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Share your in-room measurements?

Wombat

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My initial bias is using units people I know own. They always seemed to be yucky to use if anything beyond just straight signal was the purpose. They worked. They were cheap. I didn't like using them.

There also was the period of unreliability again from people I know who used their gear. I believe the move to generally SMD construction helped their reliability problems. I don't hear of them just not working like used to be the case.

So while they'll do the job, they are not my first choice. It seems if you step up just one rung higher you'll be much happier with another brand.

Fair comment.

For home use, once set up they just keep doing the job. The next step up is somewhat more pricey. Pro gear has moved along somewhat since the 2496 series was introduced but bang-for-buck, Behringer offers a lot to non Pro users.
 
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Vuki

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Same room, same measuring conditions, different loudspeakers. But the awful measuring ones sound much better :)
lpsweepminimelr.png


lpsweepjmz2.png
 

Aerith Gainsborough

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Hello ASR-Forummembers, long time lurker here.
Since I have tried out the Demo version of the Dirac Live processor, I thought I'd share the results. Setup is a Nearfield setup using 2x Focal Aria 906 (Thanks @VintageFlanker for posting the deal in this forum, what a steal at 230€ per speaker!).
Room is a tiny 1 room apartment, 16.5m². Unfortunately I am forced into an asymmetric positioning within the room, which I guess is responsible for the dips in the left channel. No room treatment whatsoever.

I used UMIK-1 at 5 measurement points with a boom arm (the suggested 9 seemed overkill, so I left out the positions my head would never be in anyway), marked the main measurement position on the floor, so I could use another single point measurement after Dirac applied it's filters.

"Variable smoothing" is applied in REW, this seems to interfere the least with the display of the low frequency content.

Right Channel
Right channel.png


Left Channel
Left Channel.png


Dirac Target Curve (left channel)
target curve.png


Dirac seems to be both honest in regards to not being able to fully compensate for the dips of the left channel but also a wee bit optimistic regarding the bass of the target curve. Oh well ,they are bookshelves after all, so I don't expect a 6.5" driver to take much note of EQ in the bass region.

Subjectively speaking: Sounds fantastic. Bass is very even now, when I fire up my piano VST, I no longer need to be careful when I touch the C2 key. :D
 

DJBonoBobo

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Neumann KH 310 + KH 750 DSP in a small room (14 m²).
Removable passive absorbtion: 2x Basotect 1x0.4m "corner traps", 3x Basotect 1x0.25m panels, 3x Basotect 1x0.12m panels.
Non removable passive absorbtion: 2x Basotect 1x0.10m panels left and right, 2x Basotect 1x0.12m panels at ceiling, big open closet at back wall.
Listening distance: 1.30 meters.
RTA MMM all channels at LP (var smoothing)
Black: sub active, passive absorbtion present, eq active, 2x PSI AVAA active (positioned at back wall)
Blue: sub deactivated, most passive absorbtion removed from room, eq deactivated, AVAA deactivated
Green: sub deactivated, passive absorbtion present, eq deactivated, AVAA deactivated
Red: sub active, passive absorbtion present, eq active, AVAA deactivated

Interesting for me to see that the basotect "bass traps" have no effect to FR below 100hz. It´s important for upper bass and low mids though. Effect of the AVAAs is significant only below 30Hz in my room.
BTW i see i have to adjust the EQ (around 70hz, for example). I changed my desk a bit recently and didn´t make new filters yet.

effects.png


Spectrogramm without/with absorbtion, EQ and AVAA
effects spec bef.png

effects spec aft.png
 

Fledermaus

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Right, left and average, 1/12 smoothing, from listening position - dispersion below 180 Hz is the kind of problem you typically encounter with an asymmetrical room, I suppose :



And I could do with a 100 ms shorter RT60 but I'm coming from a 770 ms average, bell-shaped RT60 curve, hence not so bad for my listening room :

 

txbdan

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Here's a pair of NHT C1s with a sub in my office. The sub level is too high, but Dirac Live takes care of it. Its a 12' x 11.5' x 8.5' room so i get a nice peak at 49ish Hz.
C1sResponse.png


I'm using the Dirac Live 2.0 trial right now. I'm very impressed with it. It sounds great, whereas i had trouble finding good sound with the IK ARC3 demo. I'm debating now weather to spring for DL 2.0 or try to make REW corrections work. Have you guys had good luck using REW corrections?
 

Fledermaus

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What is going on below 80Hz - what causes such a steep fall of RT60?

Dunno.
I believe I read somewhere that RT60 measurements with REW were not that accurate nor reliable in the bass. However, mine have a rather consistent trend to peak at 80 Hz (room mode not ruled out).
 

Bear123

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tjkadar

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I've read through the forums for awhile, but didn't join until recently. I don't know/understand much, but y'all have been an invaluable resource to alleviate some of that ignorance.

My listening room is a shared office for my wife and self. The office's floor plan (not to scale) is shown in the figure below. The closet makes the room oddly shaped. Combined with the small size, it has some challenges. LP is set to 38% of the long room-length from the front wall. The KEF R3s and LP (chair) are set in an equilateral triangle. Floor is carpeted, ceiling is 9' high. A pair of cheap 10" subwoofers (an Infinity and Polk Audio) are about midpoint along the side wall. A 50" plasma TV is on the front wall and two bookshelves are in the front corners.

Sources are computer and Oppo CD player ran through a MiniDSP with Dirac. I've used a Yamaha DSP-A1, Integra DTR 80.2, and a Crown 1502 for amplification. The measurement was made with the MMM method. Uhmmm... I like big bass and my room curve reflects that. No room correction was done above 1k.

KEF R3 measured at LP using MMM.jpg
Listening Room.jpg
 

Aerith Gainsborough

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Small update from me:

I re-measured, this time I used the UMIK w/o the foam, pointing at the ceiling and silly me did not forget to feed Dirac the calibration file (<_<).
I diligently measured all 9 positions this time. Oddly enough, the result looks worse in my control sweep at the main measurement position.

Subjectively, the new setting sounding brighter is the only difference I can make out.

Right channel, variable smoothing. Blue: Old curve 0° no calibration, yellow new curve 90° with calibration.
Right Channel no cal 0ged vs cal 90deg var.png


Left channel, variable smoothing, brown: old curve 0° no calibration, green new curve 90° with calibration.
Left Channel no cal 0ged vs cal 90deg var.png


Target curve remained the same: +6dB @ 20Hz | -2dB @ 10KHz (Dirac standard)

Any people smarter than me able to explain this? "Worse" performance because I measured over a larger area or simply a more honest display because the upward mic position picks up more ambient sound?
 

Senior NEET Engineer

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Looks like a lot of room influence below 1khz. Any recommendations to fix the dip at around 150hz without EQ or sub? Room is 21x13x11 and I sit in 7 ft triangle against the short wall.

1/6 octave smoothing

 
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tjkadar

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Looks like a lot of room influence below 1khz. Any recommendations to fix the dip at around 150hz without EQ or sub? Room is 21x13x11 and I sit in 7 ft triangle against the short wall.

1/6 octave smoothing


Others will be able to give you a more informative response, but my first thought would be to change the speaker distance from the front wall and/or the LP. This won't necessarily get rid of the dip, but move it to a different frequency. It could help. The second thought is bass trapping behind the speakers along the front wall.
 

Senior NEET Engineer

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Others will be able to give you a more informative response, but my first thought would be to change the speaker distance from the front wall and/or the LP. This won't necessarily get rid of the dip, but move it to a different frequency. It could help. The second thought is bass trapping behind the speakers along the front wall.

Why specifically the front wall?
 

DJBonoBobo

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Hipper

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A couple of years ago I wrote for myself a twenty six page paper on measuring with REW my dedicated listening room of 14' x 13' x 8' (4.2m x 3.86 x 2.4m) as I made various changes, adding a third piece of glazing, lots of room treatment, and finally some EQ. Here's a summary.

The theory I followed for improving the sound of music in my room is to:

1. Reduce Ambient Noise.
2. Position the speakers and listening chair as best I could.
3. Add room treatments particularly to control the frequency response (mostly to tame the bass but also to control reflections) and control the decay times (resonances). Both are important but I wonder if the time domain is actually more essential.
4. Carefully use an equaliser to tidy up, mostly in the bass region.
5. Use sophisticated measuring software to determine the best solutions - Room EQ Wizard (REW).

Ambient Noise - Triple Glazing

I live on a busy High Street about thirty metres from my flat, with buses, lorries and the rest. I have double glazing installed and this does muffle the sound but in my listening room I installed a third set of glass specifically to reduce this noise.

Firstly therefore, with no Soffit Traps in the room, and the third set of glass panels removed, I measured the ambient noise. I did this by using the measuring system on REW with the volume on my DAC turned off so no signal was emitted. I then replaced the glazing and measured noise again.

Here is the frequency response graph (FR) of these two measurements:

FN1N2.jpg


Red is without the glazing, green with the glazing.

You can see that, firstly, at 44Hz there is a large peak and the glazing makes no difference to that.

The addition of glazing does seem to knock the 100 - 1000Hz section down by around 6dB. Indeed the glazing makes the room sound much quieter and I hardly notice the noise except some heavy vehicles and occasional motorbike or boy racer.

Add Room Treatment

I then proceeded to add bass traps (GIK Soffit Traps) in wall-wall, and ceiling-wall corners. I measured each time I added a set but here are the results at the beginning and end.

SPL - No Treatment - Treatment.jpg


No smoothing. Clearly a large improvement in smoothness (yes, the full treatment measure - purple - is really with no smoothing!), reduction of nulls and peaks. However all is not perfect, in particular the dip centred around 50Hz has stubbornly remained.

Waterfall - No Treatment.jpg


Waterfall - Treatment.jpg


Again a remarkable improvement, particularly in the time for sound to die away. The lump at 40Hz I still assume is from traffic. Spectograms confirm this - the noise appears before the signal from REW is made.

S2.jpg


Spectogram-Treatment.jpg


Conclusions

The Soffit Traps have clearly had a major impact but they don’t complete the job. Apart from the major dip at 50Hz there are some other problems. In addition they don’t do anything for reflections off side, front and rear walls.

As it turns out, using an equaliser helped solved the dip and generally make the frequency response smoother, whilst the use of acoustic panels - GIK’s 242s and Monster panels - dealt with reflections.

EQ to Complete the Job

No EQ-EQ 9.18.jpg


For 20-200Hz I used REW to measure and then generate some filters to get a flat response. I then applied these filters manually to my Behringer DEQ2496 Parametric Equaliser (PEQ). This worked extremely well. Having only ten PEQ filters meant I couldn't solve the dip at 200Hz. I could do this with the graphic equaliser (GEQ) but I like what I hear and haven't felt the need, yet.
 
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