The Listening Room Reality

Hi-Fi Corner
1176

Hi Thomas, good to see you are still alive & kicking :+1:t3:
As for my room treatment I have reached a room response I am very happy with. What made the last positive difference was getting read of the big leather sofa in favour of a single chair:

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You can see the 2 Monster Bass traps behind the chair on the lower part of the wall. I’ve given them a 2 inch gap to wall as they are resting slightly elevated on the floor. Also moved the listening position very slightly forward and these 3 factors seem to have finished things off nicely.
As for your plans re your room, does this mean you are still going to purpose build a room, ie have you bought another place? :thinking:
All the best Peter

PS. If you wonder what the chair legs are resting on, they are cheap as chips rubber Ice Hockey pugs just to elevate my ears very slightly- think I’ve shrunk with age :rofl:

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1177

Hi Peter
I notice that you have positioned your S1 to the left of your two Fraim stacks. Do you find this preferred to in between? I have an S1 on order.
Cheers
Rob

1178

Not stealing Peter’s thunder but setting up in between Fraim stacks can create challenges re the length of interconnects (esp signal I/Cs) and ensuring the base of the S1 (where the very large PS sits) is away from anything sensitive.

Have you dem’ed the S1 at home?

1179

Hi Cohen, I wanted my Din-XLR not to interfere too much with my Burndies to 500/ CDP. Also my mains box sits between the stacks with no real move on the cable. I actually like to have access to my mains box this way for any necessary and occasional contact-refresh. Bit quirky I know :crazy_face:
Lastly I found the S1 transformer needed to be at a 10 inch+ distance from my lowly placed 500 head interference wise. Even at this distance it is difficult to keep the Din-XLRs off the floor, as all the sockets are at the very bottom of the S1 ( annoyingly). Lastly I actually really like to actually being sat close to it also :hugs: See photo:

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The wonderful S1 will open the window wide, so make sure your room response can cope with particularly the low frequency band. You could of course be helped by the SL2s start rolling off at 45 Hz in this regard. Hope it all works out for you- rest assured it is an amazing preamp :clap:t2::partying_face: Enjoy Peter

PS. Maybe I should mention I also wanted it as far as possible away from the speakers enabling me to treat 1st wall reflections with an absorptive foam panel, yeah I know….

5 Likes
1180

Great info. Cheers Peter

1181

Hi Peter !

Glad you reached the point where everything sounds well balanced.

Your room looks amazing! Love the chair, and those pucks under the legs :laughing:
Not sure I’d go for a chair without a headrest. I’m a bit lazy I guess and not that extreme in terms of optimising SQ. I love my StressLess chair in which I have to admit I tend to fall asleep :woozy_face: :rofl:

The bass traps I was referring to (pressure based), could advantageously replace your corners traps (velocity-based), just a thought.

We finally didn’t buy the house. What a journey through complications and disappointments.

In the region where I’m located, having the cash isn’t enough (even large amounts of it…). We even thought about selling one of our apartments, just in case.

The owner of the land changed his mind. He decided that our project wasn’t to his taste anymore, even with a more than generous offer (we offered a lot…).

So the house project is postponed until we find something interesting in our region.

This means no perfectly shaped room, sadly :pensive:

I’ll then optimise or completely change the treatment I have.

Having some funds available, I’m also planning a trip to Zürich to listen to the Soulution 760/711 combo.

1182

Hi Thomas,
Warmly joins your recommendation for the company’s products, but if the budget can be expanded a bit, I would recommend Bass Monster Trap and Absorbent Cloud Catchers at the initial return point in the ceiling, from the Canadian company PRIMA ACOUSTICS. This is what I did in my listening space.

1183

Interesting products. But not sure I understand their absorption coefficient scale…

What I liked about the Artnovion traps is that you can target a specific frequency range.

This is a nice option to have when we know/measured the offending frequencies.

1184

Oh Thomas what a disappointment!
Well sometimes we have to console ourselves with: “Ah well it wasn’t meant to be”, and yes as tricky as that can be…. :face_with_head_bandage:
‘All good things comes to he who waits’…. any good? :joy:
We nearly bought a house once ( true story), but couldn’t raise the capital quickly enough for the builder and lost the purchase. A year later we found the house we are in now, this time the seller could wait for us to sell our previous, and do you know what, in hindsight this is a much better place for us in so many ways. And hey, I’ve got my own dedicated music room :partying_face:
Yes sorry, should have commented on the Artnovion recommendation, they are great products with a furniture-grade finish. I hear what you are saying but am actually really happy with my room response now. It did take a while……
Good luck with the Soulution demo, can we maybe guess a foregone conclusion?!
Please let us know, how you get on with that :+1:t3:
Good to see some activity from you here again and keep the old pecker up! Best Peter

1185

Thank you for your kind words Peter. I usually tend to see things on the positive side too.

As soon as an interesting opportunity shows up, we’ll move. If we’re lucky enough, I’ll have the chance to build a dedicated room.

In the meantime, I’ll enjoy what I have, which is rather good all things considered (including measured acoustics).

I’m glad you’re happy with your room. It not only sounds good, it looks great! You did a excellent job.

As for the Soulution electronics, we’ll see.

A used Naim Statement is on sale in Germany for about 130’000 euros. It crossed my mind once or twice. Considering we’re no longer in a rush for the house, it could have been an option. But the thing is really too big and heavy. And my best half doesn’t like the idea of buying second hand. So I forgot the idea.

Soulution’s electronics sound astonishingly well. They are particularly good at retrieving details and reproducing the space in which the pieces were recorded. In terms of airiness and separation, it is the best I’ve heard.

My impression when I first heard them is that they also provide something Naim offers: fullness. This was not the case with their previous amplifiers.

The new version of their top line 701 monoblocs and 711 stereo amps (701 and 711 are roughly the same) have some traits in common with the 500 series. The 760 DAC is… well, I believe it has very little competition.

In addition, Soulution is located in Switzerland, which is convenient for both the warranty period and later for a possible service.

But, at the same time, I also love my Naim 500DR system. I spent an hour this afternoon listening to the piano. While not being the best in terms of details retrieval or airiness, Naim electronics has this ability to grab your attention immediately and drowns you into emotion.

While I appreciate all those audiophile attributes, for me, music is about relaxing and emotion. So it’ll be hard to decide if I’ll keep the 500 DR system or not.

I’ll take my young daughter to Zürich. She’ll decide! :smiley:

4 Likes
1186

absolutely clear,
Without measuring space all things are not serious.
I had a problem of long resonance at 63.3 HZ and the 60HZ bass catcher, from PRIMA, solved the problem.
By the way, these two companies - ARTNOVION and PRIMA ACOUSTICS, are among the only brands in the market with measurement data and tests specific to each product.
I received the recommendation for PRIMA from someone who measured my space, who is one of the best recording technicians and an acoustics consultant in Israel.
And I usually do not argue with experts … :wink:

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1187

Hi Ditton, it would be great to see some pics of your treated room and system set up please? :+1:t3: ATB Peter

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1188

Thank you very much Thomas :+1:t3: As for bringing your daughter the perfect Beta tester, a very cunning plan… :smirk: Best Peter

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1189

A machiavellian plan my daughter and I skilfully conceived. She’s not an expensive accomplice. She only requests a pair of fancy hair clips :joy:

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1190

I drop my humble opinion without having read everything, but the topic is interesting, so.

Two points, apparently in conflict with one another: first, when I was a youngster and used to record a lot of songs with a band of friends, we had elementary equipment but the tendency we saw everywhere in studios was absorb, absorb, absorb. Now from videos, articles and pics of studios and auditoriums the trend seems to be diffract, diffract, diffract - which makes a lot of sense to me, since purely absorbing has an effects on high frequencies almost exclusively, while diffracting retains some liveliness but avoids dangerous parasite waves.
Second point, I happen to see some fiction on TV where music is replayed in a true living room and, with the obvious caveat of a TV audio, the sound of not too much treated rooms seems to give a lot of life to the music if the most obvious reverberations are controlled. That is to say that perhaps the older technique of absorbing panels everywhere was not so music-friendly after all… Learning to make the room sound along with the speakers is probably better than muting it as much as possible. And I believe that the lucky guys with large rooms are better off to begin with.
Cheers,
M

1191

Hi Max, maybe you could go back to the beginning and start from there :rofl: ATB Peter
PS. Diffraction is a somewhat different thing to diffusion also :face_with_head_bandage:

1192

Hi Peter,
Here we go-sorry for the great composition in photographs :blush:
Listening space in general view-

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A look from a listening point-
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Front left wall-
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Looking at the ceiling at the first reflection point-
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Looking at the left wall-
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Looking back from a listening point-
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The absorbers in the walls - Artnovion
Bass traps in the left front wall and in the left wall / “cloud” on the ceiling - Primacoustic
Dimensions of the space - height - 2.75 width - 4.3 length - 5.2 meters
Note-
Anyone who has not performed a listening space measurement in a professional manner, does not know what his system is capable of and sometimes it is a safe recipe against the “upgrade” disease …

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1193

Hi Ditton, all looking good. As for above in my case I would buy The Statement amps tomorrow if I could afford them :hugs: Enjoy your fine system and room Peter

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1194

Hi Peter,
what I meant (I started to care about room acoustics a long time ago, although I am no acoustic engineer of course) is that many used to - and possibly use to - have an idea of an acoustically treated space as of a giant headphone, with little or no reflections. I remember how recording studios looked a few decades ago. Now a good sounding space has controlled reflections but our homes often have too small spaces for audio reproduction compared to the amount of informations in a recording. When the habit came up to listen to BBC mini-monitors sitting one meter in front of them, the 3D mania was given birth. In real acoustic spaces no 3D effect is there, in spite of what some think; at least none that sounds like an aural version of a View-Master. But you are right, I skipped the main discussion.
Best,
M.

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1195

I understand now Max and you are right. A good example is to watch acousticinsider.com’s videos (Jesco) on the Tube. In his own mixing studio he is using a lot of combined absorption/diffusion panels and his videos are well worth watching with a good no-nonsense approach to more understanding of room acoustics. I think treating a room to get a good ‘live sound’ takes a long time to the point, where it becomes almost difficult to work out when to stop. It is as you indicate very easy to ‘overdo’ it. I also think I would have run of steam with the process had I not been retired and simply wanted my system to work to the best of its ability.
It was worth it though :partying_face: You keep well Peter