What causes "cupped hands"?


I've been dealing with this puzzling phenomenon for several months. I can't seem to rid my system of the "cupped hands" or megaphone effect. Acoustic treatments seem to help but haven't diminished it to an acceptable point. I've been told that cables can cause it but haven't been able to confirm this. The system consists of:

Mark Levinson 390S CD Player
Antique Sound Lab KMP-60 Fox DT Amps
Aerial Acoustics 7B Speakers
1.5 Meter ZCable LIVE v4 Interconnects
4' ZCable PASSION v3 Speaker Cables

Any ideas?
skipperrik
If my math is right it seems you have your speakers 2.5' away from the side walls and 10' apart. The first thing I'd do is try moving the speakers closer together and possibly a little further out--maybe try something like a 7' or 8' equilateral triangle setup. In any event, I'd want the speakers a little further from the side walls to let them open up a bit and decouple them more from the room. Best of luck.

Tim
If you have the speakers 10' apart and are sitting 9' from them you are too close to the speakers or they are too far apart.....Think in terms of X x 1 wide and X x 1.15 to your ears........Something else that might be causing this is cable break-in as had something like cupped hands here a few days ago but leave everything on and playing as trying to burn in some teflon caps I use to roll off the lows in my main amps......Turn off your amps when not listening, but leave the CD player running on repeat for a few days to see if the problem doesn't go away.....
Could it be a speaker/amp problem? How powerful are the Fox DT amps? The 7B is listed 86db with a 4ohm min. Some speakers require a lot of current and can sound "closed in" or "cupped" with less muscular amps. Have you tryed other electronics?
I like Tim's suggestion re setting up an equi-tri first.
I also found that 5" midranges USUALLY sound "cuppier" than 6-7" midranges, all other things being equal. Something to do with 2-pi/4-pi stuff and resultant non-linearities with cabinet edge-diffraction. Found Aeriels to sound that way, as well that otherwise-nice Linn 3-way 5176 (?).
I found the Revel F30 and especially the Verity Audio Fidelio and Parsifals to NOT exhibit this 5" mid cuppiness, however. Somehow 6.5" 2-ways sound more easily "open", and are thus more forgiving of room setups.
Keep trying, and good luck.
I'll further add that I 've found that the cuppiness relates to a mild peak around 800-1k with 5" drivers. Similar peaks around 600Hz with 6.5- 7" mids CAN sound flatter. It's part of the reason designing (and integrating) a GREAT 3-way with a 5" is so tricky, and why 6.5-7" 2-ways are easier to live with. I tried in vain to voice a 3-way design of mine, but couldn't successfully get rid of that "pinched" peak at 800-1k with a nice Seas 5 that was otherwise super-smooth.
Bur Revel did get it right for $3500 with the F30, and of course the Verity Audio Parsifal is absolutely revelatory at $10k+.