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).
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.
I was looking at your rooms frequency response. Impressive.
How did you attain that nice flat response, as your room looks normal enough? I see the bass EQ removed the dreaded hum at 60hz buy why does your bass roll off more quickly now?
I'd love to have a listening space that has a flat studio quality EQ and looks like a normal room without all the ugly dampening pannel people throw around indiscrimenantly.
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).
Checked out the photos of your system for the first time and I'm impressed. Good to see some active speakers and custom music server. The Benchmark DAC 1 is a favorite tool of our best local studio, Mixmasters. Cheers Mark
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!
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...
The bass waterfall graph looks sweet! I've played with Room EQ Wizard some times ago and it was fun to see the graph and tune the room. My Velodyne doesn't go as low or as flat as your ATC. It must sound great also. I have recently picked up on the Rock Band game. The drums are a lot of fun to play, but at the same time really hard! I bet you the expert mode is a piece of cake for you though.
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?
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.
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 - I admire the look of your room. Nice incorporation of room treatments... great looking acoustically treated fireplace, rustic french doors, leather seating and great speakers that flawlessly blend with the decor. Bravo!
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...
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?
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.
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?
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 on V. OLD SETUP NOT CURRENT