Room Treatment Advice

[sound_cycle]

Hi

Thanks Sanjay.

Did a somewhat more careful set of measurements ie. centred the mic. with a string. Attempted to make the before and after measurements at the same location etc. However that was a before I logged into hfv and saw your post.

Could I send you a couple of REW measurement files to take a look at and give me some pointers ?

ciao
gr

 

[sdurani]

Could I send you a couple of REW measurement files to take a look at and give me some pointers ?

I don't have REW on my current laptop so I wouldn't be able to open them. Anything particular you wanted to ask?

 

[sound_cycle]

I don't have REW on my current laptop so I wouldn't be able to open them. Anything particular you wanted to ask?

The things I missed and the errors I might have made - I am very new to this.

Was also trying to figure out how much of a difference Dirac made before shelling out the money.

Thanks

ciao
gr

 

[mpw]

The things I missed and the errors I might have made - I am very new to this.

Was also trying to figure out how much of a difference Dirac made before shelling out the money.

Thanks

ciao
gr

soundcycle,

do you trust your ears or your eyes ( when it comes to sound ) ?

The corollary question is also relevant - in matters of sight do you trust your ears ?? :lol:

that will largely answer the efficacy of the Dirac for you.

looking at your earlier posts on this subject, i thought you were happy with the outcomes and now 1 question and 1 graph can cast doubts ??

well..

regards

 

[sound_cycle]

do you trust your ears or your eyes ( when it comes to sound ) <snip>now 1 question and 1 graph can cast doubts ?

if I measure it and don't like it, it is okay. If I like it and it does not measure / graph okay, I'll just buy a mood enhancer (what a pity, TS mein OM nahi milta) instead.

The gains are definite. But subtle. Now that the trial period is over, I have to figure out if I can live without it. ATM no, I wants my pressious

ciao
gr

 

[sound_cycle]

Audiolense is off the table. My mic will not work. Acourate seems to convoluted. So kuch karna hai to Dirac.

ciao
gr

and a note to myself on measuring https://www.gearslutz.com/board/studio-building-acoustics/469574-measuring-room-acoustics.html

 

[jls001]

GR, I haven't read your whole thread but was wondering if you fitted some damping panels on the back wall behind listening position? Since the listening position seems to be as good as touching the rear wall (refer diag on post#1), reflected energy from that wall would surely interfere with the primary signal coming from the speakers, and homogenize the sound in a bad way. A dehomogenized sound allows one to hear instruments and voices as separate but harmonious events. Side wall reflections (which is probably less of a problem in your case), front wall reflections, roof and floor reflections, and of course the rear wall reflection all contribute to degenerate the sound. Of course you already know this My feeling is absorption on the rear wall would help your cause.

 

[sound_cycle]

if you fitted some damping panels on the back wall behind listening position? Since the listening position seems to be as good as touching the rear wall (refer diag on post#1), reflected energy from that wall would surely interfere with the primary signal coming from the speakers, and homogenize the sound in a bad way. <SNIP>all contribute to degenerate the sound. Of course you already know this My feeling is absorption on the rear wall would help your cause.

Hi Joshua,

I have tried to set up a reasonably reflection free zone at the sweet spot. I have the back and the front wall, the ceiling and the RHS first reflection spots "almost" covered.

I wrote tried above because in this attempt for peaceful coexisting between listening and living space, the wife's sense of aesthetic rather than calculated positioning won. I am working on changing that. The RHS has been negotiated and dropped a foot and a half, the lhs cloud remains)

My biggest problems *seem to be* a reflection within 2.5ms and another at 4 ms. These are likely to be floor and some furniture that the wife loves.

Have not used the calibrated string method but the surfaces i mentioned seem to be the ones to be blamed.

There is a spirited cocker spaniel so nothing to be done about the floor (and while quite bath matly she will not stay in one place)

Will report in a few days. Thanks

ciao
gr

 

[sound_cycle]

Hi

Have to redo the graphs, but I don't think the conclusion will change.

I had estimated the first reflection points using the mirror method and calculated them using that formula on ethan winer's real traps website. I could not find a second reflection point - it was outside the room.

Today I started by connecting one of the speakers out of phase and using the mic to find the sweet spot, using pink noise from the REW signal generator and the RTA display . At the sweet spot the two waves should cancel each other, I settled for the lowest volume I could get. Confirmed the position was equidistant using a string. For the rest of the stuff, the mic stayed there for the rest of the test.

Having done that set down to measuring the impulse response, one speaker at a time. Four long 40 - 20k sweeps per measurement. That because the *&%# upstairs is forever rolling gas cylinders or thumping the floor. A busy railway track about 300 m away too.

I started with a bare floor, then added a mattress on the floor, then some padding on fronts of two single seater thingies on the rhs, and finally plugging the six inch gap between the rockwool pads on the front wall and covering the TV. I goofed in labelling / saving the files, so no graphs to paste, but that as I said does not matter.

Regardless of the treatment, one thing jumped out. a prominent perfect reflection for the rhs speaker on all its impulse graphs. At 3.98 ms on all of them.

A little crude measuring gets me to the rhs corner on the front wall. That outside the room second reflection point exists at that corner.

Will confirm with another set of measurements tomorrow. That will lead me to the RFZ that is likely to be beneficial to Dirac. What I pity I did not figure this out before the trial ended. sigh!

So, that was the outcome of the train of thought your post flagged off. Thanks , so I need a an area rug, and I need to do something about that rhs front wall corner

ciao
gr

 

[sdurani]

Was also trying to figure out how much of a difference Dirac made before shelling out the money.

By making before/after measurements that are normalized (tallest peak is the same level), you can see whether Dirac was actually fixing the peak or merely lowering the overall level. That will help you decide whether it is worth the money.

 

[sound_cycle]

tl;dr there is a future for good audio with my rig, with a little more spend, in the present house

 

[sound_cycle]

Update:

took a deep breath.

took a final sip of my beer and

ordered Dirac Live.

ciao
gr

 

[sdurani]

Interview with the inventor of Dirac Live: https://youtu.be/2zEKoJAKFbM

 

[sound_cycle]

TFS !

a bit too late to watch entirely. Will do in a couple of days

ciao
gr

 

[sound_cycle]

Hi,

What was a painless install with the trial, kept me awake till 1 PM, where upon I hung my head in defeat and crawled into bed.

Have opened a ticket with Dirac.

The idea is that the Dirac Audio processor should be set as the default device in control panel > settings > sound > playback. But it just refuses to show up there. Curiously the Live Calibration Tool believes it is seeing the USB mic. which is not connected.

Will update

ciao
gr

 

[sound_cycle]

When in doubt, uninstall, reinstall.

Hastily did a set of measurements, created a filter.

Works as advertised and how

Per plan the last signature update for a long while is done.

and yes that entertainment made for a distracted sort of day at work.

ciao
gr

 

[sound_cycle]

An impulse. purchased.

Faster decay time. . The dirac literature says that power ratio between the direct wave and the tail is improved by 6 dB or more which gets that vastly tighter sound.

Yest, that green thing is predicted and not measured, but it has been validated by using REW and other s/w so I'll take it

ciao
gr

 

[sound_cycle]

in an ideal world there would be nothing below zero... in our world you can anyhow see much less ringing after correction.
It also would be interesting to see your average frequency response at the nine different measurement positions, may be you can post your "before" and "after" graphs? Flavio

I posted a waterfall plot upthread, however have slightly rearranged the room since.

Am travelling on work for the next couple of day, I will post a before/ after soon as i return.

Thanks Flavio

ciao
gr

 

[sidvee]

Hi Sound Cycle,

in an ideal world there would be nothing below zero... in our world you can anyhow see much less ringing after correction.
It also would be interesting to see your average frequency response at the nine different measurement positions, may be you can post your "before" and "after" graphs?

Flavio

MODERATOR NOTE:
@ Flak aka Flavio if you are connected with Dirac - please register as a commercial member here. If not these posts will be deleted. You are in violation of rule no. 16. I had issued you a warning in the past as well regarding this. Please use the right procedure to advertise your products or any other description of them.
Cheers,
Sid

 

[sound_cycle]

tl; dr - yet another long drawn post with a happy ending.

Dali says there speakers do not need any toe in. The Zensor does not have a ribbon tweeter and probably does not have the wide dispersion.

So what if I add some toe in ? I would have an ugly arrangement, but I could change the reflection pattern in my room. I might be executed by the style/ no_toe_in police and maybe the sound would become brighter, but that gain would be worth it, especially since I could then move the speakers further apart.

Now, that wider position was tried and discarded earlier because that was not good from the room boom point of view. But that was in the pre DRC days.

So I decided to start from scratch. Moved all furniture out of the room, removed the rockwool pads (nothing to be done about the ceiling cloud), peeled off and flung all the tape marks i had stuck on the floor.

Started afresh with the 1 (distance between speakers) : 1.25 distance to listening position.

Used REW to figure out the likely locations of the reflections for each speaker in turn. Used 4 full 20 - 20k tones of long duration to knock out noise.

The next task was to listen endlessly to three test tracks (vocals) to get a "singer" at about/ slightly ahead of speaker plane. Had to enlist the wife's support in that as my usual conscripted labor got bored and left early on. After a longish while got the toe in "locked in", the wife was not convinced entirely she felt that the image was not quite right, and wanted me to bring the LHS speaker forward. I had measured and re measured (with tape, string and mic.) and did not agree entirely.

Why use music and not LEDR you ask ? I am not able to figure out why Up track bends on LHS.

Now had to figure out the reflection bit all over again. And ofc the woman was right, there was a big reflection at 3.98 ms for the R speaker - from a shoe rack as it turned out, she was right after all. Cannot move that so got a temporary fix there.

Then had to create a new set of measurements for Dirac. Got a few tips from reading elsewhere on the 'net on positions to measuring, creating target curves etc. In the end used the default curves for the most part.

I am nowhere near the all reflections below -20db till 20ms, and that's not gonna happen. Regardless I think I've hit the point beyond which no further gain is going to be cheaply/ easily realized.

All that effort paid off, big. I've finally got the speakers to almost disappear. Bass, depth, soundstage, a bit of shimmer, a centre image that is palpably real, all there now.

The major learning ? nothing surprising.

Your room is your enemy unless it is carefully purpose built. Get the early reflections recognized and sorted out. This can be calculated, a mic. and tape measure make it easier to figure out/ re confirm.

BB absorbers do nothing about absorbing bass.

This stuff got me about 50% of the way.

Add room correction to that, and you get a decent listening space.

Somewhere upthread I had remarked that I would not embarass myself if the listening police were to drop by. That was conceited and pre mature. But today I think I can say "Well done pig" and settle down to listen to my music.

I have also tried to do stuff with REW plugin for fb2k, but there is no control really and I don't think it can go very far in anything but cutting out your worst nulls. I could not figure out the filter construction and then apply through convolver thing with REW.

I can also state that I was listening to pure crap and thinking that I liked it earlier.

If you are sitting on the fence about getting something done about your room, go ahead and start, it will be rewarding. If you have an untreated room, with or without a shoe rack, you can FOR SURE improve your listening experience HUGELY (excuse me the caps please).

ciao
gr