haralanov wrote:

Romy, you said there is no proper tone. In your old system/room setup you were very close to the back wall, but now it is far behind you. I'm probably wrong, but I thinkyou don't have proper sound in the mid-upperbass with this configuration which is responsible for loosing the "proper" tonal pressure. Generally it is very complicated and i can't give you any recomendations but in my opinion you must find where is the optimal listening position and to set the acoustic system in context of this zone and in the same time you must find a way how to excite your room to play with Macondo...

Thanks, Haralanov, I always like your thinking, good question. I wonder myself where the tone gone. The same speakers, the same amps the same digital front-end (I did not set up analog yet) but less interesting tone. As the factors that eat Tone I see the following.

1)    My Left channel has only a half distance with PAD Dominus, the rest is Radios Shake cable.

2)    This is I think is a main reason. The room is larger and has consequentially longer reverberation time at HF. It is absolutely not treated in a typical sense of this word and has naked walls as now. The room does not sound “bright” but I think the HF reflections inject the HF noise into MF, producing HF mist that dilute the tone. I still do not want to treat the wall and ceiling with explicit treatment.

My back wall is pretty far, the wall behind the ears is in fact over 15-20 feet away. There is a wall above/behind the listening position that is very bad for reflection and it is bare now. This is the wall what the mouth of the midbass horns will be, so I do not do any action on this wall for now.

I still do not measure anything and juts am collection information about the room.  I for instance discovered last Sunday a very cool way to regulate “bass” I n my room. I need a few pieces of custom furniture for the room (with some acoustic ides bolt in) and it will take for a while to find somebody who would do it as whoever is good looks like booked up to September….

 A better option would be to build cheap diffusers with wheels on them, that you could move around in new room to trouble shoot what is going on. 36X72 With some 2X4 on 16 inch centers with fiberglass in between stapleled with some decretive materal over it. they could make the room look real cool with floral prints on the cloth. This is the best way to find the weakness in sound. It will be a hugh mistake to just start putting foam on walls anywere.

Paul S wrote:

Romy, all this seems to be fairly typical of large-ish listening rooms, along with grotesque lobing and combing.

zako wrote:

ROMY,,,,There is nothing wrong with your room ,,Its perfect,,The room is telling you , that your speakers are wrong...Its time for a clean slate,,,Redesign your totel system...       Maron

msaudio wrote:

I also believe there is little wrong with your new room. Some electrical problems witch is common for new layouts and some light reflective material her and there with some good furniture witch you have been thanking about for a long time anyway. I do believe your speaker topology is correct "But need's to be refined for larger room. Example's, Vitovox driver in the mids should be a larger horn same size as lower mid, This could give more output with no extra input. Your dyna 8 inch woofer in your bass horn should be changed to a EV 12 inch with atleast 98 db at 1 watt this could give you more output with less input. You should try to make your amp's so they donot have to work so hard, being your room is so much larger.

zako wrote:

ROMY  Your analogy of fitting the foot to the shoe is on the right track... Some times you need is a better pair of sox,,,You dont need to change the decorum of the Symphony hall..When you have a shitty orchestra,,,  Sometimes rearranging the musicions helps...Stakowski did this to make a more cohesive sound..Looking at the stack of your system,,,some rearrangement is needed,,and fireing those groups not needed,,,a tighter and more cohesive size is needed,,,,,JBL,s new EVEREST II speaker is a case in point... They threw everything out redesigned everything,,All drivers were completely redesigned everything,,,,Inside the units do not resemble anything used today,,,Every thing you or I are useing today are like that shitty orchestra.  Yes a new more cohesive BOSTON Symphony musicion talent is now needed.. Just like your drivers and TT horns,,, I now this is a shocking statement,,and you will try to resist,,but your system (and mine)needs replacing... the Vitavox S2 is an old trolly compaired to The JBL 476be,, This is a true fact,,,I will not shit you,,,It has a wider bandwidth with lower distortion,,,and a better propergation horn,,,You have built a Iron wall like the Berlin wall,,and needs to be torn down,,to let in the blinding fresh light... Think about this before responding,,,Take your time forming your words,,  This is now the time for you to catch up,, My analogy is you dont fly in a canvas covered airplane to fly from NewYork to LosAngelous in one hour... it is now possible to do this in a YF12 scramjet airplane...  This is now possible in the new speakers designed today.. I will elaborate more later...      MARON

Zako,

You said “The room is telling you that your speakers are wrong” - I do not know why you feel my need for better speakers took place only in context of the new room.  Your comment is wider then juts Macondo in the new room, it does not make them less valuable but in the way your position is irrelevant in context of the room. Regardless how inferior Macondo is - it does not perform as it did in my old room. I am not panicking and consider it expected. I did not work with Macondo in the new room yet, I will, and it will be better.  Still, the concept of Macondo is not a fixed design but a set of axioms that define design, so it is possible that as my familiarity with the sound of my room progresses I will find a need to modify something in Macondo.

Now, about your feeling regarding to what I do vs. what JBL does. It is not “shocking statement” and I will not resist. I do not have JBL 476be and I do not know how interesting it is. I did hear a few newly designed drivers/systems and it was not the direction of sound I fund interesting for myself.  I did not near the EVEREST II, I will if you feel I need but I do not expect a lot of revelations and there are a lot of reasons why. You said: “tighter and more cohesive size is needed”? I do not know if it is corrects. In way smaller room the “expanded” Macondo did very good, I mean VERY good. Now in much larger room if does not have this “magic”, so why the tighter and more cohesive size is needed in this larger room?

Again, I do not against the Macondo’s criticism. I would LOVE to hear.  I have even a thread “Macondo vs. the Industry sponsored speakers” where I was trying to share my views on the subject:

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?postID=7379#7379

I might be right or wrong but I think it is important to understand that in my current state Macondo set and therefore it does not work properly in my current room. Therefore the successes or failures of my current Sound I do not find as something that is indicative about Macondo design ideas.  It would be similar to judging Sound of output tube by plaguing it to any voltage random voltage, driving though it any random current, loading it to any random load and driving it with any random driver…

Zako, I would like to hear your more elaboration on the subject and I hope that with my progress in my room I will be able to battle your view.  I personally do believe in what Macondo stands for and when I bring it to the point I feel it demonstrates what I meant to express then I would not mind to play it for you.  Any competitive and relevant thinking I think worth only by practical results.  Perhaps my experience with Macondo is too isolated and lost track of what is being done out there? Perhaps, I doubt but perhaps.  Last years I do not have a lot of exposure to what is done out there – I do not go to shows, I do not actively travel in people houses as I use to do and I do not go to the demos in high-end salons.  Perhaps the Audio World has moved way beyond of my little room and if it is a sentiment you would like to pass then I would say “possible”. Still, what I know about the “Audio World” makes me to feel that you might be incorrect. I will take you position under advisements and will continue working on my Macondo.

Romy the Cat wrote:

Without mentioning the reasons here are a few pointers: 1)      There is no proper  tone 2)      Horizontal imaging is less refined then I would like it to be. 3)      Sound is not wet enough. 4)      At high volumes room can’t dissipate HF 5)      Sound does not have uniformed density and more reminds a dug and raked backyard. 6)      Strenuous and laborious presentation. 7)      Playback does not sound with the room but in the room.

One of the most interesting and unnerving characteristics of my sound is the way how Macondo plays loud in my new room. In my old room as volume of the sound went up Macondo’s sound was very firm and focused. There was nothing changed in Sound just volume went up. The very tip of the dynamic summit was very well defined and much spotlighted. Now, in the new room it is VERY far from what it used to be as instead of focused dynamic accent Macondo has a loud noise. Before if playbacks needed to deliver an accent, a dynamic punch line it was instantly and VERY narrow. It was like a hit of whip, where the very end was inflicting max pain. Now there is no end of the whip and as Macondo gets loud it hit with wide spectra noise, like a pile of garden rakes has fallen on you.

I attribute it to the fact that Macondo drivers are not time alighted for now but it might be something else as well.

Romy the Cat wrote:

My right bass channel that that sited right next to the equipment bay has no bass. The left LF channel is sitting in a very good “hot” spot but the right is in bass hole.  I would need 6-8dB of extra gain across the entire bass bandpass to have to work properly but Milq does not have these 6-8dBs. The bass channel have a strong room mode around 63Hz that severally mask any lower response.

So, I wonder what kind option I have. I think the most proper would be to reengage the Macondo's Axioms and to see how the bass channel might be modified in order to work alone with 63Hz mode but not against it. I think the rational proposal would be to divide my current bass to Lower Bass and Mid Bass and to have the deviation somewhere around 60hz. This way the lower knee of Mid Bass will be greatly stimulated by 63Hz mode but the upper knee of Lower Bass might stats from 38-40hz, playing with filter and allowing a  the 60Hz region to be handles properly and with any peak. If the Mid Bass will be a horn then the 63Hz mode will work very nice and might punch the response to the lower 50s but with smaller horn.

I like the idea but I need to model this behavior with the actual room measurements

You're on the right track to re-think your x/o curves, tails and overlaps, although it would sure be a big bummer to have to re-do any horns.

Have you fiddled with the floors at all yet?  By tightening the floors you MIGHT be able to boost output under the 63Hz while tailing off power into the 63Hz hump from above and below it.  Of couse the free space around the right channel is going to eat some extra LF, but only to a point.

Time to bust out the ML1s for LF...


Best regards,
Paul S

Romy the Cat wrote:

So, I wonder what kind option I have. I think the most proper would be to reengage the Macondo's Axioms and to see how the bass channel might be modified in order to work alone with 63Hz mode but not against it.

Ok, the last night with time aliment of the driver I had many “weird” problems with sound gone

http://www.romythecat.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?postID=13419#13419

…and now some “sounds” has the resemblance with what Macondo ought to do. Many aspects of tone and imagine are back and the most important the environment become clean and the problems with sound do not masked but well identifiable.

At this point I have a very clear vision that the main problem with Macondo is very much underperforming bass.  In the old room the bass was very well managed, I called it tailored bass, where it was just as much and as good quality as it needed across the bass octaves. The room was literally breathing with LF harmonics and the rest of the music was unfolded on the LF canvas. It was almost the pedal point presentation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedal_point

….with HF octaves were drifting above the LF bubbles.  It was very nice and I very much accustom to this type of sound. Reading this people might feel that it was some kind of “constant subwoofers pressure” as most of the morons set up this playbacks. Surely, it was nothing like this. I would have a difficult time to describe the effect as I did not hear it in any other listening rooms. Do I have the effect in my current room? Not even close.

In fact, after the measurements, the bass in this room is not useful and I unfortunately have to recognize that I will not be able to use Melquiades SET to handle bass. My initial sentiment was that I might be looking at the subject deeper I feel that I was mistaken. I do not have proper sound from 125Hz and doe and I need to get it. I think that my complain that the room has “dry” sound does not come from the fact that the room is untreated but from the fact that I have no proper bas and consequentially not proper lower octaves harmonics.

OK, like I it or not but I would need to put a powerful SS amp into the game and to get my “room breathing” back. Probably I would need to put Yamaha B2 to the game for now and make a temp midbass channel….