[ecwl]

I agree with Jawed on the speaker positioning. Sometimes, this "vertically wide" soundstage which I suspect means too much depth? Is actually the instruments sounding thin because the speakers are spaced too far apart or the speakers are not toed-in enough. If the bass sounds pretty good already, instead of moving your speakers, you may just want to toe them in slightly more. A few degrees maybe enough.

The bigger issue I think it's just one of personal preference. I think the sound you described you liked from tube amplifiers + Metrum Pavane is partly coming from 2nd and 3rd harmonic distortions. It can create an artificially warmer sound where the instruments artificially feel more 3-dimensional but you lose details in the sound. You like what you like so pairing tube amplifiers with DAVE instead of Vitus with DAVE can probably solve the problem. Moreover, I have seen and heard systems with tubes and R2R DACs where because the sound is so much artificially warmer that they purposefully set the speakers further apart to thin out the effects.

 

[thunder 99]

Positioning actually has made a LOT of difference!!! Absolutely stunned, recordings sound a lot more natural in terms of their placement etc. Thanks!

 

[thunder 99]

That was very helpful Jawed / ECWL. Yup to my ears warmer (without being darker/loss of detail) = more engaging, and my headphone preference is LCD4s for that reason too.
Look the positioning has made so much of a difference that I don't even think I need any pre-amp now - this is unbelievable - Sound is exactly where I want to be. I ended up moving the speakers closer to the wall as well as toed them in a bit (not much). Instruments don't sound thin at all and the texture of individual instruments is immediately obvious (was lacking previously) make them sound deeper than what my recollection of the piece was.

I guess the 2nd question I now have is - Is their anyway to limit the dynamic swing, its a small room 3 x 3m and the highs say on the LOTR OST is very high (but cymbals are not harsh so system is again where I would like it to be). Usually this would be a good thing but because of this I have to turn the volume down and thus loose out where 80% of the soundtrack lies & I guess room dynamics now come into play a bit, a larger room wouldve been a bit more forgiving of the dynamic high.

I guess I could try an alternate speaker cable. But in non acoustically treated rooms, what do you guys feel about room correction hardware like the DEQX systems. Thanks

 

[ecwl]

I just put on LOTR OST to have a listen. At times, the music is a bit bright in the highs so maybe it's really just the recording. Like that music they played in the Hobbiton scenes sound kind of bright in the highs. And I'm quite certain I have my speakers setup where nothing else sounds bright. So I'd say before making further changes, listen to many other albums first. unless LOTR OST is the only music you listen to then by all means, tune your whole system to that album.

That said, if you listen to other albums and you still find there's too much highs, there are two tricks. One possibility is that you've over-corrected in the toe-in so you're getting too much high frequency from the tweeter. You can toe out a little but you'll lose that warmth. So you would need to move the speakers just slightly closer together to get the warmth back. The more the tweeter is firing directly at your ears, the more high frequency you get in general.

Another possibility is that the tweeter position is fine, but you're getting high frequency reflections from the back or the sides of the room. My couch is to the wall so I put two plush pillows behind my ears to absorb the high frequency sounds that comes from the speakers. If your couch is in front of a wall, you may want to hang a softly mounted painting or photo that dips behind your ears where the speakers tweeters fire towards or some cloths or tapestries to help absorb the high frequency reflections. Similar if you get side wall reflections, you should do that too.

The best book about room acoustics that's actually practical to implement is Jim Smith's Get Better Sound. Best money you'll ever spend. He has a DVD set too but I don't like it as much although most reviewers prefer the DVD.

I wouldn't tune sound with speaker cables. DEQX I think converts the sample rate so it would destroy all the goodness of DAVE. If you absolutely must DSP, like I do in my system, figuring out how to implement some simple parametric EQs by measurements and implementing them in software like JRiver and then outputting the EQ's digital sound to DAVE is probably the better way to go. But 100% read Jim Smith's Get better Sound at least 3 times and do the best you can with your system physically first before using DSPs.

Time to switch out LOTR OST on Tidal...

 

[thunder 99]

This is great!. I didn't realize speaker placement correction by even a few degrees would make a component level difference, but to my ears the DAVE (most important part of my system) sounds totally different in slightly different speaker placements. I am going to buy this book today, dont think amazon ships it to Australia but will get a local to send it.
What do you feel about Roon and the EQ they have over PC/JRiver? Advantage being that I can install Roon onto my Antipodes DX which is the much more Audiophile way to go for me.

 

[ecwl]

My take on EQ/DSP, which is not covered in Jim Smith's Get Better Sound book is that without something measure, it's impossible to "tune" the sound by ear. In fact, for some of the more advanced stuff Jim Smith suggested, I found there's no way with my lack of audio experience to be able to tune by ear. I usually recommend people to review JIm Smith's Get Better Sound first. And when they think they've run out of things to do based on the book, to then go out and buy a real-time analyzer. The cheapest ones are available from miniDSP. Some work with iOS devices, while others with PCs. I personally own XTZ Room Analyzer but if I were to buy something today, I'd go with miniDSP microphones and REW (the freeware RoomEQ Wizard). The learning curve for REW is a little steep. But the whole point is that you need the computer to figure out how to EQ. But as Jim Smith likes to say, physical EQ first (which means moving your seat, speakers and some simple room treatments).

Also, I think you can buy the book +/- the DVD set directly from Jim SMith's GetBetterSound.com website.

 

[thunder 99]

And what do you feel about Roon, I think they have a EQ as well?
Thanks

 

[ecwl]

Roon EQ should work just fine. But you still need to know what to set the EQ parameters to. That's where a microphone and REW helps

 

[thunder 99]

Understood, thats great thanks!

 

[TheAttorney]

.
What do you feel about Roon and the EQ they have over PC/JRiver? Advantage being that I can install Roon onto my Antipodes DX which is the much more Audiophile way to go for me.

I think Roon parametric EQ is great: Easy to use and doesn't seem to negatively impact SQ.
JRiver's standard EQ isn't flexible enough. It also has parametric EQ that looks as if could be very flexible, but after about a minute of trying (without reading any instructions) I decided I would not get along with its UI (I'm an impatient man).

I'm sure ecwl is right about loudspeakers and room EQ, but I think it's much simpler for headphones: Just google a FR measurements chart of your model headphones to get a start point, then fine tune by ear.

 

[Jawed]

Glad to hear that speaker positioning has made a worthwhile improvement!

I have to admit the idea of your speakers in a 3m x 3m listening room is astonishing. I think of those speakers in rooms of about 5m x 7m or larger!

This probably means that your head is very close to the wall behind you. I'm afraid to say that the reflections off this wall are going to be a serious problem, creating a lot of confusion in the sound (the reason is a room acoustic effect called comb filtering). In this situation you might like to try to move your speakers close to the wall behind them and to move your seat as close to the centre of the room as you can comfortably get.

Normally when you move speakers close to a wall, this increases the perceived bass. To counteract this, move your head away from a wall which lowers the perceived bass.

Additionally, normally when you move speakers close to the wall behind them, this affects the treble quality, because it increases the proportion of high frequency sound that is reflecting from the near wall. And this reflected sound will suffer from the comb filter problem.

So, which problem is worse: comb filtering due to the wall near your head or comb filtering due to the speakers being near the wall? In general, the former is worse: your ears are designed to hear sound from behind you. But speakers are designed so that most high frequency sound doesn't bounce off the wall behind them (the shape of the speaker cabinet hinders the treble sound firing backwards). So, the comb filtering problem in a small room is improved by moving your head away from the wall.

But when you move your seat away from the wall behind you, you will lose bass power. So move the speakers closer to the wall to bring back some bass power.

It's a balancing act. Hours of experimentation beckon...

Now playing: Dub Trio - Illegal Dub

 

[Triode User]

The bigger issue I think it's just one of personal preference. I think the sound you described you liked from tube amplifiers + Metrum Pavane is partly coming from 2nd and 3rd harmonic distortions. It can create an artificially warmer sound where the instruments artificially feel more 3-dimensional but you lose details in the sound. You like what you like so pairing tube amplifiers with DAVE instead of Vitus with DAVE can probably solve the problem. Moreover, I have seen and heard systems with tubes and R2R DACs where because the sound is so much artificially warmer that they purposefully set the speakers further apart to thin out the effects.

Here we go again with tubes being described as having a warmer sound or at least appearing to have a warmer sound.

Sorry but my experience of modern tube amps is that this isn't the case at all.

Edit to say not meaning to be antagonistic.

 

[nicoludio]

I guess the 2nd question I now have is - Is their anyway to limit the dynamic swing, its a small room 3 x 3m and the highs say on the LOTR OST is very high (but cymbals are not harsh so system is again where I would like it to be). Usually this would be a good thing but because of this I have to turn the volume down and thus loose out where 80% of the soundtrack lies & I guess room dynamics now come into play a bit, a larger room wouldve been a bit more forgiving of the dynamic high.

I guess I could try an alternate speaker cable. But in non acoustically treated rooms, what do you guys feel about room correction hardware like the DEQX systems. Thanks

Quite amazed (in a good way) that you managed to fit the Puppies into that room size. I would have thought that the bass would have been overblown and the early reflections would mess up the sound a bit, especially on the orchestral peaks.

If you are considering digital room correction, you might want to take a look at Accourate (http://www.audiovero.de/en/index.php) and this article (https://www.computeraudiophile.com/...-Loudspeaker-Correction-Software-Walkthrough/). Requires a PC, amongst others, though and I am not sure how it would integrate with your Antipodes server but short of getting a bigger room ...

 

[Malcyg]

Some really useful info in here, thanks.

 

[nicoludio]

Yes, I did. I was a very early adopter of the Melco and have found it to be a very good and reliable device, but the lack of an app and, more pertinent for me, the lack of integration with Roon meant that I could not use it the way that it sounded best in my system - which was direct out of USB into the DAC.

By straight comparison, I found the Zenith MkII to sound notably better - more musical and relaxed - and the SE is another league entirely. Mind you, I have the N1-A, so comparing with the SE is not really a fair comparison. Nonetheless, several dealers have been raving about the SE, and rightly so in my opinion.

Interesting observations. Its been a while since I read this entire thread from the beginning but I was under the impression that the DAVE is relatively source insensitive when using its USB input. I use the Melco N1A but have been exploring alternatives, mainly to try Acourate and, possibly, ROON.

In view of ecwl's experience of ROON vs JRiver on the Blu 2 thread (see quote below), I am wondering if the improvements you noticed could have been due to ROON on the Innuos being better than Twonky (or MinimServer) running on the Melco? Or even the fact that the Innous USB outputs directly to the DAVE whereas the Netgear router is in the signal pathway for the Melco USB output?

I could have possibly misunderstood your system configuration when comparing the Melco USB output vs the Innuous SE USB output. No criticism intended here; I am just trying to understand how the various variables matter. Thanks.

I have finally changed my mind about how source-dependent Blu2 is. I think I and many others have said before, compared to other DACs (including the old Chord QBD76HDSD), Chord DAVE is less source-dependent as I can barely hear any difference when I change my computer settings, whereas I have found with my current computer setup, I cannot hear a difference when going through Blu2. I presumed that's because Blu2 has even better galvanic isolation than Chord DAVE. Keep in mind I run a low-powered PC with an SoTM USB card with linear power supply called CAPSv3 Carbon that was designed by Computer Audiophile website. Because I need a bit of parametric EQ for my speakers (since I can't physically remove the bass peaks without turning my living room into an old-school hi-fi shop), I was running JRiver on the headless PC and when listening to Tidal, I run the Tidal app and let JRiver capture the Tidal audio stream to DSP it before sending it to Blu2. So I acknowledge there probably is some degree of noise going from the PC into the Blu2.

For totally unrelated reasons (I got tired of remote desktop into the PC to access Tidal), I decided to try Roon out. Roon is run from my desktop. So I only installed Roon Bridge on the CAPSv3 Carbon for music playback. I shut down JRiver and Tidal. And I was shocked by the sonic improvement in terms of transparency, detail and dynamics. And I don't think it's because the parametric EQ implemented by Roon is significantly different than JRiver. I would say the improvements were much more dramatic than when I switched out my Shunyata Venom power cable and stock BNC cables for Nordost Heimdall 2 cables. So clearly, Blu2 can still improve with better USB sources. And I would concur with what others have said here that if you have the money, you should consider upgrading your USB source first before upgrading power/digital interconnect cables. That said, I was perfectly happy and amazed with Blu2 sound even prior to this recent change. So I wouldn't rush to switch USB sources if that's not in your upgrade pipeline.