My monitor/subwoofer system
- Thread starter Al M.
- Start date
Hi Al,
Your room is so amazingly long, did you ever consider putting all of the components except for the amplifier on a table or rack behind the listening position? (This is audioquattr's arrangement.) That would
eliminate any issue about component reflections near the front wall, and would get most of the the equipment out of the line of fire of the speakers.
Your room is so amazingly long, did you ever consider putting all of the components except for the amplifier on a table or rack behind the listening position? (This is audioquattr's arrangement.) That would
eliminate any issue about component reflections near the front wall, and would get most of the the equipment out of the line of fire of the speakers.
Those are 2-inch thick concrete tiles from Home Depot, for $ 15 each. I suppose they are tiles for garden pathways (I bought them in the outdoor garden department). I have a suspended wood floor, and these tiles provide stability and resistance against resonance.
The reason why I have stacked two tiles below each subwoofer is that I also wanted to raise the subs from the floor, so that they do not directly fire onto it. This follows the concept of sub platforms, like I had previously with ASC SubTraps (that link argues that raising the subs from the floor decouples them from the vertical room mode). I had doubts if raising the subs by just 4 inches from the floor would be sufficient, but based on the bass quality I am very happy with the result.
Al, i use the exact same weight distribution/resonance limiting devices under my sub-towers and speaker. I use mine in the passive mode without additional SMPS as these seem to inflate my bladder. Mine have a layer of sound diffusing black spray paint added to make them look fancy !
Hi Ron,
that is an idea that has crossed my mind as well. I would need long balanced interconnects from preamp to amp, but it might be worthwhile.
The interconnects that I have from preamp to subs, which are 9 feet long I believe, would also not be long enough for a configuration with equipment rack in the back and subs located where they are now (but thankfully long enough for me to push the rack back all the way to the front wall, if that is beneficial).
Yet it may very well be possible and even advantageous to move the subs far out towards my listen seat, and then the interconnect length would more than suffice even with equipment rack in the back. The reason why it may be advantageous to move the subs away from the main speakers and much closer to my ears is delay time, as I explained in my Update Aug 19, 2020.
Having those long balanced interconnects from preamp to amp, allowing to move the equipment rack to the back of the room for avoidance of reflections, may be an upgrade that is much more worthwhile at this point than any equipment upgrade. I am extremely satisfied with digital source, amplification and also speakers (more on the latter in my next update), and the improvements of sound that have resulted from changes in acoustics due to the subwoofer move in the summer, and now since then, could not have been bought with equipment upgrades worth $ 50 K or more.
This is not an exaggeration -- the importance of acoustics cannot be overestimated. I have known that for some years now, but each improvement confirms it.
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IMHO, one the best tweaks we can put in a system. Equipment should be listened, not seen!
Very interesting, Al! I am very happy for you that the changes in acoustics have improved the sound to such a dramatic extent.
I personally find the whole vibration/acoustic isolation conundrum to be a huge morass. Each component and each system is idiosyncratically difficult, in that we don't objectively know the vulnerabilities of each component and how vibration affects each component and what is affecting or causing what.
Every manufacturer of vibration/isolation components has his own theory and underlying science. Different slabs of materials sound different in different situations, if differences even can be ascertained accurately.
The only good thing about mechanical problems is that mechanical problems have mechanical solutions. It just makes all the sense in the world to me, to avoid or
minimize this quagmire if it all possible, to move components from the more intense vibrational field to a less intense vibrational field.
In a one bedroom apartment in New York I re-purposed a walk-in closet off the living room to contain all of the equipment except the speakers and the amplifiers.
In another apartment in Manhattan I located all of the equipment except the speakers and the amplifiers in a small clothes closet which was built into a small bedroom which I used as a dedicated listening room.
In the current house all of the equipment except the speakers and the amplifiers will be located in a room adjacent to the listening room (on the other side of the wall of the listening room).
If there is anyway to remove the equipment from the most intense vibrational field, it just makes sense to me to do so. I would rather have long balanced interconnects than worry about how vibration/isolation problems are damaging my sound, and having to go down the rabbit hole of complicated and expensive and uncertain remedies.
I told spiritofmusic four years ago that if I had his amazingly long listening room, I would have built a wall at the rear of his room and created a separate equipment room and removed all of his equipment other than the amplifiers out from the middle of his speakers.
When you have the option of a simple mechanical solution with high efficacy to a complex mechanical problem, I say take the solution.
Will physical isolation or reduced intensity solve all possible questions about floorborne feedback or acoustic feedback or vibration problems or isolation? No; questions can still remain. But we have on this problem the benefit of the inverse square law: if you double the distance, you quarter the intensity. I like those odds.
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You have gone a long way towards avoiding vibration problems when your equipment is placed separately the way you do Ron, don't start solving problems that might not really be there. Get your system operational so you have a baseline sound before tweaking. Have a little trust in the people that designed your equipment, some of them actually know what they are doing and have put together a package that works in most situations.
That is a fair consideration. My personal view is that balanced interconnects might slightly degrade the sound subjectively by canceling even order harmonic distortion. If I could use short lengths, I would use single-ended cables for this reason.
I do not believe I would personally be able to hear a degradation in sound due to length per se; say, between 10 feet long interconnects and 30 feet long interconnects. The balanced interconnects in my arrangement will be about 50 feet long.
Yes, long interconnects have to be chosen carefully for low capacitance to prevent a roll-off of high frequencies.
I personally would rather pick my poison of long interconnects, and rest assuredly that I am not damaging the sound with vibration or acoustic feedback. Another small personal idiosyncratic benefit is that I relax more easily if the space in front of me when I am listening to music is clean and open, and not cluttered with piles of equipment.
I do not believe I would personally be able to hear a degradation in sound due to length per se; say, between 10 feet long interconnects and 30 feet long interconnects. The balanced interconnects in my arrangement will be about 50 feet long.
Yes, long interconnects have to be chosen carefully for low capacitance to prevent a roll-off of high frequencies.
I personally would rather pick my poison of long interconnects, and rest assuredly that I am not damaging the sound with vibration or acoustic feedback. Another small personal idiosyncratic benefit is that I relax more easily if the space in front of me when I am listening to music is clean and open, and not cluttered with piles of equipment.
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Interesting... I was not aware that balanced interconnects could do this. My understanding is that the balanced configuration only eliminates common-mode noise; that is, noise which is injected equally to the positive and negative signals. But the signals themselves (including whatever distortion they contain) are not altered by the balanced configuration.
Balanced audio - Wikipedia
It's not the interconnects; it's the circuit. If we presume differential circuitry is driving the balanced interface, then generally, we see additional odd order distortion in the absence of additional even order distortion. The result, to many people, actually sounds less pleasant despite the fact that less total harmonic distortion is being created.Interesting... I was not aware that balanced interconnects could do this. My understanding is that the balanced configuration only eliminates common-mode noise; that is, noise which is injected equally to the positive and negative signals. But the signals themselves (including whatever distortion they contain) are not altered by the balanced configuration.
But always happy to learn something new...Balanced audio - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Are you saying there isn't so much the addition of odd order distortion but the reduction of even order distortion that tips the balance towards the odd order?
Differential drivers, in the ideal case, don't produce even harmonics but they do produce odd harmonics. So if the signal, as it traverses the path through your system, tends to accumulate odd but not even, then that will generally sound a certain way which is less pleasurable than a higher THD comprised of a mixture that includes additional even order harmonic distortion. Or at least to many people, it is less natural/pleasurable. Of course, in some applications, the common mode rejection benefits would outweigh other considerations.
Interesting... I was not aware that balanced interconnects could do this. My understanding is that the balanced configuration only eliminates common-mode noise; that is, noise which is injected equally to the positive and negative signals. But the signals themselves (including whatever distortion they contain) are not altered by the balanced configuration.
But always happy to learn something new...Balanced audio - Wikipedia
Bazelio seems to know more about this than I do, so I defer to his elaborations herein.
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This was meaningful when electronics had significant distortion - typically using cheap operational amplifiers to balance and unbalance signals. Most modern audio electronics do not suffer from this problem, but the old myths last forever. BTW, sometimes additional noise can be perceived as an warmer sound.
I have read from people referring that the Lamm L1- ML3 sound a lot better when we use the single end cables between preamplifier and power amplifier than using the same brand of balanced cables. They were not aware that the XLR connectors of these particular Lamm's are fake and just used for convenience, they are not balanced.
Well XLR is provided for convenience on many electronics and if it "sounds better" to someone then that just means they like having an extra transformer in the signal path. Regarding your first paragraph, my response is "it depends". It's not an old vs new myth. There are plenty of modern (and high priced) electronics with appreciably high THD. The actual distortion profile still matters to the audible result in these cases. It's not about opamps.This was meaningful when electronics had significant distortion - typically using cheap operational amplifiers to balance and unbalance signals. Most modern audio electronics do not suffer from this problem, but the old myths last forever. BTW, sometimes additional noise can be perceived as an warmer sound.
I have read from people referring that the Lamm L1- ML3 sound a lot better when we use the single end cables between preamplifier and power amplifier than using the same brand of balanced cables. They were not aware that the XLR connectors of these particular Lamm's are fake and just used for convenience, they are not balanced.
My guess is that it’s probably impossible to generalize. So much depends on the electronics in question. If we are talking about differential output (and input) stages slapped on inherently single-ended designs, then yes, the additional processing, especially if only of moderate quality, *may* leave a sonic imprint. However many DAC, preamp, and amp designs are inherently differential, and do not have any more input and output stages than inherently single-ended alternatives. Further, differential designs should not cancel out any harmonics, unless these are introduced “externally” and not intrinsically as part of the amplification (the same “positive” distortion would need to be added to the positive and negative signals so as to be cancelled out when these are summed). Finally, hard to do a fair comparison of balanced vs single ended cables since there are so many differences beyond the “circuit”: the geometry, different size and number of conductors, twisted vs not, shield used as signal conductor, etc.
When they are not fake they have literally twice the amount of parts in the signal path. I'm not saying that's bad, but I'm not saying it's good either. You get double of whatever you got.
Generalization has its perils but is still important so that we know where to look. This isn't a particularly unique discussion. Guitar amp guys used to design even order harmonic distortion generators in order to get the sound they wanted out of otherwise odd order dominant circuits, for example. And of course, we're talking tubes not op amps there.
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