New setup from scratch - with DSP preferred

[mvnchies]

Okay, maybe one night was enough. I ordered everything now, and it should be here in 2-3 days. I'm very excited. Sorry for the spam, haha.

as thread starter, you have my full permission to spam this thread...

welcome to Team Genelec!

 

[lennyanders]

Okay,

so today everything arrived and, of course, I used the whole evening to set everything up, which I sadly didn't really achieve. It wasn't a good time, haha.

But most of my problems were due to my dumbness, not reading the manuals, so that's on me.

I simply began with placing the speakers and connecting most of the cables. I connected the Coaxial to XLR AES/EBU cable at first into my headphone amp (FiiO K3), so I could do the LINDY stuff later. Then I connected all the network cables with the SAM system and my windows' laptop. In the GLM software, I struggled a bit with setting up the speakers. I wondered why only one speaker was shown and didn't understand that I just had to drag that one to the right position and then the other one would appear.

So after that I wanted to immediately run the autoCal setup, but I got the following error (one of the few things I couldn't solve yet):

After plugging the GLM-Kit into a different USB-Port, I could start the autoCal calibration, but it couldn't finish because of some problems. I tried the same later on my Mac mini, but I got the same error on there, plugging into a different USB-Port didn't do anything on the Mac.

I thought I just do the autoCal later and try playing some music, but that didn't really work too. Not only that, but I tried the FiiO K3 coax out and the coax out from my CD-Player, but I couldn't get any music out of these speakers. That's the part where my dumbness was real big, because, of course, really early in the user manual is described how to get the digital input's of the speakers to work. It took me way longer when I like to admit having found out about that.

After I got it working on the FiiO K3, I of course thought it would immediately work on my CD-Player too, how foolish of me. Of course, my CD-Player has settings which I have long forgotten, and I needed to change multiple settings to get the digital outputs to work. I had some sort of "better audio quality" mode on, which turned the digital outputs off.

The TV was the easiest, I just put the Optical cable into the optical to coaxial converter and it just worked. The LINDY switch also worked immediately then, but with one small annoyance. When I did go CD-Player - coax optical converter - Genelec, the Genelec LEDs were green, like they should be, but going CD-Player - optical switch - coax optical converter, the Genelec's LEDs are blinking red/orange something which indicates that the signal isn't good or something, didn't read much into that yet. Sound cam through, so maybe I'll just live with that. I didn't have that problem with my TV, with that the LEDs were always green.

I also couldn't get the remote connected yet, but I guess that is because I didn't remove the red plastic thingy yet, and I only tried twice, so that shouldn't be a problem.

So yeah, that's my current state. The worst thing is of course that the mic doesn't seem to work properly. I definitely try some more tomorrow and maybe even listen to some actual amount of music (can you believe it). I only got to listen to half of Avaritia by Deadmau5 today, which was great, obviously.

I hope this post wasn't too much, but I guess it makes me feel a bit better, and I'm absolutely excited about what's to come.

If you have any tips for me, keep em coming.

 

[mvnchies]

Okay,

so today everything arrived and, of course, I used the whole evening to set everything up, which I sadly didn't really achieve. It wasn't a good time, haha.

But most of my problems were due to my dumbness, not reading the manuals, so that's on me.

I simply began with placing the speakers and connecting most of the cables. I connected the Coaxial to XLR AES/EBU cable at first into my headphone amp (FiiO K3), so I could do the LINDY stuff later. Then I connected all the network cables with the SAM system and my windows' laptop. In the GLM software, I struggled a bit with setting up the speakers. I wondered why only one speaker was shown and didn't understand that I just had to drag that one to the right position and then the other one would appear.

So after that I wanted to immediately run the autoCal setup, but I got the following error (one of the few things I couldn't solve yet):
View attachment 238374
After plugging the GLM-Kit into a different USB-Port, I could start the autoCal calibration, but it couldn't finish because of some problems. I tried the same later on my Mac mini, but I got the same error on there, plugging into a different USB-Port didn't do anything on the Mac.

I thought I just do the autoCal later and try playing some music, but that didn't really work too. Not only that, but I tried the FiiO K3 coax out and the coax out from my CD-Player, but I couldn't get any music out of these speakers. That's the part where my dumbness was real big, because, of course, really early in the user manual is described how to get the digital input's of the speakers to work. It took me way longer when I like to admit having found out about that.

After I got it working on the FiiO K3, I of course thought it would immediately work on my CD-Player too, how foolish of me. Of course, my CD-Player has settings which I have long forgotten, and I needed to change multiple settings to get the digital outputs to work. I had some sort of "better audio quality" mode on, which turned the digital outputs off.

The TV was the easiest, I just put the Optical cable into the optical to coaxial converter and it just worked. The LINDY switch also worked immediately then, but with one small annoyance. When I did go CD-Player - coax optical converter - Genelec, the Genelec LEDs were green, like they should be, but going CD-Player - optical switch - coax optical converter, the Genelec's LEDs are blinking red/orange something which indicates that the signal isn't good or something, didn't read much into that yet. Sound cam through, so maybe I'll just live with that. I didn't have that problem with my TV, with that the LEDs were always green.

I also couldn't get the remote connected yet, but I guess that is because I didn't remove the red plastic thingy yet, and I only tried twice, so that shouldn't be a problem.

So yeah, that's my current state. The worst thing is of course that the mic doesn't seem to work properly. I definitely try some more tomorrow and maybe even listen to some actual amount of music (can you believe it). I only got to listen to half of Avaritia by Deadmau5 today, which was great, obviously.

I hope this post wasn't too much, but I guess it makes me feel a bit better, and I'm absolutely excited about what's to come.

If you have any tips for me, keep em coming.

Just to double-check... the microphone is connected to the back of the GLM kit box into the "microphone" jack, not the volume controller jack? There are 2 there.

Glad you seem excited for it!!

BTW if anyone has time ... could someone please try to generate a GRADE report and tell me if it's on my end... I don't receive any GRADE reports today it seems. waited for over an hour and nothing arrives in my e-mail yet.

edit: seems to work after reconnecting all the cables. nevermind!

 

[lennyanders]

I checked the microphone again today, and double-checked that I use the correct input, and sadly it didn't work today either. I did also contact the Genelec support and, after one extra check, they told me that the microphone is likely defect. So autoCal has to wait a bit, if I'm lucky I can get a replacement microphone by tomorrow from the music store near me, but I don't want to be too hopeful yet.

I listened to a few hours of music today, though, and it was already great. I had a bit of fear that they can't do the low end my passive speakers can do, because the Genelec's are a bit lighter and smaller, but I think they definitely can. I have to do the Blade Runner 2049 check to test that for real. Apart from that I was surprised by the details, that gets close to what my headphones can do, maybe even the same level. So yeah, I already really like them, and now I'm only waiting to do the autoCal and to listen to everything I love and to watch everything I like with these.

 

[mvnchies]

I checked the microphone again today, and double-checked that I use the correct input, and sadly it didn't work today either. I did also contact the Genelec support and, after one extra check, they told me that the microphone is likely defect. So autoCal has to wait a bit, if I'm lucky I can get a replacement microphone by tomorrow from the music store near me, but I don't want to be too hopeful yet.

I listened to a few hours of music today, though, and it was already great. I had a bit of fear that they can't do the low end my passive speakers can do, because the Genelec's are a bit lighter and smaller, but I think they definitely can. I have to do the Blade Runner 2049 check to test that for real. Apart from that I was surprised by the details, that gets close to what my headphones can do, maybe even the same level. So yeah, I already really like them, and now I'm only waiting to do the autoCal and to listen to everything I love and to watch everything I like with these.

very nice! I am curious, which are your passive speakers?
GLM for me helps a lot with cleaning up bass, and I have the smaller 8330 speakers that go down to 37 Hz with a little bit of distance to the wall in my room (38m3? I think is what the calculator says).

 

[lennyanders]

very nice! I am curious, which are your passive speakers?
GLM for me helps a lot with cleaning up bass, and I have the smaller 8330 speakers that go down to 37 Hz with a little bit of distance to the wall in my room (38m3? I think is what the calculator says).

My passive speakers are the Dynavoice Definition DM-6, pretty good for the price I think, especially when I bought them, they got a bit more expensive lately, and the company got bought by another company I think. Since then, they got removed from a lot of small dealers around the world (or at least Europe), I think.

I also could get a replacement GLM-kit today and there the microphone works perfectly. The big thing it corrected was, of course, the bass. According to the measurement, I have a big room mode at 50 Hz, that's like +17 decibels. So yeah, I guess all that vibration in my room from my old passive speakers and the Genelec's before calibrated was just "wrong". It was a bit weird at first, but I think I sort of already hear the benefits of the autoCal. It's kinda like the speakers are much more like headphones, which I definitely appreciate. It removes the totally different sound (in the bass at least) between my headphones and my speakers.

The Genelec's go down to 35 Hz at 0 db in my approximately 27m3 room.

One weird thing I noticed was that I could hear a slight hiss from the speakers, even at my listening position around 1.5 - 2 meters away, when watching YouTube videos without any background music, or when nothing is playing. I didn't notice that the last days, when only playing music, but I guess it was there. I don't think it's a big Issue and that I can get used to it.

 

[mvnchies]

My passive speakers are the Dynavoice Definition DM-6, pretty good for the price I think, especially when I bought them, they got a bit more expensive lately, and the company got bought by another company I think. Since then, they got removed from a lot of small dealers around the world (or at least Europe), I think.

I also could get a replacement GLM-kit today and there the microphone works perfectly. The big thing it corrected was, of course, the bass. According to the measurement, I have a big room mode at 50 Hz, that's like +17 decibels. So yeah, I guess all that vibration in my room from my old passive speakers and the Genelec's before calibrated was just "wrong". It was a bit weird at first, but I think I sort of already hear the benefits of the autoCal. It's kinda like the speakers are much more like headphones, which I definitely appreciate. It removes the totally different sound (in the bass at least) between my headphones and my speakers.

The Genelec's go down to 35 Hz at 0 db in my approximately 27m3 room.

One weird thing I noticed was that I could hear a slight hiss from the speakers, even at my listening position around 1.5 - 2 meters away, when watching YouTube videos without any background music, or when nothing is playing. I didn't notice that the last days, when only playing music, but I guess it was there. I don't think it's a big Issue and that I can get used to it.

I get a tiny bit of hiss too, but it's inaudible at 2m distance for me. I use the analogue XLR because I already had a DAC though - which feels like it should be more noisy? I don't really have any way to connect my TV to the digital and get volume control without having the GLM kit connected at all time.

the bass thing is interesting - I actually added +2db at 40Hz to get a little more "warmth" to the speakers. I get a natural slope down from 10kHz, so that "harman" target sound seems like it just happens on my setup. 35Hz at 0db is dang good - mine are only 37Hz at -6db. around 41Hz 0db point? I think. haven't checked GLM in a while now.

definitely experiment with the sound character profiler if you find them sounding a bit thin - it helped a bit in my case!

the Dynavoice look interesting. 35Hz at -6db seems to be their specification... maybe they do go quite low as well then.

I hope you find it fun to play with GLM and whatnot too! feel free to share your findings in here, it's fun reading about it.

 

[lennyanders]

Okay,

so I didn't write for a while because I had another issue that frustrated me quite a bit. I had it since the beginning, but I guess I firstly ignored it for a bit because of my rose-colored glasses (I hope this is a common phrase in English, haha).

So the problem was that my audio levels constantly lowered for a second or something, every minute or so when connected to my TV. Apparently the optical output of my TV isn't great. Many people are hating on it in the AV-Forums: https://www.avforums.com/threads/lg-tvs-optical-audio-output-issue-poll.2368353/.

I contacted the LG and the Genelec support regarding this. The LG support of course told me that the optical out is totally fine and that it has to have to do with my speakers. Genelec is still looking into it. I wanted to have it fixed, for me, this week, and so I did the only reasonable thing and bought a Bluesound Node. Gladly, it fixed that problem and now, my setup is pretty much perfect.

Because of that problem, I listened to a CD every day the last week, and it was great. There are so many details I never heard (that clearly) before, and DSP does so much in the low and, which I appreciate, now even more than in the beginning.

I might play a bit more with GLM the next days (I don't have to work Monday and Tuesday).

 

[lennyanders]

Hey Lenny, I have been eyeing the Lindy auto switch for a while (btw, cheaper in amazon.de, link below) but I don't have use for it at the time so didn't buy it. I would appreciate if you report back your experience with it. Thanks!
LINDY 70437 Automatic Optical 4 Port Audio Switch https://amzn.eu/d/gRZ9ZsS

The short while that I used this device, it worked pretty much okay, but I wasn't particularly happy with it. The auto switching takes some time (around 3 seconds) and it always starts searching for other inputs when pausing things on the current. So I stopped using the auto option and always selected the wanted input by hand. Sadly, every time when turning it on it was using the auto option again, so I had to select it every time.

If I didn't have had the other problem with my TV, I think I would have kept using it, but it wasn't super great. I guess it does what it says it does, just not as well as I had hoped.

 

[mvnchies]

Okay,

so I didn't write for a while because I had another issue that frustrated me quite a bit. I had it since the beginning, but I guess I firstly ignored it for a bit because of my rose-colored glasses (I hope this is a common phrase in English, haha).

So the problem was that my audio levels constantly lowered for a second or something, every minute or so when connected to my TV. Apparently the optical output of my TV isn't great. Many people are hating on it in the AV-Forums: https://www.avforums.com/threads/lg-tvs-optical-audio-output-issue-poll.2368353/.

I contacted the LG and the Genelec support regarding this. The LG support of course told me that the optical out is totally fine and that it has to have to do with my speakers. Genelec is still looking into it. I wanted to have it fixed, for me, this week, and so I did the only reasonable thing and bought a Bluesound Node. Gladly, it fixed that problem and now, my setup is pretty much perfect.

Because of that problem, I listened to a CD every day the last week, and it was great. There are so many details I never heard (that clearly) before, and DSP does so much in the low and, which I appreciate, now even more than in the beginning.

I might play a bit more with GLM the next days (I don't have to work Monday and Tuesday).

ahh drats, that sounds super annoying - LG OLED TV are so nice too. have you found a workaround for this or how are you choosing to tackle this?
curious to hear how you feel now about a week or so in

 

[lennyanders]

I wrote already that I got me a Bluesound Node, and that, that device fixed that problem for me. I guess that got somewhat lost in my text.

OLED TVs are the best. I can never go back, even with that issue. And yeah, to have both, my high quality TV and my high quality speakers, that device is absolutely worth it for me.

I'm absolutely loving my setup right now. I played a bit more with the DSP too. I set +3 DB at 50 Hz and -3 DB at 6000 Hz and that improved the sound even further, for my taste. I think I will be happy with these speakers for a long time, and then my next upgrade has to be even more expensive Genelec speakers, I guess.

 

[mvnchies]

I wrote already that I got me a Bluesound Node, and that, that device fixed that problem for me. I guess that got somewhat lost in my text.

OLED TVs are the best. I can never go back, even with that issue. And yeah, to have both, my high quality TV and my high quality speakers, that device is absolutely worth it for me.

I'm absolutely loving my setup right now. I played a bit more with the DSP too. I set +3 DB at 50 Hz and -3 DB at 6000 Hz and that improved the sound even further, for my taste. I think I will be happy with these speakers for a long time, and then my next upgrade has to be even more expensive Genelec speakers, I guess.

oh sorry I read that in a bit of a hurry! very nice. I have also been considering the Node.

that last line definitely sums it up nicely. my next upgrade would be "The Ones" speakers

 

[lennyanders]

Hey, I'm currently planning on getting the K&M 26785 stands for my speakers.

If I want to put all my cables inside the stand, I need at lease one longer cable from my BlueSound Node to the Genelecs. I'm currently using a simple coaxial to XLR AES/EBU cable, but I thought If I already need to switch that out, that I could put an impedance converter in between there. @DigiPete you recommended the Neutrik NADIT BNC-M together with a short coaxial to BNC cable and a longer XLR cable to the speaker. I guess that is the safest way to avoid ground loop issues. I also found the Neutrik NADIT BNC-MX, that could probably go directly into the speaker, and then I could use a longer coaxial to BNC cable. The potential for ground loop issues is probably greater there, but I like that I would have a cable less. I don't know, maybe I don't like to plug so many things into each other.

 

[DigiPete]

Hey, I'm currently planning on getting the K&M 26785 stands for my speakers.

If I want to put all my cables inside the stand, I need at lease one longer cable from my BlueSound Node to the Genelecs. I'm currently using a simple coaxial to XLR AES/EBU cable, but I thought If I already need to switch that out, that I could put an impedance converter in between there. @DigiPete you recommended the Neutrik NADIT BNC-M together with a short coaxial to BNC cable and a longer XLR cable to the speaker. I guess that is the safest way to avoid ground loop issues. I also found the Neutrik NADIT BNC-MX, that could probably go directly into the speaker, and then I could use a longer coaxial to BNC cable. The potential for ground loop issues is probably greater there, but I like that I would have a cable less. I don't know, maybe I don't like to plug so many things into each other.

The AES is both balanced and higher voltage, thus a much more robust signal for longer cables, and that is why you'd want the transformer close to your source.

Recommended max lengths says it all:
S/PDIF: 2m
AES/EBU: 100m

Longer S/PDIF cable lengths may work for you, or work most of the time - depending on EMI levels (Electromagnetic interference).