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Advice on Harbeth speakers placement

Y

yunie_

pfm Member
My speakers currently sound very mediocre and I am looking to see what is the main problem.

For some reason i couldn't attach the image, so here's the link
https://imgur.com/LmN6wq3

My chain is as such Hegel h190 > Harbeth SLH5+ XD
I stream spotify using h190.

Here are some potential problems I see with the setup. What do you think is the main culprit?

1. Room acoustic.
Being such a large living room, the speakers just couldn't perform. If this is the case, is a room correction device the best?

2. Playing Spotify through H190
Spotify do not have the best quality and streaming it through h190 degrades it further? Best solution is to change to tidal?

3. Speakers stands
These stands are cheap china stands made of MDF. In a bid to improve the sound, I actually added isoacoustics puck between the speakers and stands to isolate the speakers. If this is the case, best solution is to change to heavy frame and use the isoacoustic pucks? Since harbeth love open frame stands so I suppose the pucks will give it the isolation.

4. Others?
 
I have a pair of 40.2's and my advice would be to pull them into the room until you're as far away from them as they are apart. Put a piece of tape where your head is and toe them in so the tweeters are firing right at you.

I found that getting them more near field made a big difference. People always ask why and then they sit down and go ahhhhh...

All that glass can't be the best thing and might be your biggest hurdle to overcome.
 
Expectations will vary but I can tell you the SHL5+ will not sound its best in a large room with a lot of space from the side and and rear. I used to have the SHL5+ in a room that's larger than yours and there's basically no punch in the bass. I can imagine the sound in your room to be expansive but without any punch and dynamics. Changing the MDF stands to lightweight (metal) open frame stands and a more dynamic amp such as Naim (minimum 282/250DR, ideally 300DR) will open up the sound. I am not sure about the H190 but the Harbeth will wake up and sound more punchy and dynamic with powerful dynamic amps.

I dislike listening to nearfield with all my speakers and I don't think it will help much. Your listening spot looks quite good to me. Nevertheless, I would follow Weirdness' recommendation by pulling the speakers further out into the room to see if it will sound better. Speakers stands and amplification will help too but you have to experiment on your own to find out.

When you mentioned very mediocre, what exactly do you mean?
 
Hi, I’ll suggest you pull your speakers out, giving them about 1m from the rear wall. Next, move the speakers to the right, giving them equal left and right distance.
 
I find Spotify is way good enough to reveal the smallest changes in your hardware and there is no big difference in "voicing" with any of the streaming services (with the exception of MQA, now defunct).

Have you tried other speakers in that system and how did they sound?
 
yunie_ said:
My speakers currently sound very mediocre and I am looking to see what is the main problem.

For some reason i couldn't attach the image, so here's the link
https://imgur.com/LmN6wq3

My chain is as such Hegel h190 > Harbeth SLH5+ XD
I stream spotify using h190.

Here are some potential problems I see with the setup. What do you think is the main culprit?

1. Room acoustic.
Being such a large living room, the speakers just couldn't perform. If this is the case, is a room correction device the best?

2. Playing Spotify through H190
Spotify do not have the best quality and streaming it through h190 degrades it further? Best solution is to change to tidal?

3. Speakers stands
These stands are cheap china stands made of MDF. In a bid to improve the sound, I actually added isoacoustics puck between the speakers and stands to isolate the speakers. If this is the case, best solution is to change to heavy frame and use the isoacoustic pucks? Since harbeth love open frame stands so I suppose the pucks will give it the isolation.

4. Others?
Click to expand...

I bet on:

a) room acoustics and

b) listening too far from the speakers.



If your current stands don't rock or wobble there's no point in replacing them.
 
I think glass and hard surfaces are going to be a real problem there, at least in terms of achieving a sound quality justifying the value of your speakers. Ideally you would be about 6 - 10 feet.

To be frank, the room is not too large for those Harbeths, at least with regard to how far you're sitting from the speakers.

Spotify can sound excellent, not the issue.

Stands may very marginally improve things, though very unlikely to be transformative.

Can you engage the services of a friendly dealer? Show them your space via pictures, have them let you try out different speakers? Or, you can try digital room correction, though personally I never found that satisfactory.

Can you elaborate on what specifically sounds bad to you? Is it bass, etc?
 
thanks for all the feedback!

Seems like many of you seem to point towards room acoustics.

I do not have the luxury to change the living room just to make it fit for hifi listening.

i guess getting a room correction device will be the best way forward
 
Or even a tall acoustic panel to place at the first reflection point along the window, assuming you can't install curtains.
 
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If that is your actual room I’m not surprised it sounds mediocre. It would be difficult to design a room that would be worse. I’d be tempted to either use very near field speakers or sell the speakers and use headphones.
it’s not the size it is all that glass and hard surfaces. Move, every aspect of life will improve overnight.
 
yunie_ said:
thanks for all the feedback!

Seems like many of you seem to point towards room acoustics.

I do not have the luxury to change the living room just to make it fit for hifi listening.

i guess getting a room correction device will be the best way forward
Click to expand...

Unfortunately a room correction device will only deal with the bass issues, not the excess reflectiveness and flutter echo.
You could/should also move the sofa closer to the speakers as that will increase the direct/reflected sound ratio. Alternatively you could buy narrow directivity speakers such as Kef, Arendal, Buchardt, Amphion or more expensive front-loaded horns as these will beam the midrange and treble towards the listening spot thus interacting less with the room.
 
Are you not able to have the sofa facing the window (rotate sofa and speakers 90º to the left)?
 
I agree with those who've mentioned the room as the issue. As a general comment, there are a lot of hard reflective surfaces, and very few surfaces that will provide either diffraction or absorption. More specifically, the speakers are placed asymmetrically, close to the side wall with lots of glass in it. I imagine this could create a lot of glare/smear, and make the sound fatiguing.

I fear that the Harbeths will be more affected by this than some other speakers. They have an 8 inch bass/mid, handing over (around 3kHz?) to a 1 inch tweeter. This creates a significant discontinuity in off-axis response, and a large bulge in the power response where the tweeter comes in. That's the last thing you want in a room with too many hard reflective surfaces close to the speakers.

I'm not sure if room correction will help much - it tends to be best at fixing bass problems. Many years ago I tried Tact room correction with a pair of Harbeth C7s - it helped make the bass more solid, but messed up the midrange. I suspect modern room correction might be better at leaving the midrange alone, and maybe improving the bass would be enough. But really you stand a better chance of fixing things if you can improve the acoustic environment.

If you can rearrange the room slightly to get the speakers (and TV?) closer to the middle of the wall they're on, and away from the glass, that could help. As could adding furnishings that absorb or diffract.
 
irb said:
I fear that the Harbeths will be more affected by this than some other speakers. They have an 8 inch bass/mid, handing over (around 3kHz?) to a 1 inch tweeter. This creates a significant discontinuity in off-axis response, and a large bulge in the power response where the tweeter comes in. That's the last thing you want in a room with too many hard reflective surfaces close to the speakers.
Click to expand...

Indeed, as can be seen in the horizontal response plot (between 4 and 6KHz):

615HLS5fig5.jpg

https://www.stereophile.com/content/harbeth-super-hl5plus-loudspeaker-measurements
 
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Haven't heard those speakers, but FWIW a dealer I visited had them (I think this same model), and he remarked that he thought the new XDs sounded brighter than past Harbeths and also ATCs (which I was auditioning).
 
If it were me and I had to live there I would create some discrete areas. So a sitting/ music area with a sofa and two big soft armchairs the sofa would be closer to and face the speakers and the armchairs would be at the reflection points on each side. Behind the left chair I would put a big bookcase against the window. There would be nothing between the speakers except perhaps a plant. If I could I'd move the telly. If you lived in Sheffield you could drop it out of the window and see if you could hit a milk float for 8 points or a Police car for 10!
 
If possible;

Toe in the speakers.

Move your listening position nearer the speakers --

Try to get the left hand Harbie away from the Glass.

Move both speakers in front of the media cabinet.


When l had Harbeth's C7ES2 and the 3's they were not what l describe as a room filling sound regardless of amplifier/source.


Try some form of room treatment.

Rug on the floor between yourself and the speakers.


A proper pair of speaker stands.

Good luck.

:)
 
My experience with harbeths (shl5 non pluses and p3esr's) is that they like to be toed in so that you just see the very edge of the speaker from the seating position (and then you are getting less reflected sound) and following Alan Shaw's recommendation here
re distance from speaker to seat i.e sit 1.5x distance between the speakers). Others might disagree but I have not really liked them in an equilateral triangle set up. But as other posters have said the large expanse of glass may be a problem.
 
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