B&W Signature 800 upgrade diamond tweeter

[BYRTT]

that's the ideal response...if you have that you live in a surreal world...

..... Have you noticed what wesayso posted that is real world and don't ask to see his step response its as surreal as below, in i visited his home about a month ago can say it sound as good it looks.

.....But isn't what you are plotting a waterfall graph that can be plot with any other SW including REW or is there something special about how the other tool plots it?
.....

Well i'm not a code specialist so what do i know but seems program has higher precision in time domain to present high resolution trustworthy data, below is creator Raimonds Skuruls tech words copied from a pdf-file "Equalizing loudspeakers".

Use of high time resolution.

Let’s call it Time Domain Analysis (TDA) for the nature of such work in the time
domain as opposed to the frequency domain as for most of the tools already used.

Almost all audio analyzers use Discrete Fourier Transformation (often called Fast
Fourier Transformation for data size that is power of 2) and derive (calculate) all their
information (curves) from data obtained through FFT.
But you must supply FFT with a sequence of samples –a block of data. This block
must be quite large to have a usable frequency resolution. But with large block size
we get very inaccurate timing information that is comparable to that block size. The
Time Delayed Spectrometry (TDS) is its implementation with „waterfall” graphs as a
result.

This brings us back to history to when the first audio spectrum analyzers were built,
incorporating a number of Band Pass filters, detector circuitry and LED strips as
indicators.
And also, it brings us back to our human hearing that is using many resonators, BPF,
(mechanical?) to analyze sounds that we perceive.
The processing of Band Pass filters outputs gives us very interesting, high resolution
timing information that allows to see how the signal energy of different frequencies
travels thru a system (or a loudspeaker, particularly) and to see (as a result)
frequency-dependent delays directly in graph form and in very high resolution.

...Tonight I am installing the SW on my laptop as per your instructions.

Can someone tell me the difference between free and license edition and how much the license for the program costs and if it is necessary?

Great hope we all will learn a lot and get better acoustics in the long run then regarding license or not think start with that demo to see its quality and if you get hooked as i did get it via the offer for diya members at €62 seen here http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/full...eaker-correction-networks-27.html#post4583863 .

 

[Stefanoo]

62euro doesn't seem to be a steep price for a good SW. I will get the free version tonight.

What the heck is that his response??? That looks surreal!! How much room treatment does he have in place?? Is it done through regular acoustic treatment i.e. acoustic panel and tube traps or is it done by using a DSP digital in room correction response? The latter would be like cheating to me

 

[wesayso]

Sorry if not appropriate for this thread (moderator pls remove if needed) but since I have a fresh measurements I am posting them, following Ronald's parameters (4way: 2xSS21W8555 sub sealed/ 2x12 MCM 55-2982 OB upper bass/ Faital 6HX150 coax sealed mid/high; sub>upperbass 80Hz DCX; upperbass>mid 250 Hz DCX; mid>high 1K7 passive; all LR4 acoustic slopes)

That's not up to me to decide . This thread has primarily been about the B&W speakers until an 'elephant' walked into the room. (sorry Erik)

That's why a "shoot out" was suggested to learn from each other's results instead of sticking to mindless 'bashing'. I may word it a bit harsh, but this is the impression I got from it all.

So it may not be the place to start analysing all other speakers. If you feel your setup could benefit by some of us here getting a good look at it, why not start a thread with some info on your setup, the room it's in and these plots you posted. By the way, you missed at least 2. The early waterfall and the APL_TDA plot.

 

[wesayso]

62euro doesn't seem to be a steep price for a good SW. I will get the free version tonight.

What the heck is that his response??? That looks surreal!! How much room treatment does he have in place?? Is it done through regular acoustic treatment i.e. acoustic panel and tube traps or is it done by using a DSP digital in room correction response? The latter would be like cheating to me

That's my room "as seen" by the microphone from the listening spot.

It's a combination of the type of speakers, the room, damping panels and DSP.

You call it cheating, I call it my first class ticket to the recorded event .

While it may be useful data for me, how I got there isn't what this thread is about. It's well enough documented in my own thread.

Let's stick to the subject on hand. Lets see what we can learn from each other. I have great respect for B&W as a speaker maker which is a reason I was following the discussion. I've visited before and probably will again.

I also admire Magico by the way, for entirely different reasons than what peeked my interest in B&W.

Erik is pretty sure of his own DIY setup, also including some room work so I'm certainly interested in seeing more of both. How often do we get a chance to "see" something that's not in our room. Every time it happens there's a potential to learn some more. I do hope Erik is willing to play too.

So, are we on? I'm game!

 

[Draki]

moderator action

Could Post #657 be removed please? Probably not the appropriate thread...I did try to cancel it but too late. Sorry

 

[youknowyou]

62euro doesn't seem to be a steep price for a good SW. I will get the free version tonight.

What the heck is that his response??? That looks surreal!! How much room treatment does he have in place?? Is it done through regular acoustic treatment i.e. acoustic panel and tube traps or is it done by using a DSP digital in room correction response? The latter would be like cheating to me

if im not mistaken, its mostly DSP with room treatment... ask him to remove the dsp and to remeasure.

personally, Ive tried DSP with my hd800 in the sonarworks SW. while it definitely makes the sound more neutral, it removes the magic. I personally find that if you have a good dac, DSP after the DAC kills the magic. maybe my experience is too limited, i will be very curious by your impressios using DSP in combination of high end DAC and speakers.

Ive been reading abou dirac live that seem to bypass the major problem of dsp, doing the manipulation before the dac iirc. worth a try as well. I know a guy with Giya speakers, a treated room, and also use Dirac live. very interesting stuff as I cannot agree more that the room is the major culprit of any hifi system. and I mean MAJOR problems and coloration are created by the room. im just still unsure about using DRC and Ive been using quite extensive room treatment, but im more and more curious about DRC

 

[wesayso]

Now where do you supose my DSP part is taking place, before or after my perfectly functional DAC.
You overestimate the amount of DSP I use. I do not try to make up for my room with DSP. I try to make up for my speaker response. That's a pretty huge difference. By the way I did post how it looks without FIR correction. I'm not that secretive about it. Its already there for everyone to see in the link I posted to Raimonds thread.
I'm not suggesting the use of DSP here. I'm sorry to hear about your disapointment with your DSP experiment though. But honestly I do think you're jumping to conclusions. Fix only what can be fixed would be my advise. And next time put it in front of that DAC.

 

[wesayso]

Ive been reading abou dirac live that seem to bypass the major problem of dsp, doing the manipulation before the dac iirc. worth a try as well. I know a guy with Giya speakers, a treated room, and also use Dirac live. very interesting stuff as I cannot agree more that the room is the major culprit of any hifi system. and I mean MAJOR problems and coloration are created by the room. im just still unsure about using DRC and Ive been using quite extensive room treatment, but im more and more curious about DRC

Here's an idea for you: fix the room with damping and/or diffusion. Fix the speaker with DSP. That's what Dirac live tries to do and if you take control, you can even do a better job yourself.
It would require a lot of dedication.

 

[Stefanoo]

That's my room "as seen" by the microphone from the listening spot.

It's a combination of the type of speakers, the room, damping panels and DSP.

You call it cheating, I call it my first class ticket to the recorded event .

While it may be useful data for me, how I got there isn't what this thread is about. It's well enough documented in my own thread.

Let's stick to the subject on hand. Lets see what we can learn from each other. I have great respect for B&W as a speaker maker which is a reason I was following the discussion. I've visited before and probably will again.

I also admire Magico by the way, for entirely different reasons than what peeked my interest in B&W.

Erik is pretty sure of his own DIY setup, also including some room work so I'm certainly interested in seeing more of both. How often do we get a chance to "see" something that's not in our room. Every time it happens there's a potential to learn some more. I do hope Erik is willing to play too.

So, are we on? I'm game!

Fully agree with you. I am on for the game for sure. I am going to install the SW. I will definitely need some guidance from you or byritt to get up to speed quickly on how to use the SW and how to set up properly and what kind of plots are needed for evaluation.
One Step at a time, first installing the SW I will let you know when I have it up and running.
I think this thread becomes much more interesting this way.

 

[youknowyou]

Here's an idea for you: fix the room with damping and/or diffusion. Fix the speaker with DSP. That's what Dirac live tries to do and if you take control, you can even do a better job yourself.
It would require a lot of dedication.

my room is heavily treated and my speakers dont need much fixing.
very curious about dirac live though!

 

[wesayso]

my room is heavily treated and my speakers dont need much fixing.
very curious about dirac live though!

There is heavily treated and properly treated, which one did you do? How did you check it, where did you place the treatment, etc.

So what do you suppose Dirac live could do for you? If you fix your room it wouldn't have to do any room correction, right?

Here's an APL TDA plot at the listening position from member jim1961:

No digital help, except on the very bottom end, on his subwoofers (*), Troels speakers, absolutely no EQ on them. Immediately obvious what a much better room than mine looks like. The ridge at 24 ms is a passive Haas kicker, made by diffusion panels out in the room.
This is his STEP response and IR at the listening position(!):

An almost perfect graph for a (passively) time aligned second order speaker design.

Do you see how far tidying up the room can go? Especially when coupled with well designed speakers. If the room is fixed with proper passive methods, you don't need any digital help to fix it at all. But it probably won't look like a living room anymore. More info here.

Definitely the cleanest set of measurements I've ever had the pleasure of browsing trough, taken at the listening position. Another fine example of what true dedication can do. I'm pretty sure there is no "one click fix" out there. But for everyone willing to invest a lot of time, progress can be made. Be it passive or digital. Most of that time will be spend learning. Now if you want similar results without turning a living room into a studio like appearance you could do a combination of passive treatments helped out by DSP. You'd still be way ahead even without the DSP part if you look at what the treatment really does for you.

(*) = A miniDSP is used on the subwoofers for its time delay function. Not to fight any room anomalies.

 

[wesayso]

Fully agree with you. I am on for the game for sure. I am going to install the SW. I will definitely need some guidance from you or byritt to get up to speed quickly on how to use the SW and how to set up properly and what kind of plots are needed for evaluation.
One Step at a time, first installing the SW I will let you know when I have it up and running.
I think this thread becomes much more interesting this way.

Glad to read that, I think so too!

 

[youknowyou]

I have a RFZ design. all first reflection point treated with 12 inch thick Roxul, 3 corners floor-to-ceiling 14 inch thick roxul. the last thing I have to add is my cloud. my listening position is 19% away from the back wall.

I have my speaker 5 feet away from the front wall which eliminate virtually any front wall problem. I let the front of the room fully reflective as we should. Ive design my room with the helpg mainly of Glenn at Gik audio. id say my room is well treated

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There is heavily treated and properly treated, which one did you do? How did you check it, where did you place the treatment, etc.

So what do you suppose Dirac live could do for you? If you fix your room it wouldn't have to do any room correction, right?

Here's an APL TDA plot at the listening position from member jim1961:

No digital help, except on the very bottom end, on his subwoofers (*), Troels speakers, absolutely no EQ on them. Immediately obvious what a much better room than mine looks like. The ridge at 24 ms is a passive Haas kicker, made by diffusion panels out in the room.
This is his STEP response and IR at the listening position(!):

An almost perfect graph for a (passively) time aligned second order speaker design.

Do you see how far tidying up the room can go? Especially when coupled with well designed speakers. If the room is fixed with proper passive methods, you don't need any digital help to fix it at all. But it probably won't look like a living room anymore. More info here.

Definitely the cleanest set of measurements I've ever had the pleasure of browsing trough, taken at the listening position. Another fine example of what true dedication can do. I'm pretty sure there is no "one click fix" out there. But for everyone willing to invest a lot of time, progress can be made. Be it passive or digital. Most of that time will be spend learning. Now if you want similar results without turning a living room into a studio like appearance you could do a combination of passive treatments helped out by DSP. You'd still be way ahead even without the DSP part if you look at what the treatment really does for you.

(*) = A miniDSP is used on the subwoofers for its time delay function. Not to fight any room anomalies.

 

[wesayso]

I have a RFZ design. all first reflection point treated with 12 inch thick Roxul, 3 corners floor-to-ceiling 14 inch thick roxul. the last thing I have to add is my cloud. my listening position is 19% away from the back wall.

I have my speaker 5 feet away from the front wall which eliminate virtually any front wall problem. I let the front of the room fully reflective as we should. Ive design my room with the helpg mainly of Glenn at Gik audio. id say my room is well treated

Easily to prove (not to us, just for yourself) by taking that set of measurements I asked for on this thread. Especially with the (free Demo) APL_TDA plot you'd see what you get at that listening spot.

Dirac live isn't doing anything that different than some of the other packages out there. The thing it has going for it is that they are based on multiple measurements, that will average out the reflections. Meaning you'd correct more of the speaker, less of the room. It combines IIR EQ with FIR to keep latency short. This also limits the phase correction possible.
It's a sort of black box solution much like APL TDA EQ is. APL TDA EQ also works with multiple measurements and is aimed at the Pro Audio crowd.
The standard correction is minimum phase, meaning no latency. A phase correction is optional.
APL TDA (without the EQ) is the separate measurement suite.

The more open solutions, expecting more work from the user are: Audiolense, Acourate and DRC-FIR. There you are the pilot in control. With both Audiolense and Acourate you get great help and support from their original creator. The support on DRC-FIR is somewhat lacking in comparison but the price is hard to beat (it's free). I've played with a few of them, read a lot about all of them. I set my mind to really learn one of them.

There's no real reason why one of these packages should be considered better than the others, its all up to what you do with them. That goes for Dirac live too. Being more automated you have slightly less control over the results.

I'm not here to burn you. I'm willing to help.

The one thing that does puzzle me, if by front wall you mean the wall behind the speakers, your recommendation is 100% the opposite of Geddes. And according to Geddes, Toole agrees.

Toole and I both recommend damping the wall behind the speakers. If this wall is very well damped then the speakers can be quite close. But in general away from the front wall is a good idea if this is possible. But better the speakers sit against a wall than the listeners. How much performance degradation s impossible to say since the situation is so room specific.

I try to keep the space arround the speakers a s "clutter" free as possible. Anything, TV's, bookcases, etc. can cause diffraction even if they are at the sides of the speakers. If the speakers are toed-in as I suggest then nothing should be between the speakers as this will diffract the sound. How much? Hard to say - I only know that the more I tried to eliminate these difractions the better the image got.

I'd be inclined to trust their judgement. It agrees with a lot of studio concepts.
Not judging your choice, only giving an example of a contrary point of view to yours. The second half of that quote is interesting too. This is one of many quotes where he mentions his preference for front wall treatment. He does not treat side walls, remember though that he does use waveguides. He also advocates the treatment of floor and ceiling reflections.

Source thread: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/103872-geddes-waveguides-197.html#post1655595

Just viewing the first 20 ms of your impulse would show how effective your room is treated. Either that or the APL_TDA plot could make you see it.

I hope this post helps you along. The effectiveness of any processing is largely depending on how the room is at the start of that process. The better the room, the better potential for great results. For me, it's not about the amount of equipment, it's what you do with it. That means I want proof (for myself) that every change I make really works. It also means only changing one variable at a time.

 

[spongeman]

help !!!
help !!!
help !!!
i got an error when running apl_tda
matlab runtime had been installed
running win xp sp3

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[wesayso]

help !!!
help !!!
help !!!
i got an error when running apl_tda
matlab runtime had been installed
running win xp sp3

I assume you downloaded the 32 bit version of Matlab? Meaning not the 2 files BYRTT showed? It might be wise to get the questions about APL in either of these two threads:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/285628-apl-tda-acoustic-loudspeaker-analyzing-software.html
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/full-range/284916-room-correction-speaker-correction-what-can-we-do-dsp-power-now-availabl.html

(that last thread started by mr. Raimonds Skuruls, creator of the software package)
That would leave this thread's focus on it's original content.

 

[spongeman]

yes , 32 bit version;
what is wrong with this ?

 

[youknowyou]

what to do behind the speakers (the front wall) depends how far you are away from the front wall. since my speakers are 5 feet away from the front wall, theres absolutely no point in putting absorption on the front wall since any reflections off the front wall would be secondary reflections (at the LP) and I have no SBIR problem since im so far away from the front wall. I could add diffusion but putting absorption would be detrimental in my case

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/6124899-post6.html

if you read this thread about what to do behind the monitors: https://www.gearslutz.com/board/stu...642-behind-monitors-absorption-diffusion.html

Toole is also the first to suggest such different way to treat a room and is considered marginal in his theory. i rather trust what has been done for decade in studio all around the world based on the work of Leo Beranek, Manfred Schroeder, Don Davis or Peter D'Antonio, ect. a RFZ is sort of a no brainer subjectively and objectively (measurements)

what gedlee do with his room or toole for that matter is contrary to what i read constantly from acousticians. and the view of gedlee to not treat the first reflection is weird in my experience since the results from letting the bare side walls is absolutely detrimental, in my room. since my experience differ profundly from his ''opinion'' about somehting so obviously detrimental in my experience, everything else gedlee has to say about acoustic i wont take seriously.

btw, no matter the waveguide used, youll still have tons of early reflections and all the problem associated at the listening position. with horns or waveguide, you need less first reflection treatment, but you still have early reflection off the ceiling, side wall and back wall and floor, you simply need less of it since the area of early refelction is reduced with the waveguide.
im curious what is your experience, have you tried a RFZ design?

Ill try to take measurements and post them in this post later this week!

I'd be inclined to trust their judgement. It agrees with a lot of studio concepts.
quite the contrary, toole approach is very marginal, and Im on acoustic forum for a long while now. RFZ is the basis of room treatment and its what is constantly recommended unless you ahve a very big room where you can possibly implement LEDE design for exmaple. RFZ is always recommended since it give consistant results.

tbh, if I look at your room treatment, its far from extensive?

I'm not here to burn you. I'm willing to help.

The one thing that does puzzle me, if by front wall you mean the wall behind the speakers, your recommendation is 100% the opposite of Geddes. And according to Geddes, Toole agrees.


I'd be inclined to trust their judgement. It agrees with a lot of studio concepts.
Not judging your choice, only giving an example of a contrary point of view to yours. The second half of that quote is interesting too. This is one of many quotes where he mentions his preference for front wall treatment. He does not treat side walls, remember though that he does use waveguides. He also advocates the treatment of floor and ceiling reflections.

Source thread: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/103872-geddes-waveguides-197.html#post1655595

 

[wesayso]

I'm not getting the same story as you from that first post you linked to. Jens actually suggests moving speakers closer to the front wall (behind the speakers) and damp that wall. It all depends on what you want to accomplish.
Can you tell me where I can help you? I really have no clue, you seem to know every answer, even if it contradicts what I have experienced or bring to your attention. Rather than arguing about it it might be saver for me to say: sorry, I did try.

 

[youknowyou]

I'm not getting the same story as you from that first post you linked to. Jens actually suggests moving speakers closer to the front wall (behind the speakers) and damp that wall. It all depends on what you want to accomplish.
Can you tell me where I can help you? I really have no clue, you seem to know every answer, even if it contradicts what I have experienced or bring to your attention. Rather than arguing about it it might be saver for me to say: sorry, I did try.

Usually (but naturally there’s exceptions), it’s preferable to move up against the front wall unless you can move back a considerable amount (> approx. 1,5 - 2 meters) and still sit in front of the center in the room. A close distance to the wall will push the SBIR effects up in frequency and is therefore easier to deal with (absorb).https://www.gearslutz.com/board/6124899-post6.html


this is my case, im 1,5 m away from the front wall

you seem to know every answer, even if it contradicts what I have experienced or bring to your attention.
I asked you a question. have you tried a RFZ? on the contrary, what you sugegst is contrary to most acousticians work.