I have a ZMA and HR1s.  Both anniversary modified.  I have put my HR1s in storage now that I have a DIY pair of F15 powered Big Betsys.   If you are not familiar with the BB, check out this thread:  https://www.decware.com/cgi-bin/yabb22/YaBB.pl?num=1561942815/700#724

The HR1s are extremely good speakers but the sound scale of the BBs in a large room is hard to imagine and does not compare to anything I've heard.

Does anyone have experience with either the Decware HR-1 and/or the Omega super alnico high output xrs? I would love to begin narrowing down my next build and purchase. Many thanks!

I have two pair of HR-1 speakers and these speaker ended my personal search for speakers.

I have one pair powered via a ZTPRE and 25th Anniversary modded SE84UFO3 Monoblocks. The other pair are powered by a CSP3 with 25th Anniversary mods and a Taboo Mk IV with 25th Anniversary mods.

I love the speakers and expect to have them a long time. I have very limited experience with Omega speakers.

Redox,

Given characteristics of your room, I would work with a local dealer and try several different types of speakers to see how they sound. You have a lot of reflective surfaces and other issues. I would avoid overly bright speakers given large windows.

I believe ScottNC has a large listening room with arched ceilings (not sure about windows). Check out his room pictures and you'll see a large number of room treatments hanging from the ceiling.

If you can't get good sound testing out speakers and different  positions in your room, you will likely need to look into room treatments. It's the single best and often overlooked listening investment you can make, IMHO.

HK

Thank-you once again HockessinKid and Lon. Your guidance is greatly appreciated. Yes, listening is always one of the very best means of determining the sound one is looking for. But, as you know, unless it is demoed in your own space, it is hard to compare. That is why the feedback from others, like yourselves, that have experience is so valuable.

Lon, excellent positive feedback, thank-you! Your idea of including a ZROCK2 is perfect!  Steve recommended and I purchased a ZBIT along with the ZMA. While I realize it is certainly possible to link the ZBIT and the ZROCK2 into the ZMA, is this opening the door to a longer path between source and amplification, resulting in lower sound quality?
Just out of curiosity, what speakers have you owned prior to the purchase of your two pairs of the HR=1?

Thank-you for your time and valuable feedback and guidance!

Hey Redox,

The tower speakers on Louis homepage that you are asking about are the speakers Louis made me a couple years ago. They are the best speakers i've ever heard and/or owned. I also agree with HK that they are very sensitive. Caveat i've never hear the HR1's. I trust Lon's listening experience and have no doubt that either way you go you will be happy.
With my LTA ultralinear amp and Tortuga preamp the bass is never lacking and overall sound tremendous, paired with my ZP3 vinyl listening is at it's peak for me. I've never made any measurements but I also don't have the tools. When I use my Torii III with the 25th ann mods and glass resistors I have similar sentiments.
Louis is always willing to talk and is really cool, just like Steve. Even if you don't purchase anything their willingness to share their knowledge further cement their status as willing savants in the trade.

JD

Thank-you Geno and JD. Your feedback and ideas are excellent and help a great deal.
I actually spoke with Louis yesterday. He was incredibly friendly and open and helpful. So often in my experience with high-end audio sales individuals or owners, they only speak to you when you are thinking about purchasing and once you do, they seem to change their tune.  
I have read the forums and watched the videos on the BB Project, but still remain somewhat skeptical regarding their true ability. I understand in theory, but I also know that a certain percentage of the dynamics a speaker offers is incorporated into its' cabinet. The structure is more than pretty furniture and alters the vector directional of the sound, etc. I am certain that these speakers sound amazing for what they are and especially the price, but either I am old-fashion or have outdated beliefs that need changing, because I am not ready to see these as a main stage speaker that fills up a large room with high ceilings and lots of glass. (I hope I am not offending anyone! Please see my comments not as negative or closed minded, but instead objectively skeptical, but open)
I will continue to search for an opportunity to hear all 3-speakers, especially if someone in the Rocky Mountains already has a system they are open to share with a visitor.
Many thanks as I have never been on a forum with so much constructive help and open sharing!

Sounds tricky Redox, all systems and rooms different complexes.

I have the opposite problem in my room...and have had to do a fair bit of room treatment, as well as driver and cabinet damping, plinth space tuning, and with my Torii/HR-1 combo, I still needed to attenuate low bass with EQ. Same with my MG944s. Each with their own beautiful qualities, these speakers have a  similar sound, both voiced by Zygi and using the same drivers in part. In my experience, in two very different but both relatively expansive rooms, both speakers are full and warm, but also can be quite articulate and musical with a great soundstage...But in this main room, where I really get deep into the music and tuning, it took work for me to get truly great balance across many recordings.

Part of this is gain riding that you will have with your ZMA and Zbit, where you can set up a more or less dense/dynamic signal by adjusting voltage from the ZBIT. But as you know, room can be huge. This brings me to the ZBIT-ZMA combo. I have not heard your amp, but the fast dynamic hit of the ZMA and ZBIT combo might just fill out your sound nicely.

And room being so influential, I can't say my experience implies that the HR-1s would have better bass in your room or not. Or that a different high volume room might not be bassy enough with your same setup????%^* The frequencies that are attenuated or amplified in two rooms with the same volume, but different dimensions, will be different, and for me anyway, even subtle speaker placement effects nodes and reflections also. But for tunable bass adjustment that is musical, from all I have read, Lon's ZRock suggestion sounds like a good bet in most systems.

Everyone plays the balancing act between adding to the signal path or not in different ways....some conceptual, and some real, and some in between. But we all know all gear and cables are not equal, and some do this better than others! In my experience, once the room/system is tuned to balance, with care in tubes choices, cables, power, speaker placement, vibration management, etc.....refined resolution and fine detail in open space, with very natural sounding bass are highly possible....and certainly present here with a ZBIT and CSP3 before my Torii. My amps are heavily modified, but before I got into that, though more delicate to pull off, I still was able to arrive at very revealing and nuanced sound, loving the specific complexity each component brings...any subtle sacrifices overruled by improvements.

This reminds me. Are you getting the Anniversary mods in your ZMA. If not, I would highly recommend talking with Steve about this. Quality power supply and signal modifications on these already very nice amps are notable!

Thinking of speakers though, with my initially overly bassy setup/room, what I found is that thickness can be turned to naturally tight, impactful bass by reducing bass in room-specific frequencies that are building too much energy and causing thickness instead of satisfying bass...and by giving a little bump to bass articulating frequencies that are attenuated by room.

Along with changes above, done in computer, as part of my player software, before my DAC, my EQ effects all recordings the same, and is quite transparent. This exploration, done carefully by sound, was challenging, but very effective for me.

From the process, I understand Steve's comments on the Big Betsys, that what really makes the feel/sound of great bass is not all about frequency extension. In fact, too much low bass in specific frequencies here makes the bass seem less there...more diffuse/muddled, less articulate, and also less "big" sounding. If it is slow and inarticulate, I can't hear/feel it right. But well tuned for my system/room, it sounds, not huge, but real....like players.

It would seem your issues with your very large room volume, based on your speakers having impressive bass measurements, is room volume as well as attenuation of some frequencies. And since every room effects everything differently, my experience makes me wonder...I suspect you have already done this, but have you tried attenuating bass with your speaker adjustments to see if anything improves?

And if tuning bass that way does nothing good, does your server have potential for digital EQ, where you could play around and identify and perhaps fix some issues?

Hey Redox. I understand using a living room/listening room. I have the same situation. Luckily my adobe house has a number of segues and tucked away places in alcoves to hide room treatment. And the plaster over irregular adobe brick, with no regular surface planes, much of the room is diffusion of sorts, so reflections tend to be less of a thing. I built in treatments rather than trying store-bought stuff that tends to take more visual space, in my case, fundamental bass and absorption relatively innocuous visually.

I get your reservations on the DSPeaker 2.0. I tried it in what I guess was a similar way, as an Analog EQ component between gear. I did not love what I got from just running the measurements and letting it do its thing...too flat and "calculated" feeling, but telling in terms of room issues.

I use it now, with DSP, as the DAC for my DVD player. And with some effort, arrived at a good sound using many of its adjustment parameters on top of the DSP program it creates from measurements. Things like adjusting the bass compensation (the wrench symbol in settings), high and low pass adjustments and tilts, parametric EQs... After learning all that, I tuned it to be more musical in my room. I wonder if I would like it more as an EQ only now that I know more how to tune it. But I suspect, from using it for my movie DAC, not ideal...

I can say without question, though pretty good, in the big picture, the sound does not come close to my Mac Mini/Audirvana/Singxer/Gustard DAC combo. Clearly this is more than just DSP, but Audirvana player software does integrate EQ quite transparently without needing cables or another component, and working directly with the files before leaving the computer. ABing my home-made EQ off and on, every aspect of my sound is notably better with it on. It is really good off with some Torii adjustments and tube rolling, but great on. And starting with relatively balanced room frequency response, tube rolling (and other things) is more about individual sonic characters than modifying the frequency response , or shying away from otherwise great sounding tubes because they are darkish or brightish or something...

I ran a calculated test by ear originally, with a very narrow, hi-dB parametric EQ boost, sweeping the spectrum, and listening for resonance  and null areas that I noted. Then I carefully adjusted with a bunch of smallish parametric EQs across the spectrum and some subtle shelves. This solved many more room related anomalies than the DSPeaker's low end test/adjustments could automatically, mine maxing at 500Hz. Doing my sweep by hand/ear, and adjusting by ear, it does not sound sterilized like DSPeaker tends to using its algorithm without other adjustments. The opposite in fact. Done carefully, with very fine tuning over weeks, it is really good across recordings, indicating it solves system/room issues here. And it is meaningfully more alive with EQ than without. So like cables and components, all DSP is not equal.

Based on your comment: "On one hand, the sound improved and yet on another hand, it lost its organic nature. Comparing the filter on and bypass, demonstrated that improvement whereby the bass was restored, but in doing so, the entire system was compromised."

Sounds like either way, comparing DSPeaker and your speakers without, your sound is compromised.

Your speakers are reputed to be clear, accurate, and extended, implying they should work, but are being compromised by your setup and room. And its sounds like you don't feel like you can adjust speaker placement much, or devise cleverly placed room treatment. I worry that if you can't do anything in your room...experiment with changing speaker positions and angles, try to implement effective and relatively hidden room treatment, and/or figure out some form of DSP, you will in-effect be left with EQing with components, speakers, and cables....very likely an expensive exploration....and though with luck improving things, likely leaving some similar compromises.

Don't know if you played with the settings menu in DSPeaker,  but if you have a few hours one day, it might help to try and discover what is possible with your system/room using a range of user tuned variations on the DSPeaker sound.

For information sake, and maybe a working remedy, I wonder about digging into DSPspeaker utilizing a blend of its many settings beyond its own programing. This would be on top of the room measured adjustments. Their adjustments in place you could adjust the "compensation" parameters and try other fine-tuning experiments to fill in the bass for your space and tastes as well as articulating the rest of the spectrum if you chose to. For example, there are many mid-bass to upper midrange frequencies that could help the articulating aspects of the bass presentation...string hits, the sound of wood and strings, etc that fill out the sense of a real bass sound beyond low bass information...and if done carefully supporting the rest of the sound too.

Just raising the "compensation" would likely be interesting, additionally boosting bass areas the algorithm decided needed boosting, while still retaining its down balancing offending nodes. This in theory could compensate for the room's general lack of bass with frequencies that are not muddling. Or you could apply a low shelf low down, boosting maybe somewhere around 40-70 Hz, with a relatively gentle slope graduating down through the rest of the bass and mid bass to flat in the mids. This sort of filter on top of the algorithmic bass adjustment could also possibly compensate somewhat cleanly for overall lack of bass, the non-musical stuff attenuated. This same combination could also be applied manually with decent EQ in a digital player or software.

DSPeaker can do a "room response" measurement to read the whole spectrum if I remember correctly, showing general areas one could then apply careful parametric EQs up or down for fine tuning up into the mids and highs...And/or if it sounds better, an EQ shelf using their "tilt curve," attenuating or amplifying everything above a chosen frequency could help....say .5 dB for a relatively subtle experiment from 2-3 KHz up to subtly adjust "liveness" up or down. Or the "house curve" where you can bump up low bass similarly.

Could be too much trouble, but might be informative to play with the unit "by ear" to see what it takes to get the system/room better, and who knows, maybe create a more user friendly sound!