Help choosing studio monitors

[Lumar]

I need some help choosing studio monitors.

I'll list my questions first and leave the specifics at the bottom of this post.
It's a lengthy one

Here are my options:
- Yamaha HS5 Pair ≈ R8500 (€515 / $560 US)
- Yamaha HS7 Matched Pair ≈ R10 500 (€635 / $690 US)
- Kali Audio LP6 Pair (1st gen) ≈ R10 500 (€635 / $690 US)
- KRK V6S4 Pair ≈ R15 600 (€945 / $1030 US)
- KRK RP5G4 Pair ≈ R6000 (€363 / $400 US)
- KRK RP7G4 Pair ≈ R8 400 (€510 / $555 US)
- Adam T5V Pair ≈ R9000 ( €545 / $ 595 US
- Adam T7V Pair ≈ R12 000 (€726 / $795 US)

My budget is ≈ R10 000 (€605 / $660 US)
This is what it costs over here in South Africa (ZAR = R). I took my currency and directly converted it to € & $ to make it easier for you to decide.

Here are my questions:

1) Regardless of budget; which of my options listed would you choose as the best sounding monitor overall?

2) Within my budget; which of my options listed would you choose as the best sounding monitor overall?

3) One thing to note is, is that the Kali LP6 are more than double the price where I stay compared to what you could get them for new in North America. A big selling point for these monitors are the outstanding sound quality you can get for the price. At the price that I am going to pay for them - are they still worth the money compared to my other options?

4) Are the KRK V6S4 worth the money as the are the most expensive on my list. They are 55% more expensive than the LP6 and HS7.

If you don't mind, please let me know what your reasoning is.
Any advice and suggestions are welcome.

Background & specifics:
I need to get a decent pair of studio monitors for a small room. The monitors can't be placed far from the wall, as space in the room is limited. The room currently has no treatment. I am planning to put up some acoustic panels in the near future. Proper bass traps can't really be installed. I'm staying in a rental where permanent fixtures would not be possible. I would definitely say it's a less than ideal space for audio.

I need something that sounds accurate/flat and translates well or at leats as much as it can be for the price listed. Basically all the important stuff we need in a studio monitor Yes, I know that I might be asking for a lot at the price I’m willing to pay; I just need something that meets these requirements as close as possible. It's going to be used for mixing, editing vocals, production - all studio use-cases. Not for listening / HiFi.

I currently use Yamaha HS8's paired with a KRK S12 sub in my much larger studio with decent bass traps and acoustics.
I'm now temporarily using a pair of M-Audio BX8a in this small room currently and they sound horrendous compared to my HS8.

Unfortunately, I live in South Africa where prices, variety and flexibility regarding returns isn't that great. I also don't have the option to try these monitors first. If I buy them and I don't like it, I can't return them - I'll have to sell them on the second hand market which can also be tricky to deal with and probably lose money by reselling. If this wasn't the case, I would probably not be asking advice from all of you on this group.

If it turns out that my best option is over budget, then I'm willing to bite the bullet and pay up. I need to buy with the long-term in mind.

Room dimensions:
2,7m (W) x 3,2m (L) x 2,9m (H)
8.85ft (W) X 10.5ft (L) x 9.5ft (H)

I only listed smaller monitors as I’m following the “the smaller the room is, the smaller the monitors need to be” advice. If you think that there are 8” monitors that would suit my needs and be fine with the size of my room, please let me know.

[no.lens.cap]

I just got a pair of like new KRK RP7G4 via ebay for ~$300 USD and really like them so far (~1 week of use). The built in eq on the speakers let me tune them a bit for my space which was nice. Other than that I dont have much else to say other than sound treatment in the room and speaker placement can majorly affect how any speaker sounds. If you have to worry about neighbors and roommates, you might consider going the headphones rabbit hole.

[Heats with Nvidia]

16 hours ago, Lumar said:

I need some help choosing studio monitors.

As a guy from Europe, who repairs those, i had some bad experiences with KRKs, especially the Rockit series.

I had a lot of them fail and don`t really like their sound, but from all the other speakers you mentioned, i only knor the HS8.

This hopefully is a problem of the past for KRK, and maybe they were just much more popular here than all other speakers here, but for a couple of years, the vast majority of studio speakers i repaired or was asked to repair, were KRKs.

 

Speakers i can reccommend: The newer Neumann stuff is quite nice, but not in your price range.

 

Also, with smaller loudspeakers, you need to think about the bass. The smaller ones won`t provide a good representation of the bass, which can be a little bit of an advantage in a small room, but its just not there. If you can, place mobile bass traps in the room, like a rolled up matress or built something out of wood thats movable.

[Derkoli]

1: For the best "sounding" I'd go with the Adam T5V if you're using a subwoofer, or Adam T7V if you aren't using one. The tweeters sound incredibly natural and have extremely good transient response.

 

2: See above.

 

3: For the use case, then yes. They are worth it. For the price they have decent low end response, and are very flat.

 

4: No. KRK stuff is notorious for reliability issues, and I personally think other options exist at every single price point that are superior.

 

Given all the factors, I'd go for the Kali LP6. They have good DSP built in (that can compensate for being close to a back wall), are front ported, very flat for the price and have good low end response. In this case, they make the most sense.

 

If you had a subwoofer to use in conjunction with the monitors, I'd look into the Genelec 8010 AP.

 

Eventually, I'd highly recommend investing in Sonarworks, or learning how to use REW. Using a measurement mic and DSP to flatten out your monitors will improve things in essentially all situations.

[rice guru]

The best sounding thing I've heard that you have listed is the Adam t5v but I would listen to @Derkoli much more knowledgeable than me. Just wanted to also say the t5v is great and is on my personal buy list

[cmndr]

If budget is a concern, craigslist, FB market place or the local equivalent is the first place to go. Audio gear (especially the passive stuff) usually lasts 10-50 years if it's not abused and the price DROPS like crazy (think 40-80% off) when you buy used.

You might also want to consider head phones. They're cheaper and you won't need to worry about others or the space that you're in.

Here are a few reviews from "good" audio sites with good equipment. I believe both authors use the same measuring gear.
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/yamaha-hs5-powered-monitor-review.10967/
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/yamaha-hs7-review-studio-monitor.19761/
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/adam-t5v-review-studio-monitor.18122/

https://www.erinsaudiocorner.com/loudspeakers/kali_lp-6v2/



As an FYI your room dimensions in imperial units are off by 10x. An  89' x105' would literally be around 50x larger than the room I'm in right now. Your room is small enough that room modes WILL be a thing for lower bass frequencies.

Some things to keep in the back of your mind (warning, most of my knowledge comes from the home theater world).
1. Sound is produced by sound waves. These waves interact with your room. Acoustic panels in the area where you'd have the first reflections from your speakers can help. speakers are also ideally not too close to the wall.
2. Bass is hard to get right especially in a small room. I have my subwoofer next to a closer. I had HORRIBLE peaks and nulls until I placed 3 accoustic panels in my closet and created mini chambers. The bass isn't perfectly even but it's not AWFUL now.
3. DSPs, room correction, etc. are all nice and can help you get better results.
4. Some passive speakers (plus an amp) might work 'well enough' for monitoring, especially if you have your own DSP of some sort. E.g. Emotiva B1+. With that said, take this suggestion with a grain of salt, I'm NOT a professional and am only suggesting it if it ends up helping you hit your budget target. Do be aware that going this route usually means you NEED a subwoofer (frequency drop off at ~80Hz) and getting it integrated well could be hard.

[Goldilock]

The bigger problem is your are too small to effectively manage low frequency modes (i.e. low bass notes appear to be boomy)

 

Personally i would get speaker with 5" woofer like Yamaha HS5, and the spend the rest of money building bass trap and absorption panel which is not cheap.

[Derkoli]

On 3/17/2022 at 12:58 AM, rice guru said:

The best sounding thing I've heard that you have listed is the Adam t5v but I would listen to @Derkoli much more knowledgeable than me. Just wanted to also say the t5v is great and is on my personal buy list

I tend to actually prefer the T5V over the T7V. The smaller woofer just sounds much nicer in the midrange to me.

[cmndr]

On 3/17/2022 at 5:38 PM, Goldilock said:

The bigger problem is your are too small to effectively manage low frequency modes (i.e. low bass notes appear to be boomy)

 

Personally i would get speaker with 5" woofer like Yamaha HS5, and the spend the rest of money building bass trap and absorption panel which is not cheap.

I'd argue that NULLS are a bigger issue than peaks (i.e. boominess). Peaks can be EQed away... Nulls not so much.
Bass traps only do so much. Ideally there's multiple subs as well.

Hence the suggestion for headphones. Headphones effectively remove the room from the equation.

[The Flying Sloth]

Again, Listen to Derkoli over me but I mostly agree

1) Based on the options you've given the Adam options are leagues better than anything else but I have a soft spot for Tannoy and would personally suggest you take a look at their Gold series. For any budget, well, we're getting into dangerous territory here because the best monitors depend on your room, how treated it is an a bunch of other factors than just the monitor itself. Genelec and PSIaudio are big players I don't have much experience personally but they are trusted in many professional studios so take from that what you will.

2) T5V, but I like the Tannoy Gold 5 better, here's a comparison but try to hear them in person and you'll see what I mean. The top end on the Adams sounds a little harsh to my ears but YMMV 

3) I have no experience with this set and won't make any comment.

4) Let me put it this way, the biggest selling point of KRK monitors are that they are a cool colour, as a studio monitor most options are 'meh' at best. They're overrated, majorly.

 

[H713]

22 hours ago, cmndr said:

I'd argue that NULLS are a bigger issue than peaks (i.e. boominess). Peaks can be EQed away... Nulls not so much.
Bass traps only do so much. Ideally there's multiple subs as well.

Hence the suggestion for headphones. Headphones effectively remove the room from the equation.

EQ isn't a solution to room modes. Peaks are the result of a resonance. While you can try to compensate for that amplitude peak with EQ, you can't compensate for the energy stored in that resonance. In practice, the energy stored in those resonances results in extended decay times for certain frequencies.

 

For the EE minded, think of it like an LC circuit. With low-loss parts, it'll ring for a disturbingly long time, usually when you don't want it to. Energy sloshes back and forth between the capacitor and the inductor until it eventually is dissipated through parasitic properties (mostly resistance). For the ME minded, think of it like a pendulum, or a mass on the end of a spring. Once you excite it, that bugger keeps on going for a while. A tuning fork is another good example. Energy is being converted from potential energy, to kinetic energy, back to potential, etc.

 

There are lots of great books on acoustics written by people much smarter than me. The usual solution tends to be fiberglass panels (Corning 703 is the usual choice) for mid and high frequencies, and resonant bass traps to attack the room modes. Some rooms are also deceptively crappy. For my first two years of undergrad, I lived in a new construction residence hall that had truly awful acoustics. It's been a few years, but from what I remember the ceiling consisted of a single layer of ~1.252 cm drywall screwed to steel studs (I want to say they were spaced about half a meter apart). That ceiling rang like a bell, and had a decay time on the order of 500 ms. 

 

 

Headphones have their own issues, especially for production use. It isn't a "solution" to room issues. One big problem is that it's very easy to lose perspective for how loud things are when using headphones. This is part of why it's easy to suffer hearing damage when using headphones. I tend to be pretty conservative with audio levels anyway (both on speakers and in headphones). In my case, usually what happens is that I edit a video / EQ a track / whatever on headphones, trying my hardest to get it right. Then I'll play it back on monitors and say to myself "WTF dude, are you deaf? This sounds like ass".

 

 

 

[cmndr]

50 minutes ago, H713 said:

EQ isn't a solution to room modes. Peaks are the result of a resonance. While you can try to compensate for that amplitude peak with EQ, you can't compensate for the energy stored in that resonance. In practice, the energy stored in those resonances results in extended decay times for certain frequencies.

If you restrict the user to a SINGLE seating position, EQ can partially mitigate peaks at that specific location (reduce the intensity of the signal for that frequency). It does very little for nulls since you'd need a profound level of energy to overcome them and even then you'd have distorted mud for sound.

Ideally you DO have multiple subwoofers in different locations so that the combined frequency curve is generally more smooth.

 

50 minutes ago, H713 said:

There are lots of great books on acoustics written by people much smarter than me. The usual solution tends to be fiberglass panels (Corning 703 is the usual choice) for mid and high frequencies, and resonant bass traps to attack the room modes. Some rooms are also deceptively crappy.

Room treatment helps. He's still in a small cube. You can only do so much (small cube is essentially the worst case scenario for bass). I say this as someone who's only listening for fun and I've seen first hand how fiddling with panels mitigated some awful nulls.

 

50 minutes ago, H713 said:

Headphones have their own issues, especially for production use. It isn't a "solution" to room issues. One big problem is that it's very easy to lose perspective for how loud things are when using headphones. This is part of why it's easy to suffer hearing damage when using headphones. I tend to be pretty conservative with audio levels anyway (both on speakers and in headphones). In my case, usually what happens is that I edit a video / EQ a track / whatever on headphones, trying my hardest to get it right. Then I'll play it back on monitors and say to myself "WTF dude, are you deaf? This sounds like ass".

 

I'm well aware it's far from perfect. This is a secondary location.

At some level you're dealing with tradeoffs no matter what.

Given the limited budget, the small space, etc. headphones are worth considering. They may or may not be the answer.
https://splice.com/blog/mix-on-headphones-or-speakers/

For what it's worth you can level set to a fixed reference on SOME amplifiers

On an anecdotal level my HD800s have a "more accurate" bass response than my SVS PB12-NSD in my room.
If I want to get reasonably close on the bass accuracy using subwoofers I'd need a second (maybe even 3 or 4) subwoofer and each of those subs costs about as much as my headphones did. And I'd need bass traps and possibly need to look into elevating some of the subs and...
And that's just to tackle low frequencies.

[Heats with Nvidia]

When it comes to bass, If you have a subwoofer, it is a good idea, to put it on wheels (temporarily) and try it in as many different places in the room as possible. This helps a lot with the reflections. Also, resonators and absorbers are of course a really good idea.

[HenrySalayne]

On 3/18/2022 at 3:42 AM, Derkoli said:

I tend to actually prefer the T5V over the T7V. The smaller woofer just sounds much nicer in the midrange to me.

This is basically always the case (because physics!). Two-way near-field studio monitors should not have more than 6 inches for the low-mid driver.

On 3/26/2022 at 8:45 AM, cmndr said:

Ideally you DO have multiple subwoofers in different locations so that the combined frequency curve is generally more smooth.

That would be an edge-case scenario. It's sheer luck if additional subwoofers actually improve the situation. With each added subwoofer you'll get more modes and interference that will just overlay the existing pattern. This will break you're large patterns into smaller pieces but the amplitude doesn't change.

You need to get the energy out of the room. One solution would be passive absorbers. Alternatively you could use additional subwoofers to "soak" energy from your main subwoofer at critical locations. Either passively as a damped resonator or even actively with a phase inverted attenuated and delayed signal.

[cmndr]

1 hour ago, HenrySalayne said:

That would be an edge-case scenario. It's sheer luck if additional subwoofers actually improve the situation. With each added subwoofer you'll get more modes and interference that will just overlay the existing pattern. This will break you're large patterns into smaller pieces but the amplitude doesn't change.

You need to get the energy out of the room. One solution would be passive absorbers. Alternatively you could use additional subwoofers to "soak" energy from your main subwoofer at critical locations. Either passively as a damped resonator or even actively with a phase inverted attenuated and delayed signal.

I'll caveat that I'm MOSTLY speaking from the home theater perspective...

2+ subwoofers help because they excite room modes in different ways. You're far less likely to have bad nulls and peaks are easier to EQ downward (easier to cut output by a factor of 10 than it is to INCREASE output by 10x)

https://www.stereophile.com/content/jl-audio-fathom-f110v2-powered-subwoofer-measurements

At some level the idea is that sound is based on pressure and that pressure is additive. If you have a 20Db dip in sound output (a null) then there's NO WAY you can EQ it away by simply providing 100x the power to that area (a bunch of it will be absorbed). A second subwoofer generating frequencies in that region might only have a 5db dip in that range... so how far you off from baseline ends up being ~5db (annoying but tolerable) instead of 20db. And the parts that add up - think 10Db peak... you just lower the EQ (so software or room correction a la REW/Audysey/Dirac) so  the offending speaker(s) putout less at that frequency.

I can personally speak to room treatment helping (my sub is next to a closet, I ended up with TERRIBLE nulls) as moving 3 acoustic panels to near the sub gave me usable bass across much of the frequency range. No more gaps at ~25Hz, 50Hz, etc.

Ideally you do both. When I get some time, I'm getting a second subwoofer (probably a "slim" one, that will slide under a bed) and placing it on the other side of my seating area in the hope of evening out the response in the 35-80Hz range.
 

 

[HenrySalayne]

8 hours ago, cmndr said:

At some level the idea is that sound is based on pressure and that pressure is additive. If you have a 20Db dip in sound output (a null) then there's NO WAY you can EQ it away by simply providing 100x the power to that area (a bunch of it will be absorbed). A second subwoofer generating frequencies in that region might only have a 5db dip in that range... so how far you off from baseline ends up being ~5db (annoying but tolerable) instead of 20db. And the parts that add up - think 10Db peak... you just lower the EQ (so software or room correction a la REW/Audysey/Dirac) so  the offending speaker(s) putout less at that frequency.

You're just looking at one (!) spot and only one (!) frequency. And yes, a second subwoofer might improve a single position in your room. But it will also create new nulls because the two subwoofers will interfere. So you will not really gain anything.

Acoustic treatment should always have the highest priority. If more energy is absorbed, fewer and less pronounced modes will be present.

 

[cmndr]

9 hours ago, HenrySalayne said:

You're just looking at one (!) spot and only one (!) frequency. And yes, a second subwoofer might improve a single position in your room. But it will also create new nulls because the two subwoofers will interfere. So you will not really gain anything.

Acoustic treatment should always have the highest priority. If more energy is absorbed, fewer and less pronounced modes will be present.

 

What matters more (second subwoofer vs room treatment) will depend on the room someone is in and how one goes about it. A second sub in a position that's "out of phase" is usually easier to pull off vs trying to get treatment just right.

TWO subwoofers generally improves multiple seats as well. Think of it as changing the bass coming from one source to an entire plane/wall. You need to worry about room interactions a bit less.
EQ helps a single spot more than it helps multiple spots (and it often makes other spots worse, and it's usually only effective for reducing peaks, not nulls)
Sound treatment generally has a modest effect overall for bass frequencies (you need a lot of rockwool [think 4-10" worth and NOT compacted] or sand and foam basically does nothing). If you have a bookshelf full of books those do tend to help in corners. The main issue is it's very easy to spend several thousand dollars for only modest effects.

The reason two subs helps is because the sound reflections from each subwoofer are not perfectly correlated (ideally inversely correlated at the frequencies you care about) so the overall signal reaching the person will be closer to the overall average that a single subwoofer would put out if you didn't have walls at all. You'd want place the subs somewhat asymmetrically (think one in a corner and one offset from a corner) and run them at different phases so that the second sub would have peaks where the first sub has nulls and vice versa. If done perfectly (haha, no, this never happens) you'd end up with an very smooth frequency response in the listening position and you'd have an acceptably smooth frequency response over a decent area.

I'm not saying room treatment doesn't help. It made a NOTICEABLE difference for me (my sub is next to a closet and the closet created an echo chamber and I had awful nulls). I'm saying it's only part of the equation. The acoustic panels I bought had been meant for walls and mid-frequencies. Essentially using 4 panels (about 8" total thickness) is not cost effective compared to just buying another sub. I can still tell differences in bass response when I'm in different parts of my room.



For a fun calculator and some info on room modes - https://amcoustics.com/tools/amroc?l=270&w=320&h=290&r60=0.6 | https://amcoustics.com/articles/roommodes
Just be aware interactions with things like closets, adjacent rooms, etc. aren't well accounted for.
 

[HenrySalayne]

1 hour ago, cmndr said:

The main issue is it's very easy to spend several thousand dollars for only modest effects.

If you don't know what your doing, yes. Air gaps and corners are the magic ingredient. But most people just glue some 50 mm foam to their wall and wonder why it does nothing when it comes to bass.

 

2 hours ago, cmndr said:

I'm not saying room treatment doesn't help. It made a NOTICEABLE difference for me (my sub is next to a closet and the closet created an echo chamber and I had awful nulls). I'm saying it's only part of the equation. The acoustic panels I bought had been meant for walls and mid-frequencies. Essentially using 4 panels (about 8" total thickness) is not cost effective compared to just buying another sub. I can still tell differences in bass response when I'm in different parts of my room.

I should have read the entirety of your post first. Exactly what I'm saying.

Next time use something like this and you will get way more out of you money than buying another subwoofer will do.

http://www.acousticmodelling.com/8layers/porous.php

 

2 hours ago, cmndr said:

The reason two subs helps is because the sound reflections from each subwoofer are not perfectly correlated (ideally inversely correlated at the frequencies you care about) so the overall signal reaching the person will be closer to the overall average that a single subwoofer would put out if you didn't have walls at all. You'd want place the subs somewhat asymmetrically (think one in a corner and one offset from a corner) and run them at different phases so that the second sub would have peaks where the first sub has nulls and vice versa. If done perfectly (haha, no, this never happens) you'd end up with an very smooth frequency response in the listening position and you'd have an acceptably smooth frequency response over a decent area.

This is completely wrong. You can just look at both subwoofers individually and use the principle of superposition to figure out what will happen. If sub A has a null at your current listening position and sub B doesn't, you just don't need sub A at all. Just move the subwoofer you already have to a place that works for you listening position.

 

[cmndr]

1 hour ago, HenrySalayne said:

This is completely wrong. You can just look at both subwoofers individually and use the principle of superposition to figure out what will happen. If sub A has a null at your current listening position and sub B doesn't, you just don't need sub A at all. Just move the subwoofer you already have to a place that works for you listening position.

This is only true if you're only looking at a SINGLE frequency range.

Let's say you have Sub A in Position 1 with nulls around 23Hz and 46Hz and you have sub B in Position 2 with nulls around 36Hz and 72Hz.

If you chose one or the other you still end up with nulls.

The combined frequency response won't have any severe nulls and whatever combined peaks there are can be tamed via EQ.
And adding in a second sub increases the benefits of EQ since you'd expect to play each sub 3-6dB lower (so you effectively have 3dB more EQ headroom).
 

[HenrySalayne]

11 minutes ago, cmndr said:

If you chose one or the other you still end up with nulls.

If you are ignoring that there are an infinite number of positions and orientations.

Fun fact: if the subwoofer is closer than λ/2 there are no nulls. If the subwoofer is "only" 2 m away from you, you don't need to worry about anything up to 80 Hz. There are also no nulls in the adjacency of walls or other surfaces following the same principle. Because the authors room is tiny, this applies to the entire room.

Another fun fact: that's why subwoofers in cars work so well.

[cmndr]

2 hours ago, HenrySalayne said:

If you are ignoring that there are an infinite number of positions and orientations.

Could you rephrase and expound on this? While there are an infinite number of positions, why does this matter?

You don't need to get "the best" position merely avoiding the worst 3/4 positions someone tests is probably "good enough", and each of those positions will interact with the room in a different manner, generating different frequency responses across a range of positions. In an ideal world you would find two spots for your subwoofers that would largely complement each other (i.e. the nulls associated with one position match to the peaks in another and vice versa; or at the very least the nulls are different).

As you increase the subwoofer count in a room, room effects start to diminish and you generally get more even bass response in both a single listening position and across a great number of listening positions. This also has the benefit of generally making EQ "less harmful" to auxiliary positions when optimizing the primary listening position.

This isn't new or cutting edge information. Harman has a simulation study on it and they backed it up with empirical measurements as well
https://www.harman.com/documents/multsubs_0.pdf

The TLDR of this study - 5000 subwoofers in random locations = near perfect frequency response over a large seating area in simulation but entirely unpractical; 50 subs in random locations = pretty good but impractical; 4 subwoofers in strategic locations = almost as good as 5000; 2 = decent; 1 = meh
I want to emphasize, Harman empirically verified subsamples of the simulation results in an actual room as well.
 

 

 

2 hours ago, HenrySalayne said:

Fun fact: if the subwoofer is closer than λ/2 there are no nulls. If the subwoofer is "only" 2 m away from you, you don't need to worry about anything up to 80 Hz

Any source for this?

I'm ~1m from my sub and I could DEFINITELY hear nulls - hence the comment about improvements with respect to adding treatment to the inside of my closet. If I open the closet I hear a subtle difference and if I place my head inside the closet I can hear differences when I move my head around. All of this is occurring with 2 meters of the sub and when I pull my couch forward for movies I'm still within 2m.
 

A non-negligible chunk of the sound waves I hear from my sub are off of a back wall, a closet door and then whatever comes from inside of the closet. This was enough to cause a null at around 20Hz and also around 40Hz. My SO even commented that it sounded like something was missing and she's not an audiophile by any means.

 

Where did you learn this? Provide a link. This sounds like an internet urban legend.

 

 

 

2 hours ago, HenrySalayne said:

Another fun fact: that's why subwoofers in cars work so well.

A 10 second search pulled this up...
https://www.caraudio.com/threads/nulls-in-frequency-response.557786/

Quote

Nulls between 60-80hz in cars are pretty common. Upfiring a woofer in most vehicles cause one at 60hz in most vehicles and many trunks have them closer to 70 or 80hz regardless of driver orientation.

For what it's worth when I get time I'll probably end up measuring the heck out of things. I actually was a beta tester and I think I might still have access to this
https://simplehomecinema.com/2021/12/16/multeq-x-features-and-thoughts/

I do expect I'd benefit from moving my sub but I'd also need to move my AVR and I don't know if every cable is long enough.
 

[cmndr]

-- accidental double post --