in the brochure it covers that it is 3 channels and has zero feedback. In the video below at afer the 4 min mark Avantgarde says “it is 3 times 3 watts. This is all we meed.”
Todd's AG Trio G3 System -- it's about time
- Thread starter sbnx
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in the brochure it covers that it is 3 channels and has zero feedback. In the video below at afer the 4 min mark Avantgarde says “it is 3 times 3 watts. This is all we meed.”
It would be nice if they would just write everything down for us detail junkies. They are thinking “You are all crazy. Just plug it in and enjoy the music.” 
Yeah…I acknowledged that video in my reply to Mike. I haven’t been able to confirm that any other place and the brochure says its 3x100w in the tech specs.
I measured and the distance from tweeter to tweeter is about 112”. From my ear to the tip if the tweeter horn is 133”. That gives a ratio of 84%.
I was not shooting for a particular target. Just where they sound good.
Hi Sbnx,
I hope you are enjoying the journey.
So what’s the verdict on the room rives built for you?
It’s probably better than 99 percent plus of what’s out there, as guys are more interested in expensive cables, tidied up on cable elevators , rather than room treatments.Good looking , luxury adorned boxes and cables unfortunately beat out sound quality for most guys.
( still waiting for room treatments to hit the cover of the analytical sound or stereophile. )
I guess Rives is out of this business now. ( I also wonder who’s taken over this niche.) So what’s great about the room? What have you learned? What’s up with the soffit?
What have you had to tweak as you had various systems and speaker types? Was the room designed as general or for specific speaker types?
What specifically have you had to deal with the directional horn speakers and omnidirectional subs?
I hope you are enjoying the journey.
So what’s the verdict on the room rives built for you?
It’s probably better than 99 percent plus of what’s out there, as guys are more interested in expensive cables, tidied up on cable elevators , rather than room treatments.Good looking , luxury adorned boxes and cables unfortunately beat out sound quality for most guys.
( still waiting for room treatments to hit the cover of the analytical sound or stereophile.
)I guess Rives is out of this business now. ( I also wonder who’s taken over this niche.) So what’s great about the room? What have you learned? What’s up with the soffit?
What have you had to tweak as you had various systems and speaker types? Was the room designed as general or for specific speaker types?
What specifically have you had to deal with the directional horn speakers and omnidirectional subs?
The Journey is fun as always. I haven't posted much lately as I was out of town all this past weekend. I had fun doing that. I went to a friend's place and he wanted to compare a bunch of cables. He is a total cable junkie. We compared Nordost Odin2, Shunyata Omega, Nordost V1 and V2, Ansuz and a bunch of others. Fun times. We also went to 3ma in Houston and I listened to the MBL extremes with (of course) the full MBL electronics package. Nice system but it needs work. It would be interesting hearing it fully dialed in.Hi Sbnx,
I hope you are enjoying the journey.
So what’s the verdict on the room rives built for you?
It’s probably better than 99 percent plus of what’s out there, as guys are more interested in expensive cables, tidied up on cable elevators , rather than room treatments.Good looking , luxury adorned boxes and cables unfortunately beat out sound quality for most guys.
( still waiting for room treatments to hit the cover of the analytical sound or stereophile.
I guess Rives is out of this business now. ( I also wonder who’s taken over this niche.) So what’s great about the room? What have you learned? What’s up with the soffit?
What have you had to tweak as you had various systems and speaker types? Was the room designed as general or for specific speaker types?
What specifically have you had to deal with the directional horn speakers and omnidirectional subs?
I built the entire room myself using the Rives architectural plans. All of the design elements like color, type of wood, art etc were all mine. (Actually, the only thing I did not do myself was hang the double layer of 5/8" drywall. I hired 3 guys to help me with that. The four of us did it in 1 day) I think I posted earlier on some of the room stuff but overall the Rives room would get a thumbs down. It is too overdamped and the thinking was rather old school. I have mentioned before that a lot of "acousticians" are former recording studio guys. Designing a room to record in and designing a room to listen to recorded sound in is a different thing. Also, is the room for music or home theater or both. The needs for home theater are very different than music.
If I had it to do over I would not build any acoustic treatment into the room. Adjustability is key. When it is built in then you are pretty much stuck unless you want to undertake major construction again. I think the attempt at the room design was to create a reflection free zone with the speaker and listening position pretty much fixed. He placed the speakers in the front of the room with the sofa at about the 40% mark. Good in theory but did not work out in practice. Just like my measurements show (in one of the earlier posts with the youtube video) the bass with the speakers in the front of the room is very lumpy and anemic sounding. So, to fix this we just need to move the listening position back and pull the speakers out into the room. Well, when you do that with a semi-omnidirectional speaker (like most box speakers but especially Vivid) the sawtooth diffuser is now behind the speakers and it causes a lot of problems with reflections between it and the round diffuser in the front. If everything had been flexible, then just move the stuff causing the problem.
The soffit is another Rives thing. This is not such a bad idea. It is essentially a huge bass trap all around the perimeter of the room. The bottom is damped drywall. But the sides are covered in fabric and the interior is a bunch of OC703 insulation. The soffit is perhaps the only thing I would build into a room if I was starting again.
Yes, Rves went out of business 1/1/2016 or maybe 1/1/2015. However, this had a silver lining. I didn't finish the room and move in until late 2016. I remember how disappointed I was with the sound. You know one might think that good speakers with good gear in a dedicated space would just automatically sound awesome. Well, that is just not the case. So I did what any scientist/Engineer would do and start to figure it out. I started reading books on acoustics. I learned how to use REW to take measurements and interpret them. And then I started experimenting with different speaker locations and room treatments. I built quite a few myself and bought a bunch (Tube Traps, GIK thick Panels, Real Traps, etc.). None of that seemed to work well to really improve the sound. Then I went down the path of understanding speaker placement. Jim Smith helped with understanding how to find the best placement of the listening position. Stirling Trayle helped with understanding how to get the speakers really, really dialed in. Now I know that a ton of acoustic treatment is not even really needed to get truly great sound. Great sound lies in paying close attention to the micro details in everything.
I have owned or had extended loan of several speakers while in this room. (WIlson MAXX2, Vivid G1, Vivid Spirit, YG Haley, Audiovector) Getting the horns to sound good is so much easier than my former speakers. This is because, as you know, horns are very directional. So, I don't have to deal with the huge back reflections coming off the speakers. There is also another phenomenon. That is that the attack and decay of a horn is so much quicker. This excites the room much less. This is why a real piano in a room sounds great and nobody ever worries about room modes when someone plays it.
There are acousticians out there but I would vet these people very carefully. If they primarily do home theater then that is a pass. I do like one guy who takes a pretty light handed approach, Anthony Grimani, even though he does home theater. If you look at his design it is simple. A few panels along the side wall mixing in some diffusion. Put some diffusers on the ceiling behind the listener and a couple traps in the corners. This is more than enough to get the job done for outstanding sound. Some might even argue too much.
I think the real reason is that a piano is not a point source. Compare the area of a piano sound board to a typical loudspeaker!
Years ago I got 'schooled' in the importance of the size of the sound source. My wife was getting increasingly self-conscious about her diminished ability at the keyboard and didn't want anybody to hear her playing. I thought to get her an electric piano that she could play while listening with headphones. Of course, any cheap electronic keyboard could do the job but I wanted a real instrument: something that played and sounded like the real thing when headphones were not needed.
Most of the high-end electronic pianos do a pretty good job of mimicking both the feel and sound of a real piano, like the sound of the dampers hitting the strings, but to me, they sounded like a clock radio pretending to sound like a piano. That's because they used tiny speakers, just like a clock radio. Then, in the Kawai store, I tried their latest effort. Instead of tiny speakers, they used transducers to vibrate a full-sized piano soundboard. From the description I thought it was a gimmick, but it really works.
To summarize for others...he preferred Trios to WIlson MAXX2, Vivid G1, Vivid Spirit, YG Haley, Audiovector.
Horns are easier to set up, partly because they are directional. If he had it to do over he would not build any acoustic treatment into the room.
There is much more there but if the reader takes away the above two lines should be fine.
Thanks for the summary Ked. I am not looking for this thread to become contentious. The other speakers were all fine. I am not stating that horns are better than panels and panels are better than boxes or anything like that. The main thing I was fighting was the room as is outlined in my post. Yes, I will firmly stand by the "don't build in acoustic treatment" statement but that doesn't mean a room should have none. This is also covered in my post.
Thanks Todd. I have found that the Jim Smith ratio has been very close to where I have ended up on my last few pair of speakers. Like you I didn't aim for it initially but I found the ratio ended up being close to where I landed the speakers relative to the listening position.
Hello Caesar,
Yes, Pretty much everything in the system is changing compared with the prior. I added the CHL10. I am seriously considering changing DAC's to the CH C1.2 with associated extras.
I have Odin2 IC. Of course no need for speaker cables. I am currently using Shunyata Sigma NRV2 power cords. I may evaluate a couple other PC's at some point just to see what happens with those. I was pretty impressed with what the Odin2 PC did on just the DAC at my friends house compared to others.
Hey Al. I hope all is going well and according to plan.
It is interesting how this low 80% rule seems to work out. I would be curious if we sampled 100 great sounding systems how many would be in this general area.
I hosted the Odin Gold power cord for a few days. If the price was 1/10 of what it is really I would build a system using just these power cords. But It intrigues me how a power cable can make such dramatic changes in the sound quality of a system.
I just don't get it either. How can changing just one power cord on a DAC make that much difference. As you know, this is not a subtle change in the sound character. Someone could get a PhD if they could really figure this out. I have all but given up on the intellectual side of audio and just enjoy the music that results from finding the right comonents.
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