Sonic's System

All RCA jacks in my system are loose enough so they can be rotated with slight finger pressure.

Can you position any wires so that they can go from one component to another without touching anything? I have found this to straighten out the air and add balance. Also, for the heck of it put up a space cone right where you think the most energy is coming from and report back.

"Hi Michael

Need your guidance on getting the reverb time in my room right and optimized.

I seem to have a slight overhang where BOO! becomes BOOwoo with the tail "woo" downshifted in frequency.

The impression I get is that the main pressure zone/node in my room is at the geometric centre of the room. When I do the BOO test standing at the centre, the reverb and energy is all round me. It is loud. The more I move along any diagonal towards a corner, the more the BOOwoo is behind me (assuming I am facing the corner as I move), which tells me the pressure energy is not coming off the corners but building up at the centre of the room where all the diagonals cross.

Unless you tell me otherwise, this means I got a big pressure zone at the centre of my room.

Pressure is good but a BOOwoo overhang will muddy the sound.

What do you do when presented with a client's room like this?"

Hi Sonic, this goes back to a question of "good vs bad?".

Is over hang bad?

Audiophile experts would say yes. If you have a room that is anything but sterile it would be considered a bad thing, according to them. However when I listen in the experts rooms they have no depth or 3D sound, which is obviously a part of the music. My answer after having all sizes of rooms is if the over hang is in tune it will not produce mud but instead space. The difficult side to this is the bigger the room the easier it is to notice the loss of balance.

What you describe in your walking from the center to the edge is perfectly normal. This would be different if the upper corners were not treated. When we install the corner treatment we can hear this shift happen.

Thanks Michael

Mr Green's post in reply to Sonic's question about room overhang caps about 10 days of tuning to get the BOOwoo in my room under more control. Fortunately I didn't overdo things and I just found a tune that let me cross a major boundary.

To control my acoustics and shorten the reverb time, I mounted two Tunestrips in the rear corners of the room. What this means is I now have Tunestrips in all four corners (at midwall height). The room became quieter.

Sonic still had the big pressure zone in the geometric centre of the room so I placed a woven grass mat just ahead of my listening chair. Even better clarity and room quietness.

These tunes gave improvement but nothing that could be counted as a big step forward. The focus could be better and so could the transients.

Sonic looked around to see what could be tuned then I saw it -- the X-30 is top tuned in a mini clamprack with a Harmonic Spring while it (the X-30) sits on AAB1x1 SB and SBS cones. I remember that some gear sound better when mounted rigidly without compliance like a spring in the system. Of course rigid does not mean tight.

This is what Sonic did next:





I replaced the Harmonic Spring with a geniune Michael Green MTD (not Audiopoint cone) and mounted it in a threaded hole in the tuning bar over the X-30. The hole is off centre which explains why the MTD sits at the edge.

What a difference Focus improved and transients from harpsichord recordings have never been this real! The focus is excellent -- much less haziness in the positioning of instruments and voices. Better yet, the width is neither too wide or narrow and images sit in a field of ambience.

I listened to Trevor Pinnock playing Bach's Goldberg Variations (Archiv), Sigiwald Kuijken and La Petit Bande playing Bach's violin concerto (Harmonia Mundi) and Gothic Voices' Garden of Zephirus (Hyperion).

The music is so good I just listen and let the CDs play through one by one.

Sonic

Sonic,

I cannot determine in your picture if the X30 is connected to your subwoofer only or to the sub/maggies?

Currently, my X30 is connected to the sub only, and I have not turned on the sub amp in awhile. The bass from the main speakers seems to be re enforced by the MGD sub passively. As an experiment, I removed the sub from the room and the bass re enforcement vanished. The enhanced bass is most often heard with recordings of cello and bass; however, I have also noticed improved bass from electric bass guitar. Further experiments moving the sub around may provide additional benefits.

Hi Garp

The main amp powering the Magneplanars is driven from the 50Hz output of the X-30. The low pass output drives the Rotel which in turn goes to the Janis W-1 subwoofer.

I have tried running without the sub but where my main spakers are placed, I get too steep a roll off from 60 Hz down.

Sonic knows the crossover and the extra gear adds a complexity that gets in the way of the tune really opening up but the rolloff thins things out too much.

Sonic

Hi Garp and Zonees!

Sonic just had an idea....a dangerous thought even

According to Michael my system is over-complicated.

I need the subwoofer system because without one I get a roll off below 60Hz.

Once Michael asked me to move my bookcase wall forward by about 1 foot. I reported the sound was awful -- way over bassy, thick mud....

What if I took the X-30 and the subwoofer system out of the system AND moved the bookcase wall forward to fill in the low end

This Sonic did. It's not bad on first listen....the room seems a little ringy but the bass is....not rolled off the way it was before.....the soundstage seems wider....a certain haze over the soundstage is lifting.....this has a chance of working....

Michael, tell me what you think...how can I deal with that ring, have a look at my set up...where can I start to retune the room given that it has been optimised for the subwoofer system.

Sonic

Hi Sonic

A big move indeed The more simple my system becomes two things happen

1) settling becomes easier

2) space becomes bigger

Start by taking the sub out of the corner and listen to how much energy it was using up.

Hi Michael

The subwoofer is out of the room.

Sonic very soon noticed that:

a. the room (with no music playing) is quieter

b. the reverberation time has shortened a bit, there is a more determined decay when tested with BOO!

c. I used to remark that there was more ambience on the RH side of the room in some recordings. This is the side the of the room the subwoofer was. Now the ambience is centred and balanced R to L/front to back. Less prominent though

d. when listening to some recordings, I now hear another layer of low level detail below and behind the main images, like there is more going on in the music that Sonic noticed before on these recordings, but it feels bottled up

e. the soundfield on some orchestral recordings has pulled too wide at the plane of the speakers so the images around the speakers go wide and I feel I need to move my eyes into the sides of my head to locate them

Since the crossover and subwoofer has been bypassed, musick now plays cleaner, more solid imaging with less "interference". There is still some "interference" but it has been cleaned out from a lot of the frequency range.

The low bass extension is actually OK, there is no longer the thinness when the subwoofer was taken out of circuit.

The treble is beautiful.

Your views Michael?

Sonic

Hi Sonic,

In answer to your question about what 'Boo!' sounds like in my room, there is a little bit of overhang. It sounds like an integral part of the the original sound, rather than an identifieable echo, but I do think I hear sound carrying on a little longer than what I'm actually making with my voice. Compared to what I hear in other areas of my house, the reverb in the room seems shorter and more controlled. It also seems to be the same in there no matter which direction I'm facing.

Thanks Bill

That's really useful. My simplified set up is settling and it appears I need to get just a bit more control and shorten the reverb time. More soon.

Sonic

Hi Zonees

After removing the Janis W-1 subwoofer from Sonic's listening room, I took the next step -- removed the Rotel amplifier, the Hemlock shelf and mild steel spikes (genuine RoomTune) and the mini-clamp rack that carried the X-30 crossover unit from my room.

The first impression was an increased clarity and detail but the soundstage tipped over to the Left. The Janis W-1, the Rotel, shelf and the x-30 mini clamp were on the Right.

Sonic remember what Michael said about settling and let things go for a week....and gradually the soundstage balanced itself and what stereo and mono images that were centred were back where they should be.

Still some overhang and room honk.

Now Sonic had a mini-clamp free. I put the V-DAC PCB in the miniclamp, set the board on three MW squares (1/4" thick, one in front and two rear) then top tuned with a sharpened resitone rod just touching the PCB.

the bass vanished....the system became wiry and thin!

Backtracked....better.....after a couple of days, Sonic converted the miniclamp into a Spring Platform (after seeing what Michael did in his system) and assembled this with four machine wound un finished Harmonic Springs.





With the Quicksilver's transformers on the Spring Platform, the system's clarity, warmth, and soundstage size improved.

But there is still an overhang in my room. I can hear it when playing some musick and then hitting the CD player's remote pause button.

Sonic

Hi Sonic

What is the absolute shortest distance you can move your system up to the front wall?

Learning how the space works for you with the simple system setup is going to be key. Boo, overhang can be cut down with Sound Shutters but we must be very careful.

Hi Michael

I can move my main rack from the present 24 inches to about 9 inches from the front wall. But then where should my FS-PZCs, now sited behind the rack in a V, go?

Tell me what yuou are suggesting -- this sounds interesting.

Yes, I have found angling the Shutters affecting the BOO overhang.

Sonic

Hi Michael and Zonees

Actually moving my rack up to the front wall isn't going to be possible without moving the speakers too. I forgot that I had shortened my Michael Green T1 speaker cable so that I needed less Cable Grounds to hold them up. So the closest is going to be more like 15 to 18 inches.

Sonic found that if I angled the side wall shutters (one on each wall behind the loudspeakers and one on each wall behind the line of the bookcase wall) to face the rear of the room at 45 degrees, the BOO!woo overhang is significantly worsened. So I keep these four Shutters at 90 degrees to the wall.

Angling them the other way (to face the front wall) does odd things to the soundstage width at the sides but I'll try it just to see what the BOO! effect is.

Sonic has read on Tuneland that Shutters in the right hands (Michael's) can reduce the RT60 and control the reverb of an entire hall. They will fix my room if I knew what to do.

Sonic

Hi Michael and Zonees

I turned the shutters on the two side walls so they faced the front wqall (45 degrees). The effect is much the same as angling them the other way to face the listening chair -- a more echoey room with a BOO!woo sound.

Sonic

I wrote some stuff in tuning.

Hi Zonees

Michael made some excellent points in Tuning about room overhang and the effect of deadening a room acoustically.

I tested this by bringing in several throw rugs from adjacent parts of my dwelling and placing them on the floor in zone bounded by the speakers, my listening chair and the main amplifier platform.

The overhang was considerably reduced but the sound went all artificial and nothing was believable anymore. No more sense of humans making music in a real space, just sounds produced by electronic means. While the bass may be smoother and tighter, it was also lifeless and uninteresting.

This is not the way to go. The throw rugs got thrown out very fast.

Sonic

Yes, I have made my peace with over hang and now try to use it as an ally, finding ways to put it to work to uncover hidden dynamics. It's energy that can be put to good use and I have found no reason to dampen it. In my little room I use it as a pressure gauge.

Hi Michael and Zonees

Sonic has been tuning my attempt at simplified system for nearly a month now, wrestling mostly with acoustics (overhang problems), uneven bass which ran from a lack of extension, to looseness at some frequencies along with some notes MIA.

I have decided that it isn’t working. Starting last evening, Sonic has taken steps to return things to the last “system restore point”.

Good to have kept a record of every tune I have done since late February, when I had that “dangerous thought” to move my bookcase wall forward to strengthen the bass and remove the subwoofer system.

Not that Michael is wrong or the tune failed mind you. My room and system simply suffered from a condition that Michael pointed out befalls some -- the best spot for imaging and soundstaging may not be the best one for bass reproduction.

The restoration will be quick but the settling will take some time. The good thing is I have learnt a lot about my room and system interaction.

Sonic

Hi Michael and Zonees

Sonic has completed the process of resetting my system. It is exactly the same as it was at end February when I had that dangerous thought and moved my bookcase wall forward and removed the Janis W-1 subwoofer system.

The only differences in set up are I have gone back to the 80Hz cut in point on the X-30 instead of the 60Hz I have been using for a while, and the Janis W-1 points down the length of the room instead of at an angle down a diagonal.

The sound is settling and is returning to the familiar and pleasant presentation I am used to. The less complex system had some real strenghts but in the end I could not pull it all together -- lack of ability in the tune and lack of sufficient gear options, I guess. So the benefits were couterweighted by serious flaws and the whole thing became an exercise in frustration.

What this tells me is at some point, Michael needs to get real time in the system test and set up. With the communications possible using the internet and things like Skype, this is easy. It may become a necessity once a Tunee wishes to cross a certain point.

Sonic

Greetings Zonees

It has been about 10 months since I last posted anything on this thread and Sonic had a look at where I was when I left off.

Back in April 2012, I was just getting into the “simple system” idea and had taken the subwoofer and its attached equipment out – crossover, amp and stands.

From that time, Sonic’s system has stayed simple and then I started to tackle the room. This started a long process to deal with the BOO!oo

Of course I also got into the SP playback set up which gives my system another source which I am enjoying very much even if it involves jumping up to lift the tone arm every 3 minutes or so for 78 rpm records. Analog beats digital...but with Michael's tunes not as much as the audiophiles think....

The new thing is – and this is thanks to Michael and Robert’s advice – the Cardboard Tubes! And there are signs of a breakthrough in my room to firmly (I won’t dare say “finally”) deal with the BOO!

I got 4 Tubes now set up.

Two are just inches behind the centre FS-PZC, one Tube behind the other. These are sitting on MW blocks about ¾ inch off the ground so they are effectively open at both ends.

The other two Tubes are sitting on the floor right in the front corners, again behind their respective FS-PZCs.

The difference came from using some “burn” material in each of the Tubes. I bought some inexpensive fibrous fabric (it is a kind of filter fabric used for aircons and cooker hobs). I cut the fabric and rolled them up to have some stuffing in the Tubes. Big difference. The amount of stuffing and where they were in the Tubes made difference in their action.

I’m letting the set up settle and so far it is sounding really good. Been settling since just before last weekend. For sure Michael has a winning product with his Room Attenuators (see the drawings on Robert’s thread).

I’ll post pix and elaborate on what’s been done in a couple of days once Sonic is more certain of the results.

Sonic

Hi Sonic

Nice to have you back on this part of the forum. Boy, if I only was able to produce all the toys in my bag. Wouldn't that be something