Ron’s New System

[Johan K]

my designer was Chris Huston. Chris did design in lots of extra bass traps, telling me at the beginning that it's not possible to know how much bass trapping might be needed, but that it's much easier to remove them than to add them later. over a 10 year period i did one by one eliminate all of those traps, except for the -4- floor to ceiling traps along the rear wall. the other design concept was retaining energy, which the room surely did. all diffusion, minimal absorption. in the end i needed to add surface cloth treatments to fine tune the room after i evolved enough myself to know where i was going.

i had no big bass hump at the beginning. and i did not have an acoustician assist, my room was ground up designed by Chris and built to spec within a 1/4" by my contractor, including the structural details. but it was in a separate building from my home, a room within a room. lots of interaction between my contractor and Chris including a visit mid project.

the bones of the room were perfect. i do have a drop ceiling with large recesses which i have treated with added diffusion. but these recesses are symmetric, and are part of why my bass is so smooth.

rooms do need to get lived in and adapted to the chosen evolving system. rooms with large speakers and lots of live-ness don't hatch fully grown, they grow up into what they become. my room is oval, it's sealed, and it's totally symmetric. rooms that are living areas first, and listening rooms second maybe have compromises in that single-minded ness, but make up for it in lifestyle appeal. no one right way to do it.

i'm sure over time Ron will minimize the sonic effect of his ceiling imbalance one way or another.

You’re the King Mike, -couldn’t have said it better myself, haha?

/ Jk

 

[Elliot G.]

I've built quite a few rooms from scratch, a big positive, as not having to over come bad dimensions or obvious room flaws, however none of these rooms ever worked without room treatment. Trying to position large speakers in a room with reflections from the side and rear walls will not get you to the promised land. I also believe that more sound is better than less sound This means I would prefer to add room treatment to a too lively or reflective room than to try to remove it from a dead room.
We need to clarify some things here what are room treatments and what are they supposed to do? Absorbtion or diffusion or both?Bass traps?
Room size and speaker size play mightily into these questions as well as how the speakers actually work, Dipoles/bipoles dont work the same as boxes or horns so all of these factors determine something about the rooms make up and how it will need to be set up. Where you sit makes a HUGE difference. Walk around your room and see where and how the sound changes, trust me it does even in the best. rooms. In my room sitting or standing further back totally changes the bass balance.
From the pictures Ron's room looks like it could work however I seriously doubt ( my personal opinion) that it won't require room treatment and careful speaker placements and adjustmenst to get the sound right. Remember this you need to discover what you DONT know before you can make it work !
Just remember that when you are tuning a system you are also tuning to fix the problems that you haven't solved or that you have unintenially created. Its really hard to get it right if the starting point is wrong ( meaning room acoustics)

 

[Gregadd]

If you listen 9 hours straight I think it sounds amazing already.

 

[jeff1225]

View attachment 104188

Congrats Ron. I have to say the contrast of the black speakers and the wood panels looks absolutely fantastic.

 

[sbnx]

Very nice system. You certainly waited a long time for it to arrive. It looks fantastic. Your measurements already look pretty good. Just that rise in the upper range (>4K Hz) and it looks a little ragged. This should be adjustable by speaker placement.

As you are already taking measurements you might consider measuring each speaker independently. That way you know what you are getting from each one. You might find that one of the two is the culprit. Also consider measuring the bass tower seperate from the panel. In this way you can see how they are blending in the overlap region.

 

[Alrainbow]

Like I said earlier, how amazimg would it be to drop a large speaker into a living room, or any room for that matter and TADAAA, it's spot on. I think Al and others are correct. It is going to sound amazig one day. Its just going to take time to figure it all out. Ron is one step ahead of many in that he knows how to use a mic and measure the room.

I think this has merit but lol. Having done this what we see and how we attained this info is also very complex. A bud was a speaker designer and made them many of them. it’s all complex on a damn cell phone playing music he asked for he fixed a few things on cross over settings
Once he did this I learned two things
1- what I think is right and have learned to love is Wrong. an acoustic guitar has sounds that at times are not so clean
wood sounds like wood metal does not sound like wood period.

2- knowing when it’s better in itself is very complex , headphones are a great tool if the ones we use are neutral not bloated
can help you learn what’s correct.
What most do and what I did is try to correct last weeks mistakes with this weeks fixes
If we have a method to follow it’s far better.

 

[Alrainbow]

Elliots post I think is excellent many facts to build off of

 

[Jim Smith]

I've built quite a few rooms from scratch, a big positive, as not having to over come bad dimensions or obvious room flaws,

Where you sit makes a HUGE difference. Walk around your room and see where and how the sound changes, trust me it does even in the best. rooms. In my room sitting or standing further back totally changes the bass balance.

Just remember that when you are tuning a system you are also tuning to fix the problems that you haven't solved or that you have unintentionally created.

 

[Jim Smith]

Agreed 100% Elliott, especially paying special attention to where the listening seat is located, which I have always called The Anchor Point.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Thank you, Jeff1225 and sbnx!

 

[KeithR]

one break in thing - crank up the Tron soundtrack or something else with lots of extension for 8+ hours a day. your typical music will take much longer to get the job done.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Thank you; actually I'm using a special "Burn In" CD.

 

[Gregadd]

Are you running it through the the Baltic4?

 

[Ron Resnick]

Are you running it through the the Baltic4?

yes

 

[Lagonda]

Are you getting a reference turntable soon Ron ? The Denon, nice as it is, is not on the same level as the rest of your equipment at this point !

 

[Ron Resnick]

I am trying to use the same position and technique and SPL each time. I'm playing the break-in CD basically all day and all evening long except when I go to sleep (only because I just can't relax with super high power tubes on while I'm sleeping). So this measurement is about 50 or 60 hours after the last one I posted.

It is difficult to discern if the break-in is smoothing things out a bit . . .

 

[Johan K]

View attachment 104466

I am trying to use the same position and technique and SPL each time. I'm playing the break-in CD basically all day and all evening long except when I go to sleep (only because I just can't relax with super high power tubes on while I'm sleeping). So this measurement is about 50 or 60 hours after the last one I posted. Maybe the break-in is smoothing things out a bit?

Dear Ron,

I know that curve… it looks almost the same as I had in my room with my old Descent subwoofer system, as I told you in my conversation to you last weekend. A top at ca 60Hz, a dip at ca 30Hz as well at around ca 100Hz.. These room nodes are difficult to handle, but not impossible to get rid of… it just takes a lot of work..

Go Ron go!!

/ Jk

 

[Ron Resnick]

 

[morricab]

View attachment 104467

Work on reducing the rise at 3-6 KHz…probably where the brightness is coming from.

 

[Ron Resnick]

No absorption behind ribbon panels: