Studio style flush (soffit) speaker mounting - speakers are mounted into a wall with drivers flush with wall surface. Note that this is not simply an HT cabinet - all of this was custom built with extra thick MDF and heavily braced to eliminate vibration. Speaker is decoupled from framing with rubber pads and surrounded with 8 inches of pink acoustic fibreglass on all sides.
The bookshelves above are intended to absorb some lower frequencies, as is the log fire place which is 8 feet behind the listening position. More acoustic absorption is achieved by four massive GIK Tri-Traps. The audio signal that goes to the subwoofer is treated separately by a PEQ with specific notch filters to eliminate LF room modes.
The down firing ATC 15" subwoofer is driven by its on board 1000 Watt amp (positioned to the left of the main speakers). Active ATC main speakers have three separate (Class A to two thirds power) amps each for each driver: 200 Watts amp to each 12" woofer, separate 100 Watts amp to each mid range and separate 50 Watts amp to each tweeter.
Five giant Sony Megachangers are controlled at the touch of the keyboard trackball, all from the listening chair (software controlled from the Mac Mini). Each of these five Megachangers TOSLINK output is connected to a Benchmark DAC1. The DAC1 corrects for the jittery TOSLINK outputs and produces a sound quality way beyond the modest price of the combination.
All in all I try to combine convenience with a pretty high end sound.
Doug Sax of Sheffield Labs fame uses soffit mounted active ATC speakers driven by Benchmark DAC1's in his studio. I figure what is good enough for Doug Sax's "golden ears" is certainly good enough for my "tin ears"! Besides, as so much music is mastered by Doug it is nice to hear it as close as possible to the way he does when mastering.
Flat response, no significant resonance and smooth even decay down to 20 Hz.
In room Frequency Response Bass Plot
Blue plot is before EQ correction to the sub. Red is the corrected in room response. Speakers are run full range flat with no EQ or tone control.
T30 Room Reverb RT60 Decay Time
This shows the reverb decay time it takes for sound to decay to -60 db. A value of 0.4 is considered ideal for my large 7000 cu feet room. It is acceptable for reverb decay time to rise in the extreme LF provided it stays below 1.1 (for this size room). It is important that the room is balanced with no spikes in reverb time. Room reverb is much more important than a perfectly flat frequency response.
ATC SCM-100A
Active Speakers 12" Woofer, 3" dome mid,1" tweet, separate 275W,100W, 50W amps
ATC SCM-0.1/15
Active sub 15" Woofer driven by 1000W amp
ATC SCM-20SL
Surrounds - Passive ATC 75mm dome mid range grafted on ATC 150mm woofer with 1 inch dome tweeter(vifa). You can see them on top of fireplace, which is on rear wall (facing front speakers)
Benchmark DAC1
Each of my five CDP Megachangers TOSLINK is fed to a Benchmark DAC1 which does the D to A conversion after eliminating the TOSLINK Jitter
Sony CDP-CX350 (Five of them)
CD Mega Changer 300 dics - controlled by Sony A1 through Slink-e and Apple Mac Mini
Anthem AVM-20
Surround Processor
Bryston 4B-ST
Drives L and R surrounds
GIK Acoustics (Four of them) Tri-Trap
Triangular Bass Trap, 4 foot, 17x17x24 inch crossection, 3 Units on back wall and one unit is on the front wall.
Fireplace but actually stealthy Bass Trap & RPG Skyline diffuser
18" Logs stacked perpendicular to the rear wall in random fashion. Bark is left on the logs to help sound absorbing surfaces between logs. Logs vary in length to give a skyline diffuser surface.
Beringer DSP1124P
Parametric EQ used on Sub Woofer for Room Modal Response control.
Macintosh G4 Mini Titletrack Jukebox
I am not generally a tweaker. EQ adjustments for room modes on the sub and speaker soffit is all I do. I use my Macintosh G4 and Titletrack Jukebox software to control everything: browse/find music and set playlists, stage CD's to changers for continuous cued music playback from five Sony mega CD Changers, or iTunes. Mac mini also controls all equipment settings (RS232 to infra-red adapters).
Knowing how you like percussion I suggest you give a listen to "Ghost Rock" by Nomo. Lot's of rhythm section syncopation and some unusual lead and home made instruments. Good beat, good stuff!
I've been listening to the Genesis 76-82 SACD box set. Overall the quality of the sound is excellent in both MC and stereo. The bass is a bit weak, but this is typical of the time period and Genesis in general. The bass is there, but it's fully integrated into the music and a bit thin. Abacab is the best sounding of the lot and the real loser is Duke. The sonics on this disc are highly compressed. And I remember the LP being exactly the same - and hating it for being so!
This is very sad because it's one of my favorite albums of all time. The writing and playing are spectacular, the theme timeless. The music is full of dynamics, incredible crescendos that erupt into change-up break-out sections. And I'm rooting for it to be spectacular. To build and build and then release and carry me away with the new rhythm. But the compression holds it back and no matter how loud you crank it, the emotional involvement is just not there on the disc. Such a shame. Love this music, hate the masters. IMO they ruined this one in the studio. and I'm pretty sure this one is lost forever given the great job done with the other discs in the set.
In summary, I'd recommend Abacab and Then There Were Three as the two best of the lot. I find them completely engaging with excellent music and sound.
Yeah, lots of great drummers. I played bass in HS and through college so I really appreciate great drumming. To this day I can't think of anything that makes me smile more than those long funky jam-out session with a great drummer. Well, nothing I can mention in a public forum anyway :)
I'll pick up "Life on Planet Groove" and let you know what I think. FYI - I just won an AudioGon auction of Genesis 1976 -1982 SACD & dvd box set so I'll be listening to Phil's stick & vocal work progression for a while. For bass chops I recently bought a disc by S.M.V. (Stanley Clarke, Marcus Miller, Victor Wooten) called "Thunder". And it does! It's unusual, as they all play together and break out high, medium, and low bass parts. Lot's of funk and lots of fun - and it would sound great on your system.
OK then, thanks for the Room EQ Wizard recommendation. Free is good :) FYI, I've got the ubiquitous Radio Shack SPL meter, but it's got limited frequency response and those excel graphs only go so far. What mic do you recommend for full range coverage to use with EQ Wiz?
Hey, you guys left out Buddy Rich - the greatest jazz drummer of all time (according to his modest web site:). And at the other extreme Keith Moon - man could he pound the skins! Is it fair to say the Who never recovered from his loss?
Changing topics I'm wondering what program(s) you recommend for spectral analysis of room acoustics. Or put differently, what program did you use for the graphs posted at top of page?
shadorne on V. OLD SETUP NOT CURRENT