Give it a Tilt!
(Tilt your speakers backwards for a new experience!)
There are speaker manufacturers out there who go to great lengths to
achieve time-alignment in their speakers, which is to design their speaker
driver arrangements and baffles such that the sound from the drivers
arrive as a coherent source at the listener's position. Thiel loudspeakers
has an informative FAQ
on this. Ok, for those who have not the time to read that FAQ, here's
the summary : "Sloped baffles (can) result in better(?) sound".
: )
Sloped
baffles do more than just time-alignment, they also reduce standing
waves inside the cabinet since the front baffle and the rear cabinet
walls are now not parallel.
But for those of us who do not have sloped baffles to start with, myself
included, for matters of time alignment (actually, IMHO, in my case,
room acoustics seem to be the culprit for the difference), I have to
make do with tilting the entire speaker backwards by a small angle as
shown in the picture on the right.
Things
that you will need: |
3
or 4 adjustable cones for each speaker |
double-sided
tape (Now this is quite important! You do not want your
precious speaker to spill its brains out falling backwards!) |
Alternatively,
you can use |
3
or 4 fixed cones |
2
pieces of padding material to put under your front 2 cones.
I would recommend small bitumen squares. But then again,
anything goes, as long as your ear agrees, wood pieces could
work too.
But try to secure everything firmly! |
double-sided
tape |
|
Yes, result results results... sadly, that is what most audiophiles
/ audionuts are concerned with. (The process by which something is achieved
can be as interesting and satisfying as the result itself). For me,
I managed to get more perceived depth out of my soundstage. The characteristic
also changed towards a more laid-back nature. No, I do not attribute
this to "time-alignment", my results are probably due to a
combination of room acoustics effects (why do I say this, for my speakers
are not "time-aligned" to my listening position after I did
this tweak, but rather, the angle of the drivers with respect to my
room walls and my ears were changed. )
Well since this is a cheap tweak, give it a shot! "You'll never
know what you're gonna get!". Then perhaps you can share your results
with me and I shall "publish" them here for the benefit of
others.
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