Very cool LR.

Quote:


Hahaha, you're a funny guy.

So it's about 2:22am - I've had the amp on for about 30 hours straight I think. I finally got around to hooking it up to my MG944. At first I was like, oh crap, the Omega sound better...but then I put my Demo Tunes on, the same ones I've been playing at Decfest for the past 3 years. And I'll be damned....this amp is so resolving, I'm hearing things jump out that I guess I've subconsciously known was there, but now I can hear it all!

Now, these are tracks I've played to death - I joke about my fiance and I splitting up over hearing Helplessly Hoping and the first three tracks of the first ALT-J album for the millionth time...and every one of my Demo Tunes sounds like it's a new remaster with  more micro-detail and accuracy. Ugh, so amazing.  

Finally this little amp does something the ZMA can't and earns its keep!

Well done, Steve! This is really something!

Quote:


Quote:


Interesting.  You had my Zen for a few days after the UFO mod, so I'm guessing your mod's power/volume exceeds what you remember from mine.  Not sure what other context you'd have in your own system?  While I don't lust for more volume that often, it's really the only thing missing from the Zen IMHO.  I'll be paying attention to see if this goes anywhere.

I finally got around to moving everything out of the room, with the exception of a few of the room treatments.  The positives of doing this were immediately obvious.  

Stream of conscious thought…and a few (bad) pictures….
-The sound bloomed and the music opened up significantly.  
-I hear better separation between instruments and air.
-Sound was better not only in the sweet spot, but all around the room.
-Everything in the front of the room appeared to be distorting the music, or wasn’t letting the sound waves form naturally.
-Speaker positioning is very important, even with the ERRx’s.  Moving the speakers closer to the front wall caused blurring and confusion.  
-I have increased the width of the ERR’s but they are still sitting fairly close to the listening position.  
-I experimented with removing the bass traps in the front corners of the room and that had a detrimental impact on the sound overall, so those stayed.  
-I’m still not sure how to best treat the front of the room.  After further listening I’m convinced I’m getting some acoustic distortion from the diffusers.
-I have read that sitting too close to diffusers can introduce artifacts such as near field comb filtering.  
-Guideline for QRD diffusers seems to be 3X the longest wavelength diffused
-With this in mind, I’m not sure deep well diffusers would be the best option for me.  
-In smaller rooms it seems that combination absorber/diffuser panels are more typically recommended.
-Or diffusers that don’t diffuse as low in frequency
-If I wasn’t imagining things last evening, the soundstage took on a horseshoe type shape on some tracks.   Absorption in the corners could pin the stage, while the diffusers push through the front wall??  
-I still feel like I am looking to the left and there is still some unbalance, but overall the soundstage is very immersive.    
-Also, the room looks terrible with nothing in it and this setup isn’t going to last very long.
-I’m going to try to build it back up in a way that maximizes sound but also improves aesthetics.
-I’m glad I took the time to gut the room and will have a few weeks to experiment.  It has been another ear opening experience on the journey.  

With respect to the diffusers on the front wall, moving them together will dramatically increase the effective diffusion over having them separated.  Also when you put them together, center them in the wall as best you can.  In the white space on either side put soft absorption of some kind, the thicker the better, and then you should be able to tweak the position of the speakers back towards the front wall a touch, and gain overall better focus.

Damit LR! Now, for sure I'm going to Decware this summer by appt., and no stone (stone of tone  8-)) will be left unturned. Geeeez!  ;D

LR wrote:
"#2 I don't want to give away too much, but Steve said that going over this amp, doing this mod on an early version of the Zen with his current knowledge may have inspired a small batch run of Zen amps in the future."

Thanks Steve/LR!  

The next step in the journey...

I will listen to this setup for a couple of days and report back...

I listened to the Zen till 2am again last night while working on house projects. Just for giggles I hooked up some old (and beat looking) Alesis studio monitors; Monitor One I believe the model is. I honestly forgot I had them connected instead of my Omega Super Hemp or MG944, it simply just sounded good.



I hate to say this, but I've had zero desire to plug in the ZMA - the UFO Zen just sounds so right...though I admit, when I wanted to "crank my jam", I realized I had no room for said cranking. Beyond that, I have not been left wanting.

Oh, I should also add, I've been supplimenting the bottom end with my 18" sealed sub, powered off my crown amp, crossed over at like 53hz or something - just for the real low end. Acoustic bass sounds amazing, because you get the realistic woody detail from the Zen (especially with the Omega SuperHemp), and you get an almost visceral bottom end from the sub crossed over so low. The little Zen reproduces bass exceedingly well for it's flea wattage, and sometimes the Omega 8" feels like it's going lower than the MG944 towers! I'll have to take some measurements eventually to properly place the big sub(s), and figure out the proper crossover point depending on what speakers I'm pairing up with. But when dialed in so low, it doesn't trip up the main speakers, and gives me a fullness that some tracks just don't wound right without. I just might be missing a few notes between the bottom of the mains and the top of the sub frequency, but it hasn't been bad enough to pull me out of the enjoyment of the music.

Edit: Oh yeah, I still need to work on beautifying my Betsy baffles and get those back in circulation with the Zen amp!  

At this point I'll probably stop tacking onto this thread, and I'll return to my home theater rebuild thread since I plan on spending all day Sunday working on building the screen and hopefully pulling the room back together. I feel naked without a room full of diffusers.  :)

Your system is starting to look an awful lot like mine and Palomino's, LR!  

Thanks LR.  That is next on my list of things to do.  

I have been pretty happy with the sound of the setup so far, and without a lot of tweaking.  I think there is a lot of tuning that can still be done.  If you could do anything, would it be replacing the absorbers with diffusion on the front wall?  

Also, I am starting to formulate ideas on how to put the room back together, improving aesthetics and maintaining good sound.  I'm thinking...

-Painting the front wall gray, like the left side wall.
-Abstract art acoustic fabric on the absorbers (assuming they stay), to break up the solid wall of black.  I have already looked into getting printed acoustic fabric to do this myself.  
-Painting the diffusion panels white or in a Rothko type look, for a modern art look in the center of the wall.  I could also put an acoustic fabric "mural" over the diffusers.  
-Removing the framed posters from college that are currently hanging above everything  8-)

That said, I don't want to do any of the aesthetic tweaks until I feel I'm in good place with the sound overall.  Oh yes, and I'll likely have some panels made that fit the windows perfectly.  And a new rug...  

Geez...still a lot to do...

Dave



   

This thread has inspired me to start looking at my room.  GIK Acoustics recommended laying bass absorption panels down on top of my component rack (this is the shelving behind the speakers.  I am definitely going to do this.  The other recommendation was to set up portable side panels beside the listening chair.  Due to speak and WAF, I can't do this.

I could probably get a corner trap behind the TV so that it would not be visible.  Does anyone else think this might have a benefit?

I`m thinking you wont be needing ceiling treatment )

Sorry about that but I am not sure how to make the pic smaller.  The basic story I see that I have a flat panel tv extending from a corner that takes up much of the space between the side wall and speaker.  I am thinking about trying some type of corner trap behind the tv to see if that helps clean up the bass.

Dave,
Hope your enjoying the speakers. I miss having the highly figured walnut in my room and seeing them in your room was kind of a tug on my heart but at least I can see they went to a good home. I'm enjoying my Zu's here at my humble abode...😊

Rick,

I think I am just starting to scratch the surface of what the ERRx’s are capable of in my room.  I have gone down a rabbit hole breaking down the room to let the speakers breathe in order to get a sense for what they are capable of.    I should have expected they would be as sensitive to placement as other speakers.   Lots more experimentation to go.  That said, I have had some of the best listening sessions to date with the room in its current state.  

Pal,

Not sure if you are following this thread, but regarding continuity of space within the soundstage, I wonder if the below track applies:

-Melody Gardot’s Album ‘My One and Only Thrill’ (Track 4, “Your Heart Is As Black as Night”)
-Specifically, shortly after the opening piano, a trumpet enters (stage left, back) that I can hear echoing off the wall (stage right, side/front corner).    This one seems slightly more obvious to me versus some of the other examples you provided, but I am curious what you think.
-Hopefully you are still streaming TIDAL if you don’t already have this track!

Pal...I'm fully committed to TIDAL at this point.  I think I have over 1500 albums, playlists, saved (I am only 28,500 albums shy of a Lon collection).  I love sitting down with a cup of coffee on Sat/Sun morning and adding new music while the family is still sleeping--music that is just waiting to be discovered at a later point in time.  I recently added a bunch of meditation/sacred tone/solfeggio scale music after reading Steve's latest article.  

Coming back to sound stage continuity,  I'm also curious about your thoughts on the initial piano "hits" at the beginning of Calpyso Minor (from Abdullah Ibrahim's album Sotho Blue).  I'm fairly certain you have that album as well.  

Looking forward to your thoughts...

-Dave

So how's your mobile data rates looking then Pal? I mean, cost wise, using all that bandwidth.

~Eric~

TIDAL does have an Offline Content feature for mobile devices.  I listen to my downloaded TIDAL tracks at work and in the car, so I am not using my mobile data.  

I'm not sure how big the Offline Content files are.  It is worth looking into whether they are CD quality.  I only have a small subset of my total collection downloaded, so I'm currently not using up too much space on my phone.  It's easy enough to manage your offline content via the mobile app, so I just add and subtract things when I'm connected to my wireless network at home.

Streamed files are CD quality FLAC, with the TIDAL HIFI subscription. 

Dave,

i was able to listen to the Melody Gardot and yes, the echo is there plain as day.  it really seems to hang there for a while on the second phrase of the solo after the drums start.  That whole track has nice ambient sounds.

On Calypso, the first piano strike starts about mid height stage left and then drifts up and fills the upper sound stage and then dissapates like a cloud of gas.  i hadn't listened to this album in a while and really enjoyed it on the Betsy drivers.

I think Raven used the term soundstage continuity so he could respond as well, but to me its a seamless overall soundstage where an instrument's note continues in a fluid, natural manner across the soundstage as it would in an actual room.  The notes themselves have lifecycle that is natural and flowing with realistic echo or decay (note my comment about dissipating like gas above).

I have experienced this with rear ported horns, diffusers and now OBs.  OBs + diffusers = the best lifelike and continuous soundstage that I have experienced.  

And in my OBs, the Betsys do this better than my Tang Bands, although the Tang Bands are more precise and realistic to me.  They just don't fill the room the way the Bestys do.  Said another way, Tang Bands are more "focused" and less airy and sense of air is important to maximizing the soundstage continuity concept.

A couple descriptors that Steve once said to me seems to work here:  The Tang Bands are more precise and "audiophile" sounding while the Betsys are more vintage or "Hi-fi" sounding.  It just depends on what I am in the mood for.  

Lately, its the Betsys because they do the soundstage continuity thing so effortlessly and I have been listening to music that "reproduces the room" so they get the nod.

Sorry, wandered around a little there, but you get my drift.  Might be akin to what you get from 944s versus ERRs.

Quote:


That's a pretty good description. You've had it right for so long, you might not remember that black hole that was in the middle of your room. You could clearly hear the left side and right side as separate entities. But when it's right, you don't just have vocals/instruments floating between the speakers, but the air that gives you a sense of the room (in the recording) completely fills that left-center-right space as well.

It's like, if you were blind and in cave, you'd be able to *feel* the rough size of your space - and it would be obvious, even though you were blind, that there was a big black hole that you weren't getting reflections from. That black hold would be the broken continuity...it's more about spacial information than just having a center image.

Just when I thought I understood and had heard the continuity of space across my soundstage with the echoes in those two tracks...

...LR starts talking about black holes and blind men in caves...

LR...you didn't muddy the waters.   But, I still don't think I have any idea what you guys are talking about.  I'm fairly certain I just need to hear it.  Maybe one day!

What I am fairly certain about is that my sound is the best it has ever been.  Still more to experiment with and likely improvements to be had.  But, I'll likely never get to the level you guys are describing in my current room.  That said, I'll see how far I can push it and then 'live with it'.

Enjoy the weekend!

Dave  

Dave,

Search Tidal for "Live".  These are the recordings that usually provide the most dramatic sense of room:

* Eva Cassidy, Live a Blues Alley.  
* Allman Brothers Fillmore East.  
* Erykah Badu (great bass on this one BTW)  
* Waillin' Jenny's Live.  
* Sara Bareilles, Live at the Variety Playhouse (Sittin on the Dock of the Bay is probably the best "room" song)
* Musica Nuda Live a FIP
* Any live concert recording of Jeff Beck.  
* Minnesota Orchestra Fanfare for the Common Man.

Some non-live tracks:
Cowboy Junkies Trinity sessions (especially Walkin after Midnight)
Joe Jackson, Body and Soul

Basically, these recordings allow you to get a feel for the size and type of room the recording was made in.  For Jeff Beck recordings, you know he's playing a big arena (look for a live recording of Space for The Papa).

When I first heard Joe Jackson Body and Soul I thought that must have been recorded in a really cool, large venue.  Then I read the liner notes and found that the location was a church that had been painstakingly selected to achieve the acoustics Joe Jackson wanted on the album.

When you feel like you are sitting in that room/arena and not constrained to your listening room walls, you have it.