New Neumann MA 1 - Automatic Monitor Alignment

[hyperplanar]

Has anyone had luck with factory resetting their KH80? Seems the process in the manual doesn't actually work at all.

Possibly making some headway here, moved the speakers to a pretty wide placement, seems to have made an improvement in the mid bass region, things are breathing more down there. I can also move my head and not hear much in the way of change. Seriously it was so bad before, you could move your head a single cm and hear major phasing issues, super distracting. Yeah this is much better, when the snares hit the body has room to exist. This is also with the DSP disabled, I'll have to measure again, but honestly I kinda prefer the raw sound of the speakers. They're left with a bit of boominess to the 100-200hz area but I actually like that, as I tend to mix that region too hot otherwise. I can just EQ down with the local controls, they work well here. The forward-ness appears to be alleviated as well, yeah it's gone (typing this as I listen). They are much easier to listen to now, very engaging. I'm definitely getting an emotional connection to the speakers now. Gotta stop typing and listen, damn this is nice.

Got chills on a few songs, so this is good. Also kind of sad on a few songs, there really is just a shocking amount of music that is mixed really poorly.

So with wider dispersion speakers, one could place them closer with little toe in and achieve good image? While the KH80 are more narrow, so wider placement with toe-in should achieve the same thing? Do I have that right?

Holy cow, just loaded up the usual NI felt piano to play with, it's a totally different instrument now and feels better to play. No bunching of the lower mids like before.

Yeah I suspect the primary culprit is the desk here. As for the transition to omnidirectionality, there’s no hard cutoff there. It’s just that a larger woofer/baffle will gradually start narrowing its directivity at a lower frequency than a smaller speaker. So since a smaller speaker sprays more sound around itself at more of the lower midrange frequencies, the SPL of the reflections at those frequencies will be louder than a larger speaker’s, and so the reflections will muddy the sound up more (possibly why small speakers can sound boxy when these reflections aren’t tamed).

The comb filtering frequency response you posted is pretty indicative of strong desk reflections IMO. It’s possible that the reason why you prefer the speakers uncorrected is that the MA1 software is trying to EQ those peaks and valleys out, when it really shouldn’t be, because they’re the result of discrete reflections and so not minimum phase. It seems like the most you can do without relocating the speakers to avoid the desk reflection would be to only manually correct the response under ~200-300 Hz or so, just the room modes so you get even bass, but not the desk induced comb filtering.

Do you have a picture of your setup by any chance?

 

[Deleted member 12642]

Here's my room, I put down a thick blanket on the desk to maybe help out a bit, it doesn't really fix the issues, but one of my cats loves it.

Woke up with fresh ears, still hearing that mid-bass that doesn't expand out like it should. Even when I had them out in the living room with no desk it didn't sound right in that region. The comb filtering just kind of drives me nuts though. Interestingly the behringers don't seem to suffer from it, image is very stable. Why are these speakers doing so much worse in that regard?

 

[Deleted member 12642]

So here's a before and after with the blanket, evens out the top end and a bit. But I don't think that's the problem. I think the big suck out from 400-1k is. If I EQ it back in the sensitive phasing seems to go away.

I do think the MA-1 software is overcorrecting my mid bas, without EQ my monitors slope down in a manner you would expect, and they sound as you would expect. With EQ correction from MA-1 they are made just flat and don't seem to take into account the slope that you actually want, straight flat in room response sounds plain wrong to me. If I can track down this hole I think I might be happy. Ceiling?

 

[DJBonoBobo]

Idk, but my guess is the desk. How does the ETC diagram look? You should see a desk reflection clearly there.
How far away are the speakers from the windows?
I think in a studio one would try to place the speakers as close to the front wall as possible, on stands behind the desk, and angle the desk down to direct reflections away (you can use the ETC or a mirror to see how much angle you need). I just did this in my mancave after i realized how much effect my (much smaller) desk had.

I don´t know why other speakers seem to sound better in your case. In my personal experience it happened more then once that after some optimizations other "problem areas" became visible that have been masked by other problems before. Almost every step forward made small problems more apparent, so i still have more things to try and optimize. I don´t know if that´s the case, of course, maybe there are other reasons.

Edit: Another thing you could try: Only the first mic position has to be very exact. You could try a bigger or smaller area for the rest of the measurements or even skip the other measurements and only use the first or the first three.

Edit 2: The reason is, that if the problem is caused by the desk reflection it is possible that the sound changes a lot if you move in an area with a different angle. If you make multiple measurements, the average may look very different from the sweet spot itself. Maybe in your case the average of all the MA-1-positions looks much better(?) In that case a smaller area might help - at least worth a try. Trying to angle the desk away would always be better, if possible, of course.

 

[Deleted member 12642]

I'll try doing a measurement with a tight area and one with more loose coverage.

I went ahead and added in that sucked out area with EQ in my DAW and mixed some stuff. Seems like I was getting what I wanted and noticed pretty much all the stuff I had been working on lately had too much build up there.

Going to try MA-1 stuff again tomorrow, have to make sure to add back in the mid bass and low end it will take out. Wish you could limit the correction area. Wish a lot things about these speakers and it's DSP lol.

Idk if I can angle the desk, it's huge and kind of clunky, was handmade by the partners grandfather. I'm not opposed to slapping a chunk of covered oc703 on the desk while I work lol.

Next toughie is finding the right spot for my sub. It's kind of in a good spot but other areas of the room are just excellent, feels like it's outputting a lot more than I'm hearing. Sub crawl has yielded ok results. I feel like I can localize that the sub is on one side of the room, I thought you shouldn't be able to do that with low frequency?

 

[hyperplanar]

Here's my room, I put down a thick blanket on the desk to maybe help out a bit, it doesn't really fix the issues, but one of my cats loves it.

View attachment 122964

Woke up with fresh ears, still hearing that mid-bass that doesn't expand out like it should. Even when I had them out in the living room with no desk it didn't sound right in that region. The comb filtering just kind of drives me nuts though. Interestingly the behringers don't seem to suffer from it, image is very stable. Why are these speakers doing so much worse in that regard?

Very cute—seems like your problem is cat filtering

Your desk is really deep and seems like the perfect reflector for your speakers unfortunately... (moving a mirror around the desk while sitting and looking for the reflection of the speakers is a nice visual tool to determine this). Not sure why the mid bass is still bad in your living room though.

What diameter woofer do the Behringers have?

 

[Deleted member 12642]

Very cute—seems like your problem is cat filtering

Your desk is really deep and seems like the perfect reflector for your speakers unfortunately... (moving a mirror around the desk while sitting and looking for the reflection of the speakers is a nice visual tool to determine this). Not sure why the mid bass is still bad in your living room though.

What diameter woofer do the Behringers have?

6.75", but if you order them they say 5.25" on the box which is hilarious to me. I bought a few pairs back when they were getting found out, only 120/pair at the time.

I have the kh80s up for sale but not much interest unfortunately. Im just really tired of feeling like I'm fighting the speakers. I shouldn't have to do this much work just to match what other speakers I have are already doing. I wish you guys could hear the absolutely night and day difference between these two speakers and how kh80 sounds nebulous and the 2030a sound very controlled.

Dont think ill toy with ma-1 today, its too calm in the home today.

 

[hyperplanar]

6.75", but if you order them they say 5.25" on the box which is hilarious to me. I bought a few pairs back when they were getting found out, only 120/pair at the time.

I have the kh80s up for sale but not much interest unfortunately. Im just really tired of feeling like I'm fighting the speakers. I shouldn't have to do this much work just to match what other speakers I have are already doing. I wish you guys could hear the absolutely night and day difference between these two speakers and how kh80 sounds nebulous and the 2030a sound very controlled.

Dont think ill toy with ma-1 today, its too calm in the home today.

Makes sense, the Behringers would narrow in directivity roughly at a 6.75 / 4 ~= 1.7x lower frequency so it's not spilling as much low mids onto your desk to reflect as the KH80s.

I totally believe your experience, it's a shame that it didn't work out but I agree, makes no sense to keep fighting your speakers to make them work with your setup if you have other ones that work better already.

 

[tuga]

So here's a before and after with the blanket, evens out the top end and a bit. But I don't think that's the problem. I think the big suck out from 400-1k is. If I EQ it back in the sensitive phasing seems to go away.
View attachment 122977

I do think the MA-1 software is overcorrecting my mid bas, without EQ my monitors slope down in a manner you would expect, and they sound as you would expect. With EQ correction from MA-1 they are made just flat and don't seem to take into account the slope that you actually want, straight flat in room response sounds plain wrong to me. If I can track down this hole I think I might be happy. Ceiling?

I wouldn't expect a blanket to do anything at 400Hz.
Have you tried using one of those boundary reflection calculators?

http://tripp.com.au/sbir.htm
https://carltatzdesign.com/acoustic-tools/ (axial mode excel calculator)

 

[Deleted member 12642]

Bleh, not sure what MA-1 was thinking today but it decided to try and make my KH80's flat down to 30hz lol. First thought was maybe the sub was on but it wasn't.

Just gonna leave the app open as long as I can and fiddle with it, see how long it can go before dc'ing in some manner. Also love how the UI scales indefinitely, the EQ type thumbnails get as big as you can drag the window lol.

I'm checking out that axial calculator, kinda neat. Will mess around with positioning based on that.

 

[Deleted member 12642]

Mics gone, not much a bother to me. I still have an EMM6 if I ever want to correct again, or Neumann will update the app and just let uses manually adjust the EQ (not holding my breath).

I might order a few speakers and take advantage of some stores return policies and see if I can find something I like better. I'm probably done with this thread so thanks everyone.

 

[oboist]

FWIW I had a similar reaction to KH80s when I set them up in the piano room behind the piano to listen to playbacks. Listening from about 6 ft with the speakers 2 ft from the wall. Boxy, small sounding, lot’s of comb filtering, not pleasant at all. Replaced them with Genelec 8330 and was happier. Since the KH80 were just sitting there I set them up by the table where we eat and surf the net. Now they were 2 ft away and as close to the wall as minimum recommended to avoid heat issues. All of sudden I love them. They sound quite good without correction and I was motivated to get the over-priced wall mounts and start ruining my plaster. I think they really want to be close to the wall and they really want to be close to the listener. Suddenly all the raves make sense.

 

[Deleted member 12642]

FWIW I had a similar reaction to KH80s when I set them up in the piano room behind the piano to listen to playbacks. Listening from about 6 ft with the speakers 2 ft from the wall. Boxy, small sounding, lot’s of comb filtering, not pleasant at all. Replaced them with Genelec 8330 and was happier. Since the KH80 were just sitting there I set them up by the table where we eat and surf the net. Now they were 2 ft away and as close to the wall as minimum recommended to avoid heat issues. All of sudden I love them. They sound quite good without correction and I was motivated to get the over-priced wall mounts and start ruining my plaster. I think they really want to be close to the wall and they really want to be close to the listener. Suddenly all the raves make sense.

Thanks for chiming in. I was actually looking at the 8030c and curious if they sound a bit larger.

I can't say mine sounded very good near the front wall, I kind of really hate to sit next to walls, ears are really sensitive to boundaries and I can hear my own voice bound off the front wall.

This is certainly a tough search for a detailed monitor that isn't fatiguing and doesn't comb filter like a motha'.

 

[Mirac1e-]

One quick question, can neumann ma-1 correct impulse response like dirac?

 

[richard12511]

One quick question, can neumann ma-1 correct impulse response like dirac? View attachment 123746

Pretty sure Dirac is not unique in this regard, but I'm not sure if MA-1 does it. I'd be curious to about GLM as well.

 

[Deleted member 12642]

Might have to message Neumann to figure that one out.

 

[Mirac1e-]

Can correcting the phase improve the impulse response at the same time? Or they are basically the same thing.

 

[ernestcarl]

can neumann ma-1 correct impulse response like dirac?

It does...

Can correcting the phase improve the impulse response at the same time? Or they are basically the same thing.

Correcting the phase improves the IR and step response view -- don't forget gain levels (& EQ) and delays. How well either software processing algorithm performs those tasks will also depend highly in the room acoustics and placement.

 

[ernestcarl]

Here's my room, I put down a thick blanket on the desk to maybe help out a bit, it doesn't really fix the issues, but one of my cats loves it.

View attachment 122964

Woke up with fresh ears, still hearing that mid-bass that doesn't expand out like it should. Even when I had them out in the living room with no desk it didn't sound right in that region. The comb filtering just kind of drives me nuts though. Interestingly the behringers don't seem to suffer from it, image is very stable. Why are these speakers doing so much worse in that regard?

I have my own monitors closer to the very front edge of the table to reduce its boundary effect.

 

[hyperplanar]

One quick question, can neumann ma-1 correct impulse response like dirac? View attachment 123746

It will correct the phase rotation due to the crossovers of analog speakers connected to a KH750 by loading the appropriate compensation filter for the model. (KH80 already has a linear phase crossover so not necessary there.) It doesn’t correct for any excess phase errors caused by the room acoustics or the subwoofer crossover. However your phase response should smooth out significantly simply from the software EQing out the room modes.