WTF...I thought this hobby/indulgence was supposed to be fun and relaxing
There is casual listening and critical listening, they both can be fun.
If you want lame advice DON'T do this!
Have you ever seen a member ask for advice about their system and don't understand why they need to make a change? Mistakes in this hobby are generally expensive. Does a list of components tell you how they sound together as a system? No Does a picture of a room tell you how the system sounds in the room? No. Think about the dollars that have been flushed away because the problem was the room and no matter what you stick in there or how much it cost it won't git er done. A flat in room frequency response is a starting point before changing anything. So, why don't more people post measurements when asking for advice? If you want lame advice DON'T post your system in your profile. If you want good advice post your system and a pic. If you want excellent advice include your in room FR measurements (which almost all modern receivers provide or REW can do for free).
Showing 19 responses by kota1
You got nothing posted about your system that I see yet you posted this thread about racks. It is a waste of space unless you measure, then you KNOW which is better for YOUR room. Why even ask? You will never get the right answer on a chat room board but if you post measurements with rack at different location BOOM, you don't have to guess. https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/equipment-rack-between-speakers-good-or-bad |
Every professional installer (either for the home or the studio) measures, tweaks, measures, listens, and gets it right. Every Joe Six pack like you that slings money at the problem at Best Buy couldn’t hear the difference anyway. Don’t walk away angry, it’s not my fault you have a blow torch at your wallet and another one you have to sit on every time you turn on your system. I realize you struggle just using your phone, here get professional help, you can thank me later: https://homeacoustics.org/haa-training/
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Equally as important are time decay issues. +1, decay times should be .2 to .4 seconds. There is some good info on how to achieve that in this video at the :32 mark. The hard math they use to calculate it follows and the short cut (which I followed to the T) to get it right in your room is at the :43 mark: https://www.youtube.com/live/G0ekssXX7rE?feature=share
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We all have our own ways of measuring, and I do it with experimentation and with my ears. That's the final step in calibrating your room. If it doesn't please your ears no point right? In recording studios they have standards, rooms are calibrated. Professional installers use standards that are known to reproduce what the engineer heard in the studio. It saves time and money. This gets me back to my OP, how can someone advise me on a system change when they don't know how my current setup interacts with my room? Changes cost money and I am all for using your ears and experimentation AFTER the room is calibrated. |
Different people like different sound types, whether that be a rolled off top end, or a heavy mid response, etc... 100% true, the software I use has different response curves you can choose or design one of your own. I read a lot of good stuff about the "harman curve" yet it wasn’t what sounded best to my ears. I think this is coming it a bit high. I 100% agree, I did title this thread very in your face. The reason is the number of thread I see of people saying "my budget is $$$$ and I want to buy X." That’s it, no system posted, no pics, just "and I like ______ type of music." The next thing you know members here are firing off $$$$$ recommendations and I think that is a poor way to budget (throwing darts in a chat room). I think the way I summed it up is reasonable, the MORE info someone provides (including system, pics, and measurements), the better the advice.
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Expecting a novice to do what you would like to see in order to advise them is a bit beyond the pale. Does that make it wrong? A microphone is $100 and REW is available for whatever you care to donate (or not). How much money and time will that noob save by having objective data to share? These is no downside to having the data.
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Is the OP an acoustician specialized in small room That is a GREAT question. The OP (as in moi) knew his limitations re: small room acoustics AND his budget. Thankfully I had the sense to get the acoustics right before blowing up my budget. There is some GREAT info available on the topic which I chose to avail myself of. (check page 2 here) and (chapters 4,5, and 10 here) This is a starting point and yes, I consulted with professional mixing stages, studio owners, the founder of Auro 3D, and installers of high end listening rooms and home theaters. I have had my measurements reviewed by professional acousticians. Maybe it was overkill but still a LOT cheaper than buying new gear. |
And the bigger question is, perhaps, who is going to train these folks? I wouldn’t want to send out a drivers ed student in a Rolls Royce. If you are Joe Six pack just install big subwoofers and hit the only switch you will ever need (full blast). Next there are certified calibrators that will calibrate a TV or a listening room (see CEDIA and https://homeacoustics.org/haa-training/) For the astute members that have already invested in a system it isn’t a big deal to buy a mic and measure. |
Funny you should mention BestBuy I know, I know, the first three words of English you learned was "attention K-Mart shoppers". my bad. Forget the link I posted for you to get professional help, use this one instead.
As per my personal preferences for my room setup the Toole uses the same setup as me (right down to using a center height channel and using front and rear book shelves as height channels AND a VOG channel):
Abbey road studios mixing Pink Floyd immersive audio, same. I also use active speakers for bed channels and have active speakers mounted high as height channels, sounds better and save a lot of space and money. They are using Neumann active monitors, I use Paradigm Active Reference 40 and 20's:
Here is a takeaway about acoustics from both setups, notice the MLP is equidistant from the front and back of the room. This was a HUGE improvement in my room when I moved my MLP to same and NOT the one listed in the dolby specs which is closer to the rear wall FWIW. |
I dont recommend to anybody to listen to anyone FIRST but i recommend reading serious acoustic articles and creating their own set of experiments in their dedicated room or in their living room FIRST ... For fun, learning is more fun than buying... Bingo, you nailed it AND there are some good videos available on you tube like the one I linked to by Anthony Grimani. |
but it is not easy to master if you’re not familiar with acoustic measurement taking. You already learned to move your MLP and what did that cost? Time, maybe a learning curve. Imagine if you didn't have that information and attempted to "fix" it by buying new equipment. It would be money down the tubes. I went through the same thing, instead of flushing dollars I went to doing what you are going through. Moved my MLP forward so its equidistant from the back wall, placed my speakers a t precise angles using a tape measure and a laser pointer, measured again and it was better, critically listened and WOW. Not bad for an afternoons work and I didn't need to buy new gear. |
My streamer is a Paradigm Link which was only $199 on sale and has all the streaming features I need AND an RCA in port so I can also connect a TT or a CDP to it if I wanted. The reason it is so good is because it has ARC room correction. I use the toslink out to my Sony TAZH1ES dac/pre. The end result is a true holographic soundstage, crystal clear intonation of voices, every pluck of a cello, every breath of a singer, every shimmer of a cymbal or a triangle. It sounds so amazing NOT because of the streamer or the dac/pre. It sounds amazing because it is tuned to my room just right. No matter how much you spend on your front end, if the notes smear, if the noise doesn’t allow them to stand in their own space of the soundstage, you are missing the point. To do this strictly by ear is painstaking because you don’t know what you don’t know. Maybe it sounds great but you don’t know how much better it can get. When you see a measurement like the one below it basically confirms you have squeezed the living daylights out of your room to focus in a great performance for every track you play. I had a professional acoustician review this graph, he said even my FR before the ARC correction was outstanding due to the attention I gave to my room. The corrected graph is even better as you can see.
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