Canadian Broadcasting Corporation aquired 3000 pair of Golds in '71, subsequently developed/designed their own enclosures for their use as
monitors in Dozens of studios/control rooms across Canada. No big deal as Tannoy Golds were inexpensive to buy.. then ..
Cheaper than the Poor quality JBL drivers offered at the time
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And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how Canada took over SciFi channel and produced so many TV shows inexpensively.
Damn Canadian foresight and planning!
Erik
I was talking about my own experience in recording/mixing studio's and i'm located in EU (France)!
It's something funny if you think a little about it but for monitoring purpose there is no nostalgia in the studio i used to work in (except for the main monitors as most of them was in wall mounted and not as easy to swap)! It was more an hype thing: the newer the better...At the time everything was put to Adam in this places... considering most of this place dreamed to own an old original Neve desk, or a Neuman U47, or an EMI rs428...
Mainly i've seen/heard DMT (II) 15 and 12 and some 215 from the end of 80's early 90's... and already considered as vintage units! As the Kinoshita's RM... stange world!
On the subject of amplifiers. Parts-express is running a $100 sale for 250ASP IcePower modules. Kind of hard to resist at that price. Together with cases and cables from China, you can build a very pair of 250W monoblock amps for around $560. Alternatively of course you could build them into your speakers, saving yourself the case costs.
I have three on order already, so I'm not as worried about you guys grabbing the last one's.
Best,
Erik
Is that a class-D amp? I've read mixed reviews about them.. high RF interference?
Not so sure my build will go ahead due to the REW test, do you really think the soffit traps will help?
Yes they are. Mixed review about entry level... Hypex or this particular B&O are really really REALLY good to my ears! (Did i say how really good they are?!
)Don't get too much worried about your graph: this is typical for small room. Given some strategies you can use your room effectively!
One of the strategie: do you have some nice flat and accurate headphones? If not purchase a pair, and use it for spectrum/frequency control/balance. Once correctly dialed in with your headphones you switch back to monitors for pan/relative levels of instruments and global presentation of your mixes. Complete mixes with headphones are not possible for multiple reasons (mainly because pan is not reliable as sources seems to be located inside your head and because they can't take into account interaural leaks you encounter with monitors) but they have their use for frequency control. I always brings mine for that purpose when i go to a new room.
One thing to be aware of if you decide to treat your room: don't go crazy about absorption because there is a point past which you start to increase some default rather than correcting them. In small room the first issue to adress is early reflections and try as much as possible to create an RFZ. I say it again using 1m width panel located sideways and angling them to redirect ER outside listening area already gives impressive results.
In EU you can find equivalent here:
Bass / Broadband Absorbers - Thomann UK
Hofa's and Auralex are standard and effective products, but you pay for the brand. The others offers i don't know if they're as efficient but as long as foam is specified almost the same they should be ok.
Usually in small control rooms i've seen this kind of broadband/bass absorbers are used on the whole corners of room (ceilling to walls and walls to walls) to be effective.
If you can build a speaker I'm fairly certain that with a little research you can build bass traps. There are many variations on the theme but generally foam ones are considered the least effective but sometimes the only option.
Just google 'diy bass traps' but here is one example from page one regarding small rooms: Q. What kind of bass trap do I need?
The advantages would be twofold:
1) You may or may not save some money;
2) you get to fit them to your room.
Just google 'diy bass traps' but here is one example from page one regarding small rooms: Q. What kind of bass trap do I need?
The advantages would be twofold:
1) You may or may not save some money;
2) you get to fit them to your room.
You are absolutely right Charles but 'regular' bass trap (helmotz resonator) have drawback in small rooms:
_ they eats up a lot of space to be effective at a given freq,
_ usually they work on a limited frequency range.
They can deal (more or less) with some room modes but they will not tame the low end the way foam absorbers (which are more broadband) do and in small room this is more what to do imho.
From what i've seen they tend to be swapped for membrane resonator more and more in professional control room. But maybe this is some kind of hype... i don't know. The EG in Charles's link is of this kind. But as said in the article it is intended for low voice range (180/360hz). For much lower register i'll probably need to be much more bulky? There's some calculator available on the web.
And in rooms with enough volume most acousticians use 'hangers' all around the room to increase acoustical impedance at low frequencies ( a sandwich of rockwool/cardboard-for having some tightness/rigidity to hang-/rockwool hanged by rope at the ceiling). This has an other advantage of being wide band absorber too (rockwool is the material with the best absorption coefficient above 500hz and up). But in small room this solution is impossible to do.
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If you mean that they have some ultrasonic stuff in the outputs, you are right. The question though is what's audible and what's measurable. These amps are 2nd or 3rd generation ICE. I'm getting a set and going to compare them to my Parasound A23's. The Parasound are warm, and use class A up to around 20 watts, most of where I listen. I'll let you know. If they suck or aren't quite as good I'll relegate the ICE to the surrounds, but your mileage will vary.
Um, dude, I'm serious when I tell you I had EXACTLY the same problems.
Why are you panicking now? This is exactly what I've been warning you about, and there's a solution. Let me share you a living room picture. I literally thought my test procedure was broken. As you can see, I purchased 2 of these and put them in the corner, stacked. Measurements and sound quality are now all to die-for. I had 3 2'x4' panels before this. Did improve imaging and clarity but not bass like these did.
All it's doing is confirming what I said all along. That the place to start if you want good bass is in your room, not your speakers.
The skull on the bookshelf belongs to some idiot who tried to convince me to buy Golden Ear speakers.
Erik
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I'm not sure who I tell this to and who I do not, sorry if being repetitive. I use the satellites there for music without the sub. For moviese you can see the Hsu VTF-15H Mk2, a 15", dual ported 2,000 watt beast of a subwoofer. I got it by accident (another story).
I can only do this well thanks to the soffit traps. Those bookshelves will scare you out of your seat in some classical recordings. The bass is that good. The subwoofer integrates perfectly now as well. In movies I run L and R full range, and the sub comes on and the sound quality remains balanced and natural from top to bottom, but I'm not hte expert that these recording engineers who are trying to help you are. I'm just a guy with too much time in an apartment in San Francisco who started in the same place acoustically as you are. When yo usee +-10 to 20 db spikes in the bass disappear, you know it's not voodoo.
Also, during the California Audio Show 2015 I got to speak to the ASC Rep. Really nice guy, he's the one who suggested tube traps in that location. If I could have afforded them of course I would have gone that route, but GIK is more cost friendly to the likes of me.
We were both commiserating that most of the vendors at the show did not use their products even though they were happy to loan them to anyone at the show. You can literally tell who uses them and who doesn't before you walk into a vendor's room. I always thought it was just me until he mentioned it. I suspect it's that in a poorly treated room all you hear is the tubby bass, but in a good room you hear more balanced bass with the mid through treble coming out the door. It was a real disappointment to me because in most rooms I could only hear the rooms, not the equipment, so I was completely unable to judge anything.
I think you are just a little scared because this seems like voodoo and is brand new to you. It's not. It's physics. I have the measurements and you will soon to.
Best,
Erik
I can only do this well thanks to the soffit traps. Those bookshelves will scare you out of your seat in some classical recordings. The bass is that good. The subwoofer integrates perfectly now as well. In movies I run L and R full range, and the sub comes on and the sound quality remains balanced and natural from top to bottom, but I'm not hte expert that these recording engineers who are trying to help you are. I'm just a guy with too much time in an apartment in San Francisco who started in the same place acoustically as you are. When yo usee +-10 to 20 db spikes in the bass disappear, you know it's not voodoo.
Also, during the California Audio Show 2015 I got to speak to the ASC Rep. Really nice guy, he's the one who suggested tube traps in that location. If I could have afforded them of course I would have gone that route, but GIK is more cost friendly to the likes of me.
We were both commiserating that most of the vendors at the show did not use their products even though they were happy to loan them to anyone at the show. You can literally tell who uses them and who doesn't before you walk into a vendor's room. I always thought it was just me until he mentioned it. I suspect it's that in a poorly treated room all you hear is the tubby bass, but in a good room you hear more balanced bass with the mid through treble coming out the door. It was a real disappointment to me because in most rooms I could only hear the rooms, not the equipment, so I was completely unable to judge anything.
I think you are just a little scared because this seems like voodoo and is brand new to you. It's not. It's physics. I have the measurements and you will soon to.
Best,
Erik
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+1.
I would say 'if you want good sound in your room start by treating the room'. This is one of the reason i stopped to read/discuss with audiophool! They 're able to spend cost of a new house every year in gear to gain nothing serious, but once you tell them to stop swapping amp and treat the room they think you're crazy... and you're deaf!
Erick: is there some scanspeaks i recognize in the bookshelfs?
+1
in the studio world, its all very well known but it seems that some take Toole research about first reflections and convince themselves that its not needed. Very sad as its not that pricey if you diy and it makes a improvement like nothing else.
Id say that you have no idea how good your system is until you treat your room.
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You do indeed.
Those are Scan-speak 18W/4531G-00 with Mundorf tweeters sitting on top of a mahogany crossover cabinet masquerading as a speaker stand. Concept, crossovers, drivers and screws selected and/or designed by me. Cabinet and driver fitting by Lee Taylor of Taylor Speakers.
Best,
Erik
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You know, this is something about the audiofool culture I just discovered myself. Having spent time at high end installer's like Goodwyn's High End in Massachusetts I had assumed that all high end systems installed these days had studio grade room treatment.
But between discussions here about just add bass, and the California Audio Show, and recent experiences with the SF Audiophile Society I'm really learning that the culture doesn't have a lot of room for acoustics. I'm as happy to listen to a pair of fancy cables, or add Extra-Virgin platinum caps to a crossover to see if it makes a difference, and if that difference is worth the asking price.
What I don't get is the absolute aversion to basic room treatment in this culture. WTF? No wonder dealers didn't want to have acoustic treatments in the room.
I'm serious when I say I heard maybe 3 rooms at the CAS 2015 I could even stay in for more than a few moment, but I was pretty much alone. Many people were having a good time and talking up this or that room as being great.
I need to rethink this. Maybe I need to hang out with more recording engineers instead of audiophiles.
Best,
Erik
Well, i agree with you BUT for some people in an entertainment purpose they do prefers a soundsystem which ad things to the message encoded on the medium (to the worst or the best). In the end it is all but a matter of taste at least in a domestic environnement. For professionnal needs it differs you have to make objective and technical choices, you can't rely on an euphonic reproduction.
As i am! And i'm not shy to say that i've heard sonic differences between cables! But when i talk about that with sound engineer i'm sometimes called 'a believer' and not taken seriously... I don't care, don't spend too much time in studios now, and i know what my ear/brain is capable of earing. Well all that to say that audio engineers are not all more open minded than audiofools!
For the aversion about acoustic in the audiophile culture i've got my own idea about that: you can't easily compare spec and talk and talk and talk about supposed benefits of this technical points durings hours... An acoustic treatment work as it should or it doesn't. Only way to know is to make simulations, then take measurement and it's the end. And once in place you should'nt notice they're here, just that it sound right*!
Not really a who has the bigger game!
* i've once been in a control room where the treatments where highly earable in contrast to what your eyes saw: the "A" control room of PlusXXX studios in Paris (the one with the Ams/Neve 88r): room seemed to be much much bigger than it actually was. All the effects came from the back wall all covered with small cylindrical diffusor. Very disturbing for me.
Your experience seems in line with the one i've got. And as you i'm learning a lot.
Erik: do you have a description of your bookshelf here or somewhere else? I could be interested to see your work, concept and all.
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Not exactly, but there's an exhaustive/exhausting discussion about the compression and distortion of the drivers here:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/284527-mundorf-amt-ss-7-compression-distortion.html
It was really great that Raal participated and helped me improve the compression/distortion measurements.
The overall design remains proprietary, but the driver's are easy to figure out.
Best,
Erik
As for concept, the ideas I wanted was:
1 - Use a world class tweeter everyone else in DIY wasn't already using. This meant no to the ScanSpeak beryllium's and the RAAL tweeters.
2 - Control, not widen the dispersion. Use a line source to preserve as much detail that the tweeter at the listening position. It stinks to use a great tweeter and loose the detals by the time it reaches your chair.
3 - Have it sound great in room, not in a lab.
4 - Make it tiny.
5 - Make speakers so good I'll stop having commercial speaker envy.
I totally failed on 4. I originally wanted to replace my old floor standers with something that would visually disappear in the room. That part was a total failure, but I gained tremendously good in-room response and dynamic range from top to bottom. It's a little bit like expecting a child, then getting twins. OK, your still very happy, but you got more than you were expecting.
Best,
Erik
1 - Use a world class tweeter everyone else in DIY wasn't already using. This meant no to the ScanSpeak beryllium's and the RAAL tweeters.
2 - Control, not widen the dispersion. Use a line source to preserve as much detail that the tweeter at the listening position. It stinks to use a great tweeter and loose the detals by the time it reaches your chair.
3 - Have it sound great in room, not in a lab.
4 - Make it tiny.
5 - Make speakers so good I'll stop having commercial speaker envy.
I totally failed on 4.
I originally wanted to replace my old floor standers with something that would visually disappear in the room. That part was a total failure, but I gained tremendously good in-room response and dynamic range from top to bottom. It's a little bit like expecting a child, then getting twins. OK, your still very happy, but you got more than you were expecting. Best,
Erik
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AH AH! I really love the fail on axiom 4!
That said size is very relative... once you lived for more than 15 years with 3 ways speakers with 15" bass from the early 90's, nearly all speakers looks tiny cute thingy!
I'm the lucky one with high waf (or girlfriend with good ears)! My next one will be 315liters by side towers with 5x12" each cab. She said "why not if they sound as good as these one!".
I fell in love a second time.
That said size is very relative... once you lived for more than 15 years with 3 ways speakers with 15" bass from the early 90's, nearly all speakers looks tiny cute thingy!
I'm the lucky one with high waf (or girlfriend with good ears)! My next one will be 315liters by side towers with 5x12" each cab. She said "why not if they sound as good as these one!".
I fell in love a second time.
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