Room Correction Required

@mitchellcp ,

I paid 4k shipped for fully loaded 3400 year and a half old (with receipt) less than 2 months ago. There was another one, at that time similarly priced. 

@mitchellcp Your description of the problem is a classic example of how standing waves cancel and reinforce bass in a room, depending on frequency.

You can fix the peaks with room correction but not the dips!!!

The reason you can't fix the dips is that the amplifier power is being cancelled at the null frequency. You could put 10,000 Watts into that cancellation and it would still be cancelled. So room correction won't work on its own!

You need to break up the standing waves. That is the way to fix this.

You break up standing waves by having subwoofers placed asymmetrically about the room. Since your main speakers already play bass, you really only need to add two subs to fix this. This kind of approach is known as a Distributed Bass Array, and causes bass to be evenly distributed about the room.

Normally you'd want the subs to not reproduce anything above 80Hz (in most rooms) so as to not attract attention to themselves.

At 80 Hz the waveform is 14 feet long. It takes the ear a few iterations of the waveform to know what the note is (it takes one iteration to know its there). So by the time you know what the bass note is, its bounced around the room several times. This means that bass is entirely reverberant.

So that also means that a mono signal can be used for bass in most rooms below 80Hz. This won't be true for really long rooms.

This fix will take care of about 95% of your problem- enough that you many not consider doing the remaining 5%. That 5% is what the DSP and bass traps can do; IOW they are maybe only good for about 2-3% each.

Put bluntly, room correction is a waste of time and money until you have the standing wave issue sorted out.

I agree with above. I need a system which will give me some good bass management as opposed to no management at all.

The Swarm sub array - or using different subs as described above - will work wonders. Everyone thinks of subs as 40hz and lower and pounding out bass like a concert but really having them cut off at 70 or 80hz and dialed in prudently will work really well. Good luck!

The STR Integrated has been in place for 24 hours now and I have some observations. First off, it’s big. It’s also black but not as black as the Supernait which may be the most absurdly black object I’ve ever seen. The STR speaker connections are on the correct sides, unlike the Naim, whose sole redeeming quality is highly engaging sound reproduction, which causes one to forget the weird  things about a Naim product.

As to the STR non-DSP/room corrected sound quality, I was prepared for a letdown. What I was not prepared for was the similarity between the STR and the Supernait 3. First is the transient attack which is excellent on both and one of the qualities I was worried about giving up. No worries on that score, the STR sounds nimble with percussion and outstanding with piano. The STR may best the Naim on sustains but since I don’t have them both here I can’t be sure, I certainly don’t feel like I lost anything in that regard. One thing the STR brings to the table is gobs of power and you can hear it.

All in all, in a non- corrected state, I can’t say I lost anything with the STR. I bought it for the room correction but even without that feature activated, for my equipment in my room, it’s a much better match. 
 

The 30-40hz peak and the 70 to 90hz null are still there so tomorrow is ARC day. I’ll update after I bumble through that.