What "tweak" gave you the "most bang for your buck"? (1 Viewer)

[Lee Scoggins]

I have based placement of my Maggies on the formulas given there

Good to hear Burke. Works great doesn't it?! You have to follow the special formula for planars to include height adjustments for those of you new to the Cardas placement formulae.

For dipole speakers, I also would encourage dampening material behind the speakers. I use R13 insulation (pink side facing listener) in my listening room which works surprisingly well. I will upgrade to cloth treatments when drywall gets added to the listening room.

Also, power line conditioning need not be expensive. Monster Cable has some good ones starting at $200.

As for cable, here are some budget cables I like even though I run mega-buck Cardas Golden Reference:

1. Acoustic Research - good value for price.

2. Kimber Hero - anything Kimber does is excellent.

3. Audioquest Sidewinder and othe entry level interconnects. More value from Bill Low and gang.

4. Cardas entry level - superb but a bit more toward the upper end in price. Some of the entry Nordost is quite good as well.

See Stereophile's Recommended Components Listing every April and June issue for more cable recommendations.

There are several cheap isolation tweaks such as placing sources on tiptoes.

For tube gear, apply Audio Research "tube damping rings" for improved sound.

The best tweak really though I have saved for last: Caig ProGold contact cleaner. Apply with pipe cleaners to RCA jacks and plugs and prepare to be amazed. Also use on tube pins if you got 'em.

If you really want to go nuts...buy Flitz metal polish and polish (I'm not getting!) the plugs for each component. You get better sound and they really shine. Many audiophile labels do these last two steps.

 

[Lewis Besze]

Most of the above,but my latest tweak was to remove the grilles on my front and surrounds[identical speakers].
Somehow it made the soundstage[stereo listening]more "3D" with more "fluid" midrange and treble.This comes as a surprise, since I didn't expect much changes much less positive.

 

[Ted Lee]

speaker stands

getting those things up off the ground fixed my boomy bass, plus it got the tweeters pointing at my head instead of my knees.

plus the stands were a gift - so my best tweak was also free.

 

[DanaA]

Second the suggestion for removing the grills.

 

[Thomas_Berg]

Speaker placement, without a doubt. it really makes ALL the difference!

 

[Brian OK]

AFTER speaker placement...... treat your room with acoustical material.

As a given, correct (by trial and error) speaker placement is assumed.

Next step is to treat your room.
There is simply no better return for your time and dollar, than rolling up your sleeves and treating the room.

Forget cables, amps, new speakers, pre/pro. We sit and listen to OUR ROOM when all is said and done. There is no arguing this sonic reality.

The wife may vary, but be firm ;*)


BOK

 

[DanielSmi]

Yep since speaker placement is free it can't bang for your buck because it doesn't cost a buck. So that leaves acoustic treatment and it is way ahead of everything else listed above for improvements. I've done almost all the stuff listed above and nothing came close to acoustic treatment and I'm not even done with the treatment yet. I made an 8x6 acoustic panel for my back wall for about $100 and that made stereo about 10x better.
Benefits:

1. My imaging is vastly better
2. There is no echo in my room
3. The brightness in my room is almost gone
4. My room is much quieter and I have less ambient noise to improve clarity
5. Bass is tighter and I can feel it in my chest especially midbass
6. Room is warmer I can now listen at reference level without high frequencies being very loud and unbearable
7. I can listen to music without getting fatigue
8. Soundstage is definable meaning that I can basically draw a map of where the players are sitting in an orchestra when I listen to a cd
9. Reflections are reduced.

Now remember is just one panel on the back wall I've still yet to put panels on the side walls which are the most important place to put acoustic treatment. NOTHING I MEAN NOTHING listed above can do all of that at once and for only $100 not even speaker placement. It's hard to compete with that.

Daniel Smith

 

[Brian OK]

Daniel,
Nice to hear that you have had immediate positive feedback based upon one panel in your room.

Not knowing your room layout, I suspect you will put some front stage bass traps in place, as well as two first reflection panels in position as well.

There is no question that taming the room response is tantamount to not having to unknowingly upgrade components and cables because one felt "something was missing".

My pleasure due to treatments was to realize what mid-bass/true midrange response was all about. Lower bass was also solidified and I realized that my Def Tech Sub was not all "that bad".

Yep, it matters.

To expound some... once I treated my dedicated basement room, it was immediately apparant that I had changed my rooms sonic response. It took weeks to figure out how best to place this corner trap, that upper side wall foam-filled abfussor, and that side panel..., etc. It was always a work in progress.
I have long since replaced my dedicated outlets for cryo'd Hubbell ones, replaced all my powered cords for "boutique" ones (other than the DIY ones for my 5 dedicated amps) and moved on to some Bybee cry'o RCA inserts for my digital coax.
And I have realized an improvement with these additions in every insertion. If not, I sent them back.

Without a sonic signature for the room, I would not have heard the positives of my additions.
Otherwise, I am totally snookered and basically the "son of the divine wind". My ears tell me otherwise ;^) 8*)

The treated room will afford one the neutral space to hear such changes to ones system. Some are positive, some negative. A room treated for a flat response is better than guesswork, or an assumption that ones room is "good enough".
Room treatment is Numero Uno in my scale of sonic upgrades.

Best of Luck, Daniel.....

BOK

 

[DanielSmi]

I don't think I'll be able to do bass traps but I'll do first reflection points and maybe put some panels behind the speakers.

Just to let you know panels are very easy to build I mean I almost literally failed woodshop class and I could easily make these. If you want to learn how to make these check out these links.
http://www.angelfire.com/sports/RCcars/archive.htm
http://www.geocities.com/jonrisch/index2.htm
http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...hreadid=130532

Brian I agree with you I think if there is a difference between these cables it would definitely be easier to hear i the room has been treated because the room is so quiet you can hear the small details it's just like lowering the noise floor of your electronics except you're lowering the noise floor of your room. I definitely noticed stuff in music that I didn't notice before.

Btw how does the bybee stuff sound, I was thinking about getting balnced power from BPT and they offer a bybee upgrade for they're balanced power units? How much of an improvement was it?

Daniel Smith

 

[Terry Montlick]

Hi Brian,

Great to hear of your very positive experience with acoustical treatment. It's pretty typical of the improvement one experiences by not ignoring your most influential acoustical component -- your room.

I'm curious to know what kind of bass traps you used, and over what area. Bass traps can be great at controlling room modes, but their effectiveness often depending on your specific modes, and how bad they are to begin with. You sometimes you have to devote a lot of room area to them. Did you use a RTA to check the flatness, or go by your ears? When there's a bass trap "success story" like yours, it's good to find out the details!

Regards,
Terry

 

[RAF]

Most bang for my buck? Winning a Runco DLP projector on the HT Cruise last year.



Seriously,

Of everything mentioned so far, speaker placement has to be the winner since, assuming you already have good equipment, it costs nothing to move the units around. Front speakers away from the wall (mine are about 2 feet forward of a neutral wall) did it for me. And SW placement(s) as well.

Good thread.

 

[Brian OK]

Robert,

Wow ! You easily trump my meager "tweaks". Man, what a smile that must have put on your face.

Jon Risch "quick&dirty" bass traps is what I use. All of my treatments are following his recipes.
Also bought a closeout of Auralex's "Studio Pack" which consisted of 24 foam wedgies and 9 diffusors. I foam filled the diffusors and all reside in the room. Also constructed some tri-corner ceiling traps via Jon's recipe as well.
My estimated RT60 in the room is .71 seconds using a dimmensional formula posted on the web.
After treatments, I can't guess what the RT60 is now.

I built the room as a dedicated HT area so construction was very carefully researched. Soffits, decoupling... the whole nine yards.
Yes, the room is very quiet, but far from dead. And after treating the room, detail from very familiar music and movie passages just blossomed. Very much left me in complete awe of what is possible with some attention to controlling the rooms response.

BOK

BOK

 

[Ron Reda]

All are great ideas! Proper speaker placement is most likely first as, like others have stated, you already have the speakers, so it's free.

I would also say that replacing your stock outlets with Hubbell hospital-grade or even PS Audio Power Port outlets ($50 each) will make a big difference. Even my wife heard the difference with only one Power Port installed. The noise floor in my system dropped and the background in music became blacker.

Lastly, I certainly agree with treating the room. A few months ago, I had bought some (I feel dumb for saying this) costly room treatments. While they did help a bit, I was expecting more for the price I paid and felt somewhat let down. Then, I had an ISF calibrator to my house to calibrate my TV and noticed on his site that he was also an acoustician. When I asked for some ideas, he suggested that his best tweak was this: go to a construction supply place and buy a 4'x 10' piece of duct board which I did for $20. I then made five 4'x 2' panels, wrapped them in black cloth that I bought from Wal-Mart ($12 total), stapled the cloth to the back side of the panel and hung them. Total time on the project was about 2 hours and I don't even remotely consider myself a handyman by any means. With only two panels in place, located on the wall at the first reflection points, the room instantly sounded better. The panels cut down on a significant amount of slap-echo that my "live" room had, improved imaging and made the room quieter. I still have two panels left but can't imagine my room sounding better than it does to me right now.

 

[Brian OK]

Daniel,

Regarding Bybee.... your best source for feedback on BPT and Bybee is www.audiocircle.com

Go to the Bolder forum, and seek out "satfrat" (Robin) postings about the BPT/Bybee. He is the Bybee king and uses the BPT with Bybee.

Personally, I found Bybee to really clean the noise floor. Controversial stuff, but I like what they do.

Good Luck,

BOK

 

[Lee Scoggins]

The panels cut down on a significant amount of slap-echo that my "live" room had, improved imaging and made the room quieter. I still have two panels left but can't imagine my room sounding better than it does to me right now.

Good show Ron. This is one of those things that engineers do all the time in the studio with gobos and other movable devices. It is suprising how much of a difference these can make.

Oh, and don't discount what a good contact cleaqning can do as I suggested earlier. This can easily be on the same order of magnitude as both speaker placement and acoustics if you have not done it in a while.

 

[Pete Jennings]

Filling my audio stand legs with sand was the cheapest, most noticeable difference, tweak for me. I have a Vantage Point Altus stand, and you could literally thump the legs on the stand and make my CD player skip! After filling the legs with sand, it takes *considerable* effort to whack the stand hard enough to make the cd skip now. I had sand left over, so I made black sand bags to put on top of my DVD and CD players to help isolate them even further. They blend in very well with my black components.

Pete

 

[DanielSmi]

Alright I tried that golden ratio speaker placement thing and I found that it set the speakers to far apart and and the soundstage between them was reduced. So what I did was move the speakers back in about 4 inches each and that helped alot. That's where I have it right now and it is better than my original non-golden ratio speaker placement but I might move them alittle bit closer together. But right now I like the wider soundstage. Still my original post stands nothing is a bigger improvement than acoustic treatment not even the golden ratio it would be second.

Daniel Smith

 

[Joe Szott]

Best tweak so far was inspired by this very thread! I moved the front left and front right speakers forward to about 20" from the wall (was at say 8" before) and it really improved the sound. 1' difference, who would have guessed?

BTW - How do you figure out where 1st reflections and such occur?

 

[DanielSmi]

To figure out first reflection point while sitting in your listening spot get someone to run a mirror along the side walls until you can see your left speaker on the left wall and your right speaker on the right wall from your listening spot. If you apply absorbsotion there it should make a huge difference. I've yet to do this yet as I was planning on trying the golden ratio speaker placement first.

Daniel Smith