mikebse2a3 Posted February 29, 2004 Share Posted February 29, 2004 My room is gypsum on 2x4 stud walls and standard carpet on wood suspended floor. After following the topic on properly sealing the KHorn to it's corner I realized that even though I had a good seal on the tailboard to the corner and the KHorn was sitting on plywood triangles over the carpet in the corners I hadn't really sealed the panel above the bass bin to the corner as suggested by artto,HDBR and Q man. I sealed the top above the bass bin by cutting out four 3/4" by 3/16" thick and 20" long strips of wood and wrapping them with 1/4" thick closed cell weather strip foam by going down one side and up the other side. I can slide the seals in or out to easly hear the differance. Wow what a differance! The problem is after listening for about a week to alot of good CDs I've noticed female and especially male vocals have a heavy almost boomy quality to them and the KHorn didn't have a properly integrated sound. I've got ALK crossovers in the KHorns and no adjustment of the autotransformer could make things come together properly. I believe that this might be a room mode problem being excited. I do use Tube Trap bass traps to help control room modes but like alot of people my room/setup is far from ideal! The point of all this is I tried an experiment by taking one of the 2 seals I had made for each KHorn bass bin's top panel out and leaving one seal in place. This eliminated the problems in the vocals and I've got the best balance of the KHorn/ALK crossover yet in this room. I'm looking into stiffening the side walls of the KHorn's corners with MDF or Plywood and see if this makes things better or worse. For those of us with less than perfect rooms/setups I thought my experience might help someone with similar problems. Would like to hear anyone elses experience or ideas on this! mikeb Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D-MAN Posted March 2, 2004 Share Posted March 2, 2004 Thanks, Mike Roger that on the room/horn issues... I would say in my case that the room is 99 percent of my problem... I use tube traps, too, and apparently could use more of them than I now have... DM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikebse2a3 Posted March 3, 2004 Author Share Posted March 3, 2004 ---------------- On 3/2/2004 6:29:11 PM D-MAN wrote: Thanks, Mike Roger that on the room/horn issues... I would say in my case that the room is 99 percent of my problem... I use tube traps, too, and apparently could use more of them than I now have... DM ---------------- Hello DM What kind of problems are you having in your room? I realized many years ago that the room I'm using is really as important as the speaker I chose to use in determining the ultimate sound quality I was going to be able to reach. KHorns in a really good room for them created the most realistic reproduction that I've ever heard {Never Forgot That First Time Hearing Them and Eventually Had To Have Them!!!} but when the room isn't cooperating people would wonder what the big deal with them are. This hobby can drive you crazy trying to get things right if you let it so I finally realized that I needed the KHorns and To Do the best I can with room treatments and not constantly changing my equipment {once good quality equipment was put together that matched My Priorities in sound}.I Have noticed when the sound is wrong it isn't long before I have to get out of the room but when I get the room/system balanced right I get drawn into the music {sometimes for hours} and I've been surprised how much my taste in different music has expanded over the years! My KHorns are in the most difficult room yet that I've had to deal with but room treatment will get me the most I can in this room. mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benesesso Posted March 4, 2004 Share Posted March 4, 2004 I took a look at how good the fit was between the walls (smooth-finish concrete faced) and the Khorn. They seem to fit very well, with very little/no gap. Has anyone noticed "better sound" after weatherstrip sealing when they had a very close fit before? How much air leakage is OK? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D-MAN Posted March 4, 2004 Share Posted March 4, 2004 Hi Mike, My room dimensions are definately not the best but I have finally achieved somewhat of a what I consider "good" sound... that is a completely filled soundstage and relatively sharp and consistant imaging with all of the depth that I have ever heard. The frequency response is relatively full and smooth with no apparent troughs or peaks, in particular no glare. The dynamics are great and the transients are startling. There is a point in volume that gets painful still, but at reasonable and/or comfortable volumes, it seems to be pretty impressive. I expect that most will be appalled, and I don't blame them, but when its an environment that cannot be easily or cheaply changed, one has to make some "adjustments". The most important thing that I have learned is that one actually is listening to the room with speakers in it, rather than the speakers in the room. In no way have I reversed that, but it has improved considerably. Here's my situation... My listening position is roughly about 9 ft or so from each cornerhorn and they are spaced (measuring outside wall to outside wall) 13 ft from each other. Overall close to a 9 ft or so triangle... there is a big screen TV in between them, so there isn't alot of room between them, I have them on the short wall with TV and stereo stand inbetween; not a very good setup to begin with... I have a modified cabinet top so that I can "aim" the mid and tweeter horns more along the outside wall than would be possible with a standard Khorn top aligned with the bass cabinet. Basically they point more towards the listening position but not quite directly at it. The same thing can be done by turning the Khorn top cabinet slightly, but it won't look as good as it does when aligned with the bottom. The angle depends on the dispersion characteristics of the horn(s). The midrange horn is the main concern here as its output is much greater than the tweeter and the midrange freqs are the most glaring or harsh worst case. I have 3 8x48in tube traps panels on the each outside walls very close to the horns to prevent wall reflections as much as possible separated by about 3-6 inches. This required constant tweaking to find the "perfect" spots to prevent "glare" at the listening position. I used push-pins to hold them up and so I can move them around easily without damaging the walls too much. I have on large bass tube trap on the side of the TV that does not have the stereo stand. This is positioned so that the reflecting strip is pointed back behind the TV. It greatly increases apparent depth. The other tube bass trap is in a rear corner on the same side. I have larger panels in the front-upper corners, that is, vertical behind and above each Khorn starting at the ceiling and touching the outer wall. Behind the TV is a single 8x48 tube trap panel mounted virtically. I know that what I have said here indicates an extremely bad situation to put corner horns in, but it is possible to also get reasonably good sound out of a bad situation, too. It takes alot of room tweaking, but it can be done. I have KEF model 4s that NEVER sounded good in the same room, same circumstances. DM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikebse2a3 Posted March 5, 2004 Author Share Posted March 5, 2004 Hi DM Great information in your reply! I'm thinking about trying false corners for various reasons and to see if aiming the KHorns toward me will improve things more. Can you give me more details on how you modified things so that you can aim yours. My room situation is similar to yours. Approx. 11.5' side wall to side wall. Believe me I like my KHorns spread {1st house 17.5'}, {2nd house 20.5'} with a Belle in between but the house I have now only has this former beedroom avaible for my dedicated room. At the back wall of this room I leave the closet doors open which gives me a depth of approx. 15' and with bathroom door open on back wall a depth of 20'. The door entering the room is at the back corner of the room so I have found leaving it open also sounds best. Now for how I've treated the room. I have {2} 16"x43" Tube traps {1} on each KHorn. On each side of these traps is a 8"x43" sound plank.I still have the Belle in the center(not using it till I get the room tuned to the KHorns). On top of the Belle is a 16"x48" trap with {2} 8"x48" sound panels flanking it on both sides and a 16"x38" trap on each side of the Belle. On each side wall are {2} studio traps with several more sound panels trying to kill interfering early reflections. At first reflection points on side walls I have RPG Skyline diffusors {so far I like this better than absorption at these points}. Back wall in former closet space has some traps of smaller size and a few sound panels to break up reflections. On the ceiling I have Sound Planks {5} rows {made up of 2' and 3' long planks} approx. 11' wide and 6" apart starting about 2' from the front wall for about 5' back I have a custom frame I've built so that I can vary the planks spacing from the ceiling as well as there location easly. I also have Skyline Diffusors on the ceiling in the rear/side of the ceiling in framework making them fairly easy to remove for experimenting. How does it sound? Well I wish I could say it sounds like my former 21.5' spread but thats not going to happen but my Vocals {Very Important to me} on really good recordings are very realistic with good height & real life size presence. I was having some trouble with an irritating edginess especially showing up on harmonica on some of my good blues CDs but this was eliminated by the skyline diffusors at the first reflection points on the side walls. The Low End Responce, I never would have thought I could get the quality of bass I'm getting in this size room. I can feel the Pressure Wave and hear the very Dynamic and Tight Impact of the low frequencys on good recordings. On good recordings I'm able to hear the echoes defining the walls of the room the recording was made in. I've got a computer acoustical testing program by www.etfacoustic.com now so I hope to study how to treat and locate acoustical problems better. Someday I hope to have a larger room again but till then I'll make the most of what I have so I can enjoy my Music/Khorns!! mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D-MAN Posted March 5, 2004 Share Posted March 5, 2004 Mike, My "listening room" is a converted one-car garage... I would first turn the top cabinets towards the listening position as much as possible. This should have the effect of making the upper horns more direct in the sound path and somewhat reduce some refelections. Further dampening can be accomplished with judicious use of some of your panels along the outside walls real close to the cabinets. My setup is the closest panel to the cabinet actually is on the floor and leans against the wall; it is 8X48 so it lines up well with the top of the cabiner. The others are mounted about 2-1/2 feet up on the wall. All of them are vertical and are spaced about 4-6 inches apart. I find that the worst reflections come from the side walls and glare can be reduced by placing sound-absorbing panels right up to near the mod horn, more or less. This is by far the most critical absorbtion placement to me. The combination of directing the horns and dampening the outer wall reflections has finally given me some satisfaction but it has been a hard road. I knew when I started building my enclosures that I wanted to be able to handle diverse listening spaces by allowing the upper horns to be "redirected" rather than hard-mounting them to a baffle on the top cabinet as with Khorns, so I opted to build what I call a "frame-type" upper cabinet which was relatively easy to build. I mounted my horns on simple plywood stands so that I can point them at any angle (think turret). I made a insertable frame to mount the grill cloth on so that the horns are covered and it looks like more or less like a standard Khorn upper cabinet which is aligned with the bottom cabinet. There is no front baffle for the horns as they are on a "stand" or movable platform which sits on top of the bottom cabinet, and the frame structure with the attached top sits on top to cover the horns. I cheated a little to save space and screwed the tweeter to the edge of the midrange horn closest to the outside wall so they are more-or-less a single unit supported by the "stand" which holds the horn up in alignment. In one version when I even aligned the voice coils in the same plane to achieve better "time alignment". I have since moved to a wider mid-horn so that is no longer possible in the horizontal and I really can't tell the difference. If you decide that redirecting the upper horns is where you want to go, then you can remove the horns and build a stand for them, get them mounted and then put them on the bass bins without a top and play with the room treatments to adjust for the new sound. You can redirect them as much as you want; if you find a placement that you like you can attach the stand down with one (for a turnstile effect)or more screws for a non-adjustable approach if you want. Then you can build a top cabinet any way you want to cover it. No harm done either way, you can always put the horns back in the original cabinets whenever you want. DM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikebse2a3 Posted March 7, 2004 Author Share Posted March 7, 2004 Thanks DM I appreciate all the information and detail of what you've done with your room/speakers. I'm very curious about and will definitely be experimenting with the aiming of the KHorn's axis in relation to the room and my listening position. mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikebse2a3 Posted March 7, 2004 Author Share Posted March 7, 2004 Hi Benesesso, I think the best answer is for you to try the seals and see how they affect your situation since all rooms have unique qualities that might affect your personel taste in sound and only you know what you like! As you can see in my first post I found a way to easly slip the seals in and out and found that a compromise worked the best for me at this time. It cost very little to try this so have fun and play with it. mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artto Posted March 11, 2004 Share Posted March 11, 2004 Mike, I can virtually guarantee you.....you hit it right in the head. Its a room acoustic problem. Possibly having to do with modes.....but remember, the modal thing is primarily regarding bass. It's possible the upper bass/lower midrange is being affected though. Depends on the room, etc, etc And by the way...we all have imperfect rooms. There is no such thing as a 'perfect' room acoustic Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D-MAN Posted March 11, 2004 Share Posted March 11, 2004 Mike, let us know what you learn... This is extremely valuable information for all of us. DM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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