Summer is here; time for enjoying those outdoor zones! I have a pair of Audiofrog AW28T speakers mounted under my eaves at each end of an open deck, fed by a stereo amp and a RPi/Boss Dac. (The distance between the speakers is 2-3x the distance between the speakers and the ears of the people sitting on the deck.) What’s the best way to configure/mix the sound going to each of them in Muse for best sound across the whole deck?
Would you just run both speakers in mono, or do some kind of crossfeed? There’s no seating “sweet spot,” and I’m not concerned with imaging or soundstage at all, but a little stereo effect might be nice. Mostly I just want the best frequency response, no matter where people sit.
By nature no one is able to give you some EQ settings for your speakers for “best frequency response, no matter where people sit” on your deck, from the distance . This wish is impossible to fulfill .
But first, don’t fully understand your question regarding mono or stereo. The speakers point to some listening/sitting area? Somehow similar to seats in a living room?
If it’s something like that, then frequency response will be your easier problem. But taking the listening area/room into account it’s also acoustic timing.
In such cases you my want to do some measurements with REW and a mic to create a stereo filter file which then can be imported into roon instead of fiddling with the EQ. If properly executed such a process can give pretty decent results. But this takes time, esp. if you’ve never done it before.
As an alternative simply play with the EQ from different listening positions until you have a pleasing sound.
If the speakers are placed really far apart, then as you suggest you might be better off with mono, but really the best way to decide that is to try it.
I’d your not using a sub then you might want to boost the low end frequencies a bit with a PEQ filter.
But probably the easier option is to use an auto EQ app like HouseCurve
Take multiple readings across the centre of the deck and average them before creating a filter / importing it into Roon.
See the HouseCurve docs, they’re pretty good / easy to follow, there also a thread here on using it.
I’d probably keep any auto EQ measurement below 1KHz as you’re not EQ’ing for a single sweet spot, instead focus on the lower end frequencies which will have longer wavelengths - but don’t be too aggressive, even the low frequencies will have peaks & troughs across your patio.
Probably not what you’d want to hear, but I’d recommend to relocate the speakers to the deck’s center and just slightly angle them outward from each other for best overall uniform coverage.
. This wish is impossible to fulfill