Detailed Speaker Setup and Optimization

Agree with that. There is always new stuff to learn. The curious are rewarded with knowledge. Just when you think you have it all figured out someone comes along and shows you something that you have never even considered and it can open a whole new world of exploration
I got new stuff this week and I am thrilled by what I am achieving. It broke the thought process I had from prevous experiences with other products in the same catagory. I tried it becasue my friend who I respect and trust his opinion ,becasue we have worked and listened together, suggested I try this. For me this is a very small group sadly and all of them have an open mind and the spirit that drives them to learn more.
after 50 years I know there is still much more to learn
 
Besides how loud we listen to music (where, as a result, personal biases are clearly creeping into the treatment/no treatment debate), I’ve also found that the type of music has a significant impact on treatment effectiveness. Three piece classical trio vs. Massive Attack. That sort of thing.
 
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Besides how loud we listen to music (where, as a result, personal biases are clearly creeping into the treatment/no treatment debate), I’ve also found that the type of music has a significant impact on treatment effectiveness. Three piece classical trio vs. Massive Attack. That sort of thing.

True. My system needs to be able to play everything well, because my listening tastes are varied.
 
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It is interesting. The best room/system I have heard is just a large room with carefully set up gear. It has nice furniture and decorations, carpeting and paintings, no conventional acoustic treatments. It was not even sealed, but open in two corners. The listening experience was extremely convincing, with each recording played at its optimal volume for the most convincing presentations I have heard. The only thing more remarkable than the quality of the components comprising the system was the skill with which the owner set up the speakers in the room and addressed every detail from power delivery to equipement support and cartridge tuning. The key was that the information embedded in the recording remained intact and was released into the room. This energy was controlled and managed, not removed by absorption. I had no compulsion to analyze the sound or break it down into pieces. The music simply existed in the room to be experienced. And the curious thing was that I did not need to sit nearfield for the music to feel immersive. I could walk around the room as one does at a club venue, or choose from a number of different seats, all presenting a slightly different perspective. The space was not designed for a designated seat.
 
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It is interesting. The best room/system I have heard is just a large room with carefully set up gear. It has nice furniture and decorations, carpeting and paintings, no conventional acoustic treatments. It was not even sealed, but open in two corners. The listening experience was extremely convincing, with each recording played at its optimal volume for the most convincing presentations I have heard. The only thing more remarkable than the quality of the components comprising the system was the skill with which the owner set up the speakers in the room and addressed every detail from power delivery to equipement support and cartridge tuning. The key was that the information embedded in the recording remained intact and was released into the room. This energy was controlled and managed, not removed by absorption. I had no compulsion to analyze the sound or break it down into pieces. The music simply existed in the room to be experienced. And the curious thing was that I did not need to sit nearfield for the music to feel immersive. I could walk around the room as one does at a club venue, or choose from a number of different seats, all presenting a slightly different perspective. The space was not designed for a designated seat.

Again, it depends. The need for acoustic room treatment or lack thereof depends on many factors.

The world would be simple if there was a simple rule for everything. There isn't.

It's nice to have experts who can provide suggestions, but in the end everyone has to follow their own path, guided by their own experience in their own particular situation.
 
I think you have no experience about DPOLS.
Even Small changes in upstream change the equation and speakers should move.
Changing amplifier completely change the equations.
Here we go again, copying from earlier post - Don't think you can set standards in stone. It depends. On many things. Changing amps doesn't mean the tonality shift requires necessitating moving speakers. The balance isn't as delicate as you make it seem. Some advice with someone with almost half a century in audio, music and engineering - don't dictate, offer suggestions.
 
Here we go again, copying from earlier post - Don't think you can set standards in stone. It depends. On many things. Changing amps doesn't mean the tonality shift requires necessitating moving speakers. The balance isn't as delicate as you make it seem. Some advice with someone with almost half a century in audio, music and engineering - don't dictate, offer suggestions.
You are stuck on tone. This is only 1/2 the equation.
 
These look similar, but there are no similarities between the two. Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, and most rock groups used Altecs with Crown type amps, so you should too, is a similar analogy.

The Simon Rattle guidance built Birmingham hall has relatively poor acoustics compared to many others. The Sheldonian at Oxford built in 1600s is the best acoustic I know, and is just a very different concert hall, an old building where Haydn used to compose and perform. Some churches form the best acoustics, others suck. Neither of them are planned.

That said, all concert halls are dependent on seats filling up for acoustics, and in all of them only some seats sound good. They are not built to a seat, you have a seat of choice. An audiophile listening room is built with much lower talent than a concert hall, and it is completely arrogant for any audiophile to assume that by putting up a purpose built room he has applied science to art. As you know it took you years of work after building your room, you will never know if you would have got the same results spending years find tuning a non-purpose built room with furniture with different gear. Moreover, most audiophiles will do what Ron did, build purpose built room, but have different speakers in it over their time, kind of defeating the purpose of which speaker it was built for. Marty's room was built for digitally corrected Pipedreams, now has passive crossover Wilson Alexx. What helps it is 35*25*14.

Concert halls sound good for many reasons, not necessarily the hall acoustic. The performers also rehearse there, they might be adjusting to each hall. There is a enough room for the listener to adjust his seat. And there might be other factors not acoustic related in play, i.e. just listening to a real direct instrument that is well performed. I don't know a single hall that hasn't disappointed or that hasn't awed. How can we be disappointed and awed in the same acoustic?
I urge you to read the work of Tapio Lokki to bring your understanding of concert hall acoustics into the 21st century .. most of your assumptions are not correct
Phil
 
Again, it depends. The need for acoustic room treatment or lack thereof depends on many factors.

The world would be simple if there was a simple rule for everything. There isn't.

It's nice to have experts who can provide suggestions, but in the end everyone has to follow their own path, guided by their own experience in their own particular situation.
Sure, I had written above that there are many different approaches and one must do what works best for him. And then be happy. I think you are writing basically the same thing. Elliot seemed to take issue with that. I am simply describing what I did and what the best room/system I've heard was like. I am not prescribing anything to you or to anyone else.
 
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It always depends on the room what is needed and what is not.

It also depends on the listening volume. If my average listening volume were 10 dB lower, the room problems would come into play much, much less.

I just wanted more out of my room in terms of SPL capability, and I was able to get it (and no, I'm not listening as loud as to ruin my ears, I'm careful).
I agree that it depends on the room as to what is needed and what is not.
What is your average listening SPL, what do you consider loud? Not trying to be confrontational, just interested.
 
my room designer also designed recording studios, mixing studios, and mastering studios......in addition to listening rooms. and that the aims of each were different. he felt like one constant was retaining energy in a room, once lost you cannot get it back. but also you need balance. the space needs to breathe.

he viewed a listening room like a concert hall only in the basic pieces, but not the scale of course. small room domestic acoustics work completely differently than large hall acoustics based on the volume and space and how speakers work compared to live performances. yet the idea of no square corners....essentially an oval shape, mostly diffusion, the speaker end (stage) having hardwood projecting all that energy, the listening end more carpet of some sort, the ceiling diffusive and not flat, plenty of width and height, stout construction. nothing too out there in acoustic viewpoints. pretty conventional.

those attributes i still seem to like when i experience them in other rooms, but i have no broad based experience, just my own room where i like it.

he intentionally designed in excess bass trapping, telling me it was easy to remove them once i lived in the room, but designing them in later would be very difficult. this turned out to be right. as i lived with my room eventually my final changes were to tame excess energy here and there with surface cloth texture, but zero absorption. otherwise it's as designed.

my room's aim was to be able to do large scale music and handle all that energy from a large speaker system. it can do that and listeners can enjoy that in my room. it does not get over-driven or get hard and stressed. the bass stays agile and natural.

coming back to the concert hall compare issue; there is more than one way to do large scale music in a domestic room successfully, mine is simply one way that works. there could be 100 other ways.

i don't think my room has a particular coloration or filter, no constant influence on the music. it allows each recording to be what it is. i've tried various pieces in my system and always gravitated to the gear that tells me the most about what is happening, avoiding sameness. but i suppose that is for visitors to my room to comment on. too personal for me.
Nothing wrong with any of that, Mike. My misunderstanding. For some reason I interpreted what you said earlier as something like trying to make your room have a slant toward maybe a Carangie Hall sound even though you might be listening to a recording of Boston Symphany Hall. I've heard people actually try to do that so I probably just jumped to that conclusion. :)
 
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you might get yours out of reading. I did not make any assumption, I made observations. Of the ones I used as a reference , only one was built in the 21st century. Maybe your Zus sound like the reader’s perceptions of halls made from reading Lokki’s book
I urge you to read the work of Tapio Lokki to bring your understanding of concert hall acoustics into the 21st century .. most of your assumptions are not correct
Phil
 
Having a bigger space for listening is brilliant opportunity, I really wasn’t talking about small scale spaces… the best residential listening room I’ve encountered belongs to a friend and I’ve listened in it plenty and would love a room like his as it has plenty more scale than my space and also has great proportions and height to work with.

I regret the artificial reference but it was genuinely not meant as a negative in intention or meant to be judgemental at all. It’s not my nature to be judgemental like that. It would have been better in hindsight to say a less unconventional residential room style instead but the original intention was just to point to the difference in the style being an overtly specialised room rather than a more typical room in spirit. Poor wording definitely mea culpa… I’m used to working in design analysis so the language used to capture the spirit of a style of a room is genuinely intended as non judgemental and respectful of clients preferences and choices on style.

The main weight of the point was just that more obvious room treatment isn’t what I choose for myself and it comes out of a quite conscious strategy to frame an experience in a certain way that is more comfortable for my mindset and that it has psychoacoustic benefits that work better for me feeling at home in listening rooms where treatments are invisible or less overt or less high function acoustic kind of aesthetic. The why of that I’m not exactly sure. It’s also not just about the materiality and features of room acoustic treatments. I could draw up a functional diagram of a listening space that doesn’t aim to be a typical theatre listening layout because for me it allows for a more relaxed framing of seating and standpoints and view lines and aims to create interactivity and at times a shared listening space.

I recognise that my choices do cause constraints and possibly sonic limitations or additional challenge in getting best sound but the case for listening value of a more normalised room style isn’t that often made beyond its a preference for some. That acoustically treated rooms can look a certain way is often discussed and the case of that value is more often made.

Looking back I think of the rooms I’ve had really great experiences in and quite a few of the better rooms I have enjoyed music in mostly did just integrate normal furnishings and not utilised visible or obvious acoustic treatments. If they then could be bettered still with bass traps or acoustic tiles I can’t say Mike but the summative experience in best listening for me was all I was referring to.
Graham ... it is all just a design problem to be solved .. what are the acoustic targets, what is the room use, what are the decor restrictions and what is the budget .
This applies to concert halls, recording studios, dedicated rooms and living rooms and the principles are surprisingly similar as sound doesn't know where it is :)
Attenuated first reflections , absorbing excess bass and appropriatly damping the space are all thats needed
A good mastering studio should be similar to a good living room, live but clear. Sadly they are rare, most being built based on ideas from the 90's. Sean Olive recently did a study of bass in quite a few studios and the results were appaling .. not saying there arent some great studios but a lot of our music is mastered in poor rooms.
Living rooms are often open to other spaces and are built with lossy frame and sheet construction and dont need bass absorbtion. You can easily build the general absorbtion and relection reduction into the fabric of the building .. the more discreet the more costly or space eating.
Achieving these quite specific items with furniture is unlikely to be optimal but can be quite good .. after all the good performance of older halls is supposed, to some extent, be the results of attached pilasters and all the deep decorative molding reducing first reflections.
So your baroque revival living room might sound great :)
When use a well sealed room like Mike's it becomes way more difficult to control bass but can achieve amazing clarity through low ambient noise. It is possible to make these very pleasant spaces.. Bobvins and Mikes rooms are good examples.
Speaker radiation pattern can make a difference but easy enough to design for all comers.
One of the polarsing features of the eternal debate is the ugliness of off the shelf devices when placed in a living room. I think the industry needs to step up in this area
Retuurning to the topic of speaker placement I suspect the fine adjustments of speaker set up compensate for small irregularities between left and right.. when you see an acourate sweep of left and right in a perfectly symmetrical space there are all these fine non correlated wobbles.
But a good room is always going to make it dramatically easier you would think

Phil
 
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These look similar, but there are no similarities between the two. Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, and most rock groups used Altecs with Crown type amps, so you should too, is a similar analogy.

The Simon Rattle guidance built Birmingham hall has relatively poor acoustics compared to many others. The Sheldonian at Oxford built in 1600s is the best acoustic I know, and is just a very different concert hall, an old building where Haydn used to compose and perform. Some churches form the best acoustics, others suck. Neither of them are planned.

That said, all concert halls are dependent on seats filling up for acoustics, and in all of them only some seats sound good. They are not built to a seat, you have a seat of choice. An audiophile listening room is built with much lower talent than a concert hall, and it is completely arrogant for any audiophile to assume that by putting up a purpose built room he has applied science to art. As you know it took you years of work after building your room, you will never know if you would have got the same results spending years find tuning a non-purpose built room with furniture with different gear. Moreover, most audiophiles will do what Ron did, build purpose built room, but have different speakers in it over their time, kind of defeating the purpose of which speaker it was built for. Marty's room was built for digitally corrected Pipedreams, now has passive crossover Wilson Alexx. What helps it is 35*25*14.

Concert halls sound good for many reasons, not necessarily the hall acoustic. The performers also rehearse there, they might be adjusting to each hall. There is a enough room for the listener to adjust his seat. And there might be other factors not acoustic related in play, i.e. just listening to a real direct instrument that is well performed. I don't know a single hall that hasn't disappointed or that hasn't awed. How can we be disappointed and awed in the same acoustic?
+1 for the Sheldonian. And Malvern Theatre - the Shostakovitch cycle there sounded lovely.
 
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+1 for the Sheldonian. And Malvern Theatre - the Shostakovitch cycle there sounded lovely.

Oh no, did not know it was on at Malvern. Would have visited on a weekend. The Winterreise there is still one of my favourite concerts
 
Oh no, did not know it was on at Malvern. Would have visited on a weekend. The Winterreise there is still one of my favourite concerts
The Shostakovitch was Friday to Sunday, Brodsky Quartet. Bit of a marathon but wonderful.
The Winterreise, mine too. His Die Schone Mullerin was great too.
 
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you might get yours out of reading. I did not make any assumption, I made observations. Of the ones I used as a reference , only one was built in the 21st century. Maybe your Zus sound like the reader’s perceptions of halls made from reading Lokki’s book
Your observation is pretty crap .. I don't own Zu's :), almost as bad as altecs.
You are utterly out of your depth in your correlation = causation trip...but your not robinson crusoe on this site
I get my observation out of designing buiding and testing + plus like you going to halls around the world. Nagata is my favourite acoustician.

Look I respect the effort you put in to recording and reporting your adventures , the music you introduce , your puns etc.but of late you have been riding high on your horse and unnecessarily dismissive. Perhaps my post suffered from the same issue but I do get annoyed. Next time you are in a hall look at the bottom of the fold up seat .. if its modern it will have perforations that equate to the absorbtive properties of a person
My suggestion was serious .. Lokki has done real comparitive analysis and correlated it with reputation of halls. Its great stuff.
Phil
 
Your observation is pretty crap .. I don't own Zu's :), almost as bad as altecs.
You are utterly out of your depth in your correlation = causation trip...but your not robinson crusoe on this site
I get my observation out of designing buiding and testing + plus like you going to halls around the world. Nagata is my favourite acoustician
Please clarify what you designed, build and tested. Was that your own listening room, or concergebouw, or Musikverien?
 
Why would I treat a surprcilious question like that seriuosly .. learn to ask nicely

Also, how you came to the conclusion Nagata is good is more important than name dropping.
 

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