System ca. 2008

by shadorne on V. OLD SETUP NOT CURRENT
View forward - speakers behind grill
Picture frame soffit mount
Sub on left looks small but isn't
Listening position & log RPG diffuser
Taken with my AF-S Nikkor 18-200MM DX VR
Roland TD-9 V-Drums

Description

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.
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Components Toggle details

    • Waterfall in room Bass Response Plot
    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).
    • Sony BD S300
    Blu-ray Player
    • American Power Conversion AV H15
    1.5 Kva
    • RAW RESPONSE LEFT SPEAKER - NO SUB
    Raw unfiltered response - no subwoofer

Comments 105

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Owner
Peterayer,
Thanks for your comments. The amps are built into the speaker but don't need to be big because there is no passive crossover. The 2/3 power in Class A is what the manufacturer claims. I expect they are biased that way - flipping to Class AB when they hit 2/3 power. They certainly generate lots of heat and just as much heat when idle. There are large heat sink fins on the back of the speaker. ATC also sell modest sized separate amplifiers that operate the same way - like the SIA 150 with 2/3 power in Class A.

C1ferrari,
Thanks for your comments. No I have not bothered with Vinyl since the late 80's. I know Vinyl can sound stunning because that is how I started. Especially 12" 45 RPM tracks mastered for clubs and 33 1/3 LP Japanese pressings. I consider digital the future and try to make it work. I know that some original Vinyl pressings are the benchmark for many older recordings but I am willing to accept missing out on a few gems for the sake of convenience.

shadorne

Owner
Milpai,

Thanks. That was shot in Hudson Bay - Churchill Manitoba - and that was a real wild animal - no zoo! I used a wide angle lens for the room shots. The 12-24mm f/4G IF-ED AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor.

shadorne

Owner
System edited: Added Roland VH-11 and PM-30

shadorne

Owner
Streetdaddy,

Thanks - they are indeed very comfortable and seem to hold their shape (so far).

I must update my system - I have Roland PM30 active speaker system for the drum set and a VH-11 hi-hat.

I need a few thousand years more of drumming practice before Dennis Chambers needs to be worried! All the same, I am having fun and that is what matters to me.

shadorne

Owner
System edited: Bob, You asked to see a raw frequency plot with no filtering at all - to be able to see "comb filtering" effects of in room reflections. So I have added a plot showing the RAW response of the left speaker with the subwoofer turned off (it is much worse than the right speaker and therefore serves as a great example of room modes at low frequencies as well as typical high frequency comb filtering where surface reflections cause nulls at specific frequencies) I would add that none of this is at all concerning or unusual. Unfortunately I don;t have a plot prior to placing the speakers into a soffit mount - so I can't show the worst in room comb filter effect from reflections from the wall behind the speakers (as there is essentially NONE or this effect is at least a MINIMUM in my situation - although from system photos you can deduce that the Left speaker must necessarily be the worst due to recess beside it) Is this the kind of example you asked for? Any comments?

shadorne

Owner
Perhaps Shadorne would be so kind to post a graph of his in room freq response with no smoothing supplied

Bob,

Check out the Waterfall Plot (look at Time t = 0 ). I think it was done using only 1/12 octave smoothing. You can see it is a lot more bumpy, just as one would expect.

shadorne

Owner
Metal snare sound seems "in" right now. Have you considered a classic like the Ludwig Black Beauty? What about Sabian ? Canadian made by Zildjian's youngest son (with a chip on his shoulder). Seriously though, I'd recommend going for the sound you like most and one that fits your style. Honestly, I have little experience on acoustic drums and would struggle to even tune 'em.

shadorne

Owner
Bob,

You are quite correct. If you look at my Waterfall Plot it is not smoothed nearly as heavily and you can see a few +/- 5 db peaks and troughs. 1/3 octave is useful and enough resolution for adjusting the bass response but it does not mean the response is exactly flat - just the average response...

shadorne

Owner
see the bass EQ removed the dreaded bump at 60hz buy why does your bass roll off more quickly now?

1) The accuracy of the data down to 10 Hz is not that great to start with. (It is complex, 2nd year University mathematics, but technically speaking the type of "window" used to filter the data prior to analysis can affect the ultra extreme LF - below 20 Hz. This means that if I repeated the measurement ten times there would be some variability in that part of plot below 20 Hz anyway)
2) Also, I added a notch filter around 10 Hz to remove more ultra LF as I can't hear it anyway and ultra LF can damage subwoofers - so I prefer to have a steeper roll off for safety to protect the equipment better.

shadorne

Owner
The Benchmark DAC 1 is a favorite tool of our best local studio, Mixmasters. Cheers Mark

Hey many thanks Mark.

I found their website and I see Mixmasters Studio uses ATC speakers too, as well as the mixing console from Rhinocerous Studios (INXS), another studio that uses ATC. The DAC1 and active ATC's appears to be a combination that is popular (Doug Sax of Sheffield Labs fame uses this combo too).

shadorne

Owner
Rock band is a lot of fun and our whole family plays from time to time - it is nice to have something that spans the generations - but three of us take music lessons regularly and Rock Band is clearly just a game...

shadorne

Owner
Musicnoise,

The waterfall, room RT60 decay response and room mode (bass) frequency response were all made using Fuzzmeasure software running on a Mac Mini, with a Behringer ECM8000 measurement microphone and E-Mu 0404 USB microphone amp.

Do you have Apple Mac or a PC, and do you have a measurement microphone or just a Radio Shack SPL meter?

shadorne

Owner
Guych,

I came across ATC in 1995. They happen to suit my taste perfectly so, apart from upgrades along the ATC product line over the years, I have not tried much since then. I continue to audition stuff in case something takes my fancy. Pre '95 I accumulated a speaker graveyard of typically $1K speakers that didn't work for me sonically but happened to fit the appartment or wherever I moved to, including Africa, Scotland, Italy, and France. When living in appartments I struggled a bit and even had a period of installing high end gear into cars - to get my loud SPL kicks! However, I still have a relatively unknown Canadian speaker called "Energy Pro 22" ($800 in 1983 - when I discovered this little gem) but that was really the only "keeper" from the pre-'95 era. My current house is wired top to bottom with B&W speakers everywhere - great for cocktail parties but not much good for anything else.

shadorne

Owner
Ahhh - now we are on to bass players!! Don't get me started - the next most underated player in the band (after the drummer)! Bernard Edwards and Brothers Johnson got me hooked on bass in my teens and I suppose I'll have to post to my other ongoing thread about 12" extended mixes that I recently found a fantastic recording of "Good Times" by Eurpoean DJ Ben Liebrand - WOW Bernard Edwards can groove - perhaps clarity in bass chops are part of the reason I am so careful about in room bass response and distortion in the bass from speakers/subs...

shadorne

Owner
Dan,

You are quite right - too many great drummers (like Buddy Rich) means that any discussion will inevitably leave out some greats - for example no mention of Neil Peart, so far!

FWIW - Kenwood Dennard playing drums on Maceo Parker "Life on Planet Groove" is MUST buy. You MUST have this album if you are at all interested in funk drumming. It is AMAZING! Another of my favorites is ToP Oakland Zone, for which you can buy David Garibaldi's own music sheets and get the original ToP tracks without drums. This book by David Garibaldi also has a list of his favorite albums and tracks...it may be worth buying only for this list at the back of the book!!!

Ok enough on drumming and back to your question. I used Fuzzmeasure 3 ($150) for those plots, mainly because it runs on a Mac. If I had a PC running my system then I'd probably go with Room EQ Wizard for room analysis (it's Free!!!) but convenience was important enough to me to go with Fuzzmeasure.

shadorne

Owner
Great choices. I like them and also Steve Ferrone, Brian Purdie and Jeff Porcaro -
just an amazing touch - they seem to add just what is needed and no more. Now
that is a skill. Steve Jordan and David Garibaldi are also instantly recognizable
and David's hi-hat work is stunning. However, there is so much talent out there
over the years - like Sonny Payne, Clyde Stubbfield, Dennis Chambers...it is
really unfair to single out so few...there are so many great ones that all
contribute(d) in unique ways.

A current young favorite of mine is Wesley Finley...

shadorne

Owner
Shadorne is that the roland drum set that has the Steve Gadd sound

Exactly - and that would be me producing Steve Gadd sound! Ha Ha. I wish. Unfortunately that will never ever happen!

Seriously I am not aware of any Roland V-drums connection to Steve Gadd. Is Steve one of your favorite drummers?

shadorne

Owner
Someone keeps pushing the ATCs as a choice I should have gone for but I love the planar/stat sound too much.

ATC's come close (but do not surpass) a great planar/stat sound for midrange clarity/detail - so stick to what you love! For me, it is all the other things ATC do so well that makes them work for me - for example percussion.

shadorne

Owner
ZigonHT,

So it took 3 years for you (from 10 to 13). And that is the difficulty I face as three years is a long time to keep pushing...even if it is a mere 20 minutes a day and one hour lesson a week (with summers off). I really appreciate your suggsetions.

For example, I pushed our other daughter into figure skating (extremely expensive - I would not recommend it at all) and it also took her about 3 years to get going. After that she won so many medals and competitions and had so many friends and was so healthy that she never looked back. She only gave this up recently (stopped at attempting triple jumps) but it was a great sport for her for 10 years. She holds herself very well because of it.

Unfortunately really difficult things become rewarding ONLY after significant effort...so in hindsight are you glad your Mum pushed a little or not?

shadorne

Owner
Zigonht,

I have come to the conclusion that Neil Peart has absolutely no cause for alarm. I am still having great fun though and nearly fininshed the first book or basic drum lessons. My 8 year old is playing well too but she needs a strong push to practice (only 10 to 20 minutes a day + 1 hour a week instructor) - I am not sure how long I should keep pushing before letting her decide if she really wants to continue ( I would like her to be able to partcipate in high school band as musician). It is only three months so far since we begun - not perhaps enough to get into it but long enough that the initial excitement/novelty is conmpletely gone.

What do YOU think is fair for me to push her - 6 months or a year or longer at this modest pace?

shadorne

Owner
Would the soffit installation work for any box speaker that has a flat front baffle and no rear radiation drivers or ports, such as classic acoustical suspension designs?

Yes, however you get a 6 db bass boost. (same as if you place the speakers right up against the wall) So choose a speaker lean or light in the bass and expect to need to use some EQ or tone control.

Does this concept involve constructing an opening just large enough to accommodate the speaker box, then installing the speaker flush with the face of the wall or room divider?

The best is to make a larger opening so you have room to adjust position and then fill it with acoustic batting (fiberglass or rockwool) and make a picture frame for the speaker (make a smooth transition)

Cabinetry needs to be a lot more solid than usual - and heavily braced.

shadorne

Owner
Slipknot,

Are you planning something similar?

The fireplace is a modern high efficiency gas burner with fake logs, and a glass enclosed fire box (no draft) - so I can't actually use the wood and it is simply a decorative way to gain significant rear wall acoustic absorption in lower frequencies and dispersion in higher frequencies. The bigger and more random the better!

I tend to concentrate on copying pro setups for my acoustics and pros often treat the wall behind the listener like this and this. Of course domestic concerns mean that a fireplace is infinitely preferable to what you see in these pictures.

shadorne

Owner
System edited: V-Drum set installed March 31st, 2008. This is the new Roland TD9-KX with all mesh pads. This is one of the very first kits to arrive in Canada - it sounds awesome hooked up to the main speakers and sub. Now I am really ready to make some noise :D

shadorne

Owner
System edited: My Sony 36" CRT HDTV died after 6 years. This was the opportunity to add an LCD HDTV (Sharp 42" 1080P 1980 x 1080 TV). This allows me to display my Mac Mini output on the TV in order to control my four mega CD changers. It took a whole evening to get the Mac Mini resolution to perfectly match the TV...in the end I hacked into Mac OS X with DisplayConfigX shareware program and set the Mac Mini ATI video card to output 720P (not a native Mac screen resolution...hence the need to hack). The physical hookup was much easier; I used a DVI-D to HDMI adapter and a 4 meter HDMI Monster Cable. Screen is perfect now and I will be able to control CD players/playlists/search for tracks/volume/surf the web etc. all from the listening position (couch) once I get a wireless keyboard with trackball. Obviously I could have done all this using a Crestron or other high end HTPC system but it has been a lot of fun to do everything myself along with some help from Titletrack Jukebox software and an RS232 control box that lets me control absolutely any component through either Sony A1 link or programmed IR control.

shadorne

Owner
System edited: Just added four of the new type bass traps from GIK Acoustics. This latest triangular design gives effective broadband absorption in an aesthetic design. The coffee colour was selected to match the mahogany stained maple wood cabinetry. The back wall (behind the listener) is with three of these corner units. A fourth is positioned by the sub at the front. I added detailed photos - so you can see how it looks - not bad compared to other options that I looked at.

shadorne

Owner
Jeff,
I have used a Mac to control my CD Changers for over 5 years - it is very reliable. If I were to start today, given the very low cost of large hard drives, then I would probably go for a PC/MAC server with a DAC and burn everything to lossless files on a RAID drive system...

shadorne

Owner
Jeff1225,

I currently use the DAC's in my Anthem AVM-20 DSP pre-amp(AKM DACS of around 2001 vintage, these had good reviews at the time but are nolonger SOTA).

I have A/B compared the AKM DACS to the Sony DACS in my Sony mega changers... but to be honest the difference is so small that I cannot identify which DAC is being used....with one exception, the digital signal path from changer to pre-amp has lower background noise (which is evident when you jack up the volume to max - so I prefer it)

Are you considering this option?

shadorne

Owner
Mdhoover,

Thank you for the kind words of encouragement. What I have done is still far from a perfect acoustical setup even if it was modelled on a professional studio soffit mounting for the speakers. Nevertheless I feel I have managed to adequately balance acoustic as well as aesthetic requirements in a unqiue way. I am happy to share and glad you enjoyed reading about my efforts.

shadorne

Owner
System edited: The Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla! I added home built custom baffles for soffit mount. (I had been meaning to do this for a while and finally got round to it.)

shadorne

Owner
Oz,

I did shove them into that wall unit. This is a soffit mounting, I probably don't need to go into the benefits as you probably know them already. What surprises me is that I have rarely seen soffit mounting on audigon systems but it is quite usual in professional studios...just try a search and look at a few pro studio setups and you can see that it is the preferred permanent arrangement. Why more aduiogoners do not try this is a mystery to me.

shadorne

Owner
Eldartford,

Hay bails - I love it - I never thought of that!

Mmm - on second thoughts - that might be too much of a fire hazard but it would probably work great ...better than foam.....especially if you spread the hay across the floor!

shadorne

Owner
System edited: I am not sure if others have tried this. I thought long and hard about how to get rid of wall reflections without ugly foam that is so obvious and unacceptable to my better half. To start with, the walls have all been plastered to create an extremely rough diffusive surface texture with 1/8" to 1/4" grooves but that does little to help with LF reflections... Fortunately, on the all important rear wall (where you often get undesirable base reflections) there was an existing fire place. A modification to the surround of the fireplace was the trick I came up with: a huge stack of various sizes of 18" logs gives what I believe to be the wildest acoustic base trap ever. Wild because this is not your usual foam...these are real logs! I left the bark on the logs as I felt this created the most absorbing surface. The variety in log size, 1" to 5" diameter, is intended to give this wild log base trap the broadest spectrum of absorption. I did not make before and after measurements so I cannot say exactly how much the improvement is...all I can say is that it is noticeably better. Anyone else try this? Is this crazy, dumb, wild or what?

shadorne

Owner
System edited: Added a photo showing the rats nest of cabling during testing phase prior to installing components in cabinets. This is the last step. All that remains is to run wires behind cabinets and install components....sounds simple but it is tedious work - a task for tomorrow.

shadorne

Owner
System edited: Doors and handles added. Speaker pocket doors needed additional adjustments so they can sink neatly out the way when speakers are in use. Also drilled a bunch of holes for ventilation and wiring. Shelving still needs some minor adjustments and carpet still needs to be toed in. TV is partly in but not hooked up.

shadorne

Owner
System edited: More progress. Upper shelves and maple wood facings added. Numerous holes drilled for component wires. Next phase: Cabinet doors to be installed, handles to be mounted and carpet to be toed back in its new place. System may even be ready to throw on the switch by tomorrow night!

shadorne

Owner
Pitdog75,

I try to balance stereo image with side wall reflections. My preference is for speakers to be about 8 feet apart and with a minimum of 4 feet from side walls, listening at 10 to 12 feet back with a good 6 foot behind me (less rear reflections). I find this to be the best balance. I also find corners tend to increase base but bring their own non-linear room effects and so I try to avoid them.

In any case, ATC speakers have such an even sound energy field that I find huge flexibility of placement compared to others, which is a great strength! On the smaller models (like SCM 20's), I found placement closer to corners helped with base extension, which is where they usualy ended up....the SCM 100's need no help in the base, which is why I have them further from the corners.

shadorne

Owner
System edited: Photos show progress in cabinetry construction up to Day Two.

shadorne

Owner
System edited: This photos show the first cabinets installed on Day One. The carpet was rolled back and everything was moved out the way, as the first cabinets were installed. You can see speakers in the corner by the fire place. The lower row of cabinets will house the audio components...space for TV, spealers and shelves for DVD's will follow on Day Two.

shadorne

Owner
Mark,

Huh? Cooling? This is no antique fan and it is certainly not for cooling....you have probably heard of a "base trap" well this is actually a "base mixer" ... my most expensive audio tweak.....it evenly distributes the lower base frequencies evenly through my room.

Since I upgraded the pulley system from ordinary rubber to directionaly aligned genuine cow hide leather, the smoothness in base reponse has been phenominal...with this tweak I think I have nearly achieved audio nirvana...although I find it a nuisance to continually adjust the rotation speed to match the sound level and once I nearly lost a finger when my wife hit what she thought was the light switch and started the rotor just as I was making critical phase adjustments of the blades.

shadorne

Owner
System edited: Just added some photos of my x-studio equipment (Fronts acquired on Audiogon classifieds! Others items accumulated new over several years). These back-breakingly heavy brutes will never win any beauty contest. Thes photos show how things look before the cabinet builders arrive in an attempt to improve the WAF!

shadorne

Owner
Just moved house and equipment is in a smaller size room than before. Now in a 25' by 22' slightly irregular shape room that starts about 16 feet wide where fronts are placed roughly 8 feet apart and opens, after 6 feet to full width with a circular area and large bay windows on one side. 9 foot ceilings and concrete floor with carpet. I have contracted to get some cabinetry built to hide the equipment: the 100's are big ugly brutes, and so are the CD mega changers and all will be hidden away to improve the WAF. I will post before and after pics when this is finished (next month or so).

shadorne

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