montepilot wrote:

Koshka may not like living in suburbs and become more cantankerous than she already is.

Thanks guys for advice but I have my own view on the subject.  The new listing room if it goes through has many very good features that I do appreciate very much. Even the integration of the room with the rest of the house is absolutely perfect, exactly how as I would like it to have. In context of this thread it is important that the room I looks like capable to support that notion of mine: time-alight 40hz horn that is not visible in the room - and that is very important to me. However, I am not planning to do anything with the room before I move or after I move.

If I get the house then intend to move in and peaty much live in there for a while, setting up a replica of my current playback. I would anticipate that it will hate for me a couple months to get an idea what my new room will be able to show off sonically and perhaps a couple of other months  to master that room, might be more. So, I will not undertake any midbass-horn project before I would know exactly what I will be getting in that room. So, in the best case the midbass-horn project might kick in summer or perhaps when the summer heat will subside.

I do plan to have 2 small changes in the listening room but it will be day-long simple projects…

Yes, Jessie I have thought about it as well but whatever you do with 40Hz horn you end up with horn talk with each other. It is very simple to measure – use one as a transducer and put a measuring dB meter across the VC of second driver, treating the second horn as a microphone. Yes, the cathedral will add the Monofication of sound – it is what it is. How affective this effect will it be is VERY hard to say however. I think it will depends from the low pass crossover point on midbass channel and the way how the LF channel will be implemented. Still, it is not my agenda at this point to think about the ways HOW specifically the things might be gone. To me at this [point is important that house that I might end up has an option to support my midbass endeavor.

Yes, the side wall location would be the best but it will not be time-aligned configuration or less time-aligned configuration. It would also make the horn VERY much visible and dominant in the room. It still might be the direction I would go but his spastic property I was very attracted by the fact that it has an option to imbed the midbass horns into the room and to make them invisible. 

Well, will see, how it would work. Who knows, I might have sound in there that I would not need a midbass channel to begin with...

Romy the Cat wrote:

I found an interring house that I like....

Got the corrected size of the cathedral room from the building plans. What a cool room for the long wall configuration! Hey, does anybody guess where my large 80” by 30” equipment rock would go? :-)

zanon wrote:

….what are your thoughts on these "escape" areas that essentially unseal the listening room?

Zanon, I do not have general thoughts. I do not particularly believe in the generalization but rather in the specifics and practicality of a given implementation. We discussed it last night BTW. Last night one famous industry guy from UK visited me and we were talking about generalization vs. breaking generalizations. From his point of view that I did with Macondo is imposable and it must not work. The whole ridicules idea of having 8 feet-tall, 6-way, horn loudspeaker and trying to integrate it from 5.8 feet is truly absurdish and it must not work. However, he admitted that in my case it is not just work wonderful by defy all rule of common sense. It is all about HOW the things done.

The very same with "escape" areas. Some people insist that a room mist have escape zone for bass. Other fell comfortable with sealed, tightly controlled rooms. Another group believes in the rooms with semi-transparent bass escape, I am one of them.  Honestly I do not think that there is a difference as in all case it is possible to get proper sound. The methods to do it would be very different but the result if everything is done properly shall be the same. I am a bit afraid the fact that will be losing SET bass in the new place. But will see how it will go. Hypothetically there is an option to make 120W DSET around GU-48 or a few similar tubes:

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=5200

… but will be the matter of far future and the recognition of a specific necessity that might or might not  arrive. If I move to this specific room then will be a lot of LF escape in there. It will be different, how different – I do not know but I am very confident that I will devise ways to deal with it. I am very comfortable with the bass I have in my currant room. Again, it is in a way looks like imposable to get this bass quietly in the room with such a short reverberation time. Again, at it what it is. Let see if the larger room and longer decay will add some added value. I shall do add so benefits but I still will be looking the same type of the sound that I am getting here currently. What will it take and how will it work I would not speculate at this point.

In your room take RTA and look what you are getting. You do not listen from your “escape" zone but from your listening location. The powering and arrangement of your acoustic system shall be in respect to your listening space not your escape space. From this perspective the escape zone are not in effect at all, they impact only the methods of loading and to very much lesser degree the results at your listening space.

zanon wrote:

Romy: I did not know you sat less than 6 feet from Maconda. Can I ask why you chose this position? Was it required by your room (it is small room, Macondo is big system) or was there some auditory effect you were searching for and found 5.8 ft away?

Hm…. It is hard to explain. It might be 5.8’, 6.0’ or 6.2’ or more. The “secret” that no one would tell you is that if everything else is done properly and sensibly then there is practically not difference if the distance from which a playback is able to integrated itself.

I know, I know, some might consider what I say as foolishness - everyone have an experience that approximation to a speaker disintegrate sound. In reality what people experience is not the problem of distance but they just jump outside of the realm where the given integration efforts work properly. If to have an objective to setup playback for very extreme nearfield (the way how I use Macondo) then it is perfectly possible to accomplish it. The 6-ways, 8 feet tall acoustic system from 6 feet?  Sound like insane, doesn’t it? The Macondo in it’s current state is a wonderful prove that it is not insane but a perfectly doable. I very much like that feeling of suspicion in the faces of the  people who never were in my room before who sit in front Macondo  for a first time at 6 feet  and have disbelieve that it ever might “work”. The more experienced person – the stronger the disbelieve. From the 6 feet the angle of listener’s eyes sight does not allow to see the all Macondo transducers, so the disbelieve is not a foolishness.  Then I play music and the conceptual disbelieve comfort the reality…

The point of all of it is that here and there I hear people talk about the integration boundaries, particularly for horns.  In most of those cases people in my view talk nonsense. If you are local then stop by and you will see/hear the evidence of it.

Saturntube wrote:

Similar experience but I get to keep my "old" room. I have just changed my 5 way horn loaded down to 140 hz speakers to a friends room twice as big as mine, with an open back area into the house as your new room has and one side and the front have huge glass windows,  the horns have no trouble with a bigger room and soundstage is much better, tuning will be needed but the best improvement you will get will be the soundstage,  instead of sitting in between the instruments you will be seating at the directors spot with the whole orchestra in front of you and way back, more as a normal concert hall,  the instruments will be able to develop more freely and there will be more space between them, the trumpets will come from the back and the violins will appear closer, and the timbals will be way in the back there.Bass will be a problem, we are running SET for the horns, but the bass drivers are in a sealed cabinet with a couple of commercial sub amps and a pair of servo subwoofers for the lowest registers.  My friend has a DCS combo as his main source and since the DCS has a volume control and a 6 volt output, we thought we could get away with out a preamp, but we could not.  We added a preamp but it sort of loosed the magic in the mids, but the bass was better, at the moment we have the preamp hooked to the subamps only, and the DCS feeding the SET amps directly with a Y connector, we are not there yet but this has been the problem, loading the room with bass.  Now, we dont have the woofer towers you have and we are already getting there, I guess you should give the woofer towers a chance,  they might fill the room up to your expectations,  but even if they do I am sure you will make the huge horns anyway!!

Saturntube,

I know what to suspect from large room and I did hear a lot of installations in large rooms. I am not necessary like the “normal concert hall” presentation. This is what people usually get in large room. They are motivated by the external definition of “normal concert hall presentation”. It might be effective but I do not like it.

What people are missing is that during a concert in a music hall we have visual interaction with musicians and our sight allow our listing attention to focus our listening attention to any fragment of whole sound we wish. The reproduced sound has no such a luxury, we still can focus our listening attention but it works differently, I will not go into discussion now how we do it. However, a nearfield configuration, when we are “sitting in between the instruments”, do greatly improve the focusing capacity of the listening attention.

So, even in the large room I still will be trying to get the same nearfield setting. My estimate is that I will be looking at 9 feet listing distance and will see how I will go from there. The nearfield give a sense of intimacy and personal responsibility for the played sound. This sense of personal liability for sound I am not going change for the “much better soundstage” and more impressive “concert hall presentation”. There is no such a thing as “concert hall presentation”. I go to concerts and I did not see any default presentation. If you sit in the very best sit of the hall you have some kind of “presentation” but this presentation is absolutely irrelevant. Take a musical instrument take a note and see how your body reacts to the sound. You have a physical reaction to the event and instantaneous feedback.  The further away we go out of nearfield the less sensuality we experience during playback listening; at least it is my experience.

Again, it is depends how the things are done in a specific installation but from what I see so far I will be looking for nearfield in a larger room. It is not be as extreme as I use now in my small room but I still will not be using the whole room’s depth for my MF island.

twogoodears wrote:

Dear Roman and all... also unrequested/unsolicited, MUST give my opinion on the above... I had to translate my 2,3 meters from my Gotorama speakers system, and obtained 7,6 or so feet... it's angled 110° in front of my head, placed on 5,3 meters long wall in a 22 sq.meters dedicated room... WHAT I obtain in this setting is hard to believe and seldom heard everywhere...

Yes, the long wall - wide angle speaker positioning is my very preferable. I call it “Just-Continue” configuration. I have described the methodic somewhere.  It is a bit complicated to set it up properly and there are a lot of kinks in there but when everything is done accurately then it yields the more interesting result in my view. My particular interest always was that playing with Just-Continue configuration and use critical toeing of acoustic system it is possible to bend the leading edge of playback’s imaging, creating a literal curvature of orchestral presentation. Ironically with horns it is the most fun as they behave very idiosyncratically off the axis…

Anyhow, Stefano, of you feel that from your 7.6 feet in earphones configuration you are get good result then wait until you time-align all your channels. You might be very surprised.

Stereotimes published an article describing an installation of one of the audio Shepherded person. 

http://www.stereotimes.com/jimlangham.shtml

(the audio Shepherded Type is described in here: http://www.GoodSoundClub.com/TreeItem.aspx?PostID=4650)

I do not think that there is a reason to describe the playback itself. I very much hate the Magico Ultima and I feel that they were designed by idiots and for idiots. The system used digital EQ, room correction and the rest all-imaginable crap. It uses also Behold amps, I do not anything about them but I might expect that it is in compliance with the Shepherded taste. The guy who wrote the article pretty much said nothing, so the only option is to look at the pictures. The pictures I do like very much as they give some interesting idea.

The intention is made in very good room. Looking at the way how the wide-angle lens produce barrel spherical distortions I think the room is not too large but good enough, I would estimate under 500 sq feet.. The sealing is very pleasant but if it was my room then I would put random ribs in the sealing across the room, not only along the room/axis. The amplification and the all supporting equipment is hidden behind the floor - very good solution and it is exactly what I wanted to do in my new room. However, this guy went further then I intended – hi put the amp in the basement and run the cable to the speaker through the floor. Very bold and very elegant if you ask me! I will not do it because multiple reasons but the solution need to be acknowledge and memorized.

The fireplace that is looking to the listing spot is also very nice – I was looking for this as well. It is shame that the writer paid too much photographic attention to the foolish loudspeakers but not the room - at list in context of this thread it would be more beneficial to see how the system is organized in the house.

and try to live without horns for a moment I hear you about kitchen .It's left from fireplace
Regards, W

I have so many great original ideas about the new listing room that it truly itching to make my heads duty with this project. I probably shall not run my mouth until I close the house but it is so tempting to think about it!This thered about the mid-bass horns and  real-estate has fulfilled its purpose and the those about the room need to go into a new thread but  I prefer to be a superstitions  about it. So, let see how it goes…

One of the strategic thins that I am thinking now is to hide or do hide the power amps. The beauty of this new room is I can put the power amps that drive Macondo under the floor of the listening room. I very much like this configuration but I do not know if I feel comfortable to put 12 tube channels outside of sight. I is not that I would like to look at the tubes but I do not know how secure would be to run Melquiades in the none-observable area.

Also running the amp from under the floor will set the Macondo in more or less stationary position in the room. If I move then I will be good few months away from DPoLS level. Perhaps I need to think about hiding the amps after then?