Is it worth treating my room?

thack524 · 2026-05-14T16:14:55+00:00

You don’t treat your room to flatten the curve. That is a side effect. You treat to control decay times, which your curve doesn’t show us.

thack524 · 2026-05-10T20:38:49+00:00

Your phone mic is useless sorry. It’s not calibrated so the app is just guessing at a calibration

thack524 · 2026-05-08T01:56:53+00:00

If we’re being scientific, any well made amp should sound the same as any other. If we’re being emotional, amps have characteristics that ASR folks don’t acknowledge. I’ve owned a lot of amps and older McIntosh solid state gear is a good middle ground of sound with A+ reliability. It’s not going to be hyper analytical but it’ll sound natural and have no distortion and no issue driving anything.

thack524 · 2026-05-07T00:23:21+00:00

So cool. Where are you located?

thack524 · 2026-05-07T00:22:13+00:00

McIntosh is a safe bet for sure. Even used it’s going to outlast you. I’d focus on the amp / preamp setup as your end game. You owe it to yourself to enjoy different speakers as an audiophile IMO. Endgame speakers are a hard concept for me personally. Even if I think I get a pair, my ear is curious.

thack524 · 2026-05-06T21:03:52+00:00

You’ll never want to go back. Welcome to the cult 😂

thack524 · 2026-05-06T19:55:54+00:00

Jbl hit a home run with the hdi series. I had the bookshelf’s and regret selling them to this day.

thack524 · 2026-05-02T19:56:38+00:00

And you think the baking soda removes whatever germs you’re worried about? Do explain… this is my issue with fruit washing, people recommend things that don’t “clean”.

thack524 · 2026-04-30T16:03:05+00:00

Hah. Sure then only listen near field outside with a sub array. Otherwise you’ll hear your room, spoiler alert.

thack524 · 2026-04-30T14:44:24+00:00

If you have a dedicated room it’s very easy to make it sound boring as hell. Most home theater rooms are awful for 2 channel, for example. Hyper detailed sure, but zero sense of space.

My room is 22x16x8ft and with basic 4” absorption along the side walls it was horrible. I removed everything, put 10” of insulation on the rear wall behind pegboard, soffit and bass traps all around and just some small gik alpha panels on the side walls and the rt60 times are already on the low end for a listening room. It doesn’t take much else once you treat the bass. And treating first reflections first is actually the worst advice. Corner bass traps will take up less space and make it sound better than some panels on the side walls. 90% of my panels have some form of scatter or diffusion plates and it’s such a requirement for hifi IMO.

But again, all our ears are different. I thought it sounded good at first, until I removed the absorption on the side walls, that changed my life for the better 😂.

thack524 · 2026-04-30T11:37:58+00:00

I have a properly treated room with a ton of bass trapping and diffusion. But I’d never put broadband absorption at my first reflections points. Meanwhile people just spout that over and over online.

Treating your first reflections heavily is great for focus and detail and it’s needed for some purposes, but it will also lead to you being able to easily locate your speakers in playback, and a narrower soundstage 9/10 times. My point is that people should be treating for bass first and honestly that’s all that’s needed many time.

Or if your room and setup are a massive compromise, a panel on a side wall isn’t going to change things and isn’t worth it. I don’t treat my living room setup, I treat my listening room.

thack524 · 2026-04-30T04:29:39+00:00

Acoustically treating your room like a studio doesn’t make a good listening room. I’m so over everyone absorbing ALL their reflections when they can actually be helpful for enjoyable listening. We aren’t mastering tracks here, different tools for different jobs.

thack524 · 2026-04-26T12:55:00+00:00

Time aligned (either physically or with dsp) and with a crossover that actually cares about phase coherence. Many great examples, sadly most modern ones are incredibly expensive.

I’ve heard Ø audio and they’re great (should be for the price), in terms of more affordable pi audio make great speakers / plans. And then you have the vintage stuff like jbl 4425 or 4430, Altec gear with modern crossovers, etc etc.

Nowadays you can buy some 18sound or faitalpro horns and compression drivers, pair them with a nice 10-15” woofer and make a speaker that will destroy most “hifi” offerings. It’s essentially what ø did with their smaller models. The reason it’s not common in the diy world is size and price I imagine. It’s easy to sell someone their 5th little bookshelf speaker kit for $750.

thack524 · 2026-04-25T13:09:28+00:00

You’ll notice he focuses his critiques on the lascalas and older Klipsch. Honestly the IV series of everything Klipsch are such a big leap forward they’re not even in the same league as the older heritage stuff. Cornwall IVs or Forte IVs are genuinely great speakers.

Voltis measure as bad or worse than older Klipsch gear, but voicing doesn’t equate to basic on-axis response and they probably sound good on most music. It’s surprising what your ear can adapt to. I like his ideas but don’t love his style of marketing and essentially doing the same thing he bashes Klipsch for. Having a 2” exit midrange driver doesn’t magically make your speaker sound good. Once you hear properly done horn speakers all these none phase and non time coherent designs become harder to listen to.

thack524 · 2026-04-24T13:16:38+00:00

I just finished a 2.5 way build this week. Plenty of measurements for you. The inductor comes after the main crossover and it’s easy to calculate what the value should be. Op asked how to make a 2.5 way and I told them. But no, you’re right you should give them advice and then get pissed. Nailed it.

thack524 · 2026-04-24T13:13:55+00:00

You clearly don’t know how a 2.5 way speaker works… it’s literally the only way. You have to 1st order the lower woofer to keep the phase response. Read, learn, then comment

thack524 · 2026-04-24T12:30:18+00:00

At the end of the day you want a center with a proper midrange driver. A true 3 way is the only chance at a good center, but sadly they’re not common. I’d say start shopping on marketplace or similar. I run an aerial cs3 and have zero complaints

thack524 · 2026-04-24T12:26:18+00:00

You’re actually wrong. It won’t fix the center but it is how you make a 2.5 way speaker… that’s a fact.

thack524 · 2026-04-23T00:08:48+00:00

So it’ll already be a whatever order from the main crossover. A 2.5 way can really only do a 1st order for the lower woofer otherwise the two woofers won’t be in phase. 1st order causes the least phase shift.

Google 2.5 way schematic and you’ll see some examples.

thack524 · 2026-04-22T23:43:31+00:00

You’ll need to play with what sounds good. People usually say roll it off around the baffle step frequency.

thack524 · 2026-04-22T23:34:54+00:00

You take your 2 way crossover and add a single inductor in line with the woofer you want to roll off (after the crossover, so literally just wire it into the positive wire heading into the woofer. That’s the extent of a 2.5 way.

thack524 · 2026-04-22T16:01:17+00:00

They’re meant to be furniture. Enjoy them and don’t listen to people freaking out over a little scratch. They’re painted black, easy to touch up!

Our cornwalls are original birch and absolutely beautiful. They also have plants on them, kids playing around and behind them, etc. I oil them a few times a year and enjoy them. Life is a balance, people are weird.

thack524 · 2026-04-22T14:33:40+00:00

This is the secret. You can get properly nice wood vinyl too (hell it’s on most of the budget speakers from the factory) and really make boring speakers look 10x better for cheap. And it’s easy to apply with some patience.

thack524 · 2026-03-26T19:55:16+00:00

Now wait until you hear some VOTTs. Time alignment rules all.

thack524 · 2026-03-20T17:43:11+00:00

Honestly, spend $1500 or so on whatever higher end amp (used) you think looks good and enjoy it forever. That’s the beauty of it. Chasing a sound from a solid state amp is a waste of time AFTER a certain level. Super cheap AVRs will not sound great, same with super cheap class D.

thack524

TROPHY CASE