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In Reply to: RE: IVA/A21 First Impressions posted by josh358 on October 27, 2015 at 09:56:34
Having finished the Crown trial I decided to try tweeters out, and boy, did that improve the imaging! They're actually a bit too wide as they're set up now but I'm getting a great spread. I did lose some depth, I think because the woofer panels are blocking too much of the reflected backwave.Anyway, while the setup is still rough with many things to go, after doing this and fixing a phasing problem in the bass the sound had gotten to the point at which I could just kick back and listen. First, I wanted to see if the could rock out so I listened to everything from acoustical Hot Tuna to metal and boy, they were spectacular! Anyone who thinks planars don't do chest slam hasn't heard Tympanis pushing 110 dB in a small room (the midbass is really up in this room, as one would expect). And yet they retain that planar clarity. Precisely what I love about big planar dynamics.
Studio pop is always a curious Frankenstein combination, one instrument will sound preternaturally real and another will sound seriously strange, while the recordings vary all over the place, from surprisingly clean to hard panned stuff that sounds like it was recorded that through the janitor's telephone mic. But still, somehow, it all worked beautifully and I just forgot about technical setup crap for the moment and spent several hours listening to old favorites, many of which I'd heard many times in the mixing room (loud, flat, and clean, but not nearly as satisfying) and on my 1-D's (a much more interesting comparison).
Then I ended by listening to some Bach organ -- spectacular, although I'm going to have to do some work on the bass -- then some Byrd -- spectacularly realistic on the chorus -- then the Ninth Sympthony -- tried the Karajan first because it's what I grew up with and I heard him do it live from the first row of Carnegie Hall, but the recording was such overcompressed crap that I couldn't listen so I switched to a different version -- and then listened to Kubelick doing the New World Symphony, and to my delight the recording was superb.
So basically I was just hopping through music and wishing I had more time to listen. But technical status now:
- There's some very subtle noise in the background from the delam in the midrange and likely the bass drivers (I know in the midrange because I can hear it when I put my ear up to the area). I'll fix that with some Super 77 when I get back. I had a bad buzz on piano yesterday, but I fixed that by pressing the midrange diaphragm back down on the double stick tape. I assume I'm hearing some Mylar/metal noise too but with the loose wires it's hard to tell which is which. The midrange and woofer don't have the marvelous clarity of the ribbon. However, these are superbly balanced speakers and without losing detail they're a pleasure to listen to even on bad recordings with pushed-up treble or screechy violins. Finger shows the extent of the delamination, so you can see it isn't bad (a few bigger strips on the bottom):
- Imagining isn't as deep as it was tweeters in, spread ss I said is good but a bit too wide. No wraparound on the walls, which I had with my MMG's. However, depth and imaging were superb on that Kubelick recording. I am guessing that that's because the recording itself contained the right ambient cues, so I didn't have to rely on the backwave for artificial reverb.
-- Bass in this small, almost-square room is as expected very modal and rough, and the large panels overload the room meaning midbass will have to be equalized down. The balance as is works well with rock but with classical or jazz the irregularities can be some annoying. I did some quickie equalization that took care of a gigantic peak at about 65 Hz for now. Since it's elevated, this stuff can be equalized out and I'll likely get some bass trapping in there too, broadband behind the chair (since I have to sit too close to the wall) and maybe some tuned tube traps in the corners behind the speakers which are waste space anyway.
Unfortunately, bottom octave performance in this room sucks. While there's output in the 20's and 30's the -3 dB point is closer to 40 Hz, which happens to be where the lowest mode is. Satie's IV's do a lot better, they benefit from modal reinforcement in his larger room. I may be able to get some more output with positioning and by bracing the panels but I may just have to use the sub.
Edits: 11/05/15 11/05/15Follow Ups:
There are a few things you might want to try to get better wrap around for the imaging and increase depth in this placement.
First is to get a bit of distance between the tweeter and the sidewalls. perhaps by moving the mid tweet panels just ahead of the bass panels for some overlap. that bigger gap to the wall should allow for better depth and get you better realism in the lateral spread which is probably a bit caricature like in this placement.and does not image well beyond the speaker boundary.
If there is no effect on the lateral presentation, I found that when placing the tweeters too close to the sidewalls in the outie setup plenty of absorption on the sidewall is needed at the tweeter first reflection area. I used any of a number of things to get that from stacked sofa cushions to hanging fiberfill comforters to fiberglass insulation covered in cloth.
The ideal distance for the ribbon from the wall appears to be in the 32" range and to 3' or so without wall treatment...
I didn't like the bass panels in convex setup and prefer them to be concave. If you have not tried it please do. IIRC it helped with image clarity specificity and saturation. Not that dramatic a difference and it did change the bass balance some so may not necessarily be a net benefit in your room.
I tried overlapping the panels a few days ago. They can't be overlapped much because the feet interfere. Also, it didn't sound right, not sure why.
With funrniture glides all in the speakers are now substantially easier to manipulate than they were before, it really wasn't possible to position them accurately before. I tried the concave arrangement, and it did pretty much what you said -- improved the imaging. But the freq response wasn't as good. It was also kind of tweaky.
Then I decided to play a bit, I pulled the woofers way forward to get them out of the way and just put the tweeters where I wanted them. There was a huge improvement in imaging since the tweeters were at the right angle and out from the wall and the backwave was completely unencumbered. Indeed, it was pretty apectacular.
For the most part, the woofers were just attached mentally to the M-T image, it sounded as if the woofer panels weren't playing at all. But but there were a few times when I could hear that the bass image was a different width -- the panels really should cross over at 80 Hz!
I wish I'd taken a picture from the chair because it gives a better idea of how they woofers no longer block the backwave:
Since I was just experimenting with the front panel position and don't have my DSP yet so the woofers aren't in time, and I didn't focus much on bass performance. There was a suckout around the XO where they're apparently out of phase. But overall it was surprisingly good given the awkward position of the bass panels.
So this is getting closer to where I want them to be -- not only is the imaging spectacular but they won't block the projection screen in my narrow room.
After that, I tried leaving the treble panels where they are and moving the bass panels towards them so they were touching, and then apart some to leave more of a gap for the second reflection to get through. But they didn't sound as good as they had. There's still lots of experimenting to do!
When you have the woofers more than 2' closer than the MT then you should swap polarity on the woofers.. You won't be in time but you would be in phase.
And back again if they are more than 5' out.
Have you tried the woofers with the deep bass at a right angle to the sidewall and adjusting the midbass angle by ear?
The deep bass panel was roughly 3' in front of the mid panel's plane and phase on the bass was reversed. I don't remember the exact figure but I did it by placing the bass panels in front of the mid tweets where the XO suckout was worst and then reversed polarity on the bass panels. Then I started playing with their particular arrangement.
Well I know they were a bit out of phase because I could hear a bit of a suckout and just guesstimating the distance to the acoustic centers told me they were off -- we're talking what, a 4 foot wavelength at the XO point. I probably could have improved things some just by flipping tweeter phase but my objective was to see what it did to the imaging when I got the woofers out of the way. But I remembered your post about the woofers in front arrangement and had it in mind, just didn't have time to experiment with woofer position -- actually first I had them parallel to the side walls which actually worked and then tried folding the panel closer to me so it touched the wall, but that was it.
Once I have a feel for what works both by way of imaging and sight lines I can fine tune the woofers but my feeling was that it isn't going to be right until I get the DSP/biamping up and can keep things in time. Even then, it's going to be tweaky around the 250 Hz XO point if I have that much axial separation. A more modern crossover would likely improve that some, e.g., L-R, since the lobing will be symmetrical and won't have the rise. (I still haven't had time to run the numbers so I'm not sure if I can do FIR at 250 Hz. without too much latency to use my keyboard.)
All of this reminds me that I want is my M-T panels to go down to 80 Hz!
Well, you will have some flexibility with the Neo8 line - Below 200hz is dfinitely possible, but I don't see below 100 hz as realistic without baffle reinforcement for the mids a la IRS mid tweet section. I would guestimate a 1' baffle on both sides (with tweeter and mid array) might get you close to 100 hz..
I did do the woofers in parallel to the sidewalls on the long wall but got a discontinuity in the bass with a huge lump centered on 33 hz - that was when we were discussing the 1/4 wave room mode cancellation - which did not occur when you are sitting well away from the plane of the bass panel output.I EQ'ed it out but still lacked energy in the octave centered around 80-100 and it didn't change much with any reasonable degree of EQ.
I did not try it on the short wall arrangement since that would lose me the deep bass modes I like so much. That would obviously not be an issue with your squarish geometry. So that is probably something worth optimizing.
I don't think I'd want to cause diffraction and resonances by adding a baffle. Or lose too much max SPL. Even the Neo 10 would be a stretch. I think it would be more realistic to use the mid woofer panel. I'll have to experiment but that's more work because I'll have to disconnect the panels and kludge some extra feet.
When I had them parallel to the wall they were actually in front of me. So I must have been getting some dipole attenuation but in my brief listen it sounded surprisingly good. If I have some time I'll experiment with the RTA but chances are I won't be able to get to it for at least three weeks since I'll be out of town.
Wondering if I might have the Kubelik/Dvorak #9 you mention in my collection, I'd like to learn the orchestra and/or label, its catalog number? (I want to try hearing what both you and the Amazon reviewer report.)
Well, I apologize, it seems Google led me to reviews of the wrong recording! So that was the wrong review. The version I was listening to is from the DG boxed set, CD 6.
Thanks for that information. Not having the box set, I see this recorded performance (with the Berlin Philharmonic) might be available on a single CD in DG's 'The Originals' series. However having way too many satisfactory performed/recorded 'New Worlds', I won't be giving it a shot.
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