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toe in vs toe out ?


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This subject seems to keep cropping up from year to year, but I don't see pictures of the room/loudspeakers for those claiming that they can't toe-in.  If they did post the pictures of their setups, I believe it would become obvious what's occurring.  PWK wrote on this subject (toe-in) which I linked to in my first post in this thread.  That should be enough motivation to get any reader here to start to figure out the acoustic problems with their rooms, but apparently not...

 

A little over two years ago, I wrote this:

 

Quote

The reason why people have issues with toe-in and talk about it so much on this forum is because they haven't dealt with all the acoustically reflective objects between the loudspeakers in the lower treble, midrange and upper midbass (above the room's Schroeder frequency) bands.  If you do something to effectively control those early reflections between the loudspeakers, the problem goes away and you'll be finding yourself toeing in to PWK's toe-in recommendations...

 

With dipoles, you really don't have much latitude in what you can do: it is what it is.

 

I had the same situation with Jubilees up until ~11 years ago, when I wasn't getting a good center phantom image. The uneven room front wall, which was not smooth and flat due to only the brick masonry sticking out ~2 inches from the outside drywall areas.  This was enough to disrupt the center soundstage image:

 

Oblique Jubs in front of subs.jpg

 

I added bass traps across the front corners above the Jubilees on top of the TH subs (like the picture below), but still had the same issues...

 

CRW_2243.jpg.a5bfe8eabc1847da03814bbb2c1caf25.jpg

 

...then I added absorption squares around the near field of the loudspeakers on the wall and brick masonry surfaces within 5 feet of the HF horn mouth...and this is with K-402 horns that can control their polars vs. frequency better than any other horn that Klipsch makes.

 

The most effective absorption squares are the three-high stacks of 2'x2' absorption squares on each side wall just next the horn mouth exits.  The center phantom imaging problem almost entirely disappeared at that point.

 

I kept adding squares incrementally to the front wall until I ceased seeing differences in the early decay time (EDT) curves and impulse spectrograms corresponding to the early reflections at 1-5 ms.  The picture below shows what I ended up using, along with the bass traps.  WYSIWYG: I don't use any other acoustic treatments in the room except those shown below just around the loudspeakers:

 

Chris A's setup - elevated view small.jpg

 

Chris

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38 minutes ago, Chief bonehead said:

For the best illusions of the stage and imaging and etc etc, it would best if there was nothing but a smooth wall between the speakers......wall optional. 

I have reached the same conclusion with numerous placement experiments with the Jubilees at our restaurant. Smooth walls or no walls provides excellent results. Once you experience what happens when there are no problems acoustically, it is easy to hear the problems that result from something that messes with the sound stage.

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