Placing Montis+ Depth in a long narrow room

[sgnam]

I have a living room with the following diimensions:

Width 11feet (3,50m)
Height 10 feet (3,30m)
Length 32 feet (about 9,5m)

The room has wooden floor and plaster walls. short wall nr1 has two windows in it and the other one where the dinner table are placed has two bigger shelves. In this end of the room there is also a 3 meter big opening against the kitchen area and hallway so it's preferred for me to have the speakers closer to the nr 1 short wall.

Since I'm happily married I have a understanding wife but the room itself can't be a dedicated listening room.

I have two Montis and two Depth that I need help to find the correct position for. I also have some absorbers and measuring equipment available.

So far I have played around with a lot of different setups and since the stupid narrow room size I'm tempted to play from short wall 1 with a distance from the Montis of 3feet to the front wall and a listening position about 10feet or so from the speakers who are about 7-8 feet apart but it's hard for me to get this working with the rest of the furniture, TV,Sofas etc.

I have also placed the speakers in the opposite position meaning that they are placed basically in the middle of the long wall with 17 feet of distance to the front wall and my listening position close (about 2 feet) to the short wall nr1. This should give me the best starting point I would think but the imaging is poor and the soundstage is tilting to the right. I have adjusted the toe in and rake and got it better but still it's tilting to the long wall side without the opening. I have played with absorbers in the first reflect on the long wall but still no luck.


The third option is for me to play from one long wall to the other close to shortwall nr1. This will give me a side wall with 2 windows 2feet from the left speaker while the right speaker has a big open area to the right and the speakers can maximum be 2 feet from the front wall and my LP 1,5 from the back wall. I have tried this setup with absorbers on the back wall behind the listening position and the sound stage is a lot better and there is less room information from my room present into the sound stage.
I guees the room overall has poor absorbing capacity and when I play from short wall to short wall this is more heard than when I play between the longer walls.

Still I feel annoyed that I will not get the best out of my equipment hence to the short distance between the speakers and the wall and my LP and the back wall. Does anyone have any good suggestion how to move forward.

Thank you!

 

[GaryG]

Interesting, is it possible for you to post a picture? If you come off the short wall, how far can you place your panels from the wall? Is it possible to come off 5 feet? Glass is deadly especially if you are close. It could also help if you could put some treatment over the windows. If you place your speakers say 1.75 feet each off the side walls you should get pretty good sound somewhere between 9 feet to 13 feet off of your front wall.

Gary

 

[sgnam]

Interesting, is it possible for you to post a picture? If you come off the short wall, how far can you place your panels from the wall? Is it possible to come off 5 feet? Glass is deadly especially if you are close. It could also help if you could put some treatment over the windows. If you place your speakers say 1.75 feet each off the side walls you should get pretty good sound somewhere between 9 feet to 13 feet off of your front wall.

Gary

Thank you for the response, I don't have a picture but will try to arrange this .

I have earlier experiences with speakers placed according to your suggestion but arouand 3-4feet from the wall and it was working well at that point. Unfortunately this also caused half the living room to be a dedicated listening room and this is something I would like to avoid. It's possible that I can arrange something similar in but I will need to get in a TV and furniture on the sidewalls since the windows in the short wall 1 shall not be covered. If I arrange the room in this order the sofa should cover almost the entire sdistance between the two longer walls and it will not provide a welcoming feeling to the room.

By rotating the setup 180degrees I can put the sofa beneath the windows and during listening sessions cover these by some kind of treatment (thicker drapes etc.).

The best point with this setup would be the great distance behind the speakers and that the sound at the dinner table should be quite good, My tests and experiments so far has not giving me any great results so far. I think this is due to the longer reverb time for this part of the room and also the bass has become boomy.

When I place my speakers in any kind of arrangement closer to the short wall 1 I get a much nicer and more even bass response.

One thing about the height of the ceilling. It's the median height of the ceilling I mentioned, in the area closer to short wall1 and about 15feet out in the room the height is maximum 13feet with a 45degrees tilted inner ceilling and the ceilling height over the dinner table is more modest 8 feet and flat. This is causing the room to visually look divided into two separate rooms and the part with the higher ceeling is much nicer to sit in. I suppose that this is the type of case were a pictures says more than a thousand words.


Anyway, my concern is that I would like to get the best possible situation out from my equipment at the same time as the room can still serve a s a normal living room for my family and guests. Since I'm the only one interested in great sound one listening position is ok to optimize for.

 

[sgnam]

A smaller update from my side. After I have tested a lot of different positions I finally have settled with both me and the family that the best position would be with the speakers in front of the shorter wall and the two windows in between. The backdraw with this position is that the TV needs to be placed a little lower to not cover the windows but sound is a lot better direct from start. Right now the speakers are about 4feet from the speaker wall and 1,7feet from the side walls. The toe in is a little less than the flashlight test but this needs to be adjusted further. The rake has been adjusted so that it's about 87,5 degrees.

Most important. I have the bigger sofa as listening position which acts sort of a absorber in front of the speakers and I have about 17feet of free space between my head. I like the feeling with no wall or headrest skewing the sound image. I will need to adjust the side wall absorbers a bit and then start some critical listening for the final position and then it's time for me to integrate the two subs. The ideal position from a WAF-position would be in the corners behind the speakers but I'm not sure if they will integrate well with a longer listening distance than the speakers since I don't have the possibility to add delay to the mains. I have the phase adjustments on the subs though. Any thoughts regarding the optimal setup of the subs once the mains are in position? My thought was to leave the mains alone and play unfiltered while the subs add upp below 30Hz and with starting point 90degree phase shift.