Sound engineer's monitoring and HiFi + HT system with active Yamaha NS-1000x, multi-subs and FIR QSys processor in a particular and treated room

[Igor Kirkwood]

Yes gnarly the importance of the silence of the listening room is as important as that of the "Studio" recording.
7 days ago my recording of Medieval Music was released on the MIRARE label "the Gradual of Eleanor of Brittany" recorded at the Abbaye Royale de Fontevraud, in France.
This recording requires both a "lead" silence when recording as a lead silence when listening (residual noise 15.5 dB in my Studio)
The 2 NEUMANN TLM 50 microphones on this recording were located 8 meters from the singers, which is a colossal distance for omnidirectional microphones.
In order not to hear any background noise, a SONOSAX very low background noise mixer was used + the 2 microphones whose internal silence is 15 dB and the high output level of 20 millivolts per Pascal.
After the balance carried out with STAX 202 headphones, the final check was carried out on my Yamaha NS 1000x-based system, with filtering and corrections on the QSC 110 f.
Even with a listening level "realistic" no background noise is audible in these difficult conditions

 

[gene_stl]

The Yamaha Be tweeter is certainly the weak point of NS 1000x.
Original crossover of this tweeter is 6000 Hz which is too high to keep a coherent directivity.
The Focal beryllium tweeter is much better and can be crossed at 1800 Hz with the QSC FIR processor using a high slope filter at 80 dB by octave.
Note the very light correction comparing response without correction and response with FIR linear phase correction.

To insert a FOCAL Beryllium tweeter on a Yamaha NS 1000x loudspeaker, you must design a special base.

View attachment 259332

Did you ever look at the NS 500 tweeter? It also crosses at 1.8 kHz. It looks very similar to the NS 1000 tweeter but has a much larger magnet, thicker and larger in diameter. The deck plate is also larger but the dome, phase ring, and surround appear identical or very similar. Part of the Yamaha tweeter "weak point" is its diameter of 33 mm as opposed to the Focal 20 mm. The Yamaha phase ring reduces the effective diameter.

As of this date Focal Be tweeters are offered at $2,000 USD per pair.

I am in the process of designing and building a "timbrally similar center channel" to promote my system from 2 channel stereo to multichannel (7.x). I still use the mighty Pioneer Elite D23 so am not able to time things to the bananosecond. The surround left and right will probably also be driven as quad amped, as will the center channel. I have a second D23 and a single channel four way crossover. I will probably replace the 12 inch Yamaha woofer with either an eight inch or ten inch more powerful woofer from EAW . The lower frequencies will be handed off to what some might call a sub.

If I ever promote my system to Atmos I will probably utilize NS 500 for the ceiling speakers if I can locate four or five of them.
There is an SB Satori Be driver offered at $406.50 plus schipping. It is 29 mm diameter.

 

[Igor Kirkwood]

You are 100% right gene_stl .
The Yamaha NS 500 tweeter cut at 1.8 kHz will aurally give better treble than the original Yamaha NS 1000 tweeter cut at 6000 Hz! especially since the midrange of the original Yamaha NS 1000x (and the NS 1000M) unfortunately has! a big peak of distortion in harmonic 2 towards 2 kHz.
With the FOCAL Be tweeter cut in brick wall FIR at 1.8 Khz via the QSC 110f, we optimize, with Jean-Luc Ohl, both the treble in directivity and we also avoid the distortion peak around 2 kHz.

 

[dualazmak]

7 days ago my recording of Medieval Music was released on the MIRARE label "the Gradual of Eleanor of Brittany" recorded at the Abbaye Royale de Fontevraud, in France.

Oh, very nice to know you recorded for MIRARE label!
I have just two of stunning MIRARE CDs of pianist Iddo Bar-Shaï as I posted/shared here today.

 

[Igor Kirkwood]

For almost 50 years Yamaha has continuously improved its famous 3.5 inch Beryllium midrange.
Here is attached the performance of this medium in 1982 with the Yamaha NS 2000. You will notice that the performance of this medium is between that of the medium of the NS 1000 and that of the NS 1000x.
But in 1987 Yamaha innovated the technology of its Be medium, as for the Be Focal tweeter... Much later, the patented Beryllium vapor technology was abandoned in favor of Beryllium "cut in the mass".
Note that the 33 cm Yamaha woofer of the NS 2000 and NS 10000 gives significantly less distortion.
The solution that seems elegant to me is FIR filtering (with for example QSC 110 f) quite high (85 Hz) and a cut of the Be medium at 390 Hz in order to avoid the famous "distortion peak" towards 2, 5kHz.

But around the year 2000 there was an even more revolutionary Yamaha speaker with an even more elaborate Be medium. This loudspeaker with 4-way active crossover and 4 x 100 Watt class A amplifiers.

But I don't know the distortion performance of this ultimate Yamaha speaker with Be medium.
If an ASR forum member knows of the existence of measures, please post them here.

YAMAHA NS-2000 (1982)

YAMAHA NS-10000 (1987)

 

[dualazmak]

But around the year 2000 there was an even more revolutionary Yamaha speaker with an even more elaborate Be medium. This loudspeaker with 4-way active crossover and 4 x 100 Watt class A amplifiers.

Do you mean Yamaha's ultimate active speaker GF1?
I could also find this link;
http://knisi2001.web.fc2.com/gf1.html

So far I could not find the details of measurements on GF1...

 

[dualazmak]

Just for our reference,,,

As I shared here on my project thread, you would be interested in this 8-page web article on Yamaha speakers especially focusing on NS-5000, NS-1000M, NS-1000 (I have been using in my project thread), NS-2000, NS-1000X and the centenary model NSX-10000. This article was written in December 2016 just after the launch of NS-5000.

Based on my I personal experience of attending Yamaha's promotion event of NS-5000 (see here), I fully agree with the writer of the article for rather disappointments on NS-5000.

I hope your web browser would properly translate the nice article written in Japanese into English.

BTW, I assume many of you/us are not familiar with the Yamaha's centenary model NSX-10000.

 

[dualazmak]

Even though quite overlapping with your sharing, let me share my similar summary diagrams;

 

[Keith_W]

While I was googling for the GF-1, I came across a pair for sale here. Yours for 5 million JPY, or USD$38,000.

 

[Igor Kirkwood]

Great job dualazmak ! ! !

All Yamaha measurements with Beryllium midrange on the same page!

For Keith_W, I would have bought 2 GF1s in order to extract the ultimate Beryllium loudspeaker from Yamaha. Alas not the average!
And cutting up a pair of GF1s in this way would seem iconoclastic to me.

 

[dualazmak]

Hello Igor,

I believe that both of your active setup on this thread and my active 5-way intensive project are successfully simulating the design and concept of GF1 using multiple NS-1000x and NS-1000+YST-SW1000+T925A respectively, utilizing suitable/better multiple modern amplifiers.

I too might have bought GF1s at that time only if possible, if rich enough, if I would have dedicated spacial audio room...

 

[Igor Kirkwood]

For the distortion of the Yamaha 3.5 inch Beryllium midrange, I am particularly interested in the distortion performance between 390 Hz and 1800 Hz which are the cutoff frequencies of my installation.

Which would give, approximately, in distortion (H2 & H3) , with an output level of 90 dB:
-For the Yamaha NS-1000 medium Be -60 dB
-For the Yamaha NS-2000 medium Be -65 dB
-For the Yamaha NS-1000x medium Be -70 dB
-For the Yamaha NSX-10000 medium Be -80 dB
-For the Yamaha active 4 ways GF1 medium Be ?
Provided that all the measurements have been taken under the same conditions, which seems probable, since these are measurements given by the manufacturer.

One can note the progress, over the years, in terms of distortion of the Yam Be mediums.
In order to improve distortion in the bass, we note that the best results are with a 35 cm woofer (the NS-2000 and the NSX-10000).
But the advent of subs improves distortion in the bass, especially if it is cut high enough (85 dB for my installation adjusted by Jean-Luc Ohl)
As far as tweeter distortion is concerned, progress is less.

The use of linear-phase, high-cutoff (80 dB per octave) FIR filtering for the loudspeakers further reduces distortion.

You got it....I'm not really a friend of speaker distortion !

 

[dualazmak]

According to Yamaha's official description of "History of Yamaha Speaker", they adopted dedicated "forged" pure Beryllium, instead of vacuum deposited ones so far intensively developed, in the ultimate fully active GF1. They wrote (English translation by myself);

In GF1, "The tweeter and midrange are, of course, made of pure Beryllium, but instead of forming by vacuum deposition so far intensively/successfully developed, a forged Beryllium dome has been developed and adopted exclusively for this machine, GF1."
Where they continued as follows;
The two large and small woofers are also Kevlar cones and forged Beryllium caps exclusively for this unit, and the voice coil diameter is small for the magnets, and dendritic crystalline alnico is used to lighten the movement of the vibration system (the tweeter/midrange magnets are also dendritic crystalline alnico). In addition, the diaphragms of all units are gold-deposited to damp the Beryllium's slight squeal and unify the tone of all units. As if it were a Yamaha's crowned ultimate finishing touch, the build was thorough, and if there was one thing left unfinished, it would be that the woofer cone could not be made of forged pure Beryllium.

By knowing these, I am a little bit afraid of the exclusive forged (not vapor deposited) and gold-deposited pure Beryllium diaphragms of GF1's tweeter and midrange might have had slightly larger mass compared to the vapor deposited ones in NSX-10000, NS-2000, NS-1000x, NS-1000, NS-1000M.

With the GF-1, the story of pure beryllium development that had continued since the NS-1000M came to an end, and Yamaha's speaker manufacturing began a new era centered on home theaters.
That was really a sad and disappointing turning point at least for myself, and also to you Igor I assume.

In any way, I too really would like to know the measured distortion data in GF1 given by Yamaha itself...

 

[Igor Kirkwood]

You're right dualazmak
, that's why I chose the Be tweeter, that of FOCAL in forged Beryllium.
The concave shape of this one + its 20,000 Gauss magnet probably explain its "average" performance of 94 dB per octave.

But beyond the careful choice of loudspeakers for true High Fidelity; we must not forget that most of the quality of a Hi-Fi system is due to the acoustic quality of the room.

When I look at the photo of amirn's setup, I see excellent Revel ultima 2 living room speakers housed in the corner; these can only produce excessive bass.
Of course the Kippel will give the exact response curve in the bass .... but measured as in a deaf room, where it would not be good to sleep or listen to music.
The defense of Floyd Toole and amirn is the famous blind listening carried out in Harman's "living room" and which gives the best result for the Revel Ultima 2 Salon.
But don't forget that the acoustically treated "living room" of Haman measures about 100 square meters with high ceilings, the speakers in competition being kept away from the walls.
Nothing to do with a room where you glue the Revel Ultima 2 in the corner.

My deep conviction as a sound engineer is that to the necessary measure in an anechoic chamber or in Kippel, this measure must be supplemented by a measure in one's own living room.

In addition, a contrario argument, I know of a large living room, acoustically treated in France where the owner, (let's call the owner of this room "S" ) having placed Revel Ultima 2 Salon "in a corner", obtained a somewhat bloated bass.

 

[dualazmak]

But beyond the careful choice of loudspeakers for true High Fidelity; we must not forget that most of the quality of a Hi-Fi system is due to the acoustic quality of the room.

Yes, I fully agree with you, and I too have been also very much carefully designing and tuning my room acoustic environments; I know yours are of course much more advanced sophysticated and well designed including the very nice high ceiling, though.

In this respect, my post here on my project thread would be of interest and reference for you and all of our ASR friends periodically visiting this wonderful thread;
- Not only the precision (0.1 msec level) time alignment over all the SP drivers but also SP facing directions and sound-deadening space behind the SPs plus behind our listening position would be critically important for effective (perfect?) disappearance of speakers: #687

Our home audio listening acoustic environments never to be "perfect", it would be always, more or less, our results of "compromisation" aiming towards our audio/acoustic preferences which greatly vary one to one, gerne to gerne, etc., etc., as I wrote here. "I like the listening feeling as if I am sitting on the best S-class center seat in Concertgebouw Amsterdam" when I listen to full orchestral music, for example.

I assume you may agree with me that our stereo audio listening at home would not be enjoyable if our listening room is completely anechoic.

 

[Igor Kirkwood]

Of course dualasmak the time alignment of the loudspeakers also has a great influence on the sound quality.
Jean-Luc Ohl Measurement Engineer could tell us more.

With regard to the excellent response curve obtained by S with a very well acoustically treated listening room but without equalization; except for this bulge in the bass due to the position of the Revel Ultima 2 living room in the corners.

Under the same measurement conditions, in 1/6th octave (and 1/20 th octave) and also without equalization, but with the Yamaha NS-1000x boosted by the FIR filtering of Jean-Luc Ohl, our Measurement Engineer and without equalization, nor without any sub, the response curve turns out to be straighter in the bass, with a bump of only 6 dB, compared to the bass of the Revel Ultima 2 Salon "at the corner" 15 dB.
No doubt the overhead projector system hardly avoids this defect, unless you have a very large room.

In order to be fair by comparing the uncorrected response curves and without subs of the 2 rooms, it is necessary to note for S a listening distance, and a measurement of 3.5 meters for a volume of 67 cubic meters and a height of 2.5 meter ceiling; and for my studio the
In order to be fair by comparing the uncorrected response curves and without subs of the 2 rooms, it is necessary to note for S a listening distance, and a measurement of 3.5 meters for a volume of 67 cubic meters and a height of 2.5 meter ceiling; and for my studio the listening distance is 2.5 meters for a volume of 100 cubic meters, for a ceiling height of 3m to 5.3 m. In both cases, the measurements are taken at the listener's position using Jean-Luc Ohl's method: MMM = Moving Microphone Measurement. For S I don't know exactly except that it uses a "CLIO".
It goes without saying that a measurement at 2.5 m will necessarily be more precise than a measurement at 3.5 m, and this due to the lesser reverberation of the room.
distance is 2.5 meters for a volume of 100 cubic meters, for a ceiling height of 2.6 m to 5.3 m. In both cases, the measurements are taken at the listener's position using Jean-Luc Ohl's method: MMM = Moving Microphone Measurement. For S I don't know exactly except that it uses a "CLIO".
It goes without saying that a measurement at 2.5 m will necessarily be more precise than a measurement at 3.5 m, and this due to the lesser reverberation of the room.

 

[MickeyBoy]

I am Igor Kirkwood, a French sound engineer, recording classical music with minimalistic techniques, natural acoustics, high quality microphones (mostly Neumann TLM 50), no DSP process in recording and mixing. I have also worked for the french hifi magazine DIAPASON, mainly reviewing loudspeakers.
A 10 years strong partnership with Jean-Luc Ohl for technical setup, programming and measurements, helped me to install an uncommon high-end monitoring system.

Some of my recordings

* Arvo Part, Deer's Cry, ECM records

* Music of "Ridicule", a movie of Patrice Leconte on DECCA label, recorded in 5.1 with a DECCA tree.

*The well known CHRISTUS REX soloist Herve Lamy, Jade/Universal

*Bach’ s integral DDD of the organist André Isoir, edited by CALLIOPE, re-edited by LA DOLCE VOLTA

*Bartok, Music for piano strings percussion and celesta, with the Saint Petersburg Orchestra, CALLIOPE

Audio system

For my work (editing and mastering) but also for my pleasure, I need a very high quality audio system : neutral, powerful and versatile.
Jean-Luc Ohl, a talented engineer (from company 44.1) did the setup, QSC programming and all measurements analysis.

The listening room is about 6m x 5m x 4m (120 cubic meters), high ceilings (3 m to 5.4 m), with few parallel walls, well treated with 2 to 10 cm rockwool on most walls (total of 4 cubic meters absorbing material). Measured reverberation time RT60 is 0.2s at 500 Hz and because the room is located in a very quiet place with no street nearby, its residual noise is low, 15.5 dB measured with NTI XL2 and class 1 microphone..

Audio system details

• 2 front active Yamaha NS 1000x with tweeters replaced by FOCAL Beryllium
• 2 surround passive Yamaha NS 1000x
• Central soundbar with 5 coaxial Kef Q900, center loudspeaker for treble and mid, near left and right for center bass (85 to 300 Hz), far left and right are unused for the time being
• Multi-subs with 4 active subwoofers SVS PC2000 cylindrical 350 Watts
• QSC QSys Core 110f processor, 8 inputs and 16 outputs configured for routing, FIR crossovers, 8192 taps FIR EQ and parametric EQ
• total of 14 channels of class-D amplifiers from Rotel, Crown and Hypex
• UHD players Sony 700 and Panasonic UB 9000
• TV screen: LG OLED 8k 88 inches

Schematics

1/ In-room MMM measurement without subs and without equalization, measured thanks to loudspeakers.audio method, score=7.3

2/ Same MMM measurement with multi-subs and with FIR equalization score=8.8

After this quick presentation, I’ll add technical details soon and explain some choices.

M. Kirkwood, I see that you are responsible for most of the CDs of Isoir's complete Bach. The CDs show recording dates from 1975 through 1991, a rather long time ago. I wonder if you would share your thoughts about the most successful recordings, those that more faithfully convey the acoustic space and the organ in the different recording venues. Interesting too would be your thoughts about the collaboration of the organist in the recordings.

 

[dasdoing]

is there any spotify playlist for stuff that you recorded at spaces like that?

 

[Igor Kirkwood]

In order, MickeyBoy, to illustrate your requests, go through two major works of Jean-Sébastien Bach, the Art of the Fugue and the Passacaille to try to answer you.

Bach's Art of Fugue was recorded on André Isoir's favorite organ: The Grenzing of Saint Cyprien en Périgord.
During the first recordings at Saint Cyprien, the organ had never been recorded. With a pole 17 meters (max) high, mounted on wheels and very heavily weighted, I was able to explore an almost infinite number of positions... without having to disassemble the pole each time.
Moreover, André Isoir, like me, preferred organ sound recordings with 2 microphones rather than with several microphones.
L'Art de la Fugue released by Calliope in 1982 has recently been reissued by the firm La dolce volta.
Insofar as I recorded about forty discs with André Isoir the consensus for the sound image obtained was the rule.

Weingarten's immense organ suited him ideally for Bach's grandiose Passacaglia.
But because of an organ set located very high in the vault, it was necessary to use a 2nd couple of microphone, so that this one is not drowned.
In my personal opinion Weingarten is the most beautiful organ in the world.

 

[MickeyBoy]

In order, MickeyBoy, to illustrate your requests, go through two major works of Jean-Sébastien Bach, the Art of the Fugue and the Passacaille to try to answer you.

View attachment 294430

Bach's Art of Fugue was recorded on André Isoir's favorite organ: The Grenzing of Saint Cyprien en Périgord.
During the first recordings at Saint Cyprien, the organ had never been recorded. With a pole 17 meters (max) high, mounted on wheels and very heavily weighted, I was able to explore an almost infinite number of positions... without having to disassemble the pole each time.
Moreover, André Isoir, like me, preferred organ sound recordings with 2 microphones rather than with several microphones.
L'Art de la Fugue released by Calliope in 1982 has recently been reissued by the firm La dolce volta.
Insofar as I recorded about forty discs with André Isoir the consensus for the sound image obtained was the rule.

View attachment 294432



Weingarten's immense organ suited him ideally for Bach's grandiose Passacaglia.
But because of an organ set located very high in the vault, it was necessary to use a 2nd couple of microphone, so that this one is not drowned.
In my personal opinion Weingarten is the most beautiful organ in the world.

View attachment 294433

Mille mercis, M. Kirkwood. A mic boom up to 17m high is really necessary where you recorded. I assume you used two omnis. Even more interesting is the active participation of the organist. Since the organ loft is the worst place to enjoy good sound quality, M Isoir was able to hear how his registrations and stops actually sounded. And on evidence of your recordings (I have the dolce volta set of Bach,) his choices were splendid. Also interesting to me was the presence of gentle beating on some of the pieces on the disk above. The Gabler organ at Weingarten does have a tremolo stop, but the slow beating here and in a few other pieces suggests mean-tone temperament. One of the virtues of mean-tone temperament is this beating, which adds a vibrato-like or vocal quality. Is that the case here or just an artifact of my deteriorated hearing?

L'art de la fugue is missing from the Dolce Volta set, and not readily available, even though there are three versions: Calliope, les Indispensables de Diapason, and La dolce Volta. I need to procure a copy.

And a propos of your ECM disk, The deer cries (Psalm 42: Wie der Hirsch schreit, Mon ame a soif de Dieu,) a complete success. The presence of the voices and instruments is brilliantly captured. That the composer was present at the recording session makes this disk also indispensable.

Any more of your recordings you wish to recommend?

An observation: I grew up in Kirkwood, Missouri, a tiny suburb to the west of Saint Louis, E.-U.