Our Theater (Third and Final one) - Page 5

Thank you. It does sound good for the most part. I have been trying to find one problem (upper midrange glare) for a long time but to no avail. But the bass is scary good with lots of bass traps, 4 SubMersives and Audyssey XT32. And the immersiveness of the audio in the room is also quite satisfying.

We get lots of use out of the room and my wife loves it almost as much as I do.

With the exception of an occassional visit to an iMax, we never go out to movies any longer.

I was messing around with OmniMic today (actually trying to get REW running with the new USB mic to no avail) and thought I would add these plots of my bass response. The first one is with the front two subs and was where I had them when I only had two SubMersives. The second one is with two subs in the rear of the room and the third one was was both combined. These are all without EQ and the graphs are at 1/12th octave smoothing. These are all with PGM2 on the SubMersives.

What is interesting is that even though the combined response of all 4 subs is reasonably flat, Audyssey X32 made a HUGE difference in the quality of the bass by greatly reducing bass ringing --- only to suggest that there is a lot more to what we hear than frequency response.

Front Two SubMersives



Rear Two SubMersives



All Four SubMersives

.

The rear sub measurements could become important to me if I ever decide to try "wides" as the interconnect for the front two subs would be used to drive those speakers and I would move the front two subs to the rear. When I have nothing better to do, I will run Audyssey with just the rear subs and see what it sounds like
Edited by audioguy - 1/18/13 at 7:38am

I did a 5 position Audyssey calibration utilizing only the rear subs and the bass was startling. Easily better than all four! The only negative was that it felt like I had bass actuators under my seats. Had that sensation not been confined to just the back of the seats, I would have moved the front two to the rear, stacked them onto the existing 2, run Audyssey and be done with it.

Instead, I have ordered the new DSPeaker Dual Core room correction system to see if I can flatten out the front subs and rear subs separately, and then let Audyssey do it's thing.

My thought is that the rear subs are using much of their output to fill in the dip from the front subs instead of using that output to energize the room. And that is exactly what it felt like when I ran just the rear two subs.

Stay tuned. I will post my results once I have tried this newest toy

My two front subs are equal distance from the MLP as are the two rear subs. So the front two will be treated as one and the back two will be treated as one (which is how I have done it with Audyssey).

The difference once I have this new whizzbang device installed is that by the time Audyssey sees the subs, they will already be flat (and the timing difference will also be taken into consideration between the fronts and rears. I could then just tell Audyssey that I only have one sub. I will just have to experiment.

One of the other nifty things about this product is that you can store profiles accessible via remote. So for music, I would have one slope of the bass and for action movies another.

That is a feature that these Integra and other pre-pros really need (storing multiple filter sets). The other thing these pre-pros need (would need to be a function of Audyssey Pro) is the ability to rerun Audyssey for only those speakers that would have changed since the last time you ran it. (typically sub location). I recommended that to them years ago, they said they thought it was a great idea and then apparently, dismissed it. The inclusion of this device (if it works like I think it will) will eliminate all of the Audyssey runs I perform due to sub placement experimentation.

All that said, it is yet to be determined if my objectives and reality line up but we should know reasonably soon.

A couple of updates:

I wanted to be able to easily stream music (wirelessly) to a system in our family room from my server located in the "terrace level" (otherwise known as a basement). And my server has no analog outputs and was configured with two digital outputs, one with SPDIF and the other with AES/EBU. The SPDIF was going to my Integra so I searched for an inexpensive (or used) DAC that supported AES/EBU and ended up with this USB DAC from Emotiva (http://shop.emotiva.com/collections/x-series/products/xda2). Since the purpose of the DAC was to get background music upstairs, I was not concerned about quality. Well it turns out that this product is amazing. It may not compare favorably to the dCS $77,000 stack but it is an amazing piece. The product I used to wirelessly transmit the data (to both my family room and my office on the top floor) was this http://audioengineusa.com/Store/Audioengine-W3#.URD4Aujag_M).

In addition, I had read so much about the qøl™ – signal completion stage (in TAS and Stereophile) and their 30 day home trial, I decided to give this a go as well. My conclusions are not yet final but this is a very cool piece, albeit, in my opinion, overpriced. They need to do the Audyssey thing and get this technology imbedded into preamps and surround processors. The problem I needed to solve if I keep this unit is how to integrate it into my system so that it gets a feed for the full music spectrum. So, if I used the LR outputs of my Integra, I would not get the feed for bass, assuming I did not use the Integra in Direct Mode which would then mean I had no EQ on my system.

So enter yet another box/product that I have purchased and that is the Anti-Mode 2.0 Dual Core (http://www.dspeaker.com/en/products/20-dual-core.shtml). Now THIS is an amazing product. It provides digital room correction up to about 500 hz, a built in mini-screen to see the before/after of the correction, has memories for storing various correction filters, has an instantaneous ability to add a bit of user defined bass boost (which I use when listening to movies) and a bunch of other capabilities too numerous to mention. (In a full disclosure, I like this product so much I became a dealer for them. If interested, send me a PM). The correction it did on my bass compared to Audyssey Pro was very impressive.

The initial reason for the purchase of the Dual Core was to see if I could get more out of my 4 SubMersives. The front combined with the rear subs created a very nice FR but the front subs had a very wide dip that the rear subs corrected but, I postulate, at the expense of giving up some slam. So the plan was to use the Dual Core to flatten out the front subs and THEN run Audyssey. That experiment is still on-going.

So back to potential implementation of the qøl™, I still potentially needed another piece to make it all work and am considering a very nifty preamp from Emotiva that I found by accident. It is an analog stereo preamp (see http://shop.emotiva.com/collections/processors/products/xsp1) that supports 2.1 or 2.2 systems providing the ability to set crossover points, adjust the level of each side, etc and provides full HT pass-thru so that your pre-pro can have direct access to both the mains and the subs. I am not familiar with any other analog preamp that offers this capability – at any price. Couple this with the Dual Core and ---- viola !!

I am still experimenting so we shall see. And I thought I was through. Once everything is in place and have made the decisions to keep all of the components, I will try to draw a schematic on how it is all connected.
Edited by audioguy - 2/5/13 at 1:30pm

The results I get from the anti-mode are much better than with Audyssey. Unfortunagtely, when I run Audyssey through the anti-mode, it partially screws up the primary benefit of the antimode:

The first plot is uncorrected compared to dual core corrected:



The next compares the dual core corrected to what Audyssey did on top of that correction:



You can see that Audyssey reduces a fair amount of the output below 20hz ---- and I paid good money for that output.

Now the good news is that I can easily fix that since the dual core provide the ability to raise the base a chosen amount below a user selected pivot point -- and save that to a memory.

A very very flexible product.

There is a trick I learned a long time ago with other room correction systems I used -- I am going to increase the dual core output (it has volume control) when the system does it's measurements and see if most of the curve is above the point at which it starts and then pull everything down and potentially get better response. It may or may not work but as you can see, even my uncorrected response looks OK but Audyssey really eliminates bass ringing.

It does include a very small mic and about a 30 foot cord that plugs into the Dual Core. The entire process takes maybe 15 minutes and it will show the uncorrected response and then the corrected response on the little screen (which you can validate with an external measuring system like REW or OmniMIc). It is made in Finland. Here is the website of the manufacturer:

http://www.dspeaker.com/en/products/20-dual-core.shtml

Thanks you.

The back wall has RPG Skylines Diffusors on it. They may now be a discontinued product since I could not find them on the main RPG page. You can find them at other sites like Music Direct. But the price shown is WAY above what they cost when I purchased them. WAAAAAY above.

See http://www.rpgeurope.com/products/product/skyline.html

Thank you for the compliment. Actually, there is a significant amount of bass trapping. All four corners are bass traps and 3 of the 4 wall/ceiling soffits are bass traps. I learned in my last room that room correction alone is not enough to eliminate bass ringing.

In the photo below, you can see the front right corner during construction and see where the corner trap is being constructed and the soffit traps. The soffit traps are stuffed with OC703!

Just installed DiracLive software on my music server and I can only say WOW. So for any of you two channel guys who would prefer something other than Audyssey on a pre-pro or some PEQ capability, this is the way to go. Server to DAC to analog preamp to speakers, all nice and room corrected.

Lots more flexible that Audyssey (Pro) but some care must be taken. (should you choose to try this, let me know so I can give you a heads up in one specific area). Once installed, VERY easy to use (Mac or PC). Three measurement options: single listener which fits me since my wife watched movies but does not listen to music; correct for a sofa; or correct for the room.

While I have not done any A/B comparisons to Audyssey through the Integra for 2 channel, I can tell you (and will post photos later) that the corrected response is smoother with Dirac than Audyssey.

You can download it and play with it free for some time (20 days??) and then decide. List is about $800 and I think you can purchase now for $650.

Highly recommended.

I am temporarily running my server with DiracLive on and Audyssey off to listen since the bass management functions of my 2 day old preamp don't work. Here is the bass response (both subs and mains) after Dirac did it's thing --- no smoothing!

Craig:

The slope of the response exists due to the standard target curve in DiracLive. One of the beauties of Dirac is the unlimited ability to modify the target to really fine-tune your response. What is cool about it is that if offers three approaches to measuring: For a single listener (much to the chagrin of our North Carolina friend -- Gary J); for a sofa or for an entire room. For a single listener, you take 9 measurements (MUCH MUCH faster than Audyssey).

Three things got me to the Preamp:

First: I needed an inexpensive DAC to take the output of my server and connect to this (http://audioengineusa.com/Store/Audioengine-W3) to transmit wireless audio to my family room and office. That way I can use my iPhone or iPad with J Remote to control what I hear throughout the house. And specifically, it needed to be an AES/EBU connection since that is what I had available (without buying more stuff) from my server. That led me to Emotiva.

Second: I have the qol Audio Enhancement thingie (see http://www.bsgt.com/technology-information/about-qol/qol-the-dna-of-sound/). And to take full advantage of it, I wanted it to be fed the entire audio signal, not just what the mains from my Integra would feed it.

Third: I wanted to be able to use DiracLive from my server (it has a LOT more flexibility than Audyssey Pro and appears to be as good or better than Audyssey at doing it’s job).

So, since I use a sub(s) for augmenting my mains for music listening, I searched for a preamp that supported analog bass management, and I found two. The Parasound P7 at $2000 and the Emotiva XSP-1 at $900. I chose the latter. I’m sure the Parasound is probably a better piece but I’m not sure how audible it would be to these ears. I also could have used a regular two channel preamp (purchased used), split the output and then used the Dual Core (see http://www.dspeaker.com/en/products/20-dual-core.shtml) to control the filter for the subs. But I didn’t.

As it turns out, my preamp is faulty. No matter what crossover point I select, the curve never changes so they are sending me a new (and tested) unit. (another benefit of measuring !!!!)

I have sent you a PM on the DSpeaker products.

Chuck

Here is how I have everything connected. As of today, the DSpeaker Dual Core is not in the system.

I paid the standard price. It was on sale for $650 and I think the regular price is like $800. I had an old M30 Mic (Earthworks) which is more accurate without a cal file than most are with. I used this as a mic preamp (http://www.sweetwater.com/store/search.php?s=audiobox+usb). A friend who tested DiracLive out first (they have a trial period of like 21 days) used the XTZ mic and preamp and then when he purchased the software, bought the audiobox piece.

I would go on-line to DiracLive site and see if all you need is a USB mic with a cal file. In my case, I needed the gain provided from the mic preamp.

I can't remember what SSP you are using, but you may want to think through the A/D and D/A conversion process you are contemplating if you require subs to run your main speakers full range (as I do). Unless you have an analog preamp with analog bass management, you are going to end up coming from your Oppo (analog out) to your SSP and then having to convert back to digital to do bass management and then back to analog.

That is why I ended up with the preamp that I am trying to use. I come digital out of the server with the corrected response, then to the DAC and then to the analog preamp so no more conversions.

One more point. If you have not already paid for and/or committed to your server, I HIGHLY recommend you make a phone call to Neal at SoundScience and hear his story on server differences. While he is clearly a competitor to the server you are looking at, he knows his stuff and may give you some insight to help your evaluation. He can be reached at 720-308-4000.

If you have already purchased your server, ignore the above.

But DiracLive is the real deal.

They say "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" so thank you. Do you have photos anywhere?

The system does sound very good to my ears. That has much to do with the speaker choices, placement, room treatment and Audyssey (Pro), and using available measuring tools like OmniMIc or XTZ or REW.