Help with my room and ringing (is this ringing????)

[Holmz]

I wonder if you could open the windows in the room, or drag a speaker outside, then it might help to understand if it is room resonance or a cabinet resonance?

You’re totally rocking it with the first video… by the way.

... I have to wait until my wife is out of the house. She works from home these days. You guys should see how fast I bust out my mic and laptop and HDMI cable when she runs to the grocery store, hahaha!!!!

We seem to have similar approaches.

 

[Nwickliff]

Adding my 2 cents: I was in your shoes for 3 years or so, trying to EQ bass manually with mixed success but then I gave up, even sold my Chord Qutest stand-alone DAC not to be tempted to experiment manually ever again, let my Denon 6500 set up the curve etc automatically with its measurement mic, and was happy ever since. Now everything (movies, Amazon music etc) is hassle-free and I’m super happy. I was wondering whether adding a good external amp would make sound better, purchased NAD m28 but nope, almost same excellent sound quality.

p.s. don’t know anything about external crossovers, but your Denon has a perfect built in crossover, set it up for 80 Hz for your speakers, let Denon figure out the rest.

I'm drooling over here. What a gorgeous set of speakers and separates, my friend. Unfortunately, my Denon completely screws up my setup and timing with my subs and dodesn't do a great job with the frequency response either. So I just opt to do it manually.

 

[ernestcarl]

These are all time-domain issues (I think) as I've eq'd a decent frequency response.

Wavelet spect:

Applied a 100Hz HPF to get rid of the sub low frequencies (no problem down there):

It would appear the biggest problem range is between 200-300Hz.

 

[Nwickliff]

Wavelet spect:
View attachment 160402


Applied a 100Hz HPF to get rid of the sub low frequencies (no problem down there):

View attachment 160403

It would appear the biggest problem range is between 200-300Hz.

View attachment 160404

So your recommendation is to use a steeper hpf and maybe pull downs the 200-300hz frequency?

Sorry I’m not sure what you’re advocating but I’m all ears good sir.

 

[ernestcarl]

So your recommendation is to use a steeper hpf and maybe pull downs the 200-300hz frequency?

I only applied it to get a clearer view within REW's spectrogram graphical view window.

The sub low frequencies are not relevant so got rid of it.

Sorry I’m not sure what you’re advocating but I’m all ears good sir.

Adjustments in your placement to get a better response there -- if at all possible. But, ultimately, some acoustic room treatment is going to be neccessary.

 

[ernestcarl]

There are some things that even MMM and simple FR graphs are not capable of showing... which is, as you mentioned, "time domain issues".

Just a little comparison between my right+sub measurement taken at the MLP of my couch and yours overlayed:

Looks very similar.


There's big dip around ~130Hz:

However, the peak energy delay in the low mid and upper bass is relatively quite even and does not extend high up to 50ms like in yours.

You could try bringing your speakers outside or into a different room with possibly better acoustics and listen to hear if the same "bloom" in male vocals is present.

As a quick experiment, you could reduce the gain in that general area with EQ to mitigate the issue somewhat perceptually, but it won't really fix the underlying room acoustics issue.

 

[Holmz]

I think that you would need to unplug, or unpowered the sub.
The 100 Hz XO is only the corner freq, so other notes sneak in at a lower leve…. (Unless you have a brick wall filter.)

 

[Nwickliff]

There are some things that even MMM and simple FR graphs are not capable of showing... which is, as you mentioned, "time domain issues".

Just a little comparison between my right+sub measurement taken at the MLP of my couch and yours overlayed:

View attachment 160405

Looks very similar.


There's big dip around ~130Hz:

View attachment 160406

However, the peak energy delay in the low mid and upper bass is relatively quite even and does not extend high up to 50ms like in yours.

You could try bringing your speakers outside or into a different room with possibly better acoustics and listen to hear if the same "bloom" in male vocals is present.

As a quick experiment, you could reduce the gain in that general area with EQ to mitigate the issue somewhat perceptually, but it won't really fix the underlying room acoustics issue.

I took the frequency down at around 300hz about 5db and that helped but felt a little thin. I think it was a little too high (should be closer to 200hz and perhaps not as aggressive. It did seem to help with intelligibility. Like you said, not getting rid of the underlying problem but a bandaid for now. Thanks for your time!

 

[Nwickliff]

I think that you would need to unplug, or unpowered the sub.
The 100 Hz XO is only the corner freq, so other notes sneak in at a lower leve…. (Unless you have a brick wall filter.)

The issue was there with or without the sub so it isn't the subs but the mains. Mini DSP capable of 48db/octave slopes which is far steeper than my AVR. I think the issue is more 150hz-300hz though.

 

[Bliman]

What you can also try is to take one speaker set it up in the middle of the room and try to shield it from its surroundings as best as possible. By shielding it with for example blankets on either side and above it so the measurement isn't hindered by the surroundings. And then take a measurement from that single speaker from close by inside like around 1 m from the speaker and see how the results are.
Also maybe a crazy experiment is to take the cushions from your seats (where you sit on not the loose cushions) and put them in front of the windows to block them with those rectangle cushions (that is if you can take them out, so again not those cushions that lie loosely but those that are a part of the seat). And then measure again to see if you see any difference. Just to try to find the source of the problem.

 

[Nwickliff]

What you can also try is to take one speaker set it up in the middle of the room and try to shield it from its surroundings as best as possible. By shielding it with for example blankets on either side and above it so the measurement isn't hindered by the surroundings. And then take a measurement from that single speaker from close by inside like around 1 m from the speaker and see how the results are.
Also maybe a crazy experiment is to take the cushions from your seats (where you sit on not the loose cushions) and put them in front of the windows to block them with those rectangle cushions (that is if you can take them out, so again not those cushions that lie loosely but those that are a part of the seat). And then measure again to see if you see any difference. Just to try to find the source of the problem.

I wonder if you could open the windows in the room, or drag a speaker outside, then it might help to understand if it is room resonance or a cabinet resonance?

You’re totally rocking it with the first video… by the way.



We seem to have similar approaches.

Ok, so I went outside and measured.

Here's the outdoor setup.
I'll post the results from that measurement in a second.

 

[Nwickliff]

Here's the link to the REW file

RP600m-Outdoor-Plus-INdoor-Comparison.mdat

Shared with Dropbox

www.dropbox.com

Here's me pretending I know what I'm looking at

 

[ernestcarl]

Here's the link to the REW file

RP600m-Outdoor-Plus-INdoor-Comparison.mdat

Shared with Dropbox

www.dropbox.com

Here's me pretending I know what I'm looking at

Have you seen JA's measurements of this speaker? See: https://www.stereophile.com/content/klipsch-reference-premiere-rp-600m-loudspeaker-measurements

The HF are elevated, but we do not really see any problems in the upper bass and low mids section.

At least from this one measurement sweep done outdoors, I don't really see anything else that looks obviously wrong.

 

[Nwickliff]

Have you seen JA's measurements of this speaker? See: https://www.stereophile.com/content/klipsch-reference-premiere-rp-600m-loudspeaker-measurements

The HF are elevated, but we do not really see any problems in the upper bass and low mids section.

At least from this one measurement sweep done outdoors, I don't really see anything else that looks obviously wrong.

I have a XO upgrade that is supposed to take that tweeter response and dop it a bit as opposed to stock rising frequency. Possible I wired this incorrectly? It also fixes the xo dip around 1.8K and I have added No REz sheets to help tame the box.

 

[ernestcarl]

I have a XO upgrade that is supposed to take that tweeter response and dop it a bit as opposed to stock rising frequency. Possible I wired this incorrectly? It also fixes the xo dip around 1.8K and I have added No REz sheets to help tame the box.

Don't know, but you could tailor eq the HF easily anyway. I suppose there's not much to modify with the speakers now that you have already switched the crossovers and added dampening to the box. The room largely controls the low frequency response including that upper bass region where excess energy lingers (somewhat unevenly) for far too long.

 

[Nwickliff]

Don't know, but you could tailor eq the HF easily anyway. I suppose there's not much to modify with the speakers now that you have already switched the crossovers and added dampening to the box. The room largely controls the low frequency response including that upper bass region where excess energy lingers (somewhat unevenly) for far too long.

I think just pulling down the 300hz helped quite a bit. Need to listen to a few different sources of material and I will know for sure. It's funny though because it's just one big circle of confusion seeing as how there are no standards for recording and everyone mixing their recordings have different monitors and some of those are tuned differently (I've seen some pictures of some pretty bad measuring speakers in studios), then there's however it's mixed for delivery in whatever format. I honestly noticed it most in the show Ted Laso that I watch with my wife. It's like they boosted those frequencies inentinally. Anyhow. Thanks again for all your ideas and help.

 

[Holmz]

Ok, so I went outside and measured.

Here's the outdoor setup.
I'll post the results from that measurement in a second.

^Noice^ - and the ringing waterfall?

You seem like you are an intelligent fellow.
Ishikawa developed what we call a fishbone diagram (really an Ishikawa chart for people that can pronounce that).
So this idea of outdoor would be to exonerate the room from that ishikawa chart (bone)… or exonerate the speaker from it.

 

[Nwickliff]

^Noice^ - and the ringing waterfall?

You seem like you are an intelligent fellow.
Ishikawa developed what we call a fishbone diagram (really an Ishikawa chart for people that can pronounce that).
So this idea of outdoor would be to exonerate the room from that ishikawa chart (bone)… or exonerate the speaker from it.

The post after the video you replied to has the video the measurements as well as a link to the waterfall rew file.

Here's a screenshot of the file

 

[Holmz]

Well the small outside resonances were a bit hard to see on the video… Do I have this correct?:

• There may be some cabinet resonances that down there?
• The ringing seems to not be happening out as far in time?

If so… then:

• I think your room may be responsible for the ,majority of the RT60 tails extending out in time.
  • You’re kinda boned there, and with WAF, it is almost certainly going to be a “just live with it” scenario.
• Those deep nulls may also be something where scoutching the speakers around might give some relief if they can fall on the room-length/N points.
• The “open the window” scenario would also possible let out the rooms modes to an extent??
  • So that would be a way to flesh out that Ishikawa diagram.

Ishikawa diagram - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Bliman]

It seems the problem is not coming from the speaker itself. What I would do is try to do what I said with the cushions to see if it makes a difference.
Is it with the Denon you are eq? And do you watch films by the computer and watch on the TV?
One thing I do know if you find it thin then it will not take long that it will start bugging you.