New Neumann MA 1 - Automatic Monitor Alignment

[DJBonoBobo]

is it possible to calibrate a 5.1 setup consisting of 3xkh150s, 2 x120ii, and a kh750 subwoofer, and then pull the subwoofer out because i want to use it elsewhere? i assume i would need the multichannel upgrade license, and pick 5.1, and uncheck the external bass management box?

Yes, as far as i know, that should work.

also, do you guys know how to make ma1 work if i have say...3x kh310 instead for a 5.1/5.1.4

It is possible, but you need 3 KH750 for this to work (each for every analog channel). The LFE channel and sub 80Hz content will be played by all 3 subs then.

should i just give up on this and go dirac?

I think if you have a Neumann DSP setup, MA1 should give you very good results if your situation is comparable to a studio. If it is more like a living room it is possible Dirac is more flexible.
I have a Dirac license (which is don't use) as well as MA1 multichannel and in my mancave with a small 4.0 setup, MA1 works good.
I tried MA1 in the living room also in a very suboptimal setting (couch, no real listening triangle), that did not work so good. I ended up just dialing down the main room modes with an simple EQ and let everything else as it is.

 

[NeverBetter]

Hi NeverBetter, any update about your situation? I have a similar issue with a wide dip at 50Hz, plus many more... a narrow peak at 33 Hz, and another VERY nasty two at 67 and 98 Hz. I am in a similar situation as yours and I tried everything possible to improve the response by changing the speaker position as well as the listening position, but to no avail. My setup is 2x KH310A and 2x KH750DSP. MA-1 flattens the overall frequency response but a 50 Hz dip of about -5 dB remains. In addition I don't like MA-1 equalization. It sounds too bass-shy and the effect of the A/D + D/A chain makes the highs too harsh. My music source is a windows PC, so I make use of APO Equalizer for equalizing my setup with much better results and flexibility. Having 2 subs gives my setup enough headroom to pump those 50 Hz in the room, and I don't care what Neumann recommends, but I can assure that I get perfectly flat bass response (measured) in my sitting position that way, without side effects like harsness, noticeable pre-echo (because I prefer not to use minimal phase filtering), and distorsion. Then it must be pointed out that a flat response in room is not what you want, because it would sound too bright. It took me a really long effort to elaborate an analytical way (i mean not empyric) of obtaining the so-called "house curve" to apply for my specific room, so that the overall tonal balance would mimic that of a "perfectly treated" room, but the end result is very good and way better than what I can get with MA-1. That said, I would also rather selling my house and buy one with a better room, but my recommendation for you is to try the subwoofer way and to fill that DIP using a stabdalone EQ, that can simply be a software app if you're using a PC (or if like me, you have a DAC with built-in PEQ, you could also make use of that one).

Appreciate it. In my situation, having paid up for the KH50 pair and the MA-1 I simply don't have the cash to buy one sub let alone 2 subs. Just not going to happen any time soon.

 

[onununo]

Appreciate it. In my situation, having paid up for the KH50 pair and the MA-1 I simply don't have the cash to buy one sub let alone 2 subs. Just not going to happen any time soon.

Ok, I'm sorry for that. However I would recommend you to give the equalization a chance, even without the subs. If you are careful not to stress the woofers too much by playing music too loud, you may get some acceptable results none the less. Anyway if you do go for the equalizer way, I suggest you use an external, minimum phase equalizer to flatten the bass region. In fact I have tried in all possible ways to use the manual adjustments provided by MA-1, but I always get too much pre-echo with that. I prefer having a little blurred bass rather than having a much noticeable pre-echo that makes all transients sound the same. You may want to keep the MA-1 equalization active, and just add a second minimum phase eq to the chain to flatten that dip at 80Hz without worsening the pre-echo effect, or simply equalize everything with the minimum phase eq like I am doing in my system.

EDIT: changed "non minimum" (phase) with "minimum" (phase)

 

[markstein]

With minimum phase filter you do not get pre-echos.
Minimum phase works very well to flatten (most) bass peaks, no need to use linear phase FIR filters.

 

[onununo]

With minimum phase filter you do not get pre-echos.

Thanks for correcting me. The topic of filtering is indeed something that I must delve better into. What I meant to say, is bass equalized with MA-1 sounds characterized in the attack portion of its envelope. Such characterization in proportional to the amount of boosting necessary to fill-in the dips in the FR. If you try to force MA-1 to fill the dips that it does not fill by default, such effect becomes really noticeable. I call it pre-echo but in reality I don't know if it is actually a pre-echo. I don't get this nasty effect if I equalize using normal filters that mimic analog ones (such as when using "GraphicEQ" of Equalizer APO for instance), plus these filters don't add latency (otherwise unacceptable for watching movies - and not that MA-1 EQ adds any appreciable latency either, btw), though I know, they screw up the phase response. But overall I prefer these in acoustic terms.
I also tried the route of exporting the impulse response of the inverted frequency response of each channel with REW, and feed each of these to a convolution filter in the effort to linearize the phase at the expense of latency, but that way I get HUGE pre-echo, like seconds long halos that precede all transients.
Any comment on that, much appreciated as you may help me better understand what happens and maybe find out a viable solution (ideally I'd like to have the option of getting linear phase and flat amplitude with no (appreciable) pre-echo, at the price of latency, if that was ever possible, for music-only listening).

Please excuse me as I'm trying to make myself understood as I'm not native english.

EDIT: I asked the AI to rell me difference between minimu phase and linear phase filtering and noticed that in my previous post I have called minimal phase what should instead be linear phase. Sorry but I never remember what term is used for what!

 

[markstein]

Hi @onununo, thank you for clarifying your previous post.

I would recommend not trying to fill dips by PEQ with positive gain but only to cut peaks by PEQ with negative gain.

Try to compensate dips by changing ("optimizing") the placement of your sub or - better - by using multiple subs (two, three, or max. four) and optimizing their individual responses with the free software multisuboptimizer.

Floyd Tooles book "Sound Reproduction" discussed bass optimization in small rooms in great detail. I strongly recommend to read that.

 

[onununo]

I'll check out that software, however I think I have already tried all that was humanly possible, believe me. Tried rearranging the room in all possible ways, but there's nothing to do, the LF response curve remains practically the same. The present position of the subs and the armchair is really the best I can find. My 2 subs are now close to each other and off-center, despite originally I would have liked to have them each underneath the respective satellite speaker. The spakers are at the vertexes of an equilateral triangle with the listening pos., duly tilted towards ears of the listener, and the side of the triangle is 2.3 m (6.6 ft approx). The subs are also placed at that same fly distance to have acoustic phase coherence with the satellites. All the speakers are about 1.5m away from the front wall, and the listening position is about 1.5m away from the back wall. Of course if I move the speakers closer to the front wall and/or the listening position closer to the back wall, bass response increases a lot, but also the dip at 50Hz gets deeper, and this doesn't help with equalization. I tried also changing the setup orientation (E-W as opposed to N-S) to no avail, and even move to another place in the room again to no avail. I still have to figure out where that dip at 50 Hz comes from, though it's clear from where the peak at 67 Hz comes, and that must be the longitudinal mode of the room, which is 5 m (5ft) long.

To cut a long story short, I think I have already tried all that can be tried. I don't want to take the route of treating the room because taming the spectrum below 100 Hz it not practicable/affordable in a living room, so the only thing that I can do is to try to "fix" the frequency response by equalization. I know that boosting frequencies (or better of course, attenuating all the spectum except those particular frequencies) is usually not effective due to them often being non minimal phase, but I tried nonetheless, and maybe I had luck, but that way I am now measuring perfectly flat frequency response from 20 to 20kHz. This is by using periodic pink noise and averaged RTA in REW, moving the microphone around the listening position. As confirmation, if I do a slow frequency sweep I no longer hear dips and peakes if I sit in that place. Yes, I do loose ahemmm... 14 dB of headroom, but there's still plenty enough SPL available given that I am listening at mid-field distance. Overall, I can't notice any adverse distorion effect, which I bet is now high at 50 Hz.
Though at first, considering that minimum phase EQ screws the phase I went for equalizing both channels sounding together (pink noise) with the same parametric filter shape (it is simply the exported file of the measured frequency response of both channels reproducing together pink noise, inverted with REW and imported in EqualizerAPO), recently I went the way of equalizing first each channel separately, and then applying a third PEQ to flatten the resulting combined response (i.e., the centre image), with better results acoustically speaking, though still using minimum phase equalisation with its limitations of "smearing" the transients.

I also apply a 4th PEQ on top, which shapes the flat response to the desired "house curve" (otherwise the sound is subjectively too bright), but that's yet another story, LOL...

 

[markstein]

If you haven't tried multisuboptimizer and at least 2 (better 3 or 4) subwoofers yet, there is hope to get much better bass than you have today

 

[onununo]

I alreadt have 2 quality subs, as explained. They are axpensive (Neumann KH750DSP, over 1700 euro each) and I'd rather not buy a third just to try, especially considering rhat I have already put the 2 subs everywhere in the room and the peaks ans dips are always at the same frequencies, so averaging won't work. This even if I would appreciate more undistorted SPL in the bass area. I'll try that multisuboptimizer nonetheless.

 

[markstein]

I have two KH810 and can tell you that - individual - EQ can substantially improve bass linearity across a larger area. I am using minimum phase IIR EQ and delay of my Firefaxe UFX II (10x PEQ per channel). Filter settings were optimized by multisuboptimizer, based on measurement done with REW. No way to do this manually!

AFAIK the Neumann MA-1 does not offer this functionality.

 

[onununo]

No, I also don't think so.
Ok, thanks, looks interesting and as soon as I'll get the chance I'll do some experiments.

 

[IamJF]

Best positions with 2 subs is often front and back wall center.

 

[dananski]

is it possible to calibrate a 5.1 setup consisting of 3xkh150s, 2 x120ii, and a kh750 subwoofer, and then pull the subwoofer out because i want to use it elsewhere? i assume i would need the multichannel upgrade license, and pick 5.1, and uncheck the external bass management box?

That'll be absolutely fine as those speakers all store and run their own eq settings. The older 310 and 120A require the sub.

I'm not quite sure what the multichannel licence allows you to do that justifies the price. I've configured my 5 Neumanns in two stereo pairs plus one mono and I'm happy with the result, but maybe someone knows what I'm missing without this licence. It was a bit silly needing to go through the process two more times for the three new speakers instead of once for all of them, but are the results any different? I'm not sure the licence would even let me do 5 channels without a sub.

 

[DJBonoBobo]

Version 2.9.3 has been released. It supports stereo subwoofers now.

Also, in it´s files it has hidden 4 little eastereggs. At least one of them will be a suprise for many, i guess.

 

[dasherzx]

Man, how many more months before we get to see that kh350

 

[markstein]

Also, in it´s files it has hidden 4 little eastereggs. At least one of them will be a suprise for many, i guess.

View attachment 474097

Unfortunately there is no KH420 II mentioned in that list...

 

[IamJF]

KH350 ... maybe a KH310 but driver in a line like KH420? 8" LF driver?
Curious about the price but this could be a very interesting speaker for bigger systems with subwoofer. Home cinema main speakers etc.

KH420 is relatively new, it will take time until they do a redesign.

 

[DJBonoBobo]

Interesting, there seems to be a KH 805 II, too. Probably a stereo version of the 810 II and without AES67. For people who found the KH750 too small, there will be many new options.

 

[markstein]

KH420 is relatively new, it will take time until they do a redesign.

Well, KH420 is only one year younger (2014) than KH310 (2013) per info from the Neumann home page.

KH810 and KH870 are both from 2011.

 

[IamJF]

I'm pretty sure it will come. But at the speed they do their developments ...