Any one see the Lexicon MC-12HD replacement at CES? - Page 2

"It has the same DACs in dual-differential configuration that Proceed used for the front L/R channels of their AVP2 (except the MC-12 has it for all 12 channels)."

Didn't the AVP2 claim its L/R DACs were the same as the #40s? If so then the MC-12 has the same DACs as the #40.

Shawn

"Correct, at least for the ones that came up with their previous surround processing (Dave Griesinger) and room correction (James Muller). "

Pretty sure the VP of engineering is still around and at least one or two other engineers from Team Squid. This is the group that added 8 channel input support to the MC-12HD after engineering moved to Indiana.

" and engineers at Mark Levinson for things like D/A conversion and analogue stage. "

Pretty sure it was Team Squid (when at HSG) that designed the #502.

Shawn

That is a more open minded thought/question.

Many feel it is just one item and often it is easier to say it is this or that. However,in the real world, many things can contribute to the overall better or worse sonic presentation. Power supplies and it's filtering, shielding and grounding schemes, quality of individual parts, and overall design, even the cabinet can have an impact. Closeness of noisy digital items and analog items( think small thin cabinets instead of large spacious boxes).

In the end how it sounds will depend on budget and personal needs/wants. it also depends on the other gear in the system that are being used. Less revealing gear may mask the subtle differences so that they cannot be heard. Compromised installation choices can also mask sonic details( think perfed screens with speakers against the walls and odd shaped rooms with walls of glass and uncarpeted tile or wood floors).

Your sonics will only be as good as your weakest link. More often than not it is wrong speaker/ listener postions followed by the untreated room.

Subjectively liking one cheesecake over another doesn't make it objectively superior. If you had said you preferred the CB3 to the MC-12, then I wouldn't have questioned it further. But if you're going to claim that one of them is "better" or an "improvement", then it's not unreasonable to ask you to support it with something tangible (I mean besides "how you felt").
In which case, the CB3 DACs aren't better than the MC-12 DACs; you just happen to prefer the sound of one pre-pro to the other, which could have been a result of D/A converters, analogue stage, etc (or likely a combination of "many things" as Allen points out). In any case, thanks for putting it in context.

Yup: same DACs, same configuration. No surprise, considering all three (Levinson, Madrigal, Lexicon) shared the same parent company.
I thought that he was HSG, not Lexicon specifically (a la Griesinger and Muller)?

Who eats cheesecake anyways (are we back in the 80s)?? Wine would've been abetter analogy (and less calories)...

Besides, the better question on preferences, is which do you sell or profit from...

I had the Proceed unit and it did not sound as good as my Meridian 861 V6, or my new ADA Mach IV, or my brother's MC-12 HD. I don't know how the 40 sounded.
Ken

And I just upgraded to an MC8 from a DC1!

Room dimensions can cause a disaster (eg. cubical, concrete room), but they will never solve acoustic problems, because a room will always have modes. The real question is what you do with those modes.


So if I have a mode at 40 Hz, which has a wavelength of 28 feet, what kind of physical room treatment will fix that?

--Andre

Yep, it better have STP (Spinal Tap Processing) - goes to 11


A tuned absorber - either diaphragm or Helmholtz resonator

"So if I have a mode at 40 Hz, which has a wavelength of 28 feet, what kind of physical room treatment will fix that?"

Without mucking up the material outside of the mode.....

Shawn

Depends. Need the whole picture. How many rows of seating? Need room plans/dimensions both inside and out. Are you at a peak or null for your listening position? There are 4 ways. Move the seating, move the sub, add resonator, or fork out for construction. You think Auto-EQ will fix it? I would first look into a resonator (looks like Noah posted before I could finish typing). Next question is it aesthetically pleasing? Not sure. You could possibly add a sub to help cancel the effects. There isn't a one answer fixes all problems. Every room is different. It takes trial and error while thinking outside the box. Witnessed one installation with subs in the ceiling. Not sure that is the safest method, but it worked. Just don't sit underneath one.

And sometimes you can't eradicate it. If you have a single row of seating, then you have a better chance of removing the effect at your listening position. That would not "remove" it from the room, but it would improve your listening position. I've not seen where you can buy off the shelf "products" tackling room modes. Custom solutions would most likely be required.

Maybe stop building rectangular or square rooms. Try different shapes. Who wrote a rulebook that all rooms have to be only be 4 walls?

From what I've seen with AUTO-EQ methods, if you are dealing with a peak it will lower the mic area neutering the next row. If you are at a null, then the next row gets lots of bass. If you use multi-mics for averaging, then you get a compromise with neither position being perfect in most "average household rooms".

Question: Did you try to fit a home theater into an existing room, or did you design a custom room with the assistance of an acoustic engineer, architect, interior designer, along with your custom cinema designer? Most don't want (or have) the money to do it right. Usually it's- Lets fit a theater into an existing room. I for one am not afraid point out the good and bad. And propose solutions to do it right. Sometimes it means moving walls, or changing the shape of the room.

I beg to differ. I bake a gourmet pumpkin cheesecake every year for the holidays. Sure beats the, "hmmm this wine tastes like barn". And you know you've had at least a few of those. Especially at wine tastings. You want me to pay $40 for that? As you move on to the next wine to taste. I'll stick to Frog's Leap, Markham, Sterling Vineyards, and Firestone for my table wines Thank you very much.

Size? And what do you do about the other modes in a room since resonators are narrow-band?


Yes, EQ can fix it, but it needs to be done intelligently. Moving the seating may improve it for one person, but won't work for other people. The reverb time of the bass at the modes will also stick out. Construction won't do anything except move the modes around unless you're building with really flexible walls to provide some loss. Resonators can work, but it depends on how much space you have and what modes you have.

Peak or null at the listening position is kind of irrelevant since bass issues are a global room issue, and shouldn't be fixed with some kind of local patch. Bass EQ is not a local patch, unless you're using a crappy auto EQ.


All enclosed spaces have modes, no matter what shape they are. Non-rectangular ones are just harder to analyze, but the modes are still there and just as strong, if not stronger (eg. a spherical room).

--Andre

Right and right. Anyone who abjures EQ or, on the other hand, relies on it exclusively is fighting the fight with one hand (and maybe a foot) tied behind his back.

Acoustical solutions should always be the first line of attack whether the situation calls for new construction or for fitting the system into an existing and/or non-dedicated space. The primary advantages of the acoustical approach is that it can effect global improvements for all seats and that there are no major side effects.

After that, it may be necessary to use EQ, especially since it can work efficiently at the low frequencies where physical treatments become very bulky and obtrusive. I have heard A/B demos of electronic EQ in hotel rooms where the improvement was indisputable but still sounded, imho, unacceptably crappy. What was that about a sow's ear?

This is why room correction has caught on: describing the alternative practially sells it.
OK, I know where I'm spending the holidays.

This is true for bass EQ as well.

--Andre

Agreed. I was not restricting my comments to only part of the spectrum. The only issue for bass is the increasing size of the appliances.

Different ones for different freq, or check out the broadband (down to 40 Hz) Modex absorbers under Bass Management Tools

http://www.rpginc.com/residential/ci...c-products.htm

Personally I don't like digital gain control of audio - in my HT. And EQ is just that, but at specific frequency bands. Since the amplification and speakers are analog, you have to convert it at some point anyway. One of the things I like most about the Lexicon processors is the gain controls are in the analog signal path. The EQ is not so I keep that flat and use outboard analog EQs.

TECHNICAL REASON:
Any gain change in a digital system requires multiplication. That generates a data word wider than the data path. So now you have to round down. And unless internal DSP buss is wider, you have to do this rounding several times with digital EQ involved.

Does this result in compromised sonics? Does the increased noise of analog EQ and gain control equally compromise sonics? Which is worse?

Well, that's the fun of this hobby isn't it? And since I use tube amplification on my LCR, background noise like slight hum and tube hiss is a fact of life in my system/.

I agree with your statement. However I would be more inclined to use an EQ in the low bass frequency spectrum than in mid-high frequencies where dialogue and other discerning sounds are heard. Especially if it's just for one trouble frequency, and all tools have been exhausted within the budget.

The trick is to not neuter that 12K sub, or overload the audience inducing fatigue.

Pipeline can be maintained in floating point or wider fixed point for the entire chain and then dithered+converted to target resolution of the DAC at the end. In this day and age, at least in high-end equipment, we don't worry about the fixed point DSPs of the past with narrow word width.

Now there can be arguments about the right dither (noise shaped or not) but the pipeline issue is not the concern it used to be.

Thanks. I didn't know they could be made that small, but tuning to specific frequency without overdamping nearby frequencies is still a problem.

--Andre

"I don't like digital gain control of audio - in my HT. And EQ is just that, but at specific frequency bands."

I doubt you will find a digital processor that doesn't do some form of gain control in the digital domain at some point for some function or another. Bass management for example.

Shawn

Actually by definition it's not - they're only effective around tuning.

In a mass/spring/damper system, damping (unless very high) has little effect other than at resonance.

I've never seen a spherical room. Where would you place the seats?

True but sooner or later you will have to truncate / round down. And there is always a pipe limit as well, 32, 64, 128 bits wide? However these are more than wide enough today for all practical purposes.

That's very true! But consider in my situation using BluRay direct analog output. I have no more digital conversion in the down stream path. But then if I had an HDMI equipped processor, I would get the same results anyway.

Not to keep bringing up the same exact circular $6,000,000 home theater but....

http://gizmodo.com/353963/6-million-...orth-the-money


Plenty of stuff about it here on AVS.

In theory, yes, but the charts from RPG indicate a wider spread than theory.


Depends. Where did the dealer-expert tell me to sit?

--Andre