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RE: Here you go

They're a 30-year-old pair of Tympani IVA's that I bought used a few years ago for embarrassingly little, considering how amazingly good they are. I've been doing some repairs in a desultory fashion and I'm planning to do Satie's mod to replace the old midrange panels with BG Neo 8's, which is why I have the grille cloths off.

Here they are lined up:



But they block the projection screen if I do that, so I'm using them in split configuration, with the woofers behind the midrange/tweeter panels.

I did paint the EPS diffusers. They really soak up the paint and it's amazing how much heavier they get. :-) I think they sound better than they did before they were painted. Not only do they become more reflective but the paint dampens a resonance, if you tap them you can hear that they're acoustically deader and less likely to color the sound. I think wooden diffusers would sound even better, but the EPS ones are really easy to move around and as I said I'm probably going to make some transparent ones anyway.

There's no need for a central diffuser since they're actually located right at the first reflection points of the midrange-tweeter panels. Here's a photo taken from my listening position with a mirror, you can see that the back of the mid-tweeter panel centered in it:



Anyway, based on my brief listeningg session anyway, I can't recommend diffusion enough. The difference in imaging was night and day.

If I had a huge listening room and could pull the speakers way out from the wall, it wouldn't matter, but I can only pull mine out 5' or so and without the diffusers, the image was just too flat. It actually sounded more lifelike when I was listening off axis. With the diffusers, I'm getting much more depth and it feels like I'm in a concert hall, the magic carpet effect. And that's with the speakers closer to the wall than I'd been running them -- I'd really like to be able to push them back a bit because the room is so small.

I think based on my brief listening that the diffusion also improves the ambiance of the room, since the backwave is being scattered and randomized. I have less of an image-just-between-the-speakers effect and a more spacious, natural presentation.

I also listened to a piano recording last night and that too was pretty spectacular, as in it felt like I was in the hall with the piano on stage in front of me.

I need to add some absorption to the room too, it's still pretty bare right now.

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