New near-field speaker setup for a home office? Pictures!

[LTig]

That would be pretty cool, but the MTM's only have a 3/8" mic stand thread on the bottom.

This is perfect. I use small desktop mic stands (K&M 23320) for my Genelec 8020s. It's height is adjustable. The foot has 25 cm diameter and a thick soft rubber beneath as isolation. There are also smaller and bigger models.

 

[edahl]

How tall are the MTM speakers? In particular up to above the woofers? I'm torn between the 8010A, iLoud Micro, and MTM. The first two would fit under my computer screen, which is about 20 cm above the desk. With the MTM at least the upper woofer would be behind the screen (Odyssey G9 so it's very wide and curved so I don't want them on the side and I'm not ready to commit to stands that lift above the screen pointing down)

 

[Vict0r]

How tall are the MTM speakers? In particular up to above the woofers? I'm torn between the 8010A, iLoud Micro, and MTM. The first two would fit under my computer screen, which is about 20 cm above the desk. With the MTM at least the upper woofer would be behind the screen (Odyssey G9 so it's very wide and curved so I don't want them on the side and I'm not ready to commit to stands that lift above the screen pointing down)

10.4 x 6.3 x 5.1" / 26.4 x 16 x 13 cm

 

[Vict0r]

Picked up a nice, wooden headphone stand to match the setup. It's getting there!

 

[edahl]

Your setup is looking hot!

I think the screen would obstruct the tweeter too much in mine. Perhaps by next screen will have to be smaller hahaha

 

[Vict0r]

Your setup is looking hot!

I think the screen would obstruct the tweeter too much in mine. Perhaps by next screen will have to be smaller hahaha

The MTM's come with a stand to lay them on their sides. Maybe that would work for you?

 

[edahl]

The MTM's come with a stand to lay them on their sides. Maybe that would work for you?

View attachment 122729

It could but I'm worried about the tilt, if it let's me tilt them up enough to point at my ears...?

 

[Vict0r]

It could but I'm worried about the tilt, if it let's me tilt them up enough to point at my ears...?

The built in tilt mechanism only works in the vertical position but they're easily tilt-able horizontally because you can slightly raise the front of the horizontal stand with washers, or something along those lines. Coins, gel dots, bubblegum, squashed hamsters. The possibilities are limitless.

 

[edahl]

The built in tilt mechanism only works in the vertical position but they're easily tilt-able horizontally because you can slightly raise the front of the horizontal stand with washers, or something along those lines. Coins, gel dots, bubblegum, squashed hamsters. The possibilities are limitless.

I have two dogs that might qualify if they don't straighten up and pee outside soon!

 

[timblocktoom]

Beautiful setup...

i’ve been trying to decide if I should get a sub for my MTM’s

I think I need to learn how to properly use some of this room correction software with the UMIK I bought first.
I have a small high ceiling corner home office with an awful acoustic situation

The built-in calibration with the speakers absolutely ripped out all sense of bass completely so I wonder if it is more than it can handle to correct

If he has any great REW for idiots links, I would appreciate it.
i’m so frustrated that I am thinking about going with expensive more handholding software approaches

 

[Berwhale]

I used this Youtube tutorial... Correct your speakers with REW, UMIK-1 and Equalizer APO (Room Correction Tutorial) - YouTube

Julian uses sine sweeps and averages the measurements between fixed microphone positions. An alternative, and perhaps better, approach is to use the moving mic method with pink noise, there's a thread discussing this here: REW-Moving Microphone Method Help | Audio Science Review (ASR) Forum

 

[timblocktoom]

@Berwhale

Thank you - also, may I ask your opinion of MathAudio RoomEQ

I'm a bit drawn to a solution like that as I could use it on macOS with Rogue Amoeba's Audio Hijack software

 

[Berwhale]

I'm sorry, I have no experience of MathAudio RoomEQ. I purchased iLoud's ARC3 recently because I got such a big discount as an MTM owner (I paid a little over £60). I had a go at measuring and correcting with ARC3, but I wasn't impressed with the results. However, i'm not sure I've got everything setup correctly in Windows yet, so i'll reserve judgement on it at this time. I will say that taking 21 measurements it quite tedious, which is one of the reasons i've been looking at the moving mic method.

 

[timblocktoom]

So I went through the Mathaudio RoomEQ process - it's very friendly for new folks to this like myself..

It has an option to manually "Draw in" your own reference curve (vs bright & natural options, which are mostly just flat up near the top).

Am I doing it right?
Am I supposed to be trying to "go down the middle" of all the peaks/valleys of the room measurement graph?

Or am I supposed to be trying to mitigate each peak/valley?

I'm confused as to what the goal is with correcting the room measurement.

Thank you and I apologize - I'm sure this is a total noob question - trying to make some learning headway here.

 

[Berwhale]

Am I doing it right?
Am I supposed to be trying to "go down the middle" of all the peaks/valleys of the room measurement graph?

Or am I supposed to be trying to mitigate each peak/valley?

No and maybe. You want to correct towards a target curve, but you'll need to find a target curve that you like. If you don't like the ones built into MathAudio, there are another couple you can download from MathAudio - link in 1st FAQ entry: Room EQ FAQ (mathaudio.com)

 

[timblocktoom]

No and maybe. You want to correct towards a target curve, but you'll need to find a target curve that you like. If you don't like the ones built into MathAudio, there are another couple you can download from MathAudio - link in 1st FAQ entry: Room EQ FAQ (mathaudio.com)

So does a target curve need to be adjusted to try to deal with severe peaks and valleys in my room measurements?

 

[Berwhale]

So does a target curve need to be adjusted to try to deal with severe peaks and valleys in my room measurements?

The target curve is what you want your measured response to look like. The aim is to make your measured response look like the target curve. The process is:

1. Measure your speakers in room frequency response.
2. Calculate the EQ required to bring your measured frequency response closer to your prefered target curve.
3. Apply this EQ to the signal going into your speakers.
4. Re-measure the in room frequency response with EQ applied.

If this has worked, then your re-measured response will be closer to your target curve.

My understanding is that not all severe peaks and valleys can, or should, be EQ'd. This is where it starts to get more complicated and you have start to learn about room accoustics and the causes of the peaks and valleys - especially in the lower frequencies.

 

[timblocktoom]

I don't understand why the iLoud MTM build in ARC makes things so incredibly thin and lacking in the low end.

That feature was sort of why I was interested in the iLoud's to begin with.

If I'm going to have to be using so much third party software on devices, it's making me wonder if I have wasted money on the MTM's.

For instance - if going with something inexpensive like Klipsch ProMedia 2.1's...can one expect to get fairly good results if using the same measurement/roomEQ/software in the chain as we are discussing here?

I'm a simple home user who just likes great sound and music enjoyment and I'm wondering if I'm just getting in way too deep here.

 

[Berwhale]

I'm a simple home user who just likes great sound and music enjoyment and I'm wondering if I'm just getting in way too deep here.

Maybe! I feel like that myself sometimes. Ultimately, you will have to compromise between how much time you are willing to invest into learning this stuff, how much money you're prepared to spend, what you are prepared to do to your listening space to get the best sound and even how you listen to music (e.g. how loud, see Equal-loudness contour - Wikipedia)

 

[Berwhale]

Here's the results of my first attempt as using ARC3...

Green lines are measured response. You can see there is a big difference between left and right in the 50-300Hz region. The reason is that my left speaker sits about 50mm in front of a wall and my right speaker sits infront of a deep bay window (~1m deep or more like 50cm if I have my wooden blinds closed). This is far from ideal! However, at the moment, i'm not in a position to rebuild my office (essentially rotating everything by 90 degrees) to get better speaker placement. So it's a compromise I have to make.

The orange lines are the predicted (not measured!) response after ARC3 has applied the EQ it's calculated. You can see that these lines are much closer to the target response (flat white line).