Gotcha! This has nothing to do with that (exactly), BUT, part of the reason for this question is to determine how many who visit here are "hands on" who do a lot or most of the tweaking in their room (passive or active) and how many rely on their dealer or other experts in the field to extract the best from their room? Did you set up your DRC/EQ device or did someone else? Or do you even have EQ on your pre-pro?
Very much roll my own, here’s the high-level outline:
Twelve years ago designed a custom audio/HT room for new custom home being built. Room sized and tuned to house my MartinLogan Monoliths and Sequel speakers in a multichannel audio and video setup. Followed by ten years of measuring, re-engineering elements and doing some pretty substantial room treatments as well as continually evolving EQ/Room correction.
This room was sized (26 x 15 x 10’) to meet the idealized ratios the acoustic literature had at the time, as well as fitting the guidelines for ML speaker placement (3’ away from walls and listeners spaced >1.2x width).
Point #1 – Custom room, ideally sized for large line source dipole positioning.
Next, to enable utmost speaker to room integration, and to address the shortcomings of passive crossovers, my rig uses full-active speaker processor based crossovers and EQ. Mine is based on the awesome DBX-4800 speaker processors. Using these I tune the panel to woofer integration to yield best in-room measurements for low distortion at high volume and best phase coherence. This also required replacing the woofers in the Monoliths with units tuned for the frequencies I needed to cover (60 – 300Hz).
I use very, very mild EQ for woofers and sub in the DBX, mostly it’s used for timing /phase (delays) alignment as well as frequency spectrum split and gain management.
Built an
infinite baffle Sub and a
custom center channel to mate with the rest as well.
Point #2 – Customized active speakers to perform at their absolute best in my room, with full EQ, crossover and gain control.
Over the ten year period, I did hundreds of acoustic measurement using ETF (AKA R+D from AcoustiSoft) and REW. Using this data, I not only engineered the speaker and crossover customizations, I also got seriously into physical acoustic treatments and how to tune a room ideally for large ESL line-source dipoles.
This resulted in a room that has over
45 commercial devices and many DIY elements, including
two 14’-long custom sidewall treatments seen in this panoramic front shot.
Lest anyone think this is over damped, the rear view shows the many diffusers and absorbers in the back of the room.
Trust me, when one has 72 square feet of radiating surfaces in the room, it takes a good bit of room treatment to manage resonances at 100dB SPL.
Point #3 – Treated room based on acoustic calculations and objective measurements to ensure optimal resonance and reflection control.
Now that the room, speakers and room treatment are all in place, I apply the final layer of polish to the system using the Audyssey Pro features in my
Denon AVP-A1HD preamp.
It took a lot of practice and reconfirmation using R+D to learn how to best operate the measurement process for Audyssey. Since measuring large line sources is a challenge unto itself, I documented the recommended process for doing DRC measurement of them in
this thread on the MartinLogan owners club.
The FIR-based process Audyssey uses makes intra-speaker as well as inter-speaker phase and timing so accurate, the imaging is uncanny.
The result is a hyper-cohesive soundfield that allows me to hear the exact position of multichannel mixes. On material like Porcupine Tree DVD-A’s or classical SACD’s, I hear the recording space (classical) or the instrument positioning exactly where the mixer wanted it to be, inside or outside the circle of speakers.
Frequency balance is absolute between speakers, I cannot tell when the center is operating or not.
And finally, room modes in the bass and mid-bass are very well controlled and bass is articulate at any volume level.
Point #4 – Room correction based on careful measurements and well-implemented solutions yields astounding accuracy
So there you have it, the four points of what ‘roll your own’ I do to get the best audio and video experience.
