KEF R3 new REW measurements (Do I need a subwoofer?)

[Marcin]

Hi again ASR community.

Some time ago you helped me a lot in this thread
Since then I have changed my audio setup and now it is KEF R3 with Lyngdorf TDAI-3400 streaming amp.

Below please find the measurements I did using REW and UMIK-1 mic with RoomPerfect enabled (Lyngdorf room correction system).

This one is for neutral voicing:

This one I tweaked a little with 2 filters: High Shelf 1500Hz, Q 0.7, Gain -2.5; Parametric 1350Hz, Q 2, Gain -2:

What do you think about it?

I listen to music only on this system. Do you think a subwoofer is needed and I could benefit a lot from it?
Maybe some hints on EQ settings

I attached mdat files as well with the measurements (one with RoomPerfect enabled and one bypassing RP).

 

[Matias]

Should be great, enjoy.

 

[ZolaIII]

PEQ the 120 to 500 Hz range individualy L, R towards SPL @ 120~130 Hz (where the deep is), & L peak to R SPL level at about 65 Hz.
Sure you need sub and some of the benefits should be relaxing R3's less port resonance (all by high cutting @ let's say 80 Hz), higher max SPL cuple dB (3~4) without compression and in generally better dynamic range along with better equal loudness normalisation integration. Actually you are lucky regarding room and judging by the response you are getting all do I don't know what smoothing you were using.
After you do mentioned PEQ range & chenel balance do a full range REW PEQ with desired target (can look up later which one I am currently using if you want).

 

[Marcin]

@ZolaIII
Thanks for the suggestions on EQ however I can't do individual equalizations for L/R channels. Lyngdorf's EQ is not as sophisticated as Equalizer APO.
Voicings manual

Do you think a sub like SVS SB-1000 non pro would be sufficient?

 

[ZolaIII]

@ZolaIII
Thanks for the suggestions on EQ however I can't do individual equalizations for L/R channels. Lyngdorf's EQ is not as sophisticated as Equalizer APO.
Voicings manual

Do you think a sub like SVS SB-1000 non pro would be sufficient?

Well actually I use JRiver, where you can PEQ infinite but you should try EQ-APO as free alternative. Thing is WDM driver of JRiver really can insert between anything on system (with some lag introduced).

I do think SVS SB-1000 will do the purpose quite good and not Pro series have 80 Hz high pass trough low level (RCA) I/O. Otherwise you need a multichannel DAC (sound card, interface...). Two sub's would done even better job. That bounce on the left chenel is from wall so you also might try to position it better in the first place which might resolve that, if that is possible of course.

 

[Rednaxela]

@ZolaIII
Thanks for the suggestions on EQ however I can't do individual equalizations for L/R channels. […]
Voicings manual

Also not with pre-equalization (p. 11)?

 

[Rednaxela]

I don't know what smoothing you were using.

The graph legends say Psychoacoustic.

 

[Marcin]

Also not with pre-equalization (p. 11)?

Not possible to do separately per each channel either.

 

[ZolaIII]

Also not with pre-equalization (p. 11)?

Captured picture's don't say anything in legend but OK I take your word so it's ⅓ smoothing.
@Marcin I think you will have to work on opening perspective regarding tool's. Voicing is cute, easy to use and figure out but it's too limited in many ways and not enough to do the job. Have a nice time and enjoy.

 

[Marcin]

Captured picture's don't say anything in legend but OK I take your word so it's ⅓ smoothing.

Psy means psychoacoustic in REW.

 

[ZolaIII]

Psy means psychoacoustic in REW.

How about that you show us closer to reference calibration point measurement and R60 plots (especially decay one)? Along with some pictures of placement if that's OK.
Just took a peak at your amplifier to see how "Voicing" is integrated PEQ on it. Not really impressed with it's price/functionality, don't really know about performance, by quoted numbers not impressed by that either. Probably the ADC - DSP is limiting factor as usual.
Question and task for you is to check/confirm does it's high pass filter impacts the line out or (which you wish) only speakers output. If it doesn't impact the line out you at least have a deacent Linkwitz Riley crossover (for sub/sub's) from it.
For example:

This are mine (⅓ smoothing) that I settled on for some time and target is LF rise start 160 Hz, End 57 Hz, slope 1.7 dB per octave and HF fall start 1000 Hz, slope 1.4 dB per octave. It sounds nice to me and with good dynamics.

 

[Marcin]

How about that you show us closer to reference calibration point measurement and R60 plots (especially decay one)? Along with some pictures of placement if that's OK.

Placement is described in the thread I linked in the first post here. The only difference is that R3's are a bit closer to the front wall now (around 25 cm measuring from the back of the speaker).

This is RT60 Decay for Neutral voicing

This is for my tweaked voicing:

1/3 smoothing:

Just took a peak at your amplifier to see how "Voicing" is integrated PEQ on it. Not really impressed with it's price/functionality, don't really know about performance, by quoted numbers not impressed by that either. Probably the ADC - DSP is limiting factor as usual.

I am more than happy with this all-in-one box and highly impressed with its performance. Especially digital room correction functionality does the job well.
If you want you can check out mdat of the measurement without applying room correction to see how my room behaves and what RP managed to do with it.

 

[ernestcarl]

Hi again ASR community.

Some time ago you helped me a lot in this thread
Since then I have changed my audio setup and now it is KEF R3 with Lyngdorf TDAI-3400 streaming amp.

Below please find the measurements I did using REW and UMIK-1 mic with RoomPerfect enabled (Lyngdorf room correction system).

This one is for neutral voicing:
View attachment 299420

This one I tweaked a little with 2 filters: High Shelf 1500Hz, Q 0.7, Gain -2.5; Parametric 1350Hz, Q 2, Gain -2:
View attachment 299421

What do you think about it?

I listen to music only on this system. Do you think a subwoofer is needed and I could benefit a lot from it?
Maybe some hints on EQ settings

I attached mdat files as well with the measurements (one with RoomPerfect enabled and one bypassing RP).

Looks a bit odd when RP is engaged. Magnitude looks fine... but what the hell is it doing to the phase?

What is it trying to "fix" that was broken before?

 

[kemmler3D]

Are you happy with the bass right now? Personally I would consider a sub here. You are down ~5dB @ 30hz and -20 at 20hz. Fixing up the bottom octave is worth it IMO.

 

[Marcin]

Looks a bit odd when RP is engaged. Magnitude looks fine... but what the hell is it doing to the phase?

Any chance I did the measurement wrong? I can ask Lyngdorf support about it (they are quite helpful) however I don't really understand it, so I don't know what to ask

Are you happy with the bass right now? Personally I would consider a sub here. You are down ~5dB @ 30hz and -20 at 20hz. Fixing up the bottom octave is worth it IMO.

I need to visit a local store first to check if I really want the additional bottom end.

 

[ernestcarl]

Any chance I did the measurement wrong? I can ask Lyngdorf support about it (they are quite helpful) however I don't really understand it, so I don't know what to ask


I need to visit a local store first to check if I really want the additional bottom end.

The magnitude correction looks pretty good, but I think something went wrong with the phase "correction" part. Could be simply an error in it's automatic algorithms or bad input data churning out bad output. Yeah, go ahead and ask them for clarification if this is "as expected" or not.

 

[alex-z]

Certainly wouldn't hurt. Give yourself another 15Hz of bass extension and reduce distortion a bit.

Your decay times are rising pretty dramatically below 150Hz, so I would also consider some bass traps.

RoomPerfect is pulling down the 200-600Hz region and boosting the 1000-2000Hz region. Odd choices, if there is a way to limit to the correction to the bass region, I would suggest trying that after you add the subwoofer. I think RoomPerfect is trying to compensate for the fact that the R3 have a gradual bass rolloff starting at 120Hz, rather than an extended shelf response.

 

[Marcin]

The magnitude correction looks pretty good, but I think something went wrong with the phase "correction" part. Could be simply an error in it's automatic algorithms or bad input data churning out bad output. Yeah, go ahead and ask them for clarification if this is "as expected" or not.

I did a new RoomPerfect calibration and new measurements - Bypass RoomPerfect, RP Focus mode (calibrated to MLP), RP Global mode (calibrated to the whole room). Now it looks different than previously.

There must have been something wrong with the calibration/measurement before.

 

[ernestcarl]

I did a new RoomPerfect calibration and new measurements - Bypass RoomPerfect, RP Focus mode (calibrated to MLP), RP Global mode (calibrated to the whole room). Now it looks different than previously.

There must have been something wrong with the calibration/measurement before.

Well, the magnitude may be a bit different after correction, BUT, the additional phase rotations which appear to be the application of some all pass filters (with RP enabled) are still there.

You can also see some of its effect in the step response. Honestly, I don't understand the logic behind it because usually room correction software will try to linearize the time domain (highly dependent on how many taps the device has available at its disposal). For bass management and MCH speaker matching, it may be useful to use in that scenario, but you have no subwoofer in this setup and it's only basic stereo anyway.

Okay, maybe there is perfectly valid reason.

But, to me, it's just weird...

 

[ozzy9832001]

I did a new RoomPerfect calibration and new measurements - Bypass RoomPerfect, RP Focus mode (calibrated to MLP), RP Global mode (calibrated to the whole room). Now it looks different than previously.

There must have been something wrong with the calibration/measurement before.

You have a very lively room. Your decay times are very high and your spectrogram shows significant energy missing and/or delayed especially in the low end. A sub could help straighten some of that out. There are multiple voids, one very significant from 190hz to about 300.