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SPEAKER FORUMS >> DM944/945/946 >> Tilting-up the DM945's
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Message started by Fireblade on 04/27/12 at 14:00:32

Title: Tilting-up the DM945's
Post by Fireblade on 04/27/12 at 14:00:32

In preparing to receive my new DM945's, I had a carpenter build me a pair of solid teak (very hard, heavy tropical forest wood) ramps that meet the exact footprint of the speakers, and featuring a 10% inclination plane so as to raise the front of the speakers 1 inch relative to its back.

The suggestion came from Bob Ziegler (thanks Bob!), as an alternative to speaker stands (these ramps are lying on top of an 18" high, 6' long, 16" wide furniture-table.

I'm currently using the ramps with my existing JVC speakers (which are smaller than the DM945's) and the concept works just fine (adjusting for the different speakers' height, of course).

The idea is to have both woofer and tweeter sounds come at your ear level, and not reflecting that much from the floor. It is also a more practical solution (from a decor point of view) than having speaker stands well into the listening room.

The ramps feature 2 inches on the high end and 1 inch on the other end, and are nicely polished and varnished in black. They look great! I just thought I would share the tip with other DM945 owners out there. :)

Title: Re: Tilting-up the DM945's
Post by markv on 07/12/12 at 02:44:33

Fireblade - So you've had the Mini-Torii and DM945 for awhile now. Could you please give us a review of the speakers - how the bass response is with and without a sub. Also, I'd like to see a picture of your speaker ramps if possible.

Thanks

Title: Re: Tilting-up the DM945's
Post by Fireblade on 07/12/12 at 17:44:00

markv,

This is still an on-going process, where I'm trying to find the optimal setup given my existing physical listening conditions. One of the added variables is the wide difference in recorded source quality. I could honestly say, though, that right now, in general, everything I play in my system sounds great.

Bass (and all frequencies in general) is tricky when you don't have a symmetrical back wall working with the speakers. For example, my left channel is against a hallway, and not close to a corner. The right channel has a perpendicular back wall and therefore I find myself increasing the volume on my left channel to compensate. This adjustment helps all frequency ranges.

The bass in the DM945's is good, but not too deep. I think the SUB is required for frequencies lower than 60 Hz or so. I also had to replace the ramps, initially on top of a common furniture table, with monitor stands, so I could bring the speakers more into the listening room. The difference, as I reported earlier, is very significant, both in bass quality as well as soundstage and an airy presentation. The DM945's need enough space around them to work their magic.

The ramps should work well with enough distance from adjacent walls and de-coupled from the amp and dac (both conditions physically impossible to satisfy in my case). In particular, removing the speakers from the common furniture table eliminated damaging vibrations through amp and dac.

Regarding the ramps, I don't have pictures nor would I know how to upload them in this forum, but these are pretty simple:

9" wide x 10" deep, with heights of 2" on one end and 1" on the opposite end. This particular slope works well with my target sweetspot and the 18" height on my furniture table. The slope may increase or decrease according to your sweetspot's distance from the ramps. The idea is to have an imaginary straight line going from the tweeters to your ears as you sit in the sweetspot.

Now that I'm using the stands, I would strongly recommend these as a first option. The ramps are great if you cannot bring the speakers into the listening room (as was my case until I decided to physically set the stands and speakers at every listening session), and there's plenty of space around them.

I recently discovered that the ideal distance between speakers, in my case, is between 7.5 and 8 ft. I used to have them 9 to 9.5 ft apart, but the soundstage was not as good.

There, that's about all I have learned from the DM945's so far, but all this time I've had one hell of a good time listening to gorgeous music, which seems to improve gradually all the time :) There are more avenues pending, mind you, already considered to further fine-tune the gear, this is only sort of the first stage.

Title: Re: Tilting-up the DM945's
Post by markv on 07/13/12 at 01:23:16

Thanks for the update Fireblade

Title: Re: Tilting-up the DM945's
Post by Lon on 07/13/12 at 15:45:11

Glad you are enjoying everything so deeply FB!

Title: Re: Tilting-up the DM945's
Post by Fireblade on 07/14/12 at 16:01:25

Thanks, Lon. I'm sure enjoying every minute of it!

Title: Re: Tilting-up the DM945's
Post by Lon on 07/14/12 at 16:17:28

That's what we were hoping for! :)