The Bass is the place!!

[fas42]

Stereo sound reproduction is full of compromises, most of the time the optimization of a system needs approaches that have not been studied scientifically.

...

For the nth time, I do not understand why people systematically try to mix the needs of home theater bass with the reproduction of bass in stereo systems!

I agree. I have heard ridiculous bass too many times in other systems, for me it's a complete turn-off. At the Sydney audio show every system that used extravagant subwoofers sounded, well, silly ... no relation to sounds of the real world ...

IME a system that has no special bass prowess below 100Hz still creates the subjective impression of powerful, intense bass if it's sufficiently competent - the mind "fills the gaps" of any fundamental that's not there. To put it bluntly, I still haven't heard reproduction of, say, an ambitious pipe organ on any system better than what I've achieved at times - they fail to get the intense richness that the real thing has right, far too thin overall.

 

[NorthStar]

Why would your rooms be any different than any room in terms of any "purpose" to measure? How many great sounding studios do you think they build by ear these days? I recall Mike said he recently moved his chair 4' and it sounds much better. Do you not think measuring would have caught/shown that in terms of freq, impulse, decay etc. and possibly saved time? Now, whether you believe you need to measure is another story but it can't hurt to see what's going on in your space. What you chose to do about it is an entirely different story.

Monsieur sbo6, we have here different life's philosophies and music evolutionary experience.
It's similar with music schools, even classical music.

The ear is certainly an evaluation instrument tool, and extremely valid on the overall results of pleasantness and happiness in the art of music listening.
Microphone measurements are also mighty fine for a good portion of the audiophilia world population. ...Just another hearing device, that's all.
...The difference between an electrical/mechanical microphone (condenser capsule with many many electronic parts, including dual transformers) and the human ear.

Some mix them together (one school), others don't (another school).
One thing is certain, the last school they sure know their bass recordings.
And in Chuck's room that Dafos music recording must sound au-delà-du-réel. asjkll;çé.mnç^poiqwrtç^à!

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Why would your rooms be any different than any room in terms of any "purpose" to measure?

my speaker designer spent 2 days measuring and setting up my speakers 18 months ago. I was familiar with how it measured.

How many great sounding studios do you think they build by ear these days?

my room was designed 'ground up' by a professional studio designer, who had been designing studio's for 20+ years.....11 years ago. even though it was certainly designed by science and experience......I've made a number of 'real world' changes; some of which were a result of measurements. so I've certainly given science it's due.

and to be clear; I love the basic design of my room, and the changes I've made were somewhat predicted by the designer up front.

I recall Mike said he recently moved his chair 4' and it sounds much better. Do you not think measuring would have caught/shown that in terms of freq, impulse, decay etc. and possibly saved time? Now, whether you believe you need to measure is another story but it can't hurt to see what's going on in your space. What you chose to do about it is an entirely different story.

as far as fine tuning a listening position or tweaking speaker adjustments I like my ears. things like imaging and layering are beyond reliable measurements. I used lasers to align the speakers recently.

in the bass I agree that measuring can help. as I wrote previously I am enjoying how it's sounding now so much I really am not motivated to measure at this time. but I'm not anti-measurement. I am anti-Amir discussing my measurements. live and learn.

 

[Rodney Gold]

I do the whole DRC and distributed bass thing .. measurements are only taken for DIRAC to work with thereafter its all tuning by ear
The difference between non equalised and equalised is profound.. just so much better that I could never live without it

Systems correct in both freq and time domain impulse resonse these days. dirac and a lot of other DEQ's are not really equalisers , they are way way more..

 

[GaryProtein]

Just for some perspective, here is a person in the photo of the Wisdom Infinite Grande that Mike posted earlier. Those speakers are over 13 feet tall.

 

[fas42]

in the bass I agree that measuring can help. as I wrote previously I am enjoying how it's sounding now so much I really am not motivated to measure at this time. but I'm not anti-measurement. I am anti-Amir discussing my measurements. live and learn.

That's what it's all about. I always chase this, and I'm getting lazier by the hour these days, - so, when it gets into the "good zone" I tend to lose motivation, and just flow with the listening ... .

 

[NorthStar]

Some great Jazz acoustic bassists:

Dave Holland
Christian McBride
Paul Chambers
Charles Mingus
Larry Grenadier
Avishai Cohen
Ray Brown
Ron Carter
Reginald Veil
Charlie Hayden
Jimmy Garrison
Gary Peacock
Oscar Pettiford
Niels Henning Ørsted Pedersen
John Clayton
John Patitucci
Marc Johnson
Lonnie Plaxico
Hein Van de Geyn
Philippe Aerts
Stanley Clarcke
Scott La Faro
Reggie Workman
Steve Davis
Scott Colley
Eddie Gomez

* Some of them on the ECM Record music label. ...Jazz section.
_______

And this, a bass attack/dynamic evaluation tool (acoustic drums):

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Yeah ok ? , that, is much better looking rig and place than my own...the bass must be phenomenally awesome. ...And all those wires!

honestly; the bass absolutely sucked in this 'auditorium'. it could not even get close to 'hooking up'. there was zero physicality to the bass. the whole thing sounded 'small' and 'lost'. and if you sat close it was too loud in an effort to fill up the space.

there were parts of cuts that sounded ok; but nothing was even good.

wrong speakers in the wrong space.

too bad because it was a valiant effort to pull off. and while I never loved Wisdom speakers, they could sound very good sometimes.

I was told later that a gentleman from China wrote a check for the whole set-up and had some sort of room built for it....so there was a happy ending.

I'm glad that @ least two great music selections were mentioned, one by Mike, here, and with great bass...drummer Mickey Hart. Another guy I like is Michael Stearns (ambiant musician with bass synthesizer on some recordings).

* And Chuck's graph measurement of the bass in his room is simply amazing! He's got the goods too, with six subs and well positioned and properly EQued.
This is one of the flattest bass I've ever seen...from 7Hz to 100Hz (10Hz to 75Hz +/-2dB)...just wow! ...For Music listening, and he's got the HK curve for Movies.

Davey, The Bass is the Place - Chuck's place. :b

 

[NorthStar]

Mike, I wazn't zerious, only the part with the nize imprezzive looking shiny audio gear and zpeakers and wirez. :b

 

[sbo6]

my speaker designer spent 2 days measuring and setting up my speakers 18 months ago. I was familiar with how it measured.



my room was designed 'ground up' by a professional studio designer, who had been designing studio's for 20+ years.....11 years ago. even though it was certainly designed by science and experience......I've made a number of 'real world' changes; some of which were a result of measurements. so I've certainly given science it's due.

and to be clear; I love the basic design of my room, and the changes I've made were somewhat predicted by the designer up front.



as far as fine tuning a listening position or tweaking speaker adjustments I like my ears. things like imaging and layering are beyond reliable measurements. I used lasers to align the speakers recently.

in the bass I agree that measuring can help. as I wrote previously I am enjoying how it's sounding now so much I really am not motivated to measure at this time. but I'm not anti-measurement. I am anti-Amir discussing my measurements. live and learn.

Thanks for the details. At the end of the day, the room was set up professionally built/set up including measuring. Makes sense...

 

[sbo6]

Monsieur sbo6, we have here different life's philosophies and music evolutionary experience.
It's similar with music schools, even classical music.

The ear is certainly an evaluation instrument tool, and extremely valid on the overall results of pleasantness and happiness in the art of music listening.
Microphone measurements are also mighty fine for a good portion of the audiophilia world population. ...Just another hearing device, that's all.
...The difference between an electrical/mechanical microphone (condenser capsule with many many electronic parts, including dual transformers) and the human ear.

Some mix them together (one school), others don't (another school).
One thing is certain, the last school they sure know their bass recordings.
And in Chuck's room that Dafos music recording must sound au-delà-du-réel. asjkll;çé.mnç^poiqwrtç^à!

I like my new title as Monsieur

 

[amirm]

Just for some perspective, here is a person in the photo of the Wisdom Infinite Grande that Mike posted earlier. Those speakers are over 13 feet tall.

And here is a picture of our departed Wisdom speakers with a person in it just the same!

They did not sound good to the ears and measurements easily showed the critical problems.

 

[amirm]

here is Amir's kinda room....

Why do you say that?

BTW, I went looking for that picture online to get more background on it, saw the posts in AVS Forum and then hit on WBF itself with this post!

i've heard the G1.2's in his wharehouse a few times and did not think that you got the physical bass that that speaker should provide in a real world room, as much as a 30' x 50' room is real world. if you got up close there was plenty of energy, but your body did not feel it as it would in a proper listening room. it did not pressurize. but you would not expect it to. consider the size of bass units at a large venue rock concert.

you would not want any domestically aimed speaker to trade additional gross air moving capability for articulation.

Gary's wharehouse sort of (although not nearly to the degree) sounded like how the bass sounded in this room....

I have been to Gary's factory and if you think you heard wrong bass there, then I don't know what to tell you.

 

[amirm]

Amir, is this whole thread not discussing bass quality in home audio rooms? Do any of us listen in a 300,000 cubic foot room? And do those acoustically "large" rooms have the type of audio systems that we own in them? Is Harmon designing speakers for such rooms? I do not understand the relevance of your statement for this WBF audience.

We are discussing home systems. And home spaces no matter how "large" they are by our lay definition are acoustically considered "small." The definition for that is whether there is any frequency from 20 Hz on up that creates distinct room modes, i.e. dips and peaks of the response due to size/shape of the room. Since none of us have such super large rooms, we need to forever excise terms like "flat bass" response that MikeL used. Only a fully diffused space like a large concert hall has such attribute. In our rooms we have that but only above a few hundred hertz.

And no, I am not telling you to go and put a system in an auditorium without any care about the acoustics of that room. The topic here is the bass and only the bass. The bass problems tend to get easier with volume of the space. Whether the rest of the frequencies behave is a matter of speaker itself, and lots of other variables. So Mike's comment about someone putting a speaker in an auditorium only has one valid point: throwing a million dollars into a system does not get you good sound. Understanding of audio science and engineering does.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Why do you say that?

I was making a joke based on your 300,000 cubic feet comment.....

BTW, I went looking for that picture online to get more background on it, saw the posts in AVS Forum and then hit on WBF itself with this post!

I have been to Gary's factory and if you think you heard wrong bass there, then I don't know what to tell you.

it would be nice to know what year I posted those comments. likely 4-5 years ago, which was the last time I visited Gary's warehouse. it is a huge space. I stand by my comments. you need to hear those same speakers in a properly sized room tweaked by Gary to really know what is missing.

that space is likely 50' x 30' x 80'. that is really big. and it has all these high shelving units with inventory boxes on them.....big bass traps.

I would guess Gary would be the first one to tell you how it's too big too. not to say that his big 1.2's or Dragon's can't still do spectacular things in that space, but 'uber' bass at the level Gary would be proud of is not one of them.

 

[GaryProtein]

. . . . I used lasers to align the speakers recently. . . .

Once you get into laser levels, you MUST (seriously) have an orthopedic halo ring to keep your head in position. Otherwise, truly, you are fooling yourself thinking the laser leveling is actually doing anything because your head will never be in the correct position. Turn you head, tilt it one degree one way or another or readjust your butt in the chair and all bets are off for the right listening position.

If it makes you feel better to use a laser, that's fine, but this is auditory masturbation and it won't result in a hands free orgasm.

By the way, these have pointy screws that penetrate the skin and muscle and lock onto the skull to keep you in position.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Once you get into laser levels, you MUST (seriously) have an orthopedic halo ring to keep your head in position. Otherwise, truly, you are fooling yourself thinking the laser leveling is actually doing anything because your head will never be in the correct position. Turn you head, tilt it one degree one way or another or readjust your butt in the chair and all bets are off for the right listening position.

so you have been to my room since I laser aligned the speakers?

no?

you have laser aligned Evolution Acoustics MM7's?

no?

you have laser aligned phase and time aligned speakers?

no?

then you have no idea, do you?

If it makes you feel better to use a laser, that's fine, but this is auditory masturbation and it won't result in a hands free orgasm.

By the way, these have pointy screws that penetrate the skin and muscle and lock onto the skull to keep you in position.

my room is precisely symmetrical. I can easily sight my listening position both center and depth. there is some allowance for movement. and my most frequent listening buddy (Jazdoc) tells me that the whole room's precision, no matter the seating position, improved when I aligned the speakers. he volunteered that comment, in fact wondered what I did.

I think that my vertical (both precise height and lean) alignment was maybe more significant than the horizontal. huge very tall speakers with lots of drivers.

 

[PeterA]

And this, a bass attack/dynamic evaluation tool (acoustic drums):

View attachment 26600

Have you listened to this on vinyl?

 

[PeterA]

Once you get into laser levels, you MUST (seriously) have an orthopedic halo ring to keep your head in position. Otherwise, truly, you are fooling yourself thinking the laser leveling is actually doing anything because your head will never be in the correct position. Turn you head, tilt it one degree one way or another or readjust your butt in the chair and all bets are off for the right listening position.

If it makes you feel better to use a laser, that's fine, but this is auditory masturbation and it won't result in a hands free orgasm.

By the way, these have pointy screws that penetrate the skin and muscle and lock onto the skull to keep you in position.

I respectfully disagree. I use a laser to align my mini monitors: toe in, distance to listener, tilt, height. It dramatically effects resolution, dynamics, tone, and presence. One does not need to sit in the sweet spot to notice the improvement. The head needing to be in a vise to hear the benefits from precise alignment is a myth.

You may find Jim Smith's book, "Get Better Sound", quite informative regarding this topic.

 

[DaveyF]

I'm a little confused by some of the posts here?? Are we saying that 'accurate', 'resolved','life like' bass, is doable in the typical home system's room? Or, are we saying that a space that is gigantic ( 300,000SqFt) is required to allow for the bass wave to fully develop?
Without the enormous room, the 'accuracy' of the bass cannot be expected???? Is that correct

As to Gary's point about laser alignment of speakers...that I don't follow either! I laser aligned my speakers to allow them to essentially launch the sound into the room as precisely as possible. The precision of the imaging, frequency response and control of the room benefited greatly with such alignment. Nothing to do with locking my head into a vice in order to listen to the speakers. ( Like Peter just posted above).

Bob, the vinyl of The 'Drum record' is the way to go, IMHO. Although, I do NOT think that it is a great recording from a musical stand point...although better than the 'Track' record.