Ron’s New System

[Ron Resnick]

But in my experience some turntables are better suppressing vinyl artifacts than others -

I agree. Maybe I should say more specifically that I think some cartridges are better at suppressing vinyl artifacts than other cartridges.

But I think there is more than just vinyl noise artifact suppression between the sound of vinyl and the sound of tape.

 

[KeithR]

Don came over last night for several hours. Keith, you will be happy that he twisted my arm, and we did quite a bit of ribbon panel position experimentation.

Unlike Magnepans and MartinLogans which have a much narrower sweet spot and are quite sensitive to toe-in, this Pendragon ribbon driver seems to have much wider off axis response. When the Prodigys were in the room there's no way I could've sat on a couch 3 feet to the side of the center listening chair and had a nice time listening to music.

Neither Don nor I heard the tonal balance change from moderate toe-in to pointed dead straight ahead (no toe-in).

Don feels the ribbons are projecting a lot of energy in the upper midrange area. I agree. He thinks this is making voices and instruments in that frequency range a little bit too prominent, a little bit bright. I think I agree

We experimented with A) acoustic absorption panels on the front wall, B) Tube Traps behind the speakers, and C) absorption panels on the front wall plus Tube Traps behind the speakers.

The absorption components did take the edge off of the brightness, but we couldn't figure out if we preferred A) or B) or C).

This upper midrange brightness point may be at the point of individual, subjective preference. I think I happen to agree with Don in that I still hear a little bit of upper midrange brightness, but Phil Ressler and JimFord disagree, at least upon first hearing.

Don felt the tonal balance of the Magnepan 1.6s was perfect, but I feel intellectually, at least, if not both intellectually and personal preference-wise, that they were a little bit rolled off.

Don felt that between the original moderate toe-in position and the dead straight ahead no toe-in position the soundstage moved a little bit, but he could not tell which way he preferred the soundstage. He felt with the speakers straight ahead the soundstage was pushed a little bit back toward the front wall, but that there was no change in depth.

Don feels that the LP playback in general is a little bit brighter than the tape playback in general. That could bring us back to Phil Ressler's point that the Denon may be introducing a bit of brightness.

Toe-in is the last step. Moving the panels on a vertical plane to get the back wave distance correct would be the first, and most likely is the source of current issues. I would prob do it in mono and then just match the other one. Then i would adjust on the horizontal plane but I think that’s fairly limited in your space and the panels are quite wide by themselves.

Since your bass towers are designed to go next to the panel for phase reasons, even simpler setup vs many 4-box systems.

Fabio has sliders that work for really heavy speakers - just ask.

 

[Gregadd]

The famous Fabio had the original ML Stateent.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Dave Brubeck "Take Five"

 

[bonzo75]

Sounding very good

 

[Ron Resnick]

Only say if you mean it!

It's tape. It sounds amazing in the room.

 

[bonzo75]

Yes it’s sounding very good i told you on text as well. Of course it will be sounding amazing in the room. The video shows it like it is

 

[Ron Resnick]

I played with toe-in again tonight. Right now the ribbon panels are dead straight ahead (no toe-in), as you can see in the last video. No one at Gryphon recommends dead straight ahead. I almost want to say the speakers are so engaging maybe they're hard to screw up?

It sounds pretty much the same to me as with toe-in. I guess I have to do the comparison more carefully.

Don maybe put this in my head by saying that he thinks the panels are fantastically transparent. But I think they are more transparent than the Prodigys, which does not really make sense to me, as the electrostatics should be more transparent. Maybe the grander scale now is making the ribbons seem more transparent because the whole presentation just seems more convincing.

 

[Gregadd]

You can create many triangles by adjusting your seating position both vertically and horizontally. A height adjustable chair with rollers would facillaarate this.

You can place your microphone accordingly

 

[pjwd]

Ron,
It would be worth using your Ipad app to measure each iteration of seat and speaker location and keep a record ... even though its prob not the gold standard for measurement it does give some relativity.
Its very easy to get lost doing it all by ear and it gives you some guardrails
As I recall the last plot showed a slight drop off in volume below 1Khz .. for what its worth

Cheers
Phil

 

[rando]

I played with toe-in again tonight. Right now the ribbon panels are dead straight ahead (no toe-in), as you can see in the last video. No one at Gryphon recommends dead straight ahead. I almost want to say the speakers are so engaging maybe they're hard to screw up?

It sounds pretty much the same to me as with toe-in. I guess I have to do the comparison more carefully.

Don maybe put this in my head by saying that he thinks the panels are fantastically transparent. But I think they are more transparent than the Prodigys, which does not really make sense to me, as the electrostatics should be more transparent. Maybe the grander scale now is making the ribbons seem more transparent because the whole presentation just seems more convincing.

It's OK to forgo justifications and sit there with a big grin on your face for the next year or two. Possibilities of this approach are refreshing in place of those standing on the wayside holding a sandwich board directing views towards a window on their system.

This message was selected from text auto generated during a trial of chatWBF

 

[Alrainbow]

Stats are very transparent but to me don’t have the weight and timbre to complete the reproduction in one way.
stats to me need a woofer this then effects things.
panels do this wonderfully
line sources do to of the drivers can be as one
Has anyone heard the large sound lab stats ? They reproduce scale and timbre

 

[Ron Resnick]

Thanks Greg and Phil.

Actually, what I should do first, is set up the microphone in different listening positions and see, according to the frequency analyzer, which listening position ameliorates the 60Hz bass bump.

The problem is I'm having too much fun thumbing through the record/tape storage shelves and unearthing things I had no idea I owned. Yesterday I found 30ips copies of Hotel California and After the Gold Rush. I had no recollection of purchasing these tapes.

 

[morricab]

Stats are very transparent but to me don’t have the weight and timbre to complete the reproduction in one way.
stats to me need a woofer this then effects things.
panels do this wonderfully
line sources do to of the drivers can be as one
Has anyone heard the large sound lab stats ? They reproduce scale and timbre

Large Acoustats do it as well

 

[Zeotrope]

Great room, Ron!

 

[Zeotrope]

When adjusting speakers and/or seating position, a couple of things I do:
- play a mono track (e.g., Miles Davis Kind of Blue) without the preamp or source mono switch enabled (assuming you have such a switch) and then with the mono track enabled. It should sound the same
- play a Q Sound album like Roger Waters and listen for the surround effects to be as they should be

 

[Ron Resnick]

I just listened to a four minute sample of Jonathan Horwich's recent release. The in-the-room realism of the music-making is revelatory.

I just listened to the entire Tape Project tape of Bill Evans Waltz for Debby. Since Waltz for Debby is one of the four or five jazz pieces I love, I have heard it dozens of times. I have never before heard it quite like this. Of course this is a bit overwrought, but for the first time in my life I felt like I could almost walk onto the stage amidst the musicians.

I am not going to put a fine point on this. If all or part of this hobby for you is the realistic reproduction of, and the suspension of disbelief for, recorded music, then, if you are not playing tapes like those of International Phonograph and The Tape Project and Yarlung, you are missing the boat.

I find the argument that "there aren't enough tapes to make it worthwhile" to be specious and lazy. So what if it's only 20 or 30 tapes? Those 20 or 30 tapes will help you understand at a higher level what this hobby is all about.

This new system with the Studer and the tapes has catapulted me to a much higher level of this hobby than I have ever experienced before. Prior to this experience I actually did not think that this level of suspension of disbelief was possible.

 

[Ron Resnick]

To address the serious problem of the 60Hz room boom bump (you can hear it in probably every one of the videos I have posted) I have special-ordered from Acoustic Sciences Corp. two TubeTraps with built-in Helmholtz resonators which will be tuned to 60Hz.

These are not efficient, large, freestanding Helmholtz resonators. But they have the effect of significantly increasing the Q of the bass absorption function above that of a regular Isothermal TubeTrap.

Separately, I am still awaiting a demo of the PSI AVAA devices.

 

[Ron Resnick]

 

[tima]

Dave Brubeck "Take Five"

Through my desktop computer speakers, the bass sounds over emphasized, the top end emphasized and middle is under-emphasized. It does not seem like a single frequency issue, but one of overall balance. I don't know what others are hearing, but the effect here is not subtle.

Fwiw, I heard a similar result (poor balance) from a recording I made with a particular inexpensive phone. The video and the in-room experience were quite different. Re-recording with a different, more expensive phone yielded a better representation of what I hear in-room. It appears not all phones are equal for recording.

If you obect to less than enthusiastic critique I won't comment further.