[bigshot]

I'd actually be more likely to set up a mono listening rig. My 5.1 system's DSP improves upon stereo recordings, but mono is best sounding from a single source in a large room using the room's acoustics to provide the natural space around the sound. That's what makes my acoustic phonographs sound so remarkable.

I use my Oppo because it's a swiss army knife for codecs. It's easier to just have it translate everything and send PCM to my AVR.

 

[LajostheHun]

I've found many "trusty" SPL meters off by +/- 3dB (I own a calibrator). The Radio Shack meters, for example...not as trusty as one would hope.

Yes but for the purpose of balancing speakers to one another it shouldn't matter.

 

[bigshot]

I got my KEF R100s installed yesterday and I spent the evening balancing the levels and EQ and listening to different things. The R100s had a much lower sensitivity than the Klipsch bookshelf speakers they were replacing- probably because of Klipsch's horn loaded design. I had to boost the R100s a little over 5dB to get them to the same volume level. The response in the R100s was much flatter as well. They just required a small high end rolloff.

Once I had the balances all set I started listening to my reference recordings and fine tuning the response. With movies and TV shows there was very little improvement, but with multichannel music like The Beatles: Love there were some very nice changes. My old Klipsch speakers had trouble keeping up with the mains with multichannel music at high volumes. At a certain point, they'd hit the wall. They wouldn't distort, but there wasn't any headroom left for dynamic transients. With the KEFs I heard some dynamic spikes in the music I hadn't heard before. In A Day In The Life when the sound becomes chaotic, I could sort out the various layers of sound better.

But the greatest improvement was in the definition of the sound field. With the Klipsch's I would get a clearly defined phantom center between the two rears or between the fronts and rears only when the level of the element being panned was loud enough. If the sound being placed was too low a level, it would split between the speakers. On the Love album I was now hearing tightly paired speakers even in background sounds. For instance, there was a cello bed on a song that was placed directly behind my listening position in the middle of the back wall. I could clearly pinpoint sound elements in the centers of the side walls, and even in the exact center of the room. I think a lot of this has to do with the wide dispersion of the R100s. The Klipsch speakers were more directional and that made the coverage in the rear uneven.

This was the last element of my speaker system that I needed to address. I've been refining it and upgrading things for the past 8 years or so, transitioning from a really good 2 channel system to a really good 5.1. I'm glad I left the rears for last, because the degree of improvement isn't as great as it was when I upgraded my center channel or sub. I'd say it's made maybe a 10-15% improvement. But that's pretty good- worth the money and effort.

 

[Strangelove424]

Congratulations, it sounds like a great upgrade. Everything you’re saying echoes the R100 reviews I read when I looked into their sale. How are you liking the highs of a Klipsch horn vs the highs of KEFs directed mid-woofer tweeter design? Is one more accurate or extended than the other? I remember reading that imaging is great, which you seem to be noticing as well. Thanks for all the info. Love is still one of my favorite surround albums.

 

[bigshot]

I don't really detect any real difference in frequency response or distortion, but that's probably because it's a rear channel. It doesn't really have to carry the load of imaging. They get good and loud though and the dispersion is very wide. That's important because the way my room is laid out, they have to be about 8 feet up the wall in the corners toed in. They mesh much better than the horn loaded Klipsch.

 

[Strangelove424]

Corner placement can be challenging to get the sound behind you, but ends up creating a strong center without holes. My rears are angled a bit toward the wall behind me. It creates a pretty good rear phantom center, but I'm not sure if its an ideal setup.

It's interesting what you said about the sound being around you in the middle of the room, I've had that sensation a few times before - it's odd, but very entertaining. Feels like you're in the middle of an instrument. I grew up around stereo, so L/R effects aren't anything special for me. It reminded me watching HiFiFoFun how novel stereo must have seemed at first. Surround sound is like that to me, and gives me the same "wow" feeling I bet they had back then, the sense of interaction between sound, space, and movement. But more powerful because with 5.1 it envelops you. I remember my first surround sound experience at a friend's house, and they had a Bose satellite tissue box system, but I was still floored. It was like a movie theatre. I was never captivated by big screen TVs, but the dimensionality of the sound had me hooked. It was involving, and made the experience feel more palpable than the visuals did. When I finally put together a system, it was cheaper than the overpriced Bose junk, and built for stereo music as well. Surround sound was a discovery process the entire time, I didn't even know discrete 5.1 music existed until a few months after I compiled the system and went looking for ways to really take advantage of it.

 

[bigshot]

Yesterday I spent all day listening to multichannel music and fine tuning my system. It is perfect. Sat down to watch a movie when I was done and the ending credits had helicopters flying from one corner of the room to the opposite corner. Perfect hand offs between channels and it sounded totally real. It's nice that this works as well for movies as it does for music.

 

[bigshot]

There was some interest in a Mancini SACD I have by Dutton/Vocalion... I pulled it out last night and played with it. It's a quadraphonic album, but when I play it, it shows up as 5.1. I tried boosting the LFE channel by +16 dB but it didn't help. It appears that there is a steep roll off in the bass starting at about 160Hz. I listened to a couple of other Dutton/Vocalion SACDs (Floyd Cramer, Hugo Montenegro and another Mancini) and they had the same problem, just with a slightly less steep rolloff. It sounds like the high end might be rolled off starting at 10kHz too. Worst of all, it appears that the 4 channel quad seems to have been monkeyed with. In the Mancini/Severinson disc, Mancini's piano has a fake stereo sort of phasey sound and is spread across the Left Front and Left Rear channels and there's several parts with digital reverb added at an absurdly high setting. I've never heard anything like that in a Mancini album before. The layout of the channels is weird too. The little bit left of the top end of the bass is in the rear, the piano is spread across both left channels, the trumpet is up front center, and the fills are in Right Rear. There isn't anything unique in the Front Right channel. The Cramer and Montenegro SACDs sounded much better for all of that. The only thing wrong with them is the weak bass. Unfortunately, it isn't just weak- it's nonexistent.

It seems that the label thought that quad wasn't good enough and decided to sweeten it. I have no idea what it sounded like in quad, but I have the CD and it has plenty of bass and none of the weird digital phasey/reverb sound.

 

[pinnahertz]

There have been bad recordings and bad versions of good recordings released throughout the ages. People make bad choices all the time. They don't define the quality or capability of any sort of media.

 

[bigshot]

I think it might define this particular label. I have two more of their discs on order. I'll see how they work, and if there are problems with those, I'll give up on it. This is an interesting case because these are pretty unique ways to mess up a recording. I tend to think they might actually be creative choices, not mistakes. Someone REALLY likes midrange and mushy reverb.

 

[pinnahertz]

My first guess would be an uncalibrated monitor environment was at fault.

 

[bigshot]

...or tin ears on the part of the mastering engineer. The two SACDs I just ordered are classical music. I'll be able to instantly hear monkey business in acoustic instruments.

 

[bigshot]

Tonight I found a good reason to have a multichannel system and DSPs even with mono programs. I bought the Midnight Special 6 DVD set from Discount DVD for 11 bucks. The sound was typical for the best of 70s TV... a good mix and FR, but compressed, flat, no ambience. So I started bouncing through the DSPs on my Yamaha AVR and arrived on one called Basement Club. It opened up the dynamics and gave the sound space so it wasn't cramped up against the front wall. It made a significant difference.

 

[ev13wt]

What we really need is a big enough room, a stage, 32 Genelecs on height adjustable tripods and a 32 channel recording / playback chain.

The speakers need to be repositioned for each album / track, depending on what is depicted on the album art.

Then we record stuff "as usual" but in a very dead rooms. Give it some magic.

Now we can recreate the actual stage at home, albeit smaller.

Benefits: Soundstage. Separate speaker / speakers for each instrument.

We could even let the users play with channel volumes or EQ settings. Well, maybe not. Lets give them "audiophile" EQ, like Thump, Honk, Whack, Air, body, fullness." And add some "spaciousness" in a knob. (4 channels bipole for the sides and back?)

Of course we deliver some tape they can tape on the front of their "mixer" so they know what channel is what - like a real pro! (from the good old days)



Its a tiny market, but hey. Whos in? Lets get a kickstarter project going!


p.s.: The ultimate upgrade is one of those "automatic" pianos.

 

[bigshot]

Actually, acoustic phonograph manuals gave instructions on how to do some of that. Acoustic recording was incapable of registering any sound further that 15 feet from the horn, so all the recordings were stone dead. They had a limited frequency response too, but they were quite dynamic. The instruction manual for a Victrola said to position the phonograph in the corner of a live sounding room. That way, the singer's voice would be wrapped in the natural acoustics of the room and the junction of walls, ceiling and floor would act as an extension of the horn, improving the response and directing the sound towards the listener.

The stairwell at Abby Road was the star of many recordings in the 60s too. They'd place a monitor in the stairwell and mike the echoes it produced. When they slipped it back into the mix, it became a very nice hall ambience. Of course digital delays and reverbs are much more flexible, but there's something to be said for old school. A good sounding room is important.

The Midnight Special show was recorded at NBC right next to the Tonight Show set and they used a lot of the same engineers. They were recording for little TV speakers back then, so they didn't want a lot of reverb mushing together in a single little speaker. It works well in that context, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily the best for a large home theater. I've been able to make notoriously dry Toscanini 8H recordings sound really good by running them through the Berlin Philharmonie simulation in my Yamaha AVR. There are a lot of DSPs in there that I can't find any application for, but there are a few gems that are very useful. Multichannel can even improve mono recordings.