2. amps-preamps
  3. 187438-75497

Room Correction Required

I have to part with my Supernait 3. I have enjoyed it as much as possible in a room where I have a 7bB at 80hz hole at my listening position. It starts at about 125hz, bottoms out at 80hz, comes back up around 60hz before dropping into a black hole at 50hz. On top of that I have a serious peak (12dB) at 40-30hz. It makes for an odd musical experience. Obviously this is not the fault of the Naim. My previous unit did the same thing but I was wishing that the Naim would power through it. I also replaced my speakers in the same vain hope. Wishing vs. science..... oops. When I get out of the null zone the tonality is great but I can't be seated that far out of the space without looking really dumb or antisocial. Also the sound stage is wrecked when I get out there.

I have lived in this home for a year and a half. The issue was worse before I pivoted the room arrangement 90 degrees. My partner is an artist and designer, so I have blown all my rearranging capitol for the next 10 years (her words not mine). We looked at adding room treatments and perused the currently available options which look like church or hospital decor; SO NOT HAPPENING (her words again but I have to agree- yuck).

As a result, I need an integrated with room correction. Yes, I'm sticking with an integrated because I want a minimal gear set.

-TT via Gold Note PH-10/PSU10, outputs either balanced or single end.
-Prefer built in streaming to lose another couple boxes but it's not a deal killer. Current DAC outputs balanced or single end.
-Powering MA Silver 500 7G, not looking to change these.
-Single Revel B112v2 Subwoofer (not currently in use as the 500's are already peaking in the same range)
-TV, currently input optical to the DAC.

The top contenders are:
Anthem STR (no streaming)
NAD M33
Lyngdorf TDAI 1120 (the 3400 is not budget friendly).
Yamaha RN-2000a

So if anyone has experience with these units I'd like to hear about it. Also, I know it's going to happen and god bless you all; someone is going to tell to reposition my speakers (been done), stuff the ports (been done) get room treatments (ummmmmm nope?) and buy Luxman, Sudgen or something else because of __________ (fill in the blank). That's fine and I appreciate the advise but I don't see any of that happening in this room anytime soon under the current design driven regimen I live under.

Thank you all for taking a look!

mitchellcp

Showing 3 responses by mapman

mapman's avatar
mapman
22,636 posts
 

For TV I just use a good quality soundbar.  
 

Regarding vinyl, I have lots of albums but don’t play them much anymore.  Roon and Qobuz has taken me over.  When I do play a record, I generally play it once and convert it to digital, add it to my library and stream it via Roon from there on. 
 

But yes DSP integrated into the hardware is a very flexible way to go for multiple sources beyond just digital audio streaming with Roon.  
 

 

mapman's avatar
mapman
22,636 posts
 

One of my rooms has a very similar significant drop-out at ~ 60hz. I was able to correct this quite well with Roon DSP and Room Eq Wizard freeware to create and apply a very aggressive and slightly customized convolution filter for overall room Correction.

I also then applied a 4db volume boost to bring overall SPL levels back close to original post-filtering.

The results are stunning! I have trouble bringing myself to stop listening which is always a good sign!

 

The caveat with using DSP to fix bass dropouts at certain frequencies this way is make sure your amp has headroom available beforehand so it is up to the task of delivering the corrected bass response without clipping. As a safeguard, I also added an additional gradual parametric roll off filter to the lowest octaves in Roon DSP adjusting that by ear for best results. End result was smoother response top to bottom with a gradual rolloff applied to the lowest octave mainly as a safeguard to help avoid clipping.

Of course anything one can do practically to avoid such bass nulls/drop outs physically in the first place is always a good thing to save having to make the amp work harder to compensate. But if that is not practical or effective first, DSP can help quite a bit.

 

 

mapman's avatar
mapman
22,636 posts
 

Do you have Roon? You can do room correction with Roon  by just acquiring a microphone to measure and using Room Eq Wizard freeware. I just did it with one of my rooms with excellent results. One room down, 3 to go.

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