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dcc2/cdsd owners: how much acoustic dampening?

I finally have the dcc2/cdsd combo and was wondering how tricked out is the acoustical setup that people have. I have a limitation in that I do not have a dedicated listening room so instead just the old living room. My living room has cathederal ceilings (which I have acoustically padded) and hard wood floors (but plenty of rugs). I am debating whether to also apply acoustical fiberglass and fabric to the front wall to dampen the room further. I am debating whether to do the front wall with two large panels (acoustical fiberglass and fabric) spaced apart (from 4 feet up to near the top which is close to 20 feet). The side walls are not an option nor is carpeting the floors. I could also do the back wall?

I am running the emmlabs combo with wilson watt puppy 7's and rowland 302 amp.

The sound currently has amazing bottom end and vocals are very nice and clear and sound natural.

A friend is a musician who has a home studio and listening to some miles davis (cd kind of blue) in his system and studio which is acoustically very dampened and noticed more activity and detail in the midrange. He has in his studio pass labs amp and small speakers with subwoofer with crossover.

Anyway so the big question is how much to dampen the room? Anyone do a little too much and then pull back? Anyone do a little and then decide they needed more?

Michael
128x128karmapolice
8 responses Add your response
cytocycle
1,043 posts
 
I also own WP7's, follow the wilson setup guidelines and read the section in the manual dealing with acoustics. you can do what I do and choose a nearfield listening which will remove the problems with left/right wall 1st order reflection and room induced problems.

You could have Rives audio design your room with decent looking options that you can live with.

Or you can get crazy and flip your room around like my most recent configuration (you loose a little impact in the bass but the imaging is amazing)
frankg
176 posts
 
I would suggest that you wait until you have 500 or more hours on the EMM gear before tuning your room. It will have more of what you're looking for when fully broke in.
karmapolice's avatar
karmapolice OP
256 posts
 
Frankg,

I kept my dcc2 on for a couple of days. Do you recommend keeping it on constantly for two weeks to get to 500 hours. Or is the 500 hours of actual playing? By the way, does the same recommendation hold true for the transport too?

Michael
tireguy
1,964 posts
 
You must be playing the unit to get a full break in, just leaving it on will get a little bit better(allows things to be powered up, just not doing there thing). CD players are easy to break in, just play them and have your amplifier(s) off, just turn them on when you are going to listen. After a week it will be really good, after two listen as you normally do. I can't say about the transport since I got both of mine at the same time, I would only venture a guess and say it does break in, hell part of it actually moves!

I think acoustic dampening has more to do with your speakers/room then it does your digital front end. Its also been my experience that most over dampen a room making it sound dead, it may be more at ease, but music is not always relaxed in its presentation. In other words its easy to get carried away and do too much of a good thing.
karmapolice's avatar
karmapolice OP
256 posts
 
Thanks Tireguy I think you are right about not doing too much!
frankg
176 posts
 
Hi Michael. I think the Emm gear sounds good out of the box but continues to improve for about 500 hours. You should get more body and a more musical sound with time. As for the CDSD I don't have one yet but I'm told it's much better than the Philips out of the box but will continue to improve up to 200 to 300 hours. There's not enough units in the field to have a good handle on it yet.
For break in you should have a signal going through. I like to run everything but mute my amp. Personally, I don't like to run a transport continually 24/7. I'll run it 8-12 hours on red book and turn it off for complete cool down for a few hours. Then I'll run it another 8-12 hours in sacd mode etc. Alex Peychev suggested this break in to me and it makes since to me. This will take longer and others will disagree but that's what I like to do for break in.
Hope that helps.
Frank Gortz
karmapolice's avatar
karmapolice OP
256 posts
 
Frank,

I think that sounds like a good idea to run the transport for 8 hours or so and then turn off and then resume.

Michael
frankg
176 posts
 
To elaborate a little more on switching between pcm and dsd during break in.
There are differences in the signal path from disc reading in the transport on through the dac for pcm and dsd. (Different chips etc.) By alternating you'll have a better, more complete break in.
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