Let's see pics of your stereo setup! - Page 12

Hello FOH! Nice to hear from you again, and thanks for your kind words. After having the room designed and built, I was appalled with how a bare room with only wall-to-wall carpet sounded despite having some pretty decent gear. That was the impetus for self-learning and study of small room physics/acoustics over the past several years. I caught the DIY bug and looked to design diffusers and bass traps that exceeded what was commercially available, at a considerable cost savings. My communications with Drs Sean Olive and Trevor Cox really were incredibly helpful.

Regarding the side wall reflective baffles, I built them to eliminate the flutter echo between the side walls, at the same time as likely reducing comb filtering of mid to lower frequencies. I plan on using OmniMic's Frequency, Impulse Response, and Reverb/Bass Decay charts to optimize what angles each row of baffles should be at. I'll try 20, 30 and 40 degrees for starters which gives me 27 different combinations to evaluate. This shouldn't take too long given that last week I took 99 measurements over two hours for all possible sub location combinations using my pair of subs. As you can see from the pictures, I'm using diffusion at ear level on the side wall first reflection points as I found that (i)reflection offered the best 'liveliness' but caused a reduction of musical details, and (ii)absorption sounded a bit unnatural but offered the best musical detail recovery, and (iii)diffusion was very close behind absorption for musical detail recovery but still offered the liveliness of reflection alone - kind of the best of both of the other two tools.

OmniMic is a terrific tool - very user friendly and offers the right amount of technical analysis for me for now. I'm still getting the hang of all its features. I don't particularily like its Reverb chart where you have to click along the decay trail to get a RT60 reading for a user specified frequency range. I would rather see a histogram (bar chart) with freq on the x-axis and time on the y-axis for easier comparison across the frequency bandwidth. Also, as RT60 isn't applicable to domestic rooms, I'd rather see an RT20 or RT30 calculation instead.

Now how about sharing some photos of your man cave?!
Cheers,
kevin

Posted these elsewhere, but what the heck. Here's a few of my office space...

Hey, I recognize that pooch. Looks like a nice work environment. I like the look of your main listening room too, although I might be tempted for a few more acoustical room treatments but that's just my obsesiveness. Enjoy!

Thanks Kevin. Always been impressed with your listening space. I'll probably add some treatments to my own eventually, but for now all my dough is going to my record collection.

Enjoy your room as well!

Here's a few shots of my 2 channel setup. I incorporated it into my HT.

Nice Revel gear Rickledorf. What make/model of subs are you using as they don't appear to be Revel stuff (I could very well be wrong)? Nice absorbers on the walls if that's what they are. Have you (thicker) bass traps also? Nice room. Enjoy.

Thanks Kevin. The subs are Paradigm PW-2200's. Next upgrade. Yes, they are absorptive panels. But no bass traps. I wanted to put corner traps in but my HT gear cabinet is in the right corner. Maybe I'll figure something out.

Rinkledorf - good luck on the sub replacement; there are many good internet-direct companies now from which to choose. I use Rythmik so am partial to them for their musicallity. Regarding the DIY absorptive panels, bass trap potential and how to figure something out, I'd highly recommend Dr Floyd Toole's book. It's a great education and primer on room acoustics that should help you, if you're interested.

http://www.amazon.com/Sound-Reproduc...3546625&sr=1-1

As Ethan Winer often points out, there are twelve corners in a room, not just four. The vertical corners are slightly more preferable, but trapping any of them will deliver positive results. You could also use 4" or 6" panels on the walls as well. Lots of options.

A little project thats been in the works for about 5 months:



Old but very good:



And my theater setup (or PC speakers, take your pic):

I like the music server. What software are you using?

I just set up a Mac Book Pro, running Amarra and using an iPad 2 with Apple Remote just this week.

Rutgar,
Nice! What DAC are you feeding with your Mac Book Pro? Are you using its Firewire or USB outputs to connect to the DAC? Did you consider PureMusic rather than Amarra by chance? I've heard that it's less costly and just as good or better . . . just an idea as I know Amarra is very good.

Enjoy!

Hi Kevin.

I am using the DAC in my Playback Designs MPS-5, with thier proprietary USB-X external interface:



I did consider Pure Music (mainly because of price), but a friend of mine was already using Amarra with a MacBook Pro, and was able to help me get it all together. So being a novice in this area, I stuck with his advice. So far though, I'm very happy with the setup. It's almost 'too' easy being able to select any song from any album (that I have loaded), and not have to move one inch from my listening chair!

kevin..nice room BTW, love that you use diffusion.

How high are the ceilings?? It looks lowish (esp when covered with diffusors) but that could be in part to the camera.

Hi Terry,
Thank you for your compliments. Diffusion was very much front and centre in my acoustical room treatment strategy, and the ability to try some DIY construction was a great learning experience.

The ceiling is only 7feet as it's a room in our basement, so yes it is kind of lowish. I use ceiling diffusion to help raise the apparent ceiling height which is helped by the upward angled side wall baffles that reflect sound upward to the ceiling diffusers.

Have you pictures of your room to share with us?

thanks kevin. seven foot is kinda low (not concerned about sound, I'll take your word for that) but now am curious about approval from the authorities on one that low!

ATM I only show pics of my room when I want to get laughs!

And it works haha. I am very much in the opposite camp from you, my ceilings are seventeen feet high!

Solid brick walls, so very reflective and a lot of slap echo. So to tame that (initially as an experiment..now so damned successful it is a stop gap measure till renovation) I just threw f/glass batts on the walls.

Massive massive improvement.

Oh what the heck,. may as well have a few laughs eh?

As the room is so big, only a partial shot, but enough to show how cheap, quick and easy it can be to experiment



Whilst I have that page open, and seein as how you are into diffusion, here are some diffusors I have built along the way.

first a 2d qrd, standing behind the LP



Don't use that now, moved on to 2d PRDs of my own design (well, manufacture I guess, the maths stay the same)



That was my test one, don't think I have any pics of the current ones.

DIY speakers (active four way plus a pair of subs)





Did not intend to hijack your post, but what the heck eh? Once I was there may as well.

So, the room has to be renoed and completed. Will have more bass trapping, plus huge frickin diffusors of the prd design!

I set up this system couple years ago, here is the list of components:

Main Components
Lindemann D680
Audio Research Reference Two
GamuT D 200 MK3
Usher BE-718
Richard Gray's RGPC 600S

Speaker Cables and Interconnects
Audioquest Extreme Clear
Tara Labs THE ONE
Tara Labs RSC Air 1

Power Cords
Cardas Golden Reference
Marigo Resolution
Marigo RMX Reference C Prime

Miscellaneous
Lovan Sovereign "T" Hifi
Shun Mook Mpingo
Shun Mook Power Amp Base
Soundcare SuperSpike
Harmonix TU-303EX
Harmonix TU-210ZX "Golden Toe"
Cable Tower DIY










This is my bedroom "ghetto" 2 Channels setup, how do you like it?

Playstation 1 SCPH-1001
Primaluna Prologue One
Avenue Acoustic Signature One
IXOS Gamma Audition II Interconnect
Nordost Blue Heaven Speaker Cable
OEM Power Cable

Sorry for the mess

Ctantra,
Nice looking room, lighting, and of course equipment! I see that you're using a computer media server elsewhere in your home - why not for your 2channel setup? I also like what looks to be a poly diffuser that I'll guess is filled with fiberglass to act as a bass trap in each of your front wall corners. And of course the curtains add as high freq absorption - do you find that the front wall curtains deepen the apparent sound stage depth? Great pictures! Enjoy!

Bonjour MrAcoustat,
Wow are those ever tall speakers (or you're really short . . .)! I bet they cast a great soundstage. Love the looks of the Chord gear - looks like audio jewelery!

I see you're a fellow Canuck - did you make it to the Son & L'Image show in April or the Montreal Jazz festival this summer? Happy listening.

Jazzer - what an impressive music collection! Looks like your 'mess' is screaming to be copied to a hard drive to reduce the amount of dusting you have to do I've heard great things about your speakers so congrats on owning them. I bet it's kind of hard to view the fire in your fireplace with all that expensive gear in front of it . . .ha ha

Thanks for your comments.

The real mess is behind the left speaker

Thanks for all the pics everyone. Seriously nice systems, but after reading all 12 pages I see no mention of Audio Research, ProAc(loudspeakers)or Theta which is what I have. Even though I can't post pics I'm hoping I can list all of my components.

What say you. Can I list my gear???

Here is mine simple setup

gorgeous and simple.. what are those speakers?

Thanks. Those are the Usher Mini Dancer 2

Hello everyone. I loved everything I've seen so far, but Kevin's diligence took the cake for me.

I'll upload only a few pics at first. Mains are a set of unfinished Milton-Bailes T103TTLs. Currently run with a TP-30. Shortly the Firestone ILTW DAC will be in line before the DCT-100 and TP-21 (to test the two amps). Searching for a Constantine DAC.









Last two pics are shown when I was testing the T103TTLs against the T166RLHs.




More will come later.

Thank you for the kind words Thaiboxer. Your room is about 50% of the sound so why not treat it appropriately?! Most interesting speakers. I'm not familiar with them - are they using a Fostex full-range driver? Will you be using subs too? I see that was your first post to AVS so welcome!

I like your bulldog. I want to get one after I move.

Holy massive speakers batman!