Vivid Giya G3

[dallasjustice]

Yes, my target curve is slightly tilted in the LF too. I should have said "smooth" bass to 20hz.

I definitely do not do flat at seated position , I apply a house curve .

This is one of the target curves I use as an example

 

[sbo6]

Congrats on the speakers. As many have said, I'm a bit surprised to see the xover at 80Hz. If that was the original intent, monitors might have made more sense. Also, while you cannot hear bass localization below ~80Hz, you certainly can feel it. In my experience with subs, the difference is usually quite noticeable in how the room is loaded with and without subs except for a few systems that I've witnessed. Also, as you said, you are managing the room more than the speaker low freq capability, however, depending on your listening position you most certainly can achieve 20Hz with full range speakers.

I'd also be curious to hear if you tried letting the Giyas run full range and augment with the subs xover at ~40Hz.

 

[dallasjustice]

I know it may seem surprising. I've measured and listened to all kinds of different crossovers with my previous speakers. I used REW to take measurement after each change and compared them all. I also listened. You can see some of that iterative process I use in other threads I've started like the one linked to above. Btw, I did try a 40hz crossover and the bass wasn't nearly as smooth as the 80hz crossover. It was easily a large measured difference and easily audible. The 80hz crossover produced the best bass quality in my room. There's no downside. So, This isn't a haphazardly selected crossover frequency or slope. As I said before, the bass is heard directly from the room, not the speakers. I'm most likely not going back through that measurement process again anytime soon since I'm still listening in the same room and in the same basic seated/speaker position. So the very low frequencies will be virtually identical.

I don't really understand your point about using a monitor speaker. I believe ALL full range speakers could benefit from a crossover to subs. A monitor speaker would require a higher crossover for a setup like this. A monitor speaker would also lack the extreme dynamics and low distortion that many larger speakers can deliver.

Most folks are very surprised when they hear the bass in my room. There's no doubt I could get 20hz bass in my room without the subs. I used to use DIRAC and I've done that before in a 2CH setup. The problem is that the bass isn't nearly as smooth and articulate. The other problem is that the bass has restricted dynamics with only two speakers.

Congrats on the speakers. As many have said, I'm a bit surprised to see the xover at 80Hz. If that was the original intent, monitors might have made more sense. Also, while you cannot hear bass localization below ~80Hz, you certainly can feel it. In my experience with subs, the difference is usually quite noticeable in how the room is loaded with and without subs except for a few systems that I've witnessed. Also, as you said, you are managing the room more than the speaker low freq capability, however, depending on your listening position you most certainly can achieve 20Hz with full range speakers.

I'd also be curious to hear if you tried letting the Giyas run full range and augment with the subs xover at ~40Hz.

 

[sbo6]

I know it may seem surprising. I've measured and listened to all kinds of different crossovers with my previous speakers. I used REW to take measurement after each change and compared them all. I also listened. You can see some of that iterative process I use in other threads I've started like the one linked to above. Btw, I did try a 40hz crossover and the bass wasn't nearly as smooth as the 80hz crossover. It was easily a large measured difference and easily audible. The 80hz crossover produced the best bass quality in my room. There's no downside. So, This isn't a haphazardly selected crossover frequency or slope. As I said before, the bass is heard directly from the room, not the speakers. I'm most likely not going back through that measurement process again anytime soon since I'm still listening in the same room and in the same basic seated/speaker position. So the very low frequencies will be virtually identical.

I don't really understand your point about using a monitor speaker. I believe ALL full range speakers could benefit from a crossover to subs. A monitor speaker would require a higher crossover for a setup like this. A monitor speaker would also lack the extreme dynamics and low distortion that many larger speakers can deliver.

Most folks are very surprised when they hear the bass in my room. There's no doubt I could get 20hz bass in my room without the subs. I used to use DIRAC and I've done that before in a 2CH setup. The problem is that the bass isn't nearly as smooth and articulate. The other problem is that the bass has restricted dynamics with only two speakers.

My point wrt monitors vs full range is - why bother going full range if you are going to xover at 80Hz? I think some others had the same opinion. Most monitors go well below 80Hz, but I completely understand your point. There is a "robustness" from bass that comes from full range speakers irrespective of subs and it seems to be working to your favor in your room.

I've thought about equalization in my setup but was always worried about potential degradation in sound, plus the overall complexity. It sounds like in your case it's clearly to your advantage.

 

[Rodney Gold]

I understand the need for subs .. but I too question the 80hz crossover as the G3's are more than capable of performing exceptionally down to <30hz
I had KEF ls50's which I crossed over to twin SVS subs at 80hz.... I think the point he is making re monitors is that you could have bought a set of smaller speakers that is bass limited and got more or less the same results.

 

[dallasjustice]

I understand the need for subs .. but I too question the 80hz crossover as the G3's are more than capable of performing exceptionally down to <30hz
I had KEF ls50's which I crossed over to twin SVS subs at 80hz.... I think the point he is making re monitors is that you could have bought a set of smaller speakers that is bass limited and got more or less the same results.

When you are talking about crossovers, I'm certain you aren't talking about how I've set this up. Rodney, I know you use DIRAC LIVE. However, Dirac doesn't offer the capability to do what I've done. In fact, Dirac doesn't offer a time aligned crossover option. Dirac is a user friendly DSP suite but is not very adavanced sotware. My system is a true MCH time aligned crossover between the main the subs. For now, I'm using Audiolense and later I'll use Acourate. Both softwares use the impulse response to time and phase align between the respective speakers in my room and use digital crossovers. I could be wrong but I've never remembered you saying you've ever used any software which can do this. Dirac cannot do this between multiple channels with a crossver.

I don't mind the questions. But unless you've actually done it and measure it, I don't really think much of your advice about where to cross the vivid speaker over. Rodney, if you own a license to Acourate or Audiolense and have used a MCH DAC to integrate time aligned subs with main R/L speakers, let's see what you've done and why my crossver is wrong. I would love to be wrong about your level of experience with regard to DSP. Until then, I appreciate the interest but just know that there's a much better way to integrate a subwoofer, IMO.

To better understand why I'm setting things up the way I do, you should probably pick up a copy of Floyd Toole's book. He explains the research and the math behind setting up multiple mono subs to get smoother bass response. He also discusses the research on low frequency localization. What I'm doing is very much following accepted best acoustical practices in the industry. Whether any speaker can reproduce bass down to 30hz is only really important in an anechoic chamber. In real rooms, the fact that the Giya can reproduce bass down to 30hz is only important to me such that I can get a nice smooth crossover between the Giya and a sub. R/L speakers are almost never in the optimal position or being fed mono bass to get the best bass response in a room. This is why folks like Floyd Toole recommend the multiple mono sub method to get smooth bass. In the case of 2 subs, Toole has a recommendation in his book about sub placement and I've found through actual measurements that it works best.

 

[Rodney Gold]

Dallas.. I have used sigtech , tact , lyngdorf , minidsp , acourate , krk ergo , z-sys and many other products either to drive active speakers or integrate subs or do full room correction
At present I am using a meridian 568.2 processor on my subs that allows me distance , phase , crossover , master level and so on to control them.
Dirac sees the system as a whole.

I use Geddes and duke le jeunes methods to set up the subs (which also have DSP built in) and am fully aware of tooles work

You can slice it and dice it any way , high passing the g3's at 80hz is a waste of their bass ability.
Anyway , they are yours to do as you want with them

 

[bonzo75]

Finally - an argument between 2 objectivists

 

[Rodney Gold]

Im a pragmatist .. not an objectivist ..

 

[bonzo75]

Im a pragmatist .. not an objectivist ..

Sorry, in audiophilia, there are only 2 religions - us and them

 

[FrantzM]

Finally - an argument between 2 objectivists

And why couldn't it be?

I am on the side of always using a sub when it comes to bass reproduction. would always take the highest crossover possible within the constraint of localization.

We must realize that the more LF sources in a room the better the probability of smoother bass response. Reducing the amount of LF that reach the main speakers in most cases decrease power compression.
Very interesting discussion and one more testimony to how good the Giyas are across the range. Color me extremely interested... Weird looks be damned!

 

[Rodney Gold]

Yes , distributed bass works , but most proponents of it also recommend running the main speakers full range
as per Geddes

1) Pick the sub closest to the mains, this must be a HF sub, i.e. it must overlap the mains.Overlap
with the mains is unusual in my approach.Most people would suggest a crossover, but for a
number of reasons, this doesn’t work very well(crossover all the subs at the same point?How
will this all add up at various places around the room?Basically it doesn’t work.)I suggest that
the mains and the subs overlap, in other words they are all playing at the same time at some
frequency.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxgUOGOB5HbfNkh6LUtHX09aTzA/view

If you do so with the G3's (which can handle serious power and go seriously loud with unbelievable lack of compression - no point in limiting power to them unless you have a wimpy amp ) you end up with an extra 4 more bass sources under localization freq IE do not high pass the G3's

 

[bonzo75]

Yes, like I said yesterday, I haven't heard a full range speaker do better than external subs. The ones I have heard do well cross over at 80, but I have never experimented with 80 or 40 to comment on the difference.

 

[dallasjustice]

Christof at Illusonic just performed a similar time alignment of the bass here, ( my speakers are semi active) we used four rather than two channels of the Illusonic processor, I have the previous two channel corrections and can switch between them, I prefer the latest correction.
Keith.

Do you use a crossover between the subs and the R/L?

 

[dallasjustice]

Rodney,
Why don't you try it with crossovers and without crossovers? If you have test gear, it's free and easy to use REW to measure a log sweep from say 20hz to 300hz. I thank you for posting your Dirac projected plot. But the real test would be to measure with and without crossovers with the various speakers time/phase aligned. Let's just see where this takes us. I've done it both ways in my room. I've also used asymmetric crossovers in either direction. The better asymmetric crossovers in my system have the steeper slope on the R/L. This stuff is very easy to diagnose with a mic since mics are very faithful to what's heard at the seated position at very low frequencies.

Yes , distributed bass works , but most proponents of it also recommend running the main speakers full range
as per Geddes

1) Pick the sub closest to the mains, this must be a HF sub, i.e. it must overlap the mains.Overlap
with the mains is unusual in my approach.Most people would suggest a crossover, but for a
number of reasons, this doesn’t work very well(crossover all the subs at the same point?How
will this all add up at various places around the room?Basically it doesn’t work.)I suggest that
the mains and the subs overlap, in other words they are all playing at the same time at some
frequency.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxgUOGOB5HbfNkh6LUtHX09aTzA/view

If you do so with the G3's (which can handle serious power and go seriously loud with unbelievable lack of compression - no point in limiting power to them unless you have a wimpy amp ) you end up with an extra 4 more bass sources under localization freq IE do not high pass the G3's

 

[Audiophile Bill]

I definitely do not do flat at seated position , I apply a house curve .

This is one of the target curves I use as an example

Why do you roll it off so hard @ 18khz and nothing beyond?

 

[RBFC]

Why do you roll it off so hard @ 18khz and nothing beyond?

I believe the software does that, and it is not "adjustable" for higher frequency extension. Michael can confirm this or correct me.

Lee

 

[Rodney Gold]

It was an example..I actually only correct from 300hz down.
The measured response actually rolls off much steeper and starts earlier, it's what you expect the room hf absorption and distance to do to the upper treble.

heres a pic of the target curve vs actual and you can see that

 

[harleyguy]

Love your speakers.Great looks and a top tier speaker,Vivid speakers are great congrats.

 

[Audiophile Bill]

It was an example..I actually only correct from 300hz down.
The measured response actually rolls off much steeper and starts earlier, it's what you expect the room hf absorption and distance to do to the upper treble.

heres a pic of the target curve vs actual and you can see that

What are we looking at here - the target curve from above with your uncorrected response in blue?