A bit confused

[solderdude]

Thats sounds like an excellent idea! Can I do this from a phone?
What do I need to get brand wise?

I have no idea, I do not use a phone as a source.
Most phone platforms have some players or apps that allow parametric EQ.

 

[djtetei]

What effect does moving them closer to the wall have?

Closer to the walls accentuate low frequencies, but not in a natural way. You want to minimize the room effect as much as possible.
Don't hesitate to bring your listening position closer to the speakers and toe them in more.

 

[Brian Beard]

I have no idea, I do not use a phone as a source.
Most phone platforms have some players or apps that allow parametric EQ.

I use streaming through the heos app and Im listening to Spotify.

 

[djtetei]

If you like to tailor the sound of your songs to your liking, you can use a 31 bands equaliser, to work on fundamentals.

 

[chips666]

Have a look at Erin's review...

 

[Brian Beard]

If you like to tailor the sound of your songs to your liking, you can use a 31 bands equaliser, to work on fundamentals.

Id like to have something like was mentioned earlier that limits the painful frequencies, boost my bass amd midrange. Once i have it set Ill likely not touch it much.
What I dont understand is how all this works with a receiver that has everything built in and using wi fi.

 

[Joe Smith]

Have you played with the selector knob on the back of the speakers? I see from photos there is a control there that allows one to adjust the mid-hi response curve?

Seeing what those cost per pair, and then the amp on top of that, kind of a bummer that you have the hearing issue and have to work to drop the treble...hope you can get to a good solution.

 

[Brian Beard]

Have you played with the selector knob on the back of the speakers? I see from photos there is a control there that allows one to adjust the mid-hi response curve?

Seeing what those cost per pair, and then the amp on top of that, kind of a bummer that you have the hearing issue and have to work to drop the treble...hope you can get to a good solution.

Yes I have. I felt like it inhibitited my ability to understand vocals in some music. After watching the very helpful video that @chips666 posted above it seems like that also effects midrange.
Im going to watch the video again, probably several times to make sure I understand everything. Id really like to make this combo work.

 

[jae]

Have you had your ears professionally assessed? If so post your audiogram/thresholds.

 

[Hipper]

I have some hearing loss too - I'm 69. I can't hear above 10kHz and I'm down in the 6-8kHz range, and one ear doesn't seem to hear 7kHz. I've no idea if this is typical. I read somewhere that in some cases this hearing damage can cause harshness in some frequencies (I don't know the source).

I've made a great deal of effort to set up my speakers and listening position in my dedicated room and used copious amounts of room treatment as well as EQ. During the process there were times when I couldn't hear certain percussion that I knew was there from headphone listening and also if I went closer to the speakers. Eventually I got it mostly right. I should add that recordings can be inconsistent too. I have to say though that I rarely hear really good percussion on the mostly studio recordings I listen to (of pop music, mostly country/folk type stuff with plenty of harmony singing). There are test recordings of percussion that do sound good so I put this down to the weakness of the whole reproduction system - recording to playback.

I appreciate that in your room you can't go the whole way as I have done but you can do some things. It depends how much effort you want to put in to this.

Nearly all listening rooms have major issues with bass. You may not have noticed this because of your high frequency issues. If you can do something to smooth the bass the rest of the frequencies, particularly the mids, become more audible, and that's where the main part of the music is.

If you just want to deal with the highs and mids, good positioning is important, and attention should be paid to reflections - off footstools, coffee tables, equipment on the front wall, perhaps the floor and ceiling and certainly the side walls. You could experiment using absorbent materials like a duvet to find out if any of these are issues. There are decorative panels of a size that can absorb mids and highs. Some can be made to your designs/photos etc..

I use pretty much 'The Thirds' positioning as described here:

http://www.barrydiamentaudio.com/monitoring.htm

As has been mentioned you could also use DSP or EQ but I've no idea how you could do that with your set up. I see the Marantz can use a Parametric EQ (PEQ) with Roon. I have a headphone set up with a computer as source and on that I can use JRiver as music management and it has a PEQ and Graphic EQ (GEQ). My speaker system uses CDs and the EQ is from a Behringer DEQ2496.

If you want to do things properly the first thing you need to do is measure what you hear at your listening position (LP). You can do this with test tones and your ears, or better an SPL meter. The most accurate way though is with a microphone and software (the free Room EQ Wizard - REW - is often suggested and that's what I use). Once you can do that (and it takes a bit of learning) you can make adjustments - moving speakers, LP - and measure again to compare. To control bass if you can't use bass traps, you could employ one or more subwoofers, or just DSP or EQ.

I bet you wish you hadn't asked!

 

[Brian Beard]

Have you had your ears professionally assessed? If so post your audiogram/thresholds.

I have but I dont have those results. It will take me about a week to get them.

 

[jae]

I have but I dont have those results. It will take me about a week to get them.

Since you did say you have a diagnosed loss, it is probably the first place you should start. Sometimes the sensation can be paradoxical with respect to the results, for example high distortion in areas of hearing loss can feel louder at certain SPL and give a sensation of hyperacusis. Test results could help determine what if anything could be fixed or EQ'd depending on your loss. Would also suggest a measurement mic/room correction so you can make sure your room isn't exacerbating things- when there's hearing loss in the equation having a flat-as-possible base is even more essential to make sure certain bands are reproduced accurately for maximum intelligibility. Do you recall what frequencies the loss was at (i.e. was it the typical HF roll off due to old age/noise exposure, or were there notches in other bands?). EQing for hearing loss is not necessarily simple, there are many biological mechanisms that cause hearing loss and some methods of EQ will work better than others depending on the nature. Some things may not be fixable at all. An audiogram will not show everything but it might give some clues in what approach to take.

Alternatively if you don't want to wait you can download https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ds/beta-test-earful-a-hearing-test-app.14863/ and try doing something like your own audiogram yourself. The SPL of the headphone is not as important so it doesn't need to be calibrated if you don't have the ability to do that, so it's still useful to compare the thresholds of your "normal" areas to your bad ones. I would suggest doing it with decent IEMs or earbuds that are EQ'd relatively neutral (harman/harman w/o bass shelf,- you can use AutoEQ for this). I usually use my Etymotic ER2SE because they have good noise isolation and a smooth response, but even apple earbuds can work fine if that's all you have. I use safety earmuffs over them if my room isn't quiet. I put my windows audio/interface output at maximum, remembering to turn off system sounds/quit all other apps so I don't get a nasty surprise. Make sure you're starting at -50 or -60 dB or something to that effect where the tones are not starting at an uncomfortably high level. I'd suggest trying 125-16khz (at least 125-8khz) for the bandwidth and picking a decent number of points, decreasing the value by 3 dB at a time until you can't hear the tone at all. Do the tones in random order if you can. After do you them all go back and then increase the level by 1 dB at a time for each until you can just barely hear it and save/share the result.

 

[LTig]

I was super careful setting it up. And the cables are color coded.

You could try to reverse the cables on one speaker and listen to the result, just to make sure. Costs just a few minutes of time (and switch off the amp while reversing).

 

[Brian Beard]

Have a look at Erin's review...

Watching this video made all the difference. Surprisingly the owners manual was not even opened.
Ive just rearanged the whole living room and repositioned the speakers according to the manual. I used two songs while trying the whole positioning thing and I just listened to them again. Night and day difference.
Im assuming at this point if the speakers are going to be further away than the recommended 8-10’ the angle of the stands will need to change. I havent tried that at the original listening distance but I probably will at some point.
Ill need a lot more listening to confirm its the same across all music and that will take a few or more days.
I think, tentatively we can mark this case closed.
Its funny I looked at several different forums and decided this was the one that could help me the most. Looks like that was a very accurate prediction.

 

[Brian Beard]

Since you did say you have a diagnosed loss, it is probably the first place you should start. Sometimes the sensation can be paradoxical with respect to the results, for example high distortion in areas of hearing loss can feel louder at certain SPL and give a sensation of hyperacusis. Test results could help determine what if anything could be fixed or EQ'd depending on your loss. Would also suggest a measurement mic/room correction so you can make sure your room isn't exacerbating things- when there's hearing loss in the equation having a flat-as-possible base is even more essential to make sure certain bands are reproduced accurately for maximum intelligibility. Do you recall what frequencies the loss was at (i.e. was it the typical HF roll off due to old age/noise exposure, or were there notches in other bands?). EQing for hearing loss is not necessarily simple, there are many biological mechanisms that cause hearing loss and some methods of EQ will work better than others depending on the nature. Some things may not be fixable at all. An audiogram will not show everything but it might give some clues in what approach to take.

Alternatively if you don't want to wait you can download https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ds/beta-test-earful-a-hearing-test-app.14863/ and try doing something like your own audiogram yourself. The SPL of the headphone is not as important so it doesn't need to be calibrated if you don't have the ability to do that, so it's still useful to compare the thresholds of your "normal" areas to your bad ones. I would suggest doing it with decent IEMs or earbuds that are EQ'd relatively neutral (harman/harman w/o bass shelf,- you can use AutoEQ for this). I usually use my Etymotic ER2SE because they have good noise isolation and a smooth response, but even apple earbuds can work fine if that's all you have. I use safety earmuffs over them if my room isn't quiet. I put my windows audio/interface output at maximum, remembering to turn off system sounds/quit all other apps so I don't get a nasty surprise. Make sure you're starting at -50 or -60 dB or something to that effect where the tones are not starting at an uncomfortably high level. I'd suggest trying 125-16khz (at least 125-8khz) for the bandwidth and picking a decent number of points, decreasing the value by 3 dB at a time until you can't hear the tone at all. Do the tones in random order if you can. After do you them all go back and then increase the level by 1 dB at a time for each until you can just barely hear it and save/share the result.

Ive already talked to the VA. Ive got to go there in person and request them Ill try to do that this week because you never know there may be other options that could improve my listening experience and Im all about that. Ill let you know via this thread in case there might be some info that could be helpful to someone else.

 

[Brian Beard]

While I have the experts attention let me ask one more question. How much difference is there between 24 and 32 bit dacs listening to lossless streaming music. How about a service like Spotify?

 

[Joe Smith]

I still use Spotify as my streamer, as my wife (who asks for very little, audio-wise and in other ways) likes it. I vary between using a Schiit Modi 3 dac (caps at 24 bit) and JDS Labs Atom+ (caps at 32 bit) and I hear no difference in my systems.

I did use 3-month trials of TIdal and Qobuz and felt like I could hear a slight improvement in their higher bitrate files compared to Spotify. But that was 100% subjective.

Glad the speaker placement is doing the trick for you!

 

[Brian Beard]

Thank you

 

[LTig]

While I have the experts attention let me ask one more question. How much difference is there between 24 and 32 bit dacs listening to lossless streaming music.

None. Even the best DACs offer at best around 22 bits of resolution since noise is too high (but utterly inaudible). So nothing to worry about.

 

[Brian Beard]

It was a combination of the tinnuitis and the KLH 5s. I returned the 5s and am auditioning the Monitor Audio Silver 300s. Wharfendale 4.4s inbound for auditioning also.
Any speaker suggestions in the 2-3k a pair welcome.