and he asked from youto come with some comments to it. yes, basically, udo's setup looks fine. there is no reason to thinkthat set-up would not work. he has the speakers placedinto the room away from the walls. he has a good distance between the speakers. the distance is basically the sameas the distance to the listening position,
which is optimum. and how would you determinewhich is the optimum listening distance. basically you form a equilateral triangle between the speakers andthe listening position so the distance between the speakersis the same as the distance from one speakerto the listening position. that is the theory. and we also saw in the picturethat udo has sent us, and he also mentioned thathe has this bookshelf.
yes he seems a little bit worriedabout the distance to the book cases but in reality it is the distanceto the back wall that is important. the bookcases absorb a lot ofsound and scatter the sound and that is a good thing,you actually want that. so you shouldn’t be worried about puttingthe speakers close to the bookcases. ok. so it is about, you know,getting the distance right. do not worry about the bookcases. actually, it is the distance fromthe back wall that is important. so what i would like to do to determine isthe proper distance in that room.
you cannot have a set distancefor this particular speaker. you have to determine it in the actual room. what you can do is, push the speakers backvery close to the book cases, which would probably be wrong. and then start moving them out gradually. for each step try to listen to it again. try to hear the differences, if the sound is improving. so long as it is improvingjust keep increasing the distance.
at some point the distance will be too far and the sound will be worse. you will start hearing a worse soundstageand too little bass. then it is about time to move it back now. then you go back a little bit until you havethe proper distance to the wall. ok. another thing that i sawin udo’s picture was that he has not toed his speakers in. would you recommend that or...?
we usually recommend a little bit of toeing but that can be different for each room. so basically the answer is the same. you can… when you have to set it up it is the same answer:trying... yeah try to work it outhow it actually works in your room. trust your own ears. try to point the speakers too far out,
which would definitely be wrong and then gradually toe them in until you get to a pointsound no longer improves. it starts getting worse. and find the right toe-infor that particular room. that is exactly the same procedure and again you just have tolisten to the difference. and what are we listening for? is it too much space?or?
basically focus on the sound stage especially when you aretoeing the speakers in. you try to listen to... you want to have a white sound stage. if we go too far inyou start collapsing the sound stage. ok so that is it? yes that is it. thank you for the question udo. and we move to the next point in a minute.
so otto, our next question isfrom trond roaas. sorry trond, i hope i ampronouncing that correctly. he asks what kind ofreference music you would suggest for speaker placement and toeing in. actually for the placement of the speakers in relation to the back walland the side wall the more important thing isto get an even bass response. so i would look for tracks that has refined, repetitive bass tracks.
that could be i like billie jean from michael jackson. tracy chapman has lot of recordsthat are usable here. try to listen for getting the bass even so that no notes actuallystand out from the others. ok, so speaker placement: billie jean or tracy chapman. could be and i know that trond
he actually suggestedthe track called 'amused to death'. what are your thoughts about that? yes. that is actuallya really good suggestion by trond. because i use that track... album a lot. it has a specialty called qsound. that is artificial surroundfrom two speakers. so basically,even though you only have two speakers, you will hear the sound all around youif the speakers are set up properly.
that is especially useful fortoeing in the speakers. when everything is set up properly,you will hear some effects behind you. and they are more defined when you havethe proper set up for speakers. cool. thank you trond. so just to sum-up: billie jean and tracy chapmanfor speaker placement and trond’s suggestions 'amused to death'is really good for toeing in. yeah thank you!
the next question is from thomas eriksen and he asks how would youdefine the 'soundstage'? that is a really good questionbecause getting the soundstage right is a very important part of hi-fiand also very difficult part of it actually. the soundstage relates to kind of the illusion of soundthat emerges around the speakers. it is easy to get a clean soundcoming from the speakers but what you actually want is to havethe sound emerging around the speakers. so you can actually close your eyes andmatch where the different musicians are.
yes. you want the illusion to havethe musicians in front of you. sometimes you can have depthin your soundstage if you can hear that the drummer isbehind the singer for instance. you would define thatas a better soundstage. ok also very often people search forvery large soundstage. so they want a really huge sound stage. that is not always a good thing. because actually
sometimes you have a sound where you have this wall of soundthat makes the sound appear huge. but then if the song of the singer alsospread out all across the wall then you won’t have avery defined sound stage. ok so you can,again if you close your eyes you wouldn’t be able toactually position her no. she would sound like she wasten feet tall and yelling at you instead of having a singerplaced in right position having the other parts of the instrumentplaced different in the soundstage.
so the ability to have this illusionof sound in your living room where you can place its partof the music independently. that would define a good sound stage. ok. great. thomas eriksen also askedhow you would setup a subwoofer in a stereo system. yes. very often it is thatpeople get the impression that the subwoofers are notreally good for stereo setups. and i think much of that is relatedto the wrong setup.
so mostly one of the thingsi really recommend is instead of using one subwooferusing two subwoofers. why is that? there are several reasons for itbut the most important one is actually, people think that you use twosubwoofers to get more output to get more bass.but that is not actually the case. what we want to do is even out the base. so if you have a subwoofer in one cornerthe bass would kind of fluctuate in the room so in certain positions in the roomyou would have more bass
and in other positions you have less bass. if you have two subwoofersthey would work together and even out the bass where you have peak from one subwoofer you might have adifferent from other subwoofer. and the total amount of basswould be more even. so you get actually... often less bass total but it is much moreeven much more defined bass. ok. great! so otto we have threefairly quick questions for now.
the first one is from arn klein and i am hoping that i ampronouncing his name correctly. he has a problemas he can only place his speakers up against a large window section. what are your thoughts on that? well that is always a problem because you have the speakers up againsta very reflective surface and the sound coming off from thatreflective surface will interfere withthe sound coming from the speakers.
so the only real suggestion isto put a curtain in front of those windows so that the speakers areagainst a more dent surface. then the sound of the speakerswill sound much more defined. the next question is from neil coplandand this is a fun one. he asked how do i keep my mother-in-lawfrom moving my speakers around when she is cleaning up. well actually i think it was john roome he came up with theexactly correct suggestion here. barbed wire.
barbed wire. yes folks – barbed wire. and the last of these three quick questions,otto, is from humbert sin. humbert, again, i am sorry. i hopei am pronouncing these names correctly. he has his speaker setup in a cornerwhich means that one speaker is up against the walland the other is free from any surfaces and he says that triangular positionis not possible. yes. this is a very common problem. what happens is that you have one speakernext to a reflective surface and the other one does not have any surfaces
it is just emitting into the room. so what you really need to do is get some acoustic dampening on that wallnext to the speakers. the only good solution to this so that you damp that reflection, so that you wont have any reflectionfrom either speaker and they will sound more similar. ok, perfect!so quick sum up: curtains for arn klein,barbed wire for neil copland
and some dampening material for humbert sin. the next question is from ted sanborn and he has a system wherehe turns off audyssey for an optimum sound and he asks 'is that actually optimum to turn it off.' yes well, it can be. audyssey is an automatic room correctionsoftware that measures the sound coming fromthe speakers in the room and then tries to correctthe sound going into the speakers.
sometimes that works sometimes it doesn’t. and what you basically should do istrying to set it up manually. it is free to try and it is not actuallynot that complicated. and then try to compare what you getinstead of trusting the software too much. try to also trust your ears. setup the speakers like you wouldif you didn’t have the correction software and see where it goes. so it is about, you know, just trying.yes. he also mentioned somethingabout full range sound.
yes. he says he turns audyssey offto get full range sound. that is not necessarily combined. you can set the speakers upwhichever way you want without the correction software. so you could manually setupthe speakers to go full range or you can set them up to have acrossover at, for instance 80 hz, so that the lower frequenciesgo to the subwoofer. and the best choice isactually dependent on the system. very often you will get higher output,higher dynamics
by crossing the speakers andsending the lower notes to subwoofers. in some setups with large speakersyou may want to run full range on speakers. again trust your ears. ok. thank you for the question ted. our last question is fromanders blichert-refsgaard and he has this largeliving room with sloping walls. he uses some acoustical platescalled troltekt but he feels like he missessome bass in the system. yes. an attic like that with slope walls
that is a very difficult settingto achieve a good sound. so there is probably notan easy solution to this. the way the sound behaves in a roomformed like that can be very unpredictable but main suggestion is to try to work withactually the listening position. instead of moving the speakers around, tryto experiment with the listening position. maybe try to sit closer to the speakers. maybe actually get the speakerscloser together and move closer to them to form this triangle we talked about. but…
yeah. moving the position either closerto the speaker or further way that would change the waythe sound is projected in the room. that could change the perception. but i know you also talked about something with the bass actuallybeing absent in the special place… yes especially if you aresitting in the middle of the room you will have a phase out of bass. you will often have a kind of holeexactly in the middle of the room. so you should try to avoidsitting in the exact middle.
that is why you should move and experiment yeah the best position is actuallya bit more than a third away from one of the back walls. either back walls or front walls. 38% if you want to be exact. so measure the distanceand find the 38% spot and that is very oftenthe best listening position. there it is. thank you for the question anders andthank you otto for being part of this.
this was really good. there were great questionsfrom all of you guys. thank you for that andthank you for your answers. they were really good i think. if you have any more questions for usfind us on facebook we will do our very bestto answer all of them. see you around.