April 2015 Toole video on sound reproduction

My takeaway from this thread is how many hardcore two channel audiophiles now accept previously estranged sound quality improvement tactics like room EQ. I'm sure if this thread had appeared three years ago there would have been a more balanced set of proponents and opponents. Now it seems there are only a few opponents. I'd call that progress.

I spend a lot of time "de-programming" audiophile biases around room treatment, equalization and subwoofers. Once you get to a certain level of equipment you are going to see WAY more sound quality improvement by focusing on the room acoustics rather than upgrading from a $10k to $20k DAC or power cord.

I cringe inside when I see the crappy rooms so called "pro" reviewers have. The minimum price of entry for "pro" reviewers should be an acoustically neutral room i.e. one that does not overlay a negative sonic signature on the music.

You don't have to add a gazillion bass traps and panels to have a neutral room, you just need to take care of the basics, which are: having smooth and non-resonant bass and having a balanced decay time that is not too live or too dead. Unfortunately without resorting to some EQ it is extremely difficult to really get smooth bass, especially as the frequencies get lower. A neutral room should only need a couple of bands of EQ to deal with whatever resonances are left after speaker/listener positioning, adding subs (if required) and acoustic treatment.

Room correction does not have to be DSP. It can be analog. The Rives Audio PARC was an analog parametric EQ. Meyer Sound's CP10 is another.

If you have a mostly neutral room then assuming you use a sub (or subs), and have actively rolled off the bass to the main speakers into the sub, you can put the EQ just on the sub if you want. It doesn't have to be inline with the main signal path.

amirm said:

I am sure for the simple reason that to get someone to tell you something that goes against the very nature of the products they design and sell, requires a special relationship. You need to be a respected technical person in his field so that he knows a marketing story will not work on you. And that the next question will be deep and technical and he better have that on his side as he argues with someone who has his research on his side. Being a dealer would put you at the least favorable position to hear such a story.

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Some wild assumptions and accusations Amir, not to mention the personal insults! What you're implying is that I'm a gullible ignoramus and he's an opportunistic con artist and our relationship is one sided and advantageous for him if he lies. Pleeeeeeeese don't drag everything down to this….

amirm said:

But tell me this: how is LAMM relevant to your story? Plenty of people listen to digital systems though his amplifiers, our own Steve included. If he produced a DAC, that somehow damages his standing as an amplifier manufacturer? And how is that at all related to topic at hand?

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Go back to the original post, it was reply to Michael. Figure out the topic first, then you'll see.

amirm said:

Not sure what this name dropping is about. Who is Manuel and what are you saying his position is in this regard? But sure, I am happy to chat with anyone and have them present to me scientifically how they think the physics of room acoustics ceases to exist with their product.

No name dropping, him and his company are well enough known here. SUBJECT wasn't room physics nor was your intention, go back up and read your own post!

amirm said:

Yes, would be good to not use name dropping as proof of anything. It is fine and good for context but saying I know so and so for X number of years amounts to nothing.

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You're losing composure and going on an unrelated tangent, read the original post to Michael, perhaps you'll understand the context and its purpose. As far as name dropping is concerned read your own posts and see how many times you used names and their work as proof against something I never said!

amirm said:

If you mean I should not question your understanding of these designers, then I can't do that. You brought up the topic of these two companies not building certain products as meaning something. You can't tell me that somehow your knowledge of who these designers are is absolute and cannot be questioned.

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At least in one verifiable case my knowledge of the designer and his lifetime work is far more than yours. What is the purpose of your question as it relates to my post to Michael?

david

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spiritofmusic said:

Can I ask a TOTALLY dumb question? If a node/peak/call it what you will, is analysed and needs to be smoothed out or eliminated, just what happens to the musical information in that area of frequency spectrum?

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Before I answer that, let me explain what has happened before we make the correction. You play a sequence of notes one at a time from low frequencies to high. What you hear is remarkable and educational in itself. You will hear every note at a different loudness level. In some cases, the note won't even be audible! Yet in others, it will be substantially louder. This is trivially done with a room measurement system. Here is the response of my room with the subwoofer playing post an 80 Hz filter:



What this graph is saying is that depending on what note you are playing, its loudness varies by that much. The room is acting just like an equalizer, making some notes louder and some less loud.

A piece of music can have any spectrum it wishes. Indeed its spectrum will be wild and complex. However, a fundamental of signal processing says any sound, no matter how complex (as long as it is continuous), can be decomposed into a sum of simple sine waves. This means we can break down our music and see how the above room+speaker response is varying our musical content. One of my test tracks for bass performance is the famous audiophile demo track of Chris Jones' No Sanctuary. It starts with these low bass guitar notes (sorry I am not a musician so don't know if I am using the right vocabulary ).



Now you see a similar display to my measurement. To determine then what we hear is simple: take any note in this second display and boost or lower it by the same amount shown in the first graph. I hope you agree that any such transformation has now changed the tone, timbre and overall quality of the sound.

But more has been done than is visible in this frequency display. Signals can be presented in either time, or frequency. Time is what it says. How things sound from one instant to another. If you did that, and I showed graphs of this earlier, you will note that any time we have one of those peaks in our original graph, a single note is not only amplified, but when the note goes away, the reverberations exist and there is a long decay that was not in our source. A single string pick in the Chris Jones track now lasts nearly half a second when in reality may have decayed in one tenth of a second originally. This is the dreaded "time smearing." The tail of one guitar string now steps on the next note, make it muddy and less distinct. If there were vocals or other tones, they would likewise be stomped on by these decays from the powerful bass.

Take the same identical system and put it in a different room and the shape of this graph will change radically as those variations are depending for the most part on the dimensions of the room and to some extent, the absorption of room at those frequencies (which tends to be small in standard rooms). So you could come to my house, hear a great sound, go and buy the identical system, play the identical piece of music on the same hardware yet, you will experience bass that is distinctly and radically different than my house! Because again, this transformation is a function of the room and unless your room is identical to mine, your bass frequencies can change massively. It does so also if you change the placement of speakers and your seating position.

So if we do nothing, by definition we are accepting huge amount of distortion added to our music.

When we pull down one of those peaks, we are attempting to back out the effect of the room on the speaker. We are hoping to invert that graph although attempting to literally do that to a flat line is not possible (and potentially damaging). Automatic EQ systems attempt to construct an automatic correction curve to various levels of success. For the sake of the discussions in this thread, I have focused on the much simpler method of just pulling down a peak or two with a couple of filters. Many modern subs come with such DSP built-in and so this process if you have a sub, does not even involve digitizing the sound going to our mains speakers or impacting what is played by them at all.

Can we damage sound in these manipulations? Yes, it is possible. And sometimes routine in the case of mass market products. Making the overall response flat for example can result in bass that sounds anemic. For reasons we won't get into, we want higher average levels in bass than midrange and treble. Flat response sounds too sharp.

There can also be problems with the filters used although this is much less of an issue these days. Namely, the peaks in bass can have bandwidth that is less than 1 Hz! Yes, you read that right. You may need to pull down a peak that is 0.5 Hz for example. Computationally this is very expensive to implement in digital domain so cost cutting comes in and filter width may e 2-5 Hz or worse. This results in peaks being lower but also messing up the response adjacent to the peak we wanted to correct.

Probably a lot more than you wanted to know but wanted to give a complete answer .

Is it eliminated for good, or is it still fully present, just audible differently? I would hate to think there is frequency spectrum censorship as a result of this process.

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Edit: answering this part. Everything remains fully present. We are lowering or increasing the levels to bring them to similar amplitude. In no case do we remove anything.

ddk said:

Some wild assumptions and accusations Amir, not to mention the personal insults! What you're implying is that I'm a gullible ignoramus and he's an opportunistic con artist and our relationship is one sided and advantageous for him if he lies. Pleeeeeeeese don't drag everything down to this….



Go back to the original post, it was reply to Michael. Figure out the topic first, then you'll see.

amirm said:

Not sure what this name dropping is about. Who is Manuel and what are you saying his position is in this regard? But sure, I am happy to chat with anyone and have them present to me scientifically how they think the physics of room acoustics ceases to exist with their product.

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No name dropping, him and his company are well enough known here. SUBJECT wasn't room physics nor was your intention, go back up and read your own post!

You're losing composure and going on an unrelated tangent, read the original post to Michael, perhaps you'll understand the context and its purpose. As far as name dropping is concerned read your own posts and see how many times you used names and their work as proof against something I never said!



At least in one verifiable case my knowledge of the designer and his lifetime work is far more than yours. What is the purpose of your question as it relates to my post to Michael?

david

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David, nothing about what I said is personal with regards to you. It is personal with regards to them. You seemed to be saying that if they believed in DSP and digital, they would have told you so because you have known them for this many years. I am saying that this is not logical. Because doing so would mean they value telling you such a thing more than success of their company. Is there some chance that they would confide in you otherwise, sure. But the odds are against them. It would be like Steve Jobs praising Samsung and Android to someone.

And again, it is neither here, nor there. If the topic feels emotional and personal, then all the better that we stick to discussion of technology as opposed to naming people and companies this way.

spiritofmusic said:

At the continual request (VERY continual ) of Bonzo75, I'm more open to the idea of dsp than I ever have been. I had always been anti due to me having a 75% lp based collection, and it seemed anathema to do an AD/DA conversion to my beloved analogue. But the gist I'm getting is that excellently done AD/DA is fully transparent, and I'll prob not even perceive any alteration. And of course the end result will well justify the journey. Also, the tonal characteristics of my current sound will remain unaltered. Hopefully this is all true.
My main issue revolves around the sheer dearth of available places to hear well implemented dsp in the UK (let alone any tt based systems that use dsp here). I know an eminent member here based in the US has as a spectacularly positive sounding dsp 2+2 system that Bonzo says I must experience, but this still leaves me w/the rare dsp dealerships in the UK being more pro audio/home cinema orientated, and prob none of them will have any experience w/a tt in the chain.
Can I ask a TOTALLY dumb question? If a node/peak/call it what you will, is analysed and needs to be smoothed out or eliminated, just what happens to the musical information in that area of frequency spectrum? Is it eliminated for good, or is it still fully present, just audible differently? I would hate to think there is frequency spectrum censorship as a result of this process.

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Yes, well done AD/DA will likely not be perceivable by you. You will find many claim otherwise as the myth that digital bleaches music has been pervasive for many years. Route AD/DA on and then bypass it off without them knowing and you'll find they don't know it happened.

For eliminating spectrum, no that isn't what DSP does. In simplified terms let us say you have a big peak at 45 and 90 hz. Maybe 6 db or so. DSP will reduce the peak by 6 db or so and contour the shape to match. Perfect flatness may not be possible, but you can get much closer than otherwise is the case. 45 and 90 hz material is still there, just the excess in that region has been reigned in and controlled. Such peaks often cause bass overhang and color the music going on at somewhat higher frequencies. Some small dips, where the signal is deficient can be brought up making it closer to what the signal is supposed to be. And if you like a touch of extra there for warmth or whatever you can leave in as much as you wish. Hope you can find a place in the UK to hear such DSP.

For those not familiar with the Chris Jones track, here it is. I used the starting sequence only for bass tuning:

amirm said:

It was? Really? Why wait until now to mention all of these specifics? I asked a number of times for such detail but good that we have them now and we can work with it.

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Wow. That is incredible memory to remember 15 years later such detail. -17 dB and not -15?

Isn't it? Thanks Amir ! If you really want to know it was a failed 2 year process and I ended up taking the system back, that's why I remember it.

amirm said:

How had you measured such without the TacT? How broad were the modes?

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I had a TACt but all measurements and initial plotting were all done by the acoustician, he later ran some measurements with the TACt and left them for me to work with.

amirm said:

Can you explain that for us? What speaker did you use that could not muster more bass below 86 Hz? We are talking bookshelf speaker performance here.

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Kharma Exquisite.

amirm said:

Note that DSP cannot be use outside of a very limited scope to fix this problem. If you have no bass, you have no bass. DSP's use in taming your peaks actually lowers the bass output. And except in select cases, cannot be used to fill the gaps. Sure, you can try to boost the response you don't have but you risk severe damage to your amplifier and in the case of nulls, your speakers.

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It was a desperate attempt!

amirm said:

You put subs in the room and you still had no bass? What happened to your frequency response? Still had the same modes and steep drop off? Before talking about tone and texture, what happened to the bass, i.e. the problems you mentioned above? Tone and timbre going away can 100% be a placebo effect or real. The frequency response is not and hence my question about that.

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Not aurally discernable bass only low frequency energy and excitement of additional room modes. The drop off was still steep with minor difference in frequency response down to 40hz then it peaked.

amirm said:

DSP in general and TacT in the specific, are not a solution to every acoustic problem.

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Thank you!

amirm said:

I have been very careful to talk about one and only one specific use in this thread: pulling down massive peaks in response.

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That hasn't followed through many of the posts.

amirm said:

I didn't say if you have no bass with 17 db drop off starting from 86 Hz, putting a DSP fixes that problem. You had a fundamental problem with that system. Maybe it had a high-pass filter some place in that system. Without some diagnostic data that that you could have used TacT for, we can't do anything with this situation.

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Never said you did but you made it sound so shockingly easy. System wasn't the problem multiples of the same system were sold and I still have the electronics and use them myself. This was something to do with space, other speakers we tried didn't do any different.

amirm said:

What problem? No bass below 86 Hz? Or was the bass great and the problem was "tone and texture?"

I have to keep bringing you back to the problem you stated at the outset: did it fix the bass? What was the perceptual difference in bass? I am not interested, at this moment at least, in your observations of tone and timbre.

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No bass, system was all digital and we never got close to worrying about anything else.

amirm said:

I don't know what any of this means. What do you mean by "EQ?" We are not discussing the topic of equalizations in general. There are huge sins committed with general use of EQ.

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Really...

amirm said:

We are talking about measuring a room, seeing a 10 dB peak in bass response and pulling that down. Is that what he did with the outcome as you say? I am being specific here for a reason.

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Mostly other things!

david

Amir and David, can I respectfully request we all take 5, this is certainly getting pretty heated. Bonzo is taking me to task for being closed to the whole area of dsp, as a hardened 2 ch analogcentric a'phile. After agitated resistance from me, I have to say he is probably right. There is no doubt that simple mvt of my spkrs just a few inches in and out, and my seating position similarly, produces such dramatic changes, that what I used to believe was just the gear, is most likely interaction w/the room.
I have a big decision to make:
1. whether to stick w/my set up as is which I am actually very happy with (Zu spkrs w/integral active sub bass utilising some rudimentary x/over settings), and applying some judicious room treatment panels (242s at first and second reflection points/corner bass traps)
2. to go left field w/horns and active sub bass (poss Sadurnis using incorporated Behringer DCX and subs level amp)
3. stick w/Zus and go poss Trinnov dsp 2+2/twin optimised JL Fathoms
4. same w/Sadurnis, using Trinnov and uprated amp to active sub bass
I may very much make this trip to Jersey to hear Marty's dsp'd Pipedreams/JL Fathoms. I'm totally intrigued he is fully committed to having put his analog thru AD/DA conversions, and feels absolutely nothing is taken away from the lp listening experience. This is pretty much what Roy Gregory reported when reviewing a current SOTA digital only AD/DA-phono stage-preamp, feeling it was up there w/the very best phono stages, despite the digitisation of the signal.
My only issue is that Marty's Pipedreams/Fathoms is so far removed from my own system will I be able to get past this to fully take in what dsp is doing?
It's a major irony that there is no easy way to do a simple a-b. Want a change of amp, or dac etc? Well, just slot one in, and if you prefer it, buy it. Want to try out dsp? Well, find a distributor, that does well respected dsp and subs (who in the UK?). Find an experienced installer. One that is familiar w/lp AD/DA. Do all the measurements. Install the gear, move current gear around. What, a full 1 day, if not 2 day job. And that's just a trial - would one expect to just devote oneself to a full dsp install ahead of trial, or are these guys ok to spend 1-2 days trying to convince the potential customer?

Nyal Mellor said:

My takeaway from this thread is how many hardcore two channel audiophiles now accept previously estranged sound quality improvement tactics like room EQ. I'm sure if this thread had appeared three years ago there would have been a more balanced set of proponents and opponents. Now it seems there are only a few opponents. I'd call that progress.

I spend a lot of time "de-programming" audiophile biases around room treatment, equalization and subwoofers. Once you get to a certain level of equipment you are going to see WAY more sound quality improvement by focusing on the room acoustics rather than upgrading from a $10k to $20k DAC or power cord.

I cringe inside when I see the crappy rooms so called "pro" reviewers have. The minimum price of entry for "pro" reviewers should be an acoustically neutral room i.e. one that does not overlay a negative sonic signature on the music.

You don't have to add a gazillion bass traps and panels to have a neutral room, you just need to take care of the basics, which are: having smooth and non-resonant bass and having a balanced decay time that is not too live or too dead. Unfortunately without resorting to some EQ it is extremely difficult to really get smooth bass, especially as the frequencies get lower. A neutral room should only need a couple of bands of EQ to deal with whatever resonances are left after speaker/listener positioning, adding subs (if required) and acoustic treatment.

Room correction does not have to be DSP. It can be analog. The Rives Audio PARC was an analog parametric EQ. Meyer Sound's CP10 is another.

If you have a mostly neutral room then assuming you use a sub (or subs), and have actively rolled off the bass to the main speakers into the sub, you can put the EQ just on the sub if you want. It doesn't have to be inline with the main signal path.

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Nyal,

The subject of almost this entire thread and the point of contention is DIGITAL EQ!

david

spiritofmusic said:

Amir and David, can I respectfully request we all take 5, this is certainly getting pretty heated. Bonzo is taking me to task for being closed to the whole area of dsp, as a hardened 2 ch analogcentric a'phile. After agitated resistance from me, I have to say he is probably right. There is no doubt that simple mvt of my spkrs just a few inches in and out, and my seating position similarly, produces such dramatic changes, that what I used to believe was just the gear, is most likely interaction w/the room.
I have a big decision to make:
1. whether to stick w/my set up as is which I am actually very happy with (Zu spkrs w/integral active sub bass utilising some rudimentary x/over settings), and applying some judicious room treatment panels (242s at first and second reflection points/corner bass traps)
2. to go left field w/horns and active sub bass (poss Sadurnis using incorporated Behringer DCX and subs level amp)
3. stick w/Zus and go poss Trinnov dsp 2+2/twin optimised JL Fathoms
4. same w/Sadurnis, using Trinnov and uprated amp to active sub bass
I may very much make this trip to Jersey to hear Marty's dsp'd Pipedreams/JL Fathoms. I'm totally intrigued he is fully committed to having put his analog thru AD/DA conversions, and feels absolutely nothing is taken away from the lp listening experience. This is pretty much what Roy Gregory reported when reviewing a current SOTA digital only AD/DA-phono stage-preamp, feeling it was up there w/the very best phono stages, despite the digitisation of the signal.
My only issue is that Marty's Pipedreams/Fathoms is so far removed from my own system will I be able to get past this to fully take in what dsp is doing?
It's a major irony that there is no easy way to do a simple a-b. Want a change of amp, or dac etc? Well, just slot one in, and if you prefer it, buy it. Want to try out dsp? Well, find a distributor, that does well respected dsp and subs (who in the UK?). Find an experienced installer. One that is familiar w/lp AD/DA. Do all the measurements. Install the gear, move current gear around. What, a full 1 day, if not 2 day job. And that's just a trial - would one expect to just devote oneself to a full dsp install ahead of trial, or are these guys ok to spend 1-2 days trying to convince the potential customer?

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I'm expecting Bonzo at the end of summer, hoping he'll make it and have something more to report on life without DSP.

david

David, Bonzo has mentioned it, and he's pretty excited about the visit. But I suspect it won't settle anything. Even if he likes your sound, as a dsp convert, why would he not believe dsp'ing it would max it out even further? And since a simple a-b can't be performed, the jury will be permanently out.
Sorry to sound if I'm making like Devil's Advocate, that's not my intention - like you I'm still firmly in the 2ch non dsp camp. But if I can find an installer who is familiar w/lp playback via AD/DA, is as familiar w/a specialist audio install not just home cinema, and there is no pressure to sign up for the procedure before a fully configured trial is performed, I owe it to myself to see what the buzz is about. But this remains a tall order.

Steve Williams said:

Hi David

Although I don't use room correction I must say that I am a firm believer. Having said that IMO it is virtually impossible to ever convince a vinylphile to add DSP to his analog signal. I do appreciate the debate as well as the equanimity exerted between the participants.

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Hi Steve,

Actually you do, just not DSP. Documentation and construction of your listening room is all about room correction and was what initially brought me here. I'm afraid some galaxies won't be crossed anytime soon….

david

spiritofmusic said:

David, Bonzo has mentioned it, and he's pretty excited about the visit. But I suspect it won't settle anything. Even if he likes your sound, as a dsp convert, why would he not believe dsp'ing it would max it out even further? And since a simple a-b can't be performed, the jury will be permanently out.
Sorry to sound if I'm making like Devil's Advocate, that's not my intention - like you I'm still firmly in the 2ch non dsp camp. But if I can find an installer who is familiar w/lp playback via AD/DA, is as familiar w/a specialist audio install not just home cinema, and there is no pressure to sign up for the procedure before a fully configured trial is performed, I owe it to myself to see what the buzz is about. But this remains a tall order.

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Spirit there's really no score to settle with anyone, its only a pastime and a way to interact with others. Bonzo visited a close friend in NY on his last visit and apparently spent a pleasant afternoon together, I'm looking forward to the same. We're not Borg and don't have to comply !

david

spiritofmusic said:

1. whether to stick w/my set up as is which I am actually very happy with (Zu spkrs w/integral active sub bass utilising some rudimentary x/over settings), and applying some judicious room treatment panels (242s at first and second reflection points/corner bass traps)

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Neither one of those methods has any impact in the acoustic domain we are discussing. Bass is omnidirctional so there is no "first reflection" point to make a difference. Sound comes out of the woofer, goes in all directions and reflects and combines to create those peaks and valleys.

As to bass traps, if it is the common thing called a bass trap namely 3-4 inch fiberglass panel, it won't do a thing for these frequencies. The name is a marketing thing that unfortunately very much misleads. The bass it traps are in 200 to 400 Hz. Not 20 to 100 Hz. These products work by converting the movement of sound waves (i.e. air) into heat energy. A panel stuck in the corner can't do much of this because by definition air molecules stop moving at the wall. You have to make them many feet deep for them to work at these extreme frequencies. Or hang them in the middle of your room at the location where there is maximum velocity at those frequencies. Neither of these approaches is used for practical reasons.

There are pressure absorbers that work the opposite of these products but they are very specialized, usually custom designed and expensive. They are not for the most part DIY solutions.

But yes, if you are open to hiring a professional acoustician, have the flexibility to heavily modify your room, you can make good headway here with no EQ. It won't get to best it can be but it can certainly be improved.

All of this is easy to determine using measurements. If the peaks are large, then you absolutely have a problem that needs fixing. I can do a measurement with a laptop, microphone and five minutes of time if that. As I mentioned earlier, I plan to write a tutorial to do this.

2. to go left field w/horns and active sub bass (poss Sadurnis using incorporated Behringer DCX and subs level amp)

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You can add subs to any current system. You don't need to change your mains.

3. stick w/Zus and go poss Trinnov dsp 2+2/twin optimised JL Fathoms

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What I said above .

I may very much make this trip to Jersey to hear Marty's dsp'd Pipedreams/JL Fathoms. I'm totally intrigued he is fully committed to having put his analog thru AD/DA conversions, and feels absolutely nothing is taken away from the lp listening experience. This is pretty much what Roy Gregory reported when reviewing a current SOTA digital only AD/DA-phono stage-preamp, feeling it was up there w/the very best phono stages, despite the digitisation of the signal.

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I have heard a lot of accolades regarding his system too. Like me I think he got his start with Tact.

My only issue is that Marty's Pipedreams/Fathoms is so far removed from my own system will I be able to get past this to fully take in what dsp is doing?

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Sure. He can turn EQ on and off and let you hear the difference. It won't simulate what you are hearing without EQ but will train your ears on what the improvements sound like. Pick a reference track like the Chris Jones I linked to earlier. Play that on his system with and without EQ until you can clearly identify the difference. Then listen to it on your system. The auditory memory here should be good as the difference is quite substantial.

It's a major irony that there is no easy way to do a simple a-b. Want a change of amp, or dac etc? Well, just slot one in, and if you prefer it, buy it. Want to try out dsp? Well, find a distributor, that does well respected dsp and subs (who in the UK?). Find an experienced installer. One that is familiar w/lp AD/DA. Do all the measurements. Install the gear, move current gear around. What, a full 1 day, if not 2 day job. And that's just a trial - would one expect to just devote oneself to a full dsp install ahead of trial, or are these guys ok to spend 1-2 days trying to convince the potential customer?

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Acoustic optimization in DIY manner can be a journey onto itself. One way to do this is to test it in digital domain for now. While I don't have any experience with it, if you have a music server and use Jriver, you can use Dirac Live as an automated system to quickly gain some first hand experience there.

Once one has the training and tools, it is dead easy to do this and very low cost. But without it, it is a tall mountain.

David, you mentioned that you are building a Mono room setup; I would be interested to see your progression (in a dedicated thread of course).
And I guess that you must have few albums (LPs) in Mono.
Dr. Floyd E. Toole, in his video (OP's first original post), said that Mono listening is more revealing when evaluating loudspeakers. ...One speaker only.

Also, I would love, if you don't mind too much, that you enumerate five or ten of your favorite music recordings on vinyls, and open-reel-tapes. ...CD/SACDS?

________

NorthStar said:

David, you mentioned that you are building a Mono room setup; I would be interested to see your progression (in a dedicated thread of course).
And I guess that you must have few albums (LPs) in Mono.
Dr. Floyd E. Toole, in his video (OP's first original post), said that Mono listening is more revealing when evaluating loudspeakers. ...One speaker only.

Also, I would love, if you don't mind too much, that you enumerate five or ten of your favorite music recordings on vinyls, and open-reel-tapes. ...CD/SACDS?

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It's already setup, just have to find the time to photograph it. Harman's single speaker test methods serve a different purpose for them, nothing to do with mono playback. You can play mono recordings over two speakers too. In some ways mono is more direct than stereo but reason I have it is for the music, there's so much of it and stuff on 78 that you won't find on anything else.

Love Etta James!
david

Yes, I know that one speaker only is a different matter here for Harman's loudspeakers evaluation; I was simply mentioning it, and remembered reading that you were preparing/setting up a room for Mono music listening. I don't know too many people in my neighborhood who are into 78s mono listening; they all switched a long time ago.

* Love Etta James, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, ...so many more grand dames of the vocal repertoire with high emotional "pitch".

** Did you like that first video, above Etta?

Even tho I have a purpose built dedicated and treated room.. which I went to town on re treatments ...and even tho I use distributed bass to fight room nodes , I still need DSP low bass EQ to sort out the bass below 150 hz .
You can treat the room however much you like , you cannot remove room nodes...

Currently using dirac , but have used a zillion other software and hardware solutions.. strides in this field are huge what with more powerful processors etc...

I can AB no correction/correction and the effects are truly astounding. Every visitor I have had is gobsmacked ... the overriding comments are "the music comes alive" "soundstage width and depth are amazing , but imaging is even better"
If you dont get the low bass right , forget about anything else being right , its all masked.

That's an interesting video about CD vs Vinyl.

IMO, the reason audiophiles claim to hear such huge differences when swapping out components and cables is really related to how that component interacts with their room's nonlinearities. It may seem sufficient to identify the "better" component from a simple swap and comparo. But it's not that simple when one factors in the room's influence. Even different DACs can sound very different. Of course, vinyl does sound very different from digital. Those differences may be small but they get amplified by the room and become much bigger and easy to hear.

This is not to say vinyl doesn't have a place. Some very credible folks argue that vinyl offers unique crosstalk distortion which may make the brain's job of decoding the signal a little easier. This is just a theory. I mention it just to say that I don't doubt the sincerity of those who swear by vinyl. I just think it can be improved if passed through an A to D and processed digitally for RIAA and room DSP first.

NorthStar said:

David, you mentioned that you are building a Mono room setup; I would be interested to see your progression (in a dedicated thread of course).
And I guess that you must have few albums (LPs) in Mono.
Dr. Floyd E. Toole, in his video (OP's first original post), said that Mono listening is more revealing when evaluating loudspeakers. ...One speaker only.

Also, I would love, if you don't mind too much, that you enumerate five or ten of your favorite music recordings on vinyls, and open-reel-tapes. ...CD/SACDS?

________

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NorthStar said:

Yes, I know that one speaker only is a different matter here for Harman's loudspeakers evaluation; I was simply mentioning it, and remembered reading that you were preparing/setting up a room for Mono music listening. I don't know too many people in my neighborhood who are into 78s mono listening; they all switched a long time ago.

* Love Etta James, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, ...so many more grand dames of the vocal repertoire with high emotional "pitch".

** Did you like that first video, above Etta?

Click to expand...

I'm glad that people switched out of their 78s, I wouldn't be able to get them otherwise. I love them dames too...

Nothing in the first video to like or not like, you see a couple of signals on a scope from a beep and comments that one is generated from a mechanical system and the other from a non contact one, and so what? Have you seen the signal from a grand piano compared to a keyboard's? I wonder how Etta, Billie and Ella's signals compare to Justin Biebert's!

david