Nothing to do with superfly, but I finally got around to making dramatic room changes to Druid with impact on sound. Some improvement as I expected, and some big surprise as well.
My room is large, open L with cathedral ceiling and suffer from typical big room problem. Floor is cavity. I was running druid with megabuck Rotel class-d, plus seal B&W sub. Setup was in closed portion at end of "L" to deal with open room. Setup druid on wood plank.
I had a midrange suckout which I deal with with digital EQ, plus I had mid bass that really need to be run hot for it to be audible, even though it show up measuring very over (+8-9 db).
I move druid to corner of L. I put speaker on 6 inch of brick. I swap out Rotel for Peachtree Nova, and B&W for two ported subs. Most heretical, I run sub from 30-60Hz, and Druid from 60Hz+. Rolloff is sharp.
I have wanted to run dual subwoofer for long time, and given improvement from floor to wood, was interested in wood to something harder.
Here is what I find:
1. The denser the surface under the druid the better. From carpet to wood to tile to thick brick it just get better and better in upper bass and midrange.
2. Mid bass remain freakshow. 60Hz cutoff helps. It also help midrange. In general, tonal density of speaker is immense now. It is like sticking head in bucket of sound. I am interested if I can get even more of this immersion.
3. Nova is remarkable amp. I try mid-fi integrated with DAC (HK) and Nova was so clearly better it makes me laugh. Maybe you can get better amp than Nova, but Nova kick butt of low end AB integrated, and high end class-d. I had given up on class-d, and now I give up on it even more.
4. Ported subs were harder to integrate than seal. I first integrate roughtly with 20-200Hz sweeps, and then voice to actual music. But it works OK now. I also find that I must place subs very very close to main speaker. Maybe this is because I cross over very high, but group delay from sub is real phenomenon.
4. Midrange suckout is gone. I have no idea where it went. This is most curious to me. Maybe there were standing waves in the end of L that are gone in corner. I do not understand how place speaker in the most OPEN part of overly large room fixed so many of "big room" problem.
5. Digital EQ sucks. I am so happy to be rid of it.
6. I now have to sit on two pillows on chair since druid is so much higher. Ear height make big difference.
7. Because midrange is so richer, I can have speaker further apart and keep same tonal density. Sound stage is massive, and I think that is what creates the immersion in part. I am getting closer to solid wall of sound.
8. Once again, I am taught importance of toe-in for druid. I spend a long time on this, and literally milimeter change create great coherence. On track where synth play with phase to make sound slither around, i literally hear it run all around the room. Even behind me sometimes, it is very cool effect.
9. While imaging is something I do not care about, this setup does not really have it, but there is presence in the solid wall. Hard to describe.
10. This system scale very nicely. So you have track with quiet portion, it is nice and focus and clear. And then when you get crescendo, it is like everything get bigger. Sound stage gets bigger, power gets bigger, just more massive on every dimension. This is also very nice effect, I would like to get even more drama in this "scale" impact.
11. Off axis, system went from being "good" to "bad". In spot it is actively unlistenable. Oh well.
