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Room acoustics
A good listening room has just the right amount of
reflection and absorption. The performance of any
loudspeaker depends upon the speaker’s location
in the room and the acoustical conditions in that part
of the room. Furnishing, size and proportions all effect
tonal balance, imaging and bass characteristics.
In order to test the sonic balance of your room, stand in
the location where the speakers will be installed and clap
your hands two or three times. If the room is reverberant,
you will hear a sharpness or echo. If the room is dull, the
sound of the clap will decay rapidly and there will be little
or no echo. Large areas of glass, mirrors and wood-panel-
ling will reflect sound waves and often result in brittleness
and extreme brightness. You can correct this by breaking
these sound waves with softer surfaces; for instance,
draperies or wall hangings. In general try to create random
reflections.
Positioning
We recommend experimenting with loudspeaker
placement in order to obtain the best spectral balance,
openness and perception of depth.For good results, the
speakers should be no closer than 45 cm from the rear
wall, with at least 70 cm to the side walls. The space
between the loudspeakers should be free. Ideally the
space should be symmetrical in the area around your
loudspeakers. Moving the system towards a wall will
increase bass level while generally reducing openness.
Moving speakers too far into the room can result in a
“thin” overall presentation with loss of bass foundation.
The speakers will normally work well straight out and not
angled toward the listener for accurate sound staging.
The wide dispersion of the Elegance loudspeakers makes
this possible. Many have found the best room position to
be along an undraped longer wall, with the speakers as
far apart as the listener is for them. The feet under your
Elegance loudspeaker should be adjusted so that the
speaker will not “rock” as you push it from side to side.
POSITIONING YOUR SPEAKERS
Advice on cabling
Mixing different types and/or lengths of speaker cable
can upset the precise timing and balance of your speaker.
We recommend use of our own Kharma (KLC) pure
silver-gold loudspeaker cable for maximum result.
It’s important to connect your speakers in phase, which
means that the drivers are moving in and out in the same
direction and at the same time, in order to obtain
the best localisation of instruments and voices as well as
the deepest, most natural bass.
Advice on amplifier
Your Elegance loudspeaker is a high-performance system,
using ultra high quality drivers. Like all loudspeakers they
will reproduce distortion as well as music.Therefore the
choice of other audio components is critical and should
be made with care. When a speaker system is as
revealing as your Elegance loudspeaker is, musical
colorations and other forms of distortion become more
noticeable because these aberrations are no longer
masked by the speaker.
We recommend using an amplifier with sufficient power,
typically a minimum of 50 Watt. Better use a high-power
amplifier in stead of an underpowered amplifier that can
cause driver damage due to clipping distortion. This kind
of damage is considered and will not be covered under
warranty.
Use common sense
If you hear distortion or loud “cracking” sounds, the
amplifier or loudspeaker is being overdriven, turn the
volume down immediately.
Burn-in
Your Elegance loudspeaker system needs quite a bit of
playing time to reach maximum result. The use of a
Burn-in test-CD is recommended to speed up
this process. With a “burn-in” test CD, burnin time is
reduced to approximately 50 hours. After burning-in your
system, you can play demagnetising tracks for maximum
clarity. Your system will then be optimised and sound
more open, more detailed and display more natural
musical warmth.
USING YOUR KHARMA LOUDSPEAKERS