Who's actually heard a rives room? What did you think?

Mike, do you use active eq products from Rives, or is above a reference to your acoustic design?

It's kind of like the Adriana Lima of room acoustics. Don't overthink this metaphor.

Last CES I went to, I think three years ago, I heard systems in several rooms treated by Rives and they all sounded outstanding.

tzucc, i assume that by active you mean some sort of DSP or analog EQ. the answer is no. the whole idea of a purpose-built room is to avoid the signal path corruption of any EQ. and EQ can't really create the energy that a properly designed room can deliver.

OTOH my VR9SE's had numerous driver attenuators and an adjustable subwoofer crossover. my current 'loaner' VR7SE's have only have adjustments on the front facing 'super-tweeter' and the rear facing ambience tweeter. optimizing any speaker/room relationship can be greatly assisted with some adjustablity.

as far as characterizing a 'Rives' room; in general if one allows Rives to have a free reign (i gave them a completely clean sheet of paper and did not hold them back) then you will have a room that resembles a concert hall. which is to say it will try and allow the music to be free and breathe, there will be minimal absorbtion and maximum diffusion. the micro-dynamics of music and energy of the soundstage will be beyond previous music reproduction references. it will serve acoustically recorded music with tonal accuracy and textural shading.

as my room is quite large and i wanted to be able to recreate the full impact of large orchestral music i had lots of bass treatment built in; which in turn made much larger demands on my gear. for a smaller scale music focus you could scale things back a bit.

a Rives room will expose limitations of speakers and amps (unless it is designed for the capabilities of a particular speaker)......which was where i was when Chris visited my room. my speakers from that time (over 18 months ago) could not properly energize the room and some of my other gear was also not quite up to the level of truth the room was projecting. the room has a much more balanced and involving sound now than back then. almost all my gear (except tt and a few of my cables) is different now and speaker and seating positions are dramatically different. measured performance is also much better......a 'suck-out' at 80hz and a 'bump' at 135hz which i had blamed on the room went away with different speakers.

Rives can design a room to any set of sonic priorities or budget.....or do it 'their way'....or any point in between.

to answer the thread topic directly; i would describe a Rives room as 'Alive' and 'natural' and that the full capabilities of the gear will be enjoyed. a Rives room will be enjoyable at moderate as well as high SPL levels and will not 'lose coherence' on music peaks. instruments will be 'accurate' but also refined and nuanced. voices will be real and vivid. the flow and pace of the music should carry you along.

thanks.

the biggest difference would be the width of the room. for 'ideal' hi-rez multi-channel there are a couple of issues. first, you want all the speakers equi-distant......and second you want the rear speakers at 110 degrees from the center room axis listening position. for multi-channel that would require the room to be quite wide.....compared to ideal 2-channel.

at this point my ears are 14' from the tweeters of my speakers. if i were to have rear multi-channel speakers 14' from my ears and at 110 degrees my 21' wide room (already at about the width limit for home HiFi speakers) would need to be more than 25 feet wide. my room size would then need to be 36' x 25' instead of 29' x 21'. 36' x 25' is just too big for the sort of intimate dynamics i enjoy in my 2-channel music. even if i move my chair forward from the 14' ear to tweeter point i still can't manage 110 degrees in my large room unless i really move my front speakers much closer together. i am not going to be moving my 375 pound VR9's or VR7's around whenever i do multi-channel. and my future 700 pound VR11's will be even more stationary.

i will do multi-channel but the rear speakers will likely be back at about 135 degrees; i will move my listening chair forward to reduce the tweeter to ear distance from my front speakers. i will still have the speakers eqiu-distant as i refuse to lose the full resolution of the hi-rez music with any sort of DSP delay.

a third, less critical issue, is the issue of speaker to speaker comb filtering which becomes more of an issue with discrete multi-channel. ideally you would have more absorbtion than diffusion in a purpose built muti-channel room as compared to my room. you could have movable absorbtion that could be added when you were playing multi-channel. my feelings are that when i do go multi-channel that my diffusion will be adaquate to handle the comb filtering. it will be a compromise but an acceptable one.

i have 10,000 2-channel Lp's and CD's which i love. even though i do appreciate the potential of multi-channel music the current reality is not sufficient to justify compromising my 2-channel music experience to optimize multi-channel. then you throw in the inconsistent nature of the multi-channel mixes......the various approaches are so far all over the board as to how the rear channels are used.....my choise seems obvious.

lastly, i have yet to hear any multi-channel compete with my best vinyl for that real music experience. 2 'real' channels go places that multple channels of 'gaps' just can't go.

Hi Mike, If you kept your room as Rives created, and added speakers and gear for 5.1 or 7.1 HT/Multichannel music, how would the room "perform"?

i do plan on doing this in the near future. but it will only involve two additional rear speakers.....and no subwoofer. i will use the EMM Labs Switchman III with a 'phantom center' option to allow my front speakers to simulate the center channel when there is center channel information. if i were to add a center channel equal to my front speakers it would clearly compromise the 2-channel performance acoustically. the rear speakers should have almost no effect in my large room when i am listening to 2-channel other than the speaker cones themselves have a bit of resonance (which i would experiment with some sort of covers for) and having two large, massive, speakers in the rear......which will be like two additional persons standing back there. the biggest effect will be logistical...getting to the software on my shelves will be a bit more bother with two large speaker cabinets sitting back there.

my opinion is that the overall effect of those two speakers will be about the same as two more listeners in my room; which is to say not specifically audible. at least the speakers will behave themselves.

i did install 2" conduit in the floor for multi-channel interconnects and dedicated outlets for amps back in the rear corners.

even though i did install two power outlets in the ceiling for a future projector and motorized screen i will NEVER use them; they are for some future miss-guided HT nut that might buy my home.

i have a nice mid-level HT in my house that fulfills my 'foley stage' needs.

and to answer your question directly; i think my room would make a great HT room as far as 5.1 or 7.1. i also have 2" conduit for front subwoofers and center channel. the room has dedicated HVAC which is dead quiet and even hanging rear speakers on the walls the sound would be glorious with the way the room is constructed. the bass trapping is more thouroghlly designed than any HT i have seen. from an acoustical perspective it would be an ideal HT. with the light maple cabinetry the light management may be less than ideal unless you dealt with that. the floor is 6 inches of concrete and the size is very good. you are in a completely separate building with a nice foyer......kinda perfect HT setup.

Thanks Mike, great post.

What I specifically like about Mike's room is the size. A large room is just so much better in my opinion, because the size allows to greater reverberation without being unpleasant. Many people (and most rooms I've been in) have rooms which are more "normal-sized" rooms, living rooms etc type spaces that even when well designed and deadened sufficiently, are too dead. It's very difficult to get a small room to sound as good not just because bass modes are much more difficult to deal with, but because a small room demands a shorter RT60 time to sound "right," and this works nicely but you have a much smaller soundstage and less space for the music. This isn't just because the speakers are closer together and to you in absolute terms, but because the reverberation last longer and reflections are also more significantly delayed in a larger space. In a small room, almost all the reflections are very close to the direct sound, and that's bad, so you have to spend all your time wiping those out, and it's very difficult to maintain a diffuse soundfield while doing that. In the end, it can sound very very good, and extremely precise in imaging, but it doesn't have the size and depth and ambiance of a larger space.

A large room on it's own isn't always an advantage, because there are a lot of wealthy people with very large living rooms and big open lofty type locations with expensive stereos, and it just sounds hideous because they just stuck a stereo in a big bright reverberant space. And this sounds like a mess. I'd pick a small room that's very controlled over a big giant reverberant room any day.

But what makes Mike's space so unique is that it's so controlled and purpose built (VERY rare for large listening spaces as I mentioned) while being so large. It sounds like a "normal" room much smaller than it actually is when you're just in it, but it lends to the creation of music that's much larger than you could ever really get in a small space. It sound stupid to describe the music as being "more spacious" because of this, but that's what I would say anyway.

I think Mike's room would probably be great with multichannel. In my opinion, as rooms get smaller, the difference in RT60 time desired between 2-channel and multi-channel increases, and as rooms get larger that difference desired gets smaller. I think the best example of this is maybe the Seattle Cinerama, which is a very diffuse design (nested QRD diffusors all along the walls and wavy cieling diffusion along with larger wavy-wall diffusion design) which would never work in a very small HT space which should be much more dead. But in a larger space like Mike's, I think the need to be as dead for multichannel is less important, of course taken to an extreme with the large size of the Cinerama.

Definitely by far the favorite part of my visit to Mike's some time ago was the room. Although I haven't heard his new Von Schweikerts...

I don't know what kind of bass performance the room has, the speakers he had at the time didn't have much bass. But looking at the design of the room, there's tons of very thick soffit trapping all over the place, and because it's so large, I would expect bass performance to be extremely good and relatively uniform as you move around. Again, another huge advantage to such a large lofty room.

btw, regarding clocking, I am thinking of getting one of the Lake eq units, which also feature an AES-EBU digital input and clock all of the following units from a precision clock generator, of which the brand escape me at the moment, but it has five clock outputs at like <5ppm jitter:
1) dcs dac
2) dcs upsampler
3) dcs transport
4) lake eq

That would be nice, since then you can avoid completely the A/D step that I think kills the sound in most digital eq solutions, while not losing the advantage of transport and DAC in sync by one master clock. It would be interesting to check this out.

p.s. the clock generator is an Apogee Big Ben... actually at the moment I can't find the clock jitter spec, but I recall reading somewhere it was like <5ppm. The DCS DAC presumably generates a clock at like <1ppm, according to a review I read by Atkinson of SP. Pretty good figures.

Hi Rene,

Thanks for the info. I just enjoyed about 2 hours of a 24 bit remaster of Phantom of the Opera. I have never, ever, heard a redbook CD sound that good. I highly recommend it... apparently ALW himself produced and approved of the mix. I upsampled this redbook to 24/176.

Anyway, thanks for the info on DVD... I will check out their website, I have not heard of this before. I was just reading that on an SACD of La Boheme that dCS A/D's were used to master from the 1961 tapes. Looks like dCS is the choice for highest quality studio work anyway.

I do wish they had three channel DAC out though... althought that would kill me since I don't have a matching X1 in the middle.

I know of the Verona, but don't think it has enough outputs, but I will check. Apogee has five. I need four. I don't know of Esoteric's GO, but I will check that out too... thx for the heads up.

Lake Contour EQ: http://www.dolby.com/professional/li...cts/index.html
.

Bruce Thigpen first introduced me to Lake, as they were the only eq he could find that did what he needed below 20Hz. The reviews and specs suggest to me that this is possibly the only EQ I would consider putting in between dCS and my speakers.

p.s. I am trying to get an eval unit of the Lake from our San Francisco pro audio dealer, but he says their eval unit is out on eval with some movie studio recording engineer. I get it when he's done.

This is the absolute BEST indication to use the EMM Labs Switchman lll with the Phantom Center.

Rene, thanks for the intro to the Teac Esoteric line... never heard of it before. I didn't know more expensive gear than dCS existed... wow, that Teac stuff is pricey stuff. The clock gen sounds very impressive in specs, better than the Verona!

FWIW, Mike Lavigne had the entire Esoteric setup at his house in an a/b with the EMMLabs and the Esoteric at $68K didn't come close to the EMMLabs

Hopefully Mike Lavigne will chime in regarding the a/b test on Esoteric vs the Meitner




I am curious therefore as to why you sold the best available gear "on earth". Defies all logic if such is the case

or post the link to his audioasylum thread

Rene--I know that you too own X-2's

FWIW, when I heard the X-2 demo in Dave Wilson's living room, he used Meitner gear. I also know that in the past year he sold dcs gear on audiogon.

http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/m.mpl?...ic&r=&session=

thanks doc

I too have heard the Esoteric system. Very beautiful to behold and good sonically. However for me it was good from far but far from good.

Precisely my point as I have said countless times here on the board. This is a hobby,nothing more and nothing less. One man's passion is just another man's poison. To use such hyperbole as "the best stereo in the world" leaves me aghast. It is just your opinion. I have mine and everyone else has their own. A system is more than just the sum of its parts. It is an overall synergy. It is the room, the components, the sitting position etc, etc. Music from different components is in the words of fellow BAAS member Ron Party merely different "flavors". What you like, I might not and vice versa. Something wonderful in my system might fall short in your system. My mantra has always been "let your ears and your wallet decide". For you Rene, you have found perfection in the VTL Sigfrid whereas I have found what rocks my sonic boat in the very simple 18 wpc Lamm ML 2.1 SET and yet we have the same speakers. Long and the short of it is to say something smokes something else or this is the world's best stereo when all is said and done is tantamount to just your opinion.

It may not compromise the two channel as much as you may think. There will be a compromise but it will mainly compromise the performance of the center if preference is given to two channel listening. I run a full range 50"by17" by 13", 140 pound center which is identical to my mains. I am able to push the center back about 20 inches and hear very little if any effect on stereo reproduction. BUT, the effect of having the center so close to the front wall compromises its performance. Being so close to a room boundary increase the bass response. The solution that I employ is to cross the center over at 80hz which removes the bass hump boundary effect I am getting. This though reduces some of the advantage of having a full range center in the first place. Still, having an identical center speaker blends almost seamlessly with multi-channel SACD. I have one particular recording where the female vocal is placed dead center. The illusion of the singer in the middle is excellent. With so much two channel material at your disposal and so little well recorded multi-channel tracks in existance, this is not worth a compromise with your two channel. My room has both absorption and quite a bit of RPG skylines and QRD734 style diffusers. My speakers does not respond well to having any form of treatments on the front wall between the front left and right. This lead me to believe that a large center would have the same result but it did not.

Guys,
I've noticed some of the posts mentioning 110 deg position for rear speakers in multi-channel configuration. This is so called ITU setup that seems to be not favoured any more for both recording monitoring and listening configuration. ITU will always cause a hole in the rear phantom image and causes problems with front-to-back image coherence. According to Michael Bishop who is a recording engineer for Telarc, no surround mixer is using ITU setup for monitoring any more. They switched to N.A.R.A.S recommendation which is at 135 deg position. You may read more at: http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/m.mpl?...ns&r=&session=

Richard

LCR equidistant from the sweetspot is always preferred. Lining them up is a compromise used only when you have many listeners (such as in a cinema). If they're not equidistant, then you need time alignment and phase alignment (the latter usually not available).

you are absolutely right and everyones post no matter what they say is their own opinion (of the facts). Especially when it comes to best sound, best speaker, etc... That's why I never am offended if someone complains about Wilson sound, or Krell amps, or whatever. I believe them. They hear what they hear, and I hear what I hear. I only have to set the room up so that the brain I live with is happy. I can't optimize for the occasional visitors brain, even if I wanted to.

I happened to have the same opinion on dcs vs emmlabs, but that doesn't mean that you truly don't feel the reverse. Though I think we should use selected external opinions to filter information. For example, I did rely on your opinion specifically in making several eqpt decisions, not the least of which was upgrade from the WP to the X1-III's. For which I am grateful I listened.

Yes. I found that I had to push the center back about 15 inches to eliminate its effect on the soundstage but continued to a position about 20 inche back as this was the limit of what I could manage. I will explain. First I optimized the position of the L/R with a sound meter to determine the best position to minimize boundary effects from my seating position, like the 50hz bump that exist in my room. Then I moved the center back to eliminate, at least to my ears, the effect on my two channel sound stage. I wish I could move it back further though I can hear no reason to do so but then boundary effect become too severe to manage by just crossing over the center . If I put the center dead up against the wall to move it as far away as possible from the imaginary line between the front L/R then effects are just too pronounced to control with the bass trapping that I am utilizing. I constructed two rather large, 6 feet tall by 18 inches in diameter bass traps which are mostly solid 6 pound density fiberglass, few air gaps. I have a closet at the rear of the room with Owen-Corning 705 panels inside. I also built a large seating platform, stuffed with fiberglass to act as a bass trap. Still, placing the full range center against the wall does not permit me to eliminate the boundary effect. Stereo imaging though is just fine. I was skeptical that this would work. I tried placing a 2' by 4' and two inch thick 6 pound density fiberglass panel between the front L/C. The results were disastrous, even with it being located further away on the front wall. My expectations were that the large center would also be unmanageable in this regard. That prove not to be true but just introduced another set of variables.

No, the placement to match side arrays in a theater as recommended by Dolby (THX has gone off the deep end) is not the same as what one should do for multichannel music. Dolby recommends 90-110 degrees for the surround placement, and then 135-150 degrees for surround backs.

Ideally for a dual-use system you'd have duplicate arrays of surround speakers.

It really depends on the use of the system. If you're watching mainly all movies, then I'd bias it towards standard HT placement as per dolby. If you're listening to a significant amount of multichannel music I would bias it towards that.

I would say that that I think most listeners if they are at all serious about multichannel music, even if they watch more movies than they listen to multichannel music, would find that placement for multichannel music is more important to get right than HT placement. The aggressiveness of many multichannel music mixes can rely much more heavily on surround channels for both output and imaging than HT surrounds which are usually much more purely ambient and strong precise imaging is secondary. Which is to say, in a multi-use system, choosing a multi-channel placement with the surrounds farther back may be very minimally degrading to HT performance, while choosing HT placement may be much more significantly degrading to multichannel performance. As such I would probably bias towards best multichannel performance. As always, you would want to experiment with placement in your room and see what works best for you.

Also another thing to bring up is that vertical placement differs between m-ch music and HT, for music you want all the speakers are ear height in the same vertical plane, while for HT you want the surround a foot or two above ear level, or more if they are a significant distance away (in a large room). Here if you are at all serious about multichannel music I would probably go for ear height for surrounds.