MSB + ARC + MBL + VTV + Paradigm + Artnovion

[Ittaku]

42 minutes ago, tripitaka said:

Oh my good lord, looks like I need to be invited back again

Compared to last time you came, I've regained the 16Hz shaker you experienced the first time you were here, the bass is more defined, localised, and tight, and has a much smoother response just about anywhere in the room now.

[tripitaka]

7 minutes ago, Ittaku said:

Compared to last time you came, I've regained the 16Hz shaker you experienced the first time you were here, the bass is more defined, localised, and tight, and has a much smoother response just about anywhere in the room now.

 

And fair enough too, unless I'm being knocked about in my chair these days I dont feel I'm listening to hifi anymore

[ghost4man]

Just a beautiful looking system.

Well done mate!

[Ittaku]

I know we've talked about how silly it is to try and make a qualitative assessment of audio over youtube, but there's still fun in checking it out. This is a binaural recording of the system in action with a static image of the system to minimise bandwidth requirements. There is no point listening to this without using headphones.

 

 

 

 

However in addition, you can download the uncompressed flac capture of the binaurally processed audio in full quality (24/48) from here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mfhlrZURwVI7eLRzIemUTRSvTVyMGbhh/view?usp=sharing

Edited June 13, 2022 by Ittaku

[aussievintage]

28 minutes ago, Ittaku said:

I know we've talked about how silly it is to try and make a qualitative assessment of audio over youtube, but there's still fun in checking it out. This is a binaural recording of the system in action with a static image of the system to minimise bandwidth requirements. There is no point listening to this without using headphones.

 

 

 

 

However in addition, you can download the uncompressed flac capture of the binaurally processed audio in full quality (24/48) from here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mfhlrZURwVI7eLRzIemUTRSvTVyMGbhh/view?usp=sharing

 

 

That was fantastic for those of us too far away to ever hear the system in person.  Impressed!!

[PKay]

Excellent Con. It really pushed my headphones so I can only imagine how good this would sound in your room. 

[Ittaku]

This is the (superb) track that features in that video in case you're wondering.

[Ittaku]

By the way, if anyone's ever in Melbourne from interstate and wants a listen, just message me as I'm home most of the time and can easily spare a couple of hours to geek it up without needing a get together.

[tripitaka]

1 hour ago, Ittaku said:

This is the (superb) track that features in that video in case you're wondering.

Wow that's a lovely album

[tripitaka]

On 06/06/2022 at 9:15 PM, Ittaku said:

Tweaked my DSP even further. This time I just did some paragraphic phase eq convolution on top of the existing filters to get phase alignment better between left and right subwoofers. Subsequently this got me more bass so I had to turn it down yet again. Low bass definition and localisation improved as a result. I don't think I can extract an awful lot more out of this as I've pretty much run out of tricks, but I did revise the convolution incrementally 18 times today.

 

Well this weekend I finally turned on the FIR box that I bought after one visit to @Ittakus house (along with some  subwoofers of course!)

I learned to use Rephase (which was harder than I expected) and I can sure see why people use Dirac ha!  Anyway, in some ways the result is very nice but I am pretty sure the number of taps is causing loss of resolution since my box (OpenDRC DI) only does 6K per channel. While that is higher than many similar gadgets offer, I seem to recall that ittaku experimented with this at one point and declared improvements to be audible up to several hundred K!

Anyway, now that I've demonstrated proof of concept I'm thinking maybe a NUC might be my next purchase.

 

[Edit: nope, I just hadn't set up my correction impulses properly, 6K taps now seems fine to me, I've updated my thoughts in a later comment]

 

The moral of the story is that visits to @Ittaku are pretty special, but they don't come cheap

Edited June 19, 2022 by tripitaka

[evil c]

2 hours ago, Ittaku said:

By the way, if anyone's ever in Melbourne from interstate and wants a listen, just message me as I'm home most of the time and can easily spare a couple of hours to geek it up without needing a get together.

Don't fall for it, it's a trap!

You'll never look at your own system the same way again!

[Stereophilus]

4 hours ago, Ittaku said:

I know we've talked about how silly it is to try and make a qualitative assessment of audio over youtube, but there's still fun in checking it out. This is a binaural recording of the system in action with a static image of the system to minimise bandwidth requirements. There is no point listening to this without using headphones.

 

 

 

 

However in addition, you can download the uncompressed flac capture of the binaurally processed audio in full quality (24/48) from here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mfhlrZURwVI7eLRzIemUTRSvTVyMGbhh/view?usp=sharing

It is useful and innovative of you, Con, to make this recording available.  The flac does offer something of a insight into your system sound, albeit filtered through the lens of whatever transducers I’m using to reproduce your recording.  Some might say it’s the best of both worlds if you hear a recording of music on MBLs played through Rockports?  Unfortunately I think the other transducer (the mic) also removes somethings.  IMHO the recording at 24/48 flac does not do your system anywhere near full justice.  How does it sound to you when you play it back through your system?

[Ittaku]

13 hours ago, Stereophilus said:

It is useful and innovative of you, Con, to make this recording available.  The flac does offer something of a insight into your system sound, albeit filtered through the lens of whatever transducers I’m using to reproduce your recording.  Some might say it’s the best of both worlds if you hear a recording of music on MBLs played through Rockports?  Unfortunately I think the other transducer (the mic) also removes somethings.  IMHO the recording at 24/48 flac does not do your system anywhere near full justice.  How does it sound to you when you play it back through your system?

It sounds like crap played back through my own system a second time. It's a binaural recording and is only meant to be played through headphones, as you already have full room effects, head shape, and ear reflections recorded in it, and adding another room (and ears) no matter how good the system is going to turn it into garbage. Through neutral sounding headphones the leading edge is lost a bit, the top end is rolled off, and the bass is boomy, but it does recreate the room experience which is the point of this exercise.

Edited June 13, 2022 by Ittaku

[PKay]

21 minutes ago, Ittaku said:

It sounds like crap played back through my own system a second time. It's a binaural recording and is only meant to be played through headphones, as you already have full room effects recorded in it, and adding another room no matter how good the system is going to turn it into garbage. Through neutral sounding headphones the leading edge is lost a bit, the top end is rolled off, and the bass is boomy, but it does recreate the room experience which is the point of this exercise.

It is definitely bass heavy through headphones 

[Ittaku]

I've had quite a few people ask me about my playlist. To my disgust, there really is no way to share playlists between different users of Roon. The best that I can offer is a CSV format list of the files, so I've made it available for download here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JP0usjih4OCzRNHd2ktf_33RLN6aFhDJ/view?usp=sharing

[BugPowderDust]

Will check it out.

 

I usually create my playlists in the horrid Qobuz interface then import them into Roon. Not ideal but sorta workable.

[Ittaku]

Just now, BugPowderDust said:

Will check it out.

 

I usually create my playlists in the horrid Qobuz interface then import them into Roon. Not ideal but sorta workable.

Only half my tracks are on Qobuz. The other half are my local collection.

[tripitaka]

On 13/06/2022 at 7:16 PM, tripitaka said:

 

Well this weekend I finally turned on the FIR box that I bought after one visit to @Ittakus house (along with some  subwoofers of course!)

I learned to use Rephase (which was harder than I expected) and I can sure see why people use Dirac ha!  Anyway, in some ways the result is very nice but I am pretty sure the number of taps is causing loss of resolution since my box (OpenDRC DI) only does 6K per channel. While that is higher than many similar gadgets offer, I seem to recall that ittaku experimented with this at one point and declared improvements to be audible up to several hundred K!

Anyway, now that I've demonstrated proof of concept I'm thinking maybe a NUC might be my next purchase.

 

The moral of the story is that visits to @Ittaku are pretty special, but they don't come cheap

 

Apologies @Ittaku for cluttering up your thread but I simply have to withdraw my earlier equivocation regarding FIR.

I'm a total convert now!!

 

Despite my embarrassing ignorance of FIR programs, I finally got something to 'click' - I can at last hear the openness for which I had been striving. I no longer have any concern over the 6Kx2 tap limit (it does mean I cannot influence phase much below 50Hz, but I can live with that).

 

Its likely that I'm still well short of what Dirac could have achieved in 5 seconds, but I'm now able to test the effect of each parameter that I adjust, rather than blindly relying on the generic decisions made by Dirac. I am going to invest considerable effort in this now, since I am certain that I am far from optimized, due to my lack of intuition regarding parameter-setting.

 

FIR is the future for me, thanks @Ittaku for introducing me to it

 

[Ittaku]

Listening to music.

[Ittaku]

Just saw a review on the Magico M9s in the Absolute Sound. I was pondering how 1.5 million dollars gets you two 15" woofers per side, and how they still have to be part of the main speaker tower. Funnily enough, in the review they still listened to them with two Magico Titan subwoofers. Thinking about this the whole thing is quite ridiculous since half the cost of those speakers is that woofer component, the crossover for them, and them needing their own amplification.  Given the subwoofers almost certainly do a better job, none of this makes any sense unless you were planning on not adding subs. It's funny how the old guard is in this schizophrenic stage where they're convinced speakers need to be full range and not rely on subwoofers, but then add them anyway. I remember doing similar calculations for myself on a smaller scale when looking for full range speakers at up to $500K, only to find none that could compete with smaller speakers and subwoofers. Bass is hard, but not that hard guys. You need lots of surface area, amplification, flexibility with room positioning, and DSP.  This obsession with taking the old way we did things to the Nth degree is counter-productive and not capitalising on technological breakthroughs.

 

https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/magico-swings-for-the-fences-the-m9-loudspeaker

Edited June 21, 2022 by Ittaku

[Satanica]

1 hour ago, Ittaku said:

Just saw a review on the Magico M9s in the Absolute Sound. I was pondering how 1.5 million dollars gets you two 15" woofers per side, and how they still have to be part of the main speaker tower. Funnily enough, in the review they still listened to them with two Magico Titan subwoofers. Thinking about this the whole thing is quite ridiculous since half the cost of those speakers is that woofer component, the crossover for them, and them needing their own amplification.  Given the subwoofers almost certainly do a better job, none of this makes any sense unless you were planning on not adding subs. It's funny how the old guard is in this schizophrenic stage where they're convinced speakers need to be full range and not rely on subwoofers, but then add them anyway. I remember doing similar calculations for myself on a smaller scale when looking for full range speakers at up to $500K, only to find none that could compete with smaller speakers and subwoofers. Bass is hard, but not that hard guys. You need lots of surface area, amplification, flexibility with room positioning, and DSP.  This obsession with taking the old way we did things to the Nth degree is counter-productive and not capitalising on technological breakthroughs.

 

https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/magico-swings-for-the-fences-the-m9-loudspeaker

 

Well, there's really nothing that special in this regard as with any speaker you can listen to it with or without sub-woofers.

But if ever there was a demonstration of why sub-woofers will provide the highest level of fidelity not matched by just two speakers of any kind, it's this, the room needs subwoofer(s).

 

"Why would the massive M9 need a subwoofer? It doesn’t; the room needs the subwoofer, as do all rooms, even a reference-quality room such as the one in Magico’s factory. The multiple sources of bass distributed throughout the room drive the room’s resonant modes more uniformly for smoother and more linear low-end response.".

[qik_shift]

Wholeheartedly agree with the lack of understanding on why people are so resistant to add subwoofers.  Not only do 'full range' speakers rarely truly present a full range, but having subwoofers means you can move them around independently of the mids and uppers too.

[Wimbo]

Wow. How did I miss this post. Just came across it. Congrats @Ittaku. Beautifully set up room and system. You must be proud and extremely happy

[Ittaku]

Oh wow thetubestore has KT150s back in stock and at their normal price. There is only one manufacturer of them, and they're Russian so... ??? Maybe I should buy some spares.

[cazzesman]

On 21/6/2022 at 3:43 PM, qik_shift said:

Wholeheartedly agree with the lack of understanding on why people are so resistant to add subwoofers.  Not only do 'full range' speakers rarely truly present a full range, but having subwoofers means you can move them around independently of the mids and uppers too.

I just added 2 X JL Audio D110’s to my Active Kii3’s.    The Kii’s rolled off at 25 alone.    The 110’s are crossed at 50hz.    The 110’s go to 20hz but what the subs have given me are better performance and easier spl without strain on the Kii3’s bottom end.    The Kii’s are brilliant but they still can’t produce 20hz at 95+db.      The Kii/110 combo can.   
 

Vocals are wide and open.      The sound stage is more 3D and relaxed. 
 

It was the BXT at $25,000 or the 2 X 110 plus MiniDSP Studio (Dirac Live 3.0) and 2x4HD for $5,000.   Would the BXT be 5 times better?     Mmmmmmmmm doubt it.   

Regards Cazzesman

 

Edited June 26, 2022 by cazzesman