New Neumann MA 1 - Automatic Monitor Alignment

[hyperplanar]

MMM-measurements (average of (R+sub) + (L+sub)) with a individually calibrated UMIK-1 (calibrated by hifi-selbstbau.de) vs. MA 1 uncalibrated vs. MA 1 calibrated with the method described by @hyperplanar (pls do not overthink small differences between UMIK 1 and MA 1 because of the nature of MMM measurements). I don´t know which one is "correct", just wanted to show the difference the calibration makes:

View attachment 120359

Same, but zoomed in (20 dB scale), no smoothing, thinner traces:
View attachment 120361

PS: I aligned the traces manually for best looking fit.

Thanks for checking! The most noticeable difference for the purposes of calibration IMO is the region around 600-6000 Hz, looks about half a dB higher and closer to your calibrated UMIK. But overall the differences are quite negligible.

Would you mind sharing a graph of your final MA1 calibration curve? I'm curious to see how different it is from the golden mic curve alone.

 

[DJBonoBobo]

Sure, blue line is "my mic" calibration, red is "golden mic".

Scale is +/-5 db, so these are small deviations (+0,5db at 1k).

 

[Deleted member 12642]

I wonder if Neumann will ever release a free-to-use version of Neumann Control for Mac/Windows. It’s infuriating that I have to borrow an iPad in order to tweak my EQ.

Yeah it's really annoying, I've communicated with them back and forth about it. You can at least adjust the correction it generates manually, but only at the time of measuring. I get what they're going for, automatic but I feel that people who are going to actually buy this thing are going to be interested in digging deeper than what the software provides. I mean look at us.

If they’re not planning on doing so, I wonder how much work it’d take to reverse engineer the communication protocol from the software to the KH750 and reimplement it in order to be able to tweak the EQ from a computer for free. The MA1 app appears to be written in C# and ILSpy can cleanly decompile it... hmm... I’ll start taking a look this week if I have time. From a first glance looks like mDNS is involved for discovery and communications are AES encrypted but I found the key already.

There's a dude in this thread who wrote some basic way to communicate with the monitors. I told him I'd pay him to develop and app lol. That thread's about a fault in the auto stand by which I don't use and just leave mine on all the time.

https://www.soundonsound.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=73619&start=30

BTW I observed quite significantly different results depending on how the speakers and subwoofer were positioned. Perhaps the software manages differently depending on the situation.

I gotten pretty different results every time that I've done it, mostly in the low bass, sometimes it gives me flat response down to 60, sometimes it just rolls them off at like 100.

 

[hyperplanar]

There's a dude in this thread who wrote some basic way to communicate with the monitors. I told him I'd pay him to develop and app lol. That thread's about a fault in the auto stand by which I don't use and just leave mine on all the time.

https://www.soundonsound.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=73619&start=30

Thanks for the heads up on that. Would be really nice if he would share his results with the class but doesn't look like he replied after.

I should have a good amount of free time this week so I'll try to begin documenting the communication protocol... Then hopefully come up with a simple app that can tweak the parameters, and load/save presets from files. Need to build up a portfolio for CS anyways, I haven't been doing much on that front since I graduated LOL!

 

[DJBonoBobo]

However I'm not sure if mic calibration curves are presented in this format, or inverted/upside-down. Basically the final resulting curve from A*Bing the golden mic curve and the hex mic curve is what needs to A*Bed with any measurement in order to correct it - it is the inverse of the mic's frequency response. If a mic calibration file represents the frequency response of the mic, and not the inverse, then you'll need to invert it as well.

Just tried it with REW. You have to invert it (trace arithmetic -> A/1), then export to txt. Works great as a cal-file. Thanks again!

 

[hyperplanar]

Just tried it with REW. You have to invert it (trace arithmetic -> A/1), then export to txt. Works great as a cal-file. Thanks again!

Awesome! Glad to hear

 

[m_g_s_g]

I should have a good amount of free time this week so I'll try to begin documenting the communication protocol...

I took a look at that as well and was thinking about writing an app too (but no time next week for me ). It is a osc/json based protocol. The trick is that the speakers never ask for a DHCP address, they just use a ipv6 link-local address you have to find out with mDNS. The rest is not difficult (no encryption).

EDIT: I have a running proof of concept.

 

[m_g_s_g]

There seems to be a bug involving Android‘s capability to issue a specific query through mDNS DNS service discovery. Maybe this is what prevented them to launch an Android app?

 

[Deleted member 12642]

Godspeed to you folks, you'll be making a lot of users happy if you can come up with something.

 

[hyperplanar]

I took a look at that as well and was thinking about writing an app too (but no time next week for me ). It is a osc/json based protocol. The trick is that the speakers never ask for a DHCP address, they just use a ipv6 link-local address you have to find out with mDNS. The rest is not difficult (no encryption).

EDIT: I have a running proof of concept.

Ah yes, you're right. I see the relevant code in SscFramework now. I didn't look at what the encryption functions were used for at first, but I did today and found something interesting...

It looks like Neumann is planning on adding the ability to load/save configs at some point? But who knows when that will be...

There's a lot of code to sift through

 

[Deleted member 12642]

"In the coming months" - Neumann facebook page.

Is there any potential risk for Neumann to see that people are trying to reverse engineer the DSP suite, and them encrypting things?

 

[hyperplanar]

"In the coming months" - Neumann facebook page.

Is there any potential risk for Neumann to see that people are trying to reverse engineer the DSP suite, and them encrypting things?

Possibly, they want people to spend money on the MA-1 mic for sure. Not to mention the licensing costs with Fraunhofer. But I don't see the benefit in them encrypting/obscuring the communication protocol to the DSP monitors themselves, so should be able to make a much lighter weight version of the Neumann Control app for Mac/Windows, which is what I really want in the first place.

 

[Matias]

 

[Deleted member 12642]

How exciting

 

[Deleted member 12642]

Spent a lot of time the past week trying to get a good setting with ma-1, total pain in the ass and I'm not really happy with the results. My placement and room give me some build up in the mid bass region and ma-1 takes it out but it kind of just sucks the life out of the sound, results are always super bright. Also not really sure how I feel about the overall sound of the kh80, something about the mid bass from them is off and it's not the room, it's like they don't "breathe" or expand out in the stereo field like they should. Tried a few other speakers with larger woofers and worse tweeters and I preferred them all because I could judge the mid bass band a lot better, even the cheapo RCA's I have from 80's sounded better to me, so I've been looking at other options with bigger woofers.

Spent some time trying to dial out the in your face-ness of the speakers too and can't quite get it. They're about 3 feet away. I don't have anything on my ceiling, gonna go ahead and treat that and see if it makes me like the kh80 anymore. Idk if it will, I think I'm hearing the "small" sound of them that people have mentioned. Something about that in your face-ness of the speaker just kind of makes me not want to work on them or listen to music on them. One of the speakers I tried are a pair of behringer 2030a and I very much preferred them, at least with the sub on. You'd think they would be brighter speakers but they weren't even with my HF cuts on the KH80. The stereo image was also a lot better on the behringer, the KH80 are really sensitive to head movements and I kind of hate it. I like to be able to move and not hear any change.

Sell KH80 and buy something else? Or just be happy with the stuff that I think sounds better? I do mix professionally for a living out of my home and I want to have the best monitoring I can to give the best results to my clients, but maybe there's a lot more to preference than I thought. Haven't really had good mix translation on the KH80's since I got them, they make me mix the fun out of everything I feel. I've been doing this so long I can honestly mix pretty well on anything but to get that extra "something" I feel you need to have a sort of emotional connection with the sound of your speakers and I'm not sure I get that with the KH80.

 

[napilopez]

Spent a lot of time the past week trying to get a good setting with ma-1, total pain in the ass and I'm not really happy with the results. My placement and room give me some build up in the mid bass region and ma-1 takes it out but it kind of just sucks the life out of the sound, results are always super bright. Also not really sure how I feel about the overall sound of the kh80, something about the mid bass from them is off and it's not the room, it's like they don't "breathe" or expand out in the stereo field like they should. Tried a few other speakers with larger woofers and worse tweeters and I preferred them all because I could judge the mid bass band a lot better, even the cheapo RCA's I have from 80's sounded better to me, so I've been looking at other options with bigger woofers.

Spent some time trying to dial out the in your face-ness of the speakers too and can't quite get it. They're about 3 feet away. I don't have anything on my ceiling, gonna go ahead and treat that and see if it makes me like the kh80 anymore. Idk if it will, I think I'm hearing the "small" sound of them that people have mentioned. Something about that in your face-ness of the speaker just kind of makes me not want to work on them or listen to music on them. One of the speakers I tried are a pair of behringer 2030a and I very much preferred them, at least with the sub on. You'd think they would be brighter speakers but they weren't even with my HF cuts on the KH80. The stereo image was also a lot better on the behringer, the KH80 are really sensitive to head movements and I kind of hate it. I like to be able to move and not hear any change.

Sell KH80 and buy something else? Or just be happy with the stuff that I think sounds better? I do mix professionally for a living out of my home and I want to have the best monitoring I can to give the best results to my clients, but maybe there's a lot more to preference than I thought. Haven't really had good mix translation on the KH80's since I got them, they make me mix the fun out of everything I feel. I've been doing this so long I can honestly mix pretty well on anything but to get that extra "something" I feel you need to have a sort of emotional connection with the sound of your speakers and I'm not sure I get that with the KH80.

While those haven't been my experiences with the KH80, nor something I've heard many people say, the most likely explanation to me is that you would prefer something that controls directivity to a bit of a lower frequency, which a larger woofer/baffle will do.

My experience is that speakers that maintain more constant directivity behavior, as opposed to the sloping directivity of the KH80, can often sound larger. This can be achieved in one sense with a wider directivity design, but can also be achieved in a different way with speakers that have larger baffles or other forms of low frequency directivity control (like cardioid designs). To me that gives a 'bigness' to the sound that's a bit distinct from simply throwing things further left and right as a wide directivity speaker might do.

More specifically, Toole's book has this image for describing how different frequency ranges affect the perception of soundstage:

(Chapter 6.3)

It's the 'envelopment' region that I think might be what causes what you hear as smallness. Though I don't know how much of an impact it has from so close up, but it's the only thing that makes sense to me.

In any case, sometimes a technically good speaker just doesn't give with you, no shame in option for something else. Maybe go for something with a larger woofer for the dollar like the kali in-8 or JBL 308P?

 

[Deleted member 12642]

Might be onto something there, the KH80 don't "envelope" me in the music to build off that. They up and down well, side to side really well, but there's no front to back if that makes sense.

My listening distance is about 4ft, is that enough distance?

 

[hyperplanar]

Might be onto something there, the KH80 don't "envelope" me in the music to build off that. They up and down well, side to side really well, but there's no front to back if that makes sense.

My listening distance is about 4ft, is that enough distance?

Other than what napilopez said, maybe you’ve already tried this, but try toeing out the speakers in increments and see if the sound gets better to you? Or sit closer to them so that the left speaker points directly at your left ear and the right speaker points directly at your right ear. I find my KH120s to have a pretty narrow sweet spot and so the positioning was pretty crucial. At least for me, I found sitting a bit closer than an equilateral triangle and having my ears ever so slightly below the acoustic axis (which is the midpoint of the centers of the woofer and tweeter) made a big difference. Also try fiddling with the high shelf/parametric EQs in the MA 1 software so that the treble is left untouched. If you can address your desk reflection that might make the biggest difference—since the woofers and baffle are so small, they radiate omnidirectionally to a higher frequency than larger monitors and so the reflections are worse. This was unbearable for me with the KH120s and I ended up putting them right at the very front of my desk to avoid that reflection.

I agree with napilopez though, if it’s not working out for you then no sense to stick with these speakers. You could try Genelec’s modern stuff too.

 

[Deleted member 12642]

Other than what napilopez said, maybe you’ve already tried this, but try toeing out the speakers in increments and see if the sound gets better to you? Or sit closer to them so that the left speaker points directly at your left ear and the right speaker points directly at your right ear. I find my KH120s to have a pretty narrow sweet spot and so the positioning was pretty crucial. At least for me, I found sitting a bit closer than an equilateral triangle and having my ears ever so slightly below the acoustic axis (which is the midpoint of the centers of the woofer and tweeter) made a big difference. Also try fiddling with the high shelf/parametric EQs in the MA 1 software so that the treble is left untouched. If you can address your desk reflection that might make the biggest difference—since the woofers and baffle are so small, they radiate omnidirectionally to a higher frequency than larger monitors and so the reflections are worse. This was unbearable for me with the KH120s and I ended up putting them right at the very front of my desk to avoid that reflection.

I agree with napilopez though, if it’s not working out for you then no sense to stick with these speakers. You could try Genelec’s modern stuff too.

Toe in doesn't seem to alleviate any of my complaints, takes off the top end a bit but that's about it. Part of asscumed toe-ing out would maybe make the stereo image wider but that doesn't seem to be the case, feels like the stereo width with these just hits a wall and refuses to go any further. I think my desk is a really bad influence on what I'm hearing. I was fiddling with the simple built in EQ of foobar2000 and noticed that the center image would shift around from left to right when making cuts to the mid range. Also noticed that I was basically just adding back in what MA-1 had corrected.

I don't think I can deal with more sets of measurements just to get into the software to tweak some stuff. Hell for awhile I was just leaving the software open for days at a time just so I could go back and adjust things. The hell were you guys thinking Neumann. The more I use this package the more I hate it lol.

So I'm trying to wrap my head around directivity and how what you mentioned translates to what I hear. So if I'm reading Amir's measurements right, the KH80 start to be omnidirectional at ~300hz? While many larger woofer speakers can maintain the directivity at a lower frequency? I feel everything from the tweeter is great, but everything below 300hz is what I have a problem with. I had these guys setup in my living room for a bit, the tv stand has no desk to reflect off of and I felt they sounded the best in this setting, but still off.

Some Psychoacoustic whatevers - I think my desire to move to something else was really cemented last night. I had the KH80 on their stands, and some Behringer 2030a just sitting striaght on the desk, way off to the sides with little thought on their toe in, just some back ground music while I work on some soldering projects. I don't know what to say but the sound from this crappy setup was far more emotionally engaging than anything I've gotten out of the KH80. In that moment I sort of realized, I have never actually felt this way about music on the KH80. No idea what to look at next. 8030c look nice but are also a bit more in cost. Elac DBR62 look to have great low end and nice wide dispersion which I feel is kind of something I want. The fact that I can move pretty much anywhere in the room with the 2030a's and always get a great image is something I basically need.

 

[Deleted member 12642]

Has anyone had luck with factory resetting their KH80? Seems the process in the manual doesn't actually work at all.

Possibly making some headway here, moved the speakers to a pretty wide placement, seems to have made an improvement in the mid bass region, things are breathing more down there. I can also move my head and not hear much in the way of change. Seriously it was so bad before, you could move your head a single cm and hear major phasing issues, super distracting. Yeah this is much better, when the snares hit the body has room to exist. This is also with the DSP disabled, I'll have to measure again, but honestly I kinda prefer the raw sound of the speakers. They're left with a bit of boominess to the 100-200hz area but I actually like that, as I tend to mix that region too hot otherwise. I can just EQ down with the local controls, they work well here. The forward-ness appears to be alleviated as well, yeah it's gone (typing this as I listen). They are much easier to listen to now, very engaging. I'm definitely getting an emotional connection to the speakers now. Gotta stop typing and listen, damn this is nice.

Got chills on a few songs, so this is good. Also kind of sad on a few songs, there really is just a shocking amount of music that is mixed really poorly.

So with wider dispersion speakers, one could place them closer with little toe in and achieve good image? While the KH80 are more narrow, so wider placement with toe-in should achieve the same thing? Do I have that right?

Holy cow, just loaded up the usual NI felt piano to play with, it's a totally different instrument now and feels better to play. No bunching of the lower mids like before.