After my visit to the "Raven's Haven" I decided it was time to enter the world of tuning my room and thus far built six absorber panels.

I am now testing them out and playing with the position/orientation and having pretty good luck getting a better 3D sound stage.

Any recordings that emphasize the 3D effect/placement of musicians you'd suggest listening to?  

I have some of the usual suspects like Pink Floyd and a smattering of live Jazz and well recorded studio jazz (Kind of Blue, etc.).

Any suggestions are appreciated.

"Earl Hines Plays Duke Ellington" is a recording of fantastic solo piano by one master playing the music of another master and the quality of the recording can make this sound like a real piano in a room on a great system, worth checking out. There are different releases of this on vinyl and cd, there were three volumes altogether but they all share the same excellence so any and all will serve.

Theres a lot going on in John martyn`s studio albums (electric period)
Not many guitars at all but so many sounds popping up. A rich tapestry's of, well, I`m listening to this one now



and its always a pleasure to get drawn in.

You could try these...mine are error corrected redbook Cd files.

If you like Bosa Nova in a newish, but more or less old style..."bluebossa" by Ana Caram. Great sound stage width and depth.

Archie Schepp and Niels-Henning Orsted Pederson, "Looking at Bird"...pretty mellow Schepp...just sax and stand up bass. Not a huge stage, but just right and a nice recording...holographic.

If those Room Lenses weren't so expensive...

I might make a set and see what happens. It's a neat concept, but hard to swallow at $1200 for a set of three...especially when they offered no way for tuning them for your rooms particular nodes.

Thanks everyone for your responses.  I think there may be some good examples there of what I am after.  

Maybe a more specific description of what I hear could help one of you steer me in the right direction - via other recordings to test and/or room treatments to explore.

I have now achieved a virtual soundstage that eclipses the entire area in front of my listening chair.  Speakers disappear.  Height and width is only limited by the recording.  Overall depth of the complete stage is good. Within that soundstage, on good recordings, the individual instruments and/or vocals have their own 3D "orb."  They seem to float within that soundstage having their own height, width, depth and radiating decay.

What I feel is still compressed is where those orbs of sound appear in that soundstage from front to back.  So I can't tell for example, where the bass player is positioned relative to the vocalist, etc. in terms of depth.  I know they are on the left side, but front to back on the stage, everything seems somewhat bunched up in the rear of the soundstage.

So I was looking for good recordings that others can definitely differentiate the front to back location of the "orbs" within the soundstage so I could see if I indeed do have a issue to work out.

That sounds right up my alley, Lon!

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?22736-SDA-Playlist

....large thread here to check out!


You might not have SDA like I have... . However, with a Decware Amp it is there with these too!

To bad ALL recordings are not as good as a REFERENCE RECORDING, A PROF. JOHNSON RECORDING....BUT, that is where Decware comes in/for my Listening Room & SDA SRS comes in for the Living Room System... .   -S

Palamino and all.

My room/system does really well width, height, and depth, with great spacial accuracy and individual player saturation. Though I prefer the sound with HR-1s, soundstage did not change notably going from MG944s to HR-1s in this room. I don't have any official diffusers, but do have round log beams with angled rough wood boards for a ceiling, irregular adobe walls, and open segues to other spaces. I also use Synergistic Research Art Basik bowls (they are placed at first reflection points on the sides, and  front and back) and a Kemp Schumann resonator. Both contribute to a more defined sound and soundstage in this room.

I have used these for years, so thought I should test them. The difference is subtle in ways, but each is quite clear in contributing its own part. The combination is a very real aspect of a great soundstage. As LR said, the Decware is a big first step, but in this room, these tools really help. I can't say how much they do compared with official diffusers since I have none. I also built a small low bass, and a small mid bass trap, and more absorbers strategically placed in areas where sound got bunched up.

One thing I have really noticed in this difficult room is that when my bass/mid-bass is too dominant in the frequency balance, masking the upper mids and highs, at some point it weakens the sound stage. Right now I have a nice warm tube set that is really good at sound stage though, so it depends on tubes here. I do generally use less pushy, less dense OB3s in my Torii rather than OA3s giving a sound that is still warm, but more articulate. Also, this is where the Schumann resonator contributes in this room...it articulates without messing with the frequency balance in any negative way (positive actually, better micro detail rounding out the timbre).... I think anything that contributes to good power treatment and vibration control really helps by cleaning up/articulating what is there.

My other room also has a great sound stage with a similar ceiling to this, and with segues to other spaces, but with flat sheetrock and masonry walls. It does have a lot more speaker placement flexibility though and it has a great soundstage with no treatment at all, not much of a power filter, and no vibration control. I have not put much energy into that system yet, but the room is so easy, and I don't use it as much, so it is not pressing.

I also find the recording effects the quality of soundstage location and saturation, or, likewise, with well saturated spacial information, the plausibility of the player placement is not always great based on engineer choices.

The recordings I mentioned above do width and depth well in my rooms. Don't know if you can play digital files, but if you can get individual songs without compression, "Inutil Paisagem" is the test tune I use on Ana Caram "bluebossa." Not being as saturated and simple a recording as the Schepp one, it is a good test for bass and drum differentiation in width and depth. They are well back through the wall in this room and spatially well placed, the drums further back and right, the bass forward of them and left.

One with big, complex, and layered music is Vision: The Music of Hildegard von Bingen. This is a new style Hildigard thing with additions of bass, big drums, bells, and with the occasional obvious electronic hyped instruments I uncheck in my play lists, but that is me. There is clear attention to sound stage in this production. I use the tune "Praise of the Virgin" as a test tune. Great for analyzing width and depth, bass, soft or hard mids, highs...the lot.

Also Ayub Ogata the tune "Kothbiro." Nice saturation width and depth, and a good test for depth. With subtler depth differentiation on some of the up front voices and instruments (several feet here), it is quite deep on others. For me the piano is about 15 feet behind the speakers and the bass a bit forward of the piano and not far left of it, so a good test for depth and right/left location and saturation.

Good luck pulling in the front to back part!

Will, I'm so intrigued by those little bell like cups and stuff you have. I'm very, very skeptical, but very curious.

Marky, you have photos of your setup!? I love seeing rooms with sound treatment!

If anyone is curious, I have a collection of diffuser images I've put up on my ZenFolio gallery. I have a ton more I need to add, but it's my own little collection of "sound treatment porn" LOL

http://lonelyraven.zenfolio.com/p968463117

I am open to any treatments or products that take me from this:



To more of this:



I'm getting a great horizontal and vertical soundstage and good holographic voice and instruments.  I am just trying to get them more separated front to back (with recordings that are engineered this way).

My speakers are actually toed in about what is showing in the diagram.  I experimented to get to that point but I continue to play with it.  I'll start pointing them further out and see if it helps.


I recently built 7 24X48 2" panels http://acousticsfreq.com/blog/?p=62 and the results were pretty dramatic.  That is what got me going on this path.  I have one in the middle behind the speakers, two acting as quasi bass traps in the corners, two at the mirror reflection points on the sides, one in the back in the middle and two on the ceiling.  Helped the imaging and tamed the bass.  Best $120 I have spent on audio.

Palomino,

I just noticed you use a Mini with Audirvana. Audirvana Plus has eq, and may be really interesting to play with. I use AppleAUfliters, which do low shelf, high shelf and three parametric EQs in the middle. With four filters you can do a lot.

To find troubled bass zones I set a narrow Q, like .1-.3 octave, jack up the Dbs maybe 10 Db and slowly slide across the frequencies until the nasty resonant ones show up. I write them down as I go. Then it is easy to keep the Q really narrow and adjust down by sound....or to widen the Q's a bit if necessary to cover larger resonant areas and adjust until it sounds right.

Also interesting to explore small changes in the mid to upper frequencies, same method as above but less Db...maybe up or down 3-5 Db might tell the tale to find areas you might like more or less of.

With the graphic interface in Audirvana, it can be fun to play with it as you listen. Narrow the Q some, widen it, change the cut or hit.

I start with recordings that are good, but may be too bassy, or for mids and highs, that may be too intense or hard. It can be tedious, but if you make small adjustments, it is safe enough and can really improve the sound if your treatments are not quite enough, and do it very transparently for your whole collection.

Looks like you have it all going on. It is amazing how tuning can be so captivating, that bait of better sound always tempting us.

I am not an Audirvana user, so no expert by any means. Though I always like it at first, I tend to go back to Pure Music. Somehow, with this system/room, I get a more authentic, less processed sound with Pure. It is like Audirvana tries to work the "analog" smoothness angle a bit much, along with a bit too much push and definition layered into this effect. Subtle though and I think loads of folks prefer Audirvana, and I have explored Pure more.

You got me experimenting with it. Thanks for the reminder. One reason I really want to go further with it is that it appears to work in integer mode with my Tranquility DAC. So I will see if I can refine its settings to my tastes.

It was crashing at times for me as it integrated with iTunes also. I may have solved it by lowering the memory allocation to it. They recommend at least 2.5 GB to be left for the computer.

I love EQ to finish out my room problems (and preferences), and my settings are minimal (most less than 2 Db). But even if you don't use it in playback, it is an interesting and instructive way to identify problem areas for treatment. Flexes the hearing/perception abilities.

I have not gone with REW as it looks like more of a learning curve than I ever have time for. But I do run measurements with DSpeaker AntiMode 2.0 now and then, which actually works really well on its own for sorting out low frequency troubles. But I go back and forth using it and just straight EQ, liking the sound of the simple signal chain without....

On the other hand, I like the ease of letting AntiMode do the work, and the reenforcement of checking my ear against actual measurement. I was gratified to find that before I bought a used AntiMode, I had the low EQ set very, very close to how Anti-Mode did it. It is harder with mids and highs, I suspect because of the HR-1s radial dispersion making measurement difficult. Seems I can use somewhere around half the adjustments the Antimode perceives to good effect though. That puts me sort of half way back to "by ear" but I like that fine.

I look forward to how your experiments end up!

Will

Palomino - IMHO, to improve your depth, you need diffusers on the rear wall and front wall. Or at very least on the front wall. A couple 1D QRD on the front wall I think would liven up the ambiance and tighten up the imaging. It would make the reverb in the recordings wrap around the room better.

Wow 3/4 of the front wall covered with plastic?

I have found an adjustment in Audirvana that helps here. It is in the Audio Filter preference, the sample rate converter. I have not played with anything else, but I set the "filter max length" for "better" - turning it up higher, and liked it less, so went with it lower and like it better. More texture and a more natural sound to me. The default setting is 500,000. With very little experimentation and listening time, I am liking it more in the 450,000 range give or take.

Good luck with those diffusers!

Quote:


I would be happy to help design, but I've not come up with a building plan I like yet that's fast, easy and repeatable. I'm out of town visiting family, but when I'm back I hope to get more time putting my garage back together, and maybe actually cutting some wood!

I apparently have piles of 1/8" board to use for the dividers, I just need some 1/2" wood for the wells.

Also, a quick and dirty diffuser idea to see if it makes a difference - try a cylindrical diffuser, it would be light, portable, and uses very little material. I would also be easy to breakdown and reuse the materials if you decide you don't like it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyriZDOG2rA

I like the curved ones.  I could build those.  The frame would have to be metal though, right?

Jury is still out on the ceiling absorbers.  Now I don't notice as much.  I think I am going to have to get serious and do some measurements.

I don't know how 3D this would be in a treated room, because I don't have one in any of the three rooms I listen in, but with the ERR and the modded C amp in my parents' living room this recoding seems to have real solidity and great dynamics and especially the cello sounds very real and present.

Quote:


Palomino, sorry I missed this.

Have you emailed audioirvana. Since my stopped crashing with a change in the preference for the "Audio System" with less memory allocated to the app and more to the MAC, I am wondering if it is a memory issue. I use only 44.1/16. I wonder if the + version needs a lot of memory or if something is just haywire?

Stumbled into this great video just now! The before and after demo around 5:30 is amazing, and exactly what I keep talking about when I'm pushing room treatment!

http://youtu.be/D66v5JC0eVk


Notice the measurements show where the problems are, and demonstrate the "ringing" in the room that you can clearly hear in the before and after videos!

I'm only about half way through the video right now, so I'm going to finish it off and see what else they show - I just wanted to post it before I forgot!

yes, this is a great video.  I downloaded some of the tracks to see how my treatments stack up against that room.  I have to say, I feel pretty good about the $160 I have spent so far.  I tried to post a video, but the mic on my camcorder is pretty bad and didn't capture what I was hearing in the room.

I have started to look for mics and think I've found one that doesn't require external phantom power and works with REW.

I had a friend over last night for drinks and then got him to come into the basement to listen to my system.  He's and engineer and helped me procure some outlets and such that were hard to find but he could get them from his supplier.

Anyway, he was clearly impressed with the sound and told me so.  Minor victory for me.

From what I hear, I think the highs are pretty tamed and the focus of the soundstage is pretty good.  Still not as front to back as I want, but pretty good.  Some music is better than others.

I was at that Menards today near your house to buy some lumber to prototype some of those bent wood diffusers.  I got the framing lumber, but could not get 1/8" ply.  I think that is what you need to make enough of a bend.  I have some other 1/8 material (not sure what you call it) and will give that a try.

I still need something to keep the bass in line (upright bass booms big time) and am considering my options for corner bass traps.  I'll send you the link to some I am looking at on-line for $60.  Seem a bit too good to be true.

I've yet to see anything under a few hundred that would put a dent in *real* bass.

It takes a lot of material, or clever use of specific materials to tame bass. Little pieces of foam the corners are BS. It takes lots of corner traps, and/or helmholtz resonators to get that low bass cleaned up like you heard at my place.












I've got those covered in cloth, and stacked 8' tall, plus I have two of the old Decware designed CWALL, which I'm really having trouble measuring to figure out what they are doing.




Plus have about 30# of insulation behind my 10' projection screen, so it acts as an absorber as well. And I still think I could use some more bass treatment to deal with a 27Hz bump I have.

Yeah your room was pretty flat.  

I am running out of room now given the relatively small size of my room.  But even those 2" absorbers angled in the front corners help.  I do think I can build some corners traps like you have shown in the pics but about half to 1/4 the height and hang them.  I have a closet on one side and a window on the other so nothing permanent.

Probably should have moved this thread to room treatment. I did get some good recording suggestions though.  Also given the relatively low cost versus big returns I have now joined the room treatment evangelists and wish to spread the word.  For $160 and some elbow grease I have made a bigger impact only sound than anything else I've done except buy a Decware amp.  Thanks for showing me the light, brother Raven.

I built a prototype of the bent wood diffuser.  Pretty easy.






I liked it enough to build a second.  I did not like it in the front of the room.  While curved, I thought it still bounced back to much to the listening position.  I now have them on the sides and there is a noticeable positive effect.  Especialy on live music.  I like the idea of having these with a backing of insulation and holes cut in the front like the combination diffuser you posted above.

Palomino,

That looks like masonite, and will continue to bend and warp at your connections to the hinges if you have humidity. We used it for arch forms for Kilns and without really complete edge connection (perhaps like the one LR showed where the edge is tucked in and secured to a straight, flat surface) it will move with time...may work just to pull it in between the connections you now have...a couple more hinges on a side.

What effects did you hear. Ethan Winer says those diffuser types are more for bigger rooms with a good distance from your seat....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nzmBhkR4JQ

But I am interested in your experience.

I don't know what this stuff is, but I think they use it for floor underlayment.  Its slick on one side and more porous on the other.

Its a prototype anyway.  If I decide to keep them, I would replace this material with some good plywood (if it will bend enough).

I do like your design idea Raven.  If I had to do this over again, I would probably keep my design (no table saw) but I would have a separate piece of wood running down each side to prevent what Will is talking about.  It's a pressed wood of some sort and very prone to absorbing moisture.

In terms of big versus small rooms, I would believe that this is better as a big room diffuser, but I can say you can shape your room sound with these even in a small room.  The "tuning" if you want to call it that is done by now much you angle them in to the room.  I haven't settled on a location yet, but I got the best front to back imaging on live recordings last night that I have had to date.  This was angling them in somewhat just past the first reflection point absorbers on either side of the room.  I think they kicked more of the sound waves back to the absorbers on each side and to the front of the room.

I have less than $35 in them so its a cheap experiment.

Given your size room and that hole you have to fill, I think this would be worth a roll of the dice.  My only concern is that they are a hard surface and even though they diffuse, they also will liven up your room a little.

If you have the ceiling height, you could make them stackable.   Mine are 48" tall by 28" wide after bending.  

I have some stuff left over and was thinking about putting a couple of small ones on the back wall.

Most of what I make is a far cry from anything:)

New Moon Daughter = ditto

I have all the usual suspects with the great Samplers:

The Ultimate Demonstration Disc-Chesky Records' Guide to Critical Listening

Chesky Records 10th Anniversary Edition 2 Disc jazz & world music celebration

(3) Three Prof Johnson Sampler Discs from Reference Recordings

Numerous, very well recorded Jazz............ .

Now, back to reality of  Recording's in general....and in comes Decware.....and where even the best Solid State ultimately does suck with grain and more grain (even with great recordings too IMHO).

For example: even on a very very good Solid State System, RUSH - Negative Feedback, can not be fleshed out to be musical.  With Alchemy and I mean Alchemy firmly....I have put together Systems with Decware, where you can actually enjoy this 29 minute Disc of covers they played and loved as a bar band coming up... .  That is saying something for a compressed Rock record! Of course, this is just one example...I wanted to use this ROCK...example for obvious reasons.  I have great results with my Contemporary Jazz Discs too....which is my favorite Genre.

Anyway, I digress, however, I love the great recordings in my collection...but ultimately you need to put together a System to play all of it with great Harmonics, decay, imaging with a soundstage.

I have a ZMA coming in a couple weeks & this August I'll order a Torii IV to complete my Decware Stable (with SE84CS & Super Zen CKC). As we know it is about the music here....not about well spec'd odd order sand Amps with oscilloscopes!  

-Stone

This is a great thread palomino. Putting  sound absorber/diffuser/b traps into a room really pays dividends. Empty room..clap hands = tubey echo.
Treat the room..clap hands = no echo. Thats just the start though. I`ve put stuff up (will get pics soon) and do I know what I`m doing ? It`s kind of symmetrical so I`m pondering it still 12 months on. Classic horseshoe soundstage no prob. Front to back between the speakers, well, could be better. I`d like the singer standing more forward etc. The drums are always back, kind of reference + he has as many channels as the engineer gives him. I too would like more back to front. It too has been a goal for a long time. It` unlockable but just listening to the music is fine for now. I did think that I`d have to spend mega on a cart but this thread is slowly sinking in.

I did an interesting little experiment over the weekend.  I downloaded a cheap, but well reviewed SPL meter ap for my iPhone and Ethan Winer’s test tone tracks (http://realtraps.com/test-cd.htm).  Basically these tones cover the bass frequencies from 20hz to 300hz.   I used these tones because my own ears told me that I had an issue with certain bass frequencies and I don’t have any real bass traps in my room.

I used the included pink noise to set the volume to 70db and then played the test tracks and recorded the levels.  While this SPL meter on my phone is hardly a precision instrument, it did show me my peaks and valleys.

To adjust, I moved my absorbers, diffusers around and watched the SPL digital display while playing the offending frequencies.  I was not able to change the offending frequencies by more than 1 db.  Then I used the equalizer within Audirvana to try to tweak the three problem areas.  

I was not able to do much with the lower frequency problem areas, but I was able to take care of one at about 200hz.  I just played the tone and adjusted the slider down until I got closer to 70db.  I went from 79db down to about 74db.

Then I sat down and listened.  The changes were easily noticeable.  Imaging improved a little, but the detail I could hear now was significantly better and the recordings (just about all of them) sounded more real.  An example is being better able to hear vibrato in the end of a verse where the singer’s voice tails off.  Not only that, but the tail of that passage is longer than I could previously hear.  I suspect that this peak I had was actually hiding some of the detail present at or around that frequency.

So now I am able to say without hesitation that this was my best bang for the buck audio tweak.  I think the SPL ap was $1.99.  I did probably spend 2-3 hours doing this exercise.

Here’s the catch.  I changed speakers and it was all out the window.  I changed output tubes and to a lesser degree, there was a change as well.  So I will have to re-tune for speakers.  I am not sure I will re-tune for tubes.  Luckily, Audirvana has settings you can save as separate files.

Nice, thanks.

Raven was by yesterday and made a few suggestions for improvements, but I am getting good imaging/sound from my room now.

Of course, when he hooked up the ZMA, he spoiled me, but I am still on a good recordings quest and less focused on equipment.