[bigshot]

No secret sauce here! Just horse sense and applied theory tempered with practicality. My friend didn't check my response with a computer or automated system like audessey. He brought a bunch of test equipment over and ran through the bands himself, so there's no print out.

The differences I've found between movies and music are the way the sub is handled, and slight differences in levels on the center channel to make dialogue clear over the mains. I split the difference to correct that.

I've found that channel levels and EQ are easier to set by working my way up from quieter to louder volumes and parallel parking with progressively smaller changes as I go up. It also helps to balance for 5.1 first, then adjusting my stereo to 5.1 DSP to work with that. But they affect each other a bit, so I end up parallel parking there too. The hand off between the mains and sub take a little finessing. There is also a weird tiny spike of distortion in my amp that I correct with EQ too.

My listening positions are in a horseshoe shape with an open area with very little reflection off the walls at that level. There are dead zones in the room, but not where anyone is sitting, so I really don't think a second sub would do much for me.

I've tried to figure out the reflections in my room, but it's a little different than most because I have a high ceiling with a peaked roof. I think some reflections end up overhead bouncing around where they don't affect the sound below.

 

[bfreedma]

No secret sauce here! Just horse sense and applied theory tempered with practicality. My friend didn't check my response with a computer or automated system like audessey. He brought a bunch of test equipment over and ran through the bands himself, so there's no print out.

The differences I've found between movies and music are the way the sub is handled, and slight differences in levels on the center channel to make dialogue clear over the mains. I split the difference to correct that.

I've found that channel levels and EQ are easier to set by working my way up from quieter to louder volumes and parallel parking with progressively smaller changes as I go up. It also helps to balance for 5.1 first, then adjusting my stereo to 5.1 DSP to work with that. But they affect each other a bit, so I end up parallel parking there too. The hand off between the mains and sub take a little finessing. There is also a weird tiny spike of distortion in my amp that I correct with EQ too.

My listening positions are in a horseshoe shape with an open area with very little reflection off the walls at that level. There are dead zones in the room, but not where anyone is sitting, so I really don't think a second sub would do much for me.

I've tried to figure out the reflections in my room, but it's a little different than most because I have a high ceiling with a peaked roof. I think some reflections end up overhead bouncing around where they don't affect the sound below.

Most measurement systems store the data points for later reference - I typically save them so I can compare the impact of changes but given this was a one time check of your frequency response, but I can understand not saving them for a one time check. Do you know if he tested impulse response and decay?

The differences you describe for movies and music really aren't part of EQing. it's simply raising the channel level to increase voice audibility. It's a pretty standard change made by a lot of people with 5.x systems. I typically raise my center 3db for movies. Since this can easily be done via the AVR menu, I don't see the value in splitting the difference and leaving them suboptimal for both situations.

Most transitions between the mains and the subs need a slight adjustment in phase to avoid cancellation at/near the crossover. For many, the simplest and most effective way to solve this is by adjusting the distance setting of the sub in the AVR's EQ. This can be achieved with little effort as long as you have some basic tools like REW (or an OmniMic if you want something that requires less knowledge to operate) to nail the integration.

I'm not a fan of DSP surround simulations so don't personally worry about addressing stereo to 5.1. On the other hand, I enjoy 5.1 audio immensely and spend significant time EQing all channels. I've never experienced a room that doesn't benefit from two or more subwoofers - not saying yours doesn't, but would have to see measurements vetting that.

Sorry about the choppy post - working mobile.

 

[pinnahertz]

If you have this SACD, can you show me a graph of just the LFE channel? When I play it with bass management turned on, the subwoofer just puts out a tiny low level signal and the overall sound of the recording is thin. I have a CD of the same album and it sounds fine. I have the other Mancini Dutton/Vocalion SACD and it sounds fine to me.

I don't have the SACD. You could do this for yourself.

 

[pinnahertz]

1. My original question had to do with the difference in sound between a horn loaded speaker and a wide dispersion pattern (an extreme example would be a dipole). 2. There is definitely an aspect to directionality of sound that allows you to easily pick a directional sound out from among widely dispersed sound. Directional sound has some sort of presence... perhaps it's easier to place by moving your head.

The question is incomplete, and therefore there is no one answer. Dispersion is not a simple figure at one frequency, but changes typically narrowing with higher frequency. The compose of frequency and dispersion angle creates what we call off-axis response.
2. The quality you refer to is due to the interaction of speakers within reflective spaces. Reflections from walls, ceilings and floors change how tightly a speaker can be localized. Tighter control may splash less of other surfaces, and more tendency to localize the source. That doesn't necessarily mean a horn speaker is better. Horns all have issues too. If you treated the reflective space the wider dispersion speakers could localize just as well.

A dipole is not an extreme example of wide dispersion by definition. It's has a very pronounced null at 90 degrees, and may or may not have smooth off axis response. You can make a dipole out of horn drivers. Probably just take "dipole" out of the discussion of dispersion, it has an entirely different purpose, valid for home theater, but it is a special case.

 

[bigshot]

Levels and EQ between channels are related. At least I think of them that way. I want to find a single setting that strikes a happy medium and I need to respect the design of my room when it comes to panelling. I don't want to keep changing settings depending on what I'm listening to or hanging fabric over beautiful wood walls. These are givens that I have to work within. If you have a suggestion how to better work within these constraints, feel free to make it. And I don't know about other DSPs, but Yamaha's stereo to 7.1 DSM is the best thing that ever happened to stereo music. It massively improves the sound of CDs and other 2 channel formats. Yamaha is head and shoulders ahead of other brands when it comes to DSPs.

I'm not sure exactly what my friend measured in my system. He does sound for a living and brought over a lot of test equipment. I'm not sure what he measured. All I asked him to do is check my settings. I was happy with how it sounded at that point. I asked him to make suggestions on how to improve it if that was possible. How would you adjust impulse response or delay in an AVR? I'm guessing that would be the distance of the speaker from the listening position. I measured that and entered it accurately. Should I have entered a farther or shorter distance?

I thought I said bipole, not dipole. I apologize if it got posted incorrectly.

 

[bigshot]

I don't have the SACD. You could do this for yourself.

I'm afraid I don't have a way to get SACDs into my Mac. I have the CD and that sounds fine. The problem is the multichannel SACD, Perhaps that chart you posted is the CD, not the SACD.

 

[bfreedma]

Levels and EQ between channels are related. I think of them that way. I want to find a single setting that strikes a happy medium and I need to respect the design of my room when it comes to panelling. I don't want to keep changing stuff depending on what I'm listening to or hanging fabric over beautiful wood walls. And I don't know about other DSPs, but Yamaha's stereo to 7.1 DSM is the best thing that ever happened to stereo music. It massively improves the sound of CDs and other 2 channel formats. Yamaha is head and shoulders ahead of other brands when it comes to DSPs. These are givens that I have to work within. If you have a suggestion how to better work within these constraints, feel free to make it.

I'm not sure exactly what my friend measured in my system. He does sound for a living and brought over a lot of test equipment. I'm not sure what he measured. All I asked him to do is check my settings. I was happy with how it sounded at that point. I asked him to make suggestions on how to improve it if that was possible.

I thought I said bipole, not dipole. I apologize if it got posted incorrectly.

I don't find hitting the channel level button and a couple others to change the center by 3db enough of an imposition to live with a compromised tuning but to each his own. Many universal remotes can utilize a macro to make the entire process a single button press. Personally never found a stereo to multichannel DSP that sounded consistently appropriate in how it distributed native stereo across calculated channels including Yamaha. If it works for you, great, but for me the gap between native multichannel and DSP simulation is too significant to enjoy DSP generated MCH. There's enough MCH music available that I'd rather just stick to those recordings for surround.

As for suggestions, acquire a measurement setup and get objective data - Bill Waslo's Omnimic system can get you up and running in a few minutes. Even if you go for Preference rather than Reference, you'll know exactly where you stand with FR, decay, and impulse response.

And of course, add at least one more sub

I found these to be excellent sources for theory and practical application:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0240520092/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/Master-Handbook-Acoustics-Sixth-Everest/dp/0071841040/ref=dp_ob_title_bk

 

[ev13wt]

Levels and EQ between channels are related. At least I think of them that way. I want to find a single setting that strikes a happy medium and I need to respect the design of my room when it comes to panelling. I don't want to keep changing settings depending on what I'm listening to or hanging fabric over beautiful wood walls. These are givens that I have to work within. If you have a suggestion how to better work within these constraints, feel free to make it. And I don't know about other DSPs, but Yamaha's stereo to 7.1 DSM is the best thing that ever happened to stereo music. It massively improves the sound of CDs and other 2 channel formats. Yamaha is head and shoulders ahead of other brands when it comes to DSPs.

I'm not sure exactly what my friend measured in my system. He does sound for a living and brought over a lot of test equipment. I'm not sure what he measured. All I asked him to do is check my settings. I was happy with how it sounded at that point. I asked him to make suggestions on how to improve it if that was possible. How would you adjust impulse response or delay in an AVR? I'm guessing that would be the distance of the speaker from the listening position. I measured that and entered it accurately. Should I have entered a farther or shorter distance?

I thought I said bipole, not dipole. I apologize if it got posted incorrectly.

I presume you are talking about the rooms response? Speaker impulse response is a different animal, I'd need to study the effects of crossovers (phase) and many other factor to understand "timing" in that context.

Clap your hand in your room. Clap it in the kitchen. In the bathroom. Clap it outside. Clap in an empty church.

This is the impulse. It has a duration, a frequency (or more than one if it it isn't a sine wave clap) The response is your rooms way of reacting to it. How long does what part the sound stay in the room being bounced around? How fast does it decay? What frequencies bounce back from where, how strong are they, do they interfere with other bouncing around waves that are still in the room from the last sound event?

All in all, the room responds to input levels, the lower you listen the less the room interferes.


You should look into open baffle speakers if you are loving the stereo to 7.1 sound!

 

[pinnahertz]

I'm afraid I don't have a way to get SACDs into my Mac. I have the CD and that sounds fine. The problem is the multichannel SACD, Perhaps that chart you posted is the CD, not the SACD.

Since I just said I don't have the SACD, then perhaps that char I posed is the CD.

 

[pinnahertz]

I thought I said bipole, not dipole. I apologize if it got posted incorrectly.

Yes, a bipole and dipole are quite different, but the same thing applies. A bipole is a special case speaker, and the specific dispersion is frequency dependant. It is possible to build a bipole with poor HF dispersion. If fact, it's done all the time.

A dipole surround is positioned so the LP is in the null. Since there's no null in a bipole, if it is used the same way the LP is 90 degrees off axis, where dispersion takes the biggest hit. It only complicates your attempt at analysis.

You can't necessarily assume a multi-driver design improves dispersion, or has any impact on it, without more information.

 

[bigshot]

Clap your hand in your room. Clap it in the kitchen. In the bathroom. Clap it outside. Clap in an empty church. This is the impulse.

I actually did that with the home theater tech when I moved in and there was no furniture in the room yet. There was almost no echo. The pine walls don't seem to reflect sound a lot. The rooms with drywall had a lot more echo. With furniture and a rug on the floor, it's a very good sounding room.

My understanding is that bipole speakers are often used in theaters on the sides to fill in non-directional sound to extend the sound field. The point in mentioning bipole speakers as opposed to horn loaded speakers is that directional sound creates a quite different impression on the listener than diffuse sound. It's more than just horn resonances. It's like the difference between a spotlight and diffused lighting. When we turn our head, we can sense the directionality, the same way we see sharp shadows caused by a spotlight. I guess I would describe the difference as "presence".

When I read about speakers, it seems the goal is an even dispersed coverage of the soundstage with all the speakers matching. But with a multiple speaker / multiple channel system, every speaker in the system doesn't have to have the same sort of sound dispersion pattern. That's an interesting thing to experiment with. I've tried to create two soundstages on top of each other... one dispersed for even coverage, and one directional to strengthen the stereo separation at the far right and left, and dialogue/vocal channel in the middle. I'm interested to hear if any other systems have interesting theories about contrasting directional and diffuse sound. (Open baffle speakers are definitely interesting to me.)

 

[ev13wt]

Correct. Its what BOSE did / does. People love that "room filling" sound.

You need to decide what you want - to you want to sit in the sweet spot and enjoy what the sound engineers did? Enjoy "stereo".
Do you want to be able to move around and "hear everything balanced", look into other technology.

I like your attempt at "filling out the room rear with sound". It probably sounds great - for movies especially. Next step would be miniDSP to get the "timing" of the speakers corrected to the listening positions. (Very tiny effect but fun stuff to do) In essence, sound travel at well, the speed of sound. So if one speaker is "too close" in reality, you need to make it appear further away by delaying it. You can "badaid" this with volume differences a bit, but its not "correct".

For instance: You couch is very very close to the rear speakers, but the tv and mains are 20 feet away. It will sound "strange", for the lack of a better word.

 

[ev13wt]

It really depends on the listeners. Its harder to make a concert hall sound great from every "seating" position, using "a wall of speakers" than it is to dial in a single seating position. The understanding of why a certain tech (sound dispersion) is better for a certain application stems from experience "out in the field" (Or venue)

Its basically impossible to make a stadium sound "good", no matter the speakers used. Someone needs to invent speakers that beam a certain depth and then suddenly drop away 70dB.

 

[bigshot]

My sound tech is actually working on speakers like that for big rock shows. He's creating modular horns to contain bass in a beam, rather than have it spill all over.

Would the distance settings in my AVR do the same thing as the DSP you mention? I entered the correct distances, but I don't know enough about it to fudge numbers to get a different effect

 

[bfreedma]

My sound tech is actually working on speakers like that for big rock shows. He's creating modular horns to contain bass in a beam, rather than have it spill all over.

Would the distance settings in my AVR do the same thing as the DSP you mention? I entered the correct distances, but I don't know enough about it to fudge numbers to get a different effect

I don't envy the engineers who have to make stadium systems that are even acceptably decent sounding. Purpose built rooms are hard enough.

You mentioned (I think) having a Yamaha receiver. Did you run YPAO? It's usually reasonably accurate in setting the speaker distances.