End Game Speakers - The Quest Continues

[MKR]

The problem is no one knows when's the new D&D is coming
Could take years

Some people know, and it won’t be years

 

[MKR]

I think he got annoyed only once when I mentioned Genelec twice , but that happened just because I'm senile and don't remember what I comment lol
But yeah I agree with your comment

Never annoyed with you PJ, I enjoy your contributions to ASR immensely, including your undying loyalty and fervor to a specific brand. You know what you like/want, nothing wrong with that. Now if you felt the same way about Wilson, B&W, etc then we may have to have a more unpleasant discussion

 

[MKR]

MKR I have to commend you on your politeness and willingness to respond to every poster in this thread (which I assume you also will do the courtesy to me) with such grace and aplomb. I never have seen you be aggressive or nasty to any person in this forum, which by all accounts is nothing short of a miracle, even more so in here, where things escalate very quickly in my view.

That's it, nothing related to audio at all, I follow this thread just to learn from you on how to deal with people and be a good online person really.

Thank you sir, I really appreciate that. Life is too short to get all worked up over some silly forum posts. But I am human and I can assure you I definitely have to bite my tongue sometimes

 

[MKR]

Interesting quest, don't we all desire to do this? Didn't read your previous thread fully, but my fantasy has already been suggested, 1238a+7380 sub. Don't know if you've heard them? I haven't - I'll never have the cash, and I am already very happy with what I've got, thankfully.

Just remember to make your room nice, I love the silence of mine when music is not playing. I don't like to hear dishwashers or the echoes of my own presence in the room. I like to emulate a studio room for "in room" monitoring. Not dead, but controlled both modes and reflections. In stead of treatment products, I resurfaced/rebuilt some walls, have thick carpet and huge futon sofa in the room.

Here's my fantasy . Nice playlist, btw - lots of deep bass, smooth productions and comfy sound . You really need something big .
View attachment 354747
Sorry for the bad Photoshop, but Genelec should consider some veneer for these...

Dagfinn

Thank you for your thoughts and recommendation. Excellent speaker no doubt (as with all Genelecs), and one I had considered (though not heard sadly), but in the end does not fully meet all of my criteria. I do hope you are able to find a way some day to acquire your end game speaker!

As to the room, fully agree on making sure noise level is very low. Actually going through the listening room design process now and this is a primary criteria. There are a few main things you need to do to ensure this … concrete slab for the floor (not wood plank floating on wood supports as is common in US!), minimize the acoustic excitation of walls/ceiling, and last, a quiet HVAC system. Working through all of these items in coming weeks.

And yup, go big or go home

 

[srrxr71]

Thank you for your thoughts and recommendation. Excellent speaker no doubt (as with all Genelecs), and one I had considered (though not heard sadly), but in the end does not fully meet all of my criteria. I do hope you are able to find a way some day to acquire your end game speaker!

As to the room, fully agree on making sure noise level is very low. Actually going through the listening room design process now and this is a primary criteria. There are a few main things you need to do to ensure this … concrete slab for the floor (not wood plank floating on wood supports as is common in US!), minimize the acoustic excitation of walls/ceiling, and last, a quiet HVAC system. Working through all of these items in coming weeks.

And yup, go big or go home

Seriously this wood plank flooring is not good. It depends though. It does shake a little and makes the bass feel stronger.

I’m not sure it’s adding anything audible to my signal.

But those walls though. I can hear it go on some songs.

I don’t know if the ground floor is actually laid on ground. Depends on the construction I guess.

 

[srrxr71]

Interesting quest, don't we all desire to do this? Didn't read your previous thread fully, but my fantasy has already been suggested, 1238a+7380 sub. Don't know if you've heard them? I haven't - I'll never have the cash, and I am already very happy with what I've got, thankfully.

Just remember to make your room nice, I love the silence of mine when music is not playing. I don't like to hear dishwashers or the echoes of my own presence in the room. I like to emulate a studio room for "in room" monitoring. Not dead, but controlled both modes and reflections. In stead of treatment products, I resurfaced/rebuilt some walls, have thick carpet and huge futon sofa in the room.

Here's my fantasy . Nice playlist, btw - lots of deep bass, smooth productions and comfy sound . You really need something big .
View attachment 354747
Sorry for the bad Photoshop, but Genelec should consider some veneer for these...

Dagfinn

This breaks the budget even before the sub.

Edit: The $17k price is for a pair. That’s not bad at all.

 

[EdW]

Thank you for your thoughts and recommendation. Excellent speaker no doubt (as with all Genelecs), and one I had considered (though not heard sadly), but in the end does not fully meet all of my criteria. I do hope you are able to find a way some day to acquire your end game speaker!

As to the room, fully agree on making sure noise level is very low. Actually going through the listening room design process now and this is a primary criteria. There are a few main things you need to do to ensure this … concrete slab for the floor (not wood plank floating on wood supports as is common in US!), minimize the acoustic excitation of walls/ceiling, and last, a quiet HVAC system. Working through all of these items in coming weeks.

And yup, go big or go home

Concrete flooring definitely gets my vote. I moved into a new house some 5 years ago and my listening room is not at ground floor level but the underfloor heating has meant that the floor is some 14 inches thick - close packed steel reinforced concrete beams with screed for the pipe work on top. A few large Oriental carpets and heavy floor to ceiling curtains damp the reflections. Sadly the main area at 25’’ by 15’ is not on the same scale as your room if I recall correctly from your earlier thread. In this space I get good sound from KEF Blade 2 meta loudspeakers - you’d need Blade 1 metas to do your room justice . . . and of course you would need to like KEF speakers. But there are worse!

 

[srrxr71]

Concrete flooring definitely gets my vote. I moved into a new house some 5 years ago and my listening room is not at ground floor level but the underfloor heating has meant that the floor is some 14 inches thick - close packed steel reinforced concrete beams with screed for the pipe work on top. A few large Oriental carpets and heavy floor to ceiling curtains damp the reflections. Sadly the main area at 25’’ by 15’ is not on the same scale as your room if I recall correctly from your earlier thread. In this space I get good sound from KEF Blade 2 meta loudspeakers - you’d need Blade 1 metas to do your room justice . . . and of course you would need to like KEF speakers. But there are worse!

Yes my room is 35x18x10. I like KEF a lot but I like Genelec better.

I also have floor to ceiling curtains and some GIK absorptive diffusive panels covering almost everything. Corner bass traps etc. However the corner bass traps have limitations. They would have to stick out a couple of feet into the room to really control low frequencies.

 

[MKR]

Concrete flooring definitely gets my vote. I moved into a new house some 5 years ago and my listening room is not at ground floor level but the underfloor heating has meant that the floor is some 14 inches thick - close packed steel reinforced concrete beams with screed for the pipe work on top. A few large Oriental carpets and heavy floor to ceiling curtains damp the reflections. Sadly the main area at 25’’ by 15’ is not on the same scale as your room if I recall correctly from your earlier thread. In this space I get good sound from KEF Blade 2 meta loudspeakers - you’d need Blade 1 metas to do your room justice . . . and of course you would need to like KEF speakers. But there are worse!

KEF is excellent, well engineered, they know what they are doing, but again not meeting all of my criteria. In all fairness though, I never was able to hear the blades, but did hear several other KEF models. As they have similar design across the models, especially the coax, I can confidently say the Blade would not work for me. But again, very good speakers!

 

[MKR]

Yes my room is 35x18x10. I like KEF a lot but I like Genelec better.

I also have floor to ceiling curtains and some GIK absorptive diffusive panels covering almost everything. Corner bass traps etc. However the corner bass traps have limitations. They would have to stick out a couple of feet into the room to really control low frequencies.

Big room! Very nice. Are you running the W371s with the Ones?

 

[MattHooper]

@MKR

You may have given this info before but...

Aside from the fact you have narrowed down what you will actually buy and live with as a speaker, what is your experience with or taste concerning...

Electrostatic speakers - Quads etc - or Ribbon/Maggies? Did they ever hold allure?

Ever hear Audio Physic speakers?

What about the British school of speakers - Spendor, Harbeth?

Ever hear some horn speakers you liked? Avante Guard or any others?

Did you ever go the tube amp route in your audiphile life? Or is that just too goofy?

 

[srrxr71]

Big room! Very nice. Are you running the W371s with the Ones?

Indeed.

 

[Anton D]

Which are the final two now?

 

[kma100]

Yes my room is 35x18x10. I like KEF a lot but I like Genelec better.

I also have floor to ceiling curtains and some GIK absorptive diffusive panels covering almost everything. Corner bass traps etc. However the corner bass traps have limitations. They would have to stick out a couple of feet into the room to really control low frequencies.

Do you need all this room treatment? I thought perhaps with the W371 in cardioid mode a lot of that would be unnecessary?

 

[srrxr71]

Do you need all this room treatment? I thought perhaps with the W371 in cardioid mode a lot of that would be unnecessary?

Hard to say honestly. I haven’t tried the system without it all. But I do know that my rt60 stays under 200ms for the entire range.

Maybe if I sat a lot closer it wouldn’t be. Also I don’t use them in cardoid mode. I use them in complementary mode.

I can say that my left monitor still has a dip around 55Hz. It’s unavoidable. (Unless I try moving it) The 2 woofers work down to 60Hz so all the cancellation and optimization tricks work down to there. Under that nothing really can help it beyond adding more subs in other locations to try to mitigate that dip.

The amount of room treatment it would take to correct at 55Hz would be insane. I would have to try 1.55m thickness of absorption in the left 2 corners. Or I could try tuned bass traps at 55Hz which would only be useful for this exact positioning and be useless if I move things around.

Alternatively maybe PSI AVAA.

So to mitigate that I did pick up some rhythmik subs and a Trinnov Nova to integrate it all.

I’m not using those subs because I haven’t really been bothered to integrate them and also the overall amount of bass being pumped through the system is too much in this urban environment. There are other houses about 20-25 feet away. It’s just too much.

Being on the second floor and the garage being under me it seems the garage really amplifies the bass from above. So I would have to treat the garage and the garage door. It’s all getting past the point where it will increase my satisfaction with the system.

The Trinnov just using the Genelec woofers really “focuses” the bass for lack of a better term. Overall it’s more than enough for me and fixing that 55Hz dip probably isn’t going to change my enjoyment.

Post Trinnov there is still a -3.5 dB dip in the left monitor at 54.5Hz. I’m past caring about it.

I can move things around and try to fix it. I started experimenting with moving the monitors further apart and the subjective increase in soundstage width by far beats trying to fix that dip. I am still experimenting but really slowly. I just like getting home on Friday and playing music.

One of these days I’ll play with the locations and try to tune it. Really since I got these I’ve had that philosophy of slowly tweaking things but mostly just enjoying it.

 

[kma100]

Got it thank you. You might give @MKR nightmares with all the room treatment

 

[srrxr71]

Got it thank you. You might give @MKR nightmares with all the room treatment

This isn’t an easy game. Acoustics is a difficult science. Computational tech gets you mostly there but there is a reason why anechoic chambers cost $millions. If you need that level of perfection.

My grade report shows I have enough to cut records on. It’s enough for me. Maybe if I move out into the country then I can use the subs to “fix” things.

Ideally I would be the ground floor on solid ground with neighbors 100+ ft away.

 

[srrxr71]

One other thing. Since I enjoy a nice boost below 140Hz of about 5dB (yeah crazy but sounds great). I really don’t have a “dip” there.

Also how you define a dip depends on how you smooth the data. The gets into a realm i’m not really qualified to speak about.

I have Trinnov working at 1/6 octave resolution. Copied from Lars Fox settings on Gearspace.

The Trinnov filter in the frequency domain mostly corrects a dip I have 1300Hz to 2600Hz. It adds a couple of dB and solves that perceptual issue.

Mostly it’s not doing much in the frequency domain.

But whatever it is doing in the phase domain I don’t understand but it sounds incredible. Makes the soundstage so real it’s unbelievable.

Basically the Genelec system does most of the heavy lifting and probably the room treatment too. The Trinnov adds the icing on the cake but what’s the point of cake without icing?

Edit: so I just checked I’ve been using some absurd target curves which I would call “experimental”. I adjusted it back to about 3dB below 125Hz and -2dB above 2000Hz.

Seems it’s good to adjust them after a recalibration.

 

[AudioJester]

One of the few speakers that sounded bigger/better than the D&D 8c to me was from a boutique Aussie brank Kyron Audio. @MKR Probably difficult to audition and in a higher cost bracket but lots of things you look for. In Aus they have had speakers out since early 2000s. All active with Deqx and class D, wide dispersion and phase acvourate. Not cardiod, but they dont use a box - think lots of large bass drivers. When I have seen them at shows the build quality / craftmenship is equisite. They are always rated among best in show. Some people wont like the looks, and although they show measurements at shows I cant see any on their website. If I was willing to spend that much the Kronos would suit me fine!

 

[Karu]

Hard to say honestly. I haven’t tried the system without it all. But I do know that my rt60 stays under 200ms for the entire range.

Maybe if I sat a lot closer it wouldn’t be. Also I don’t use them in cardoid mode. I use them in complementary mode.

I can say that my left monitor still has a dip around 55Hz. It’s unavoidable. (Unless I try moving it) The 2 woofers work down to 60Hz so all the cancellation and optimization tricks work down to there. Under that nothing really can help it beyond adding more subs in other locations to try to mitigate that dip.

The amount of room treatment it would take to correct at 55Hz would be insane. I would have to try 1.55m thickness of absorption in the left 2 corners. Or I could try tuned bass traps at 55Hz which would only be useful for this exact positioning and be useless if I move things around.

Alternatively maybe PSI AVAA.

So to mitigate that I did pick up some rhythmik subs and a Trinnov Nova to integrate it all.

I’m not using those subs because I haven’t really been bothered to integrate them and also the overall amount of bass being pumped through the system is too much in this urban environment. There are other houses about 20-25 feet away. It’s just too much.

Being on the second floor and the garage being under me it seems the garage really amplifies the bass from above. So I would have to treat the garage and the garage door. It’s all getting past the point where it will increase my satisfaction with the system.

The Trinnov just using the Genelec woofers really “focuses” the bass for lack of a better term. Overall it’s more than enough for me and fixing that 55Hz dip probably isn’t going to change my enjoyment.

Post Trinnov there is still a -3.5 dB dip in the left monitor at 54.5Hz. I’m past caring about it.

I can move things around and try to fix it. I started experimenting with moving the monitors further apart and the subjective increase in soundstage width by far beats trying to fix that dip. I am still experimenting but really slowly. I just like getting home on Friday and playing music.

One of these days I’ll play with the locations and try to tune it. Really since I got these I’ve had that philosophy of slowly tweaking things but mostly just enjoying it.

Interesting. Why did you choose say Trinnov vs. Dirac. If you take the sub integration out, and stay with the 2 channels, do you see Trinnov as much better icing than Dirac could provide? Why, how, etc.?