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).
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.
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.
Very cool WAF you got there, bigger room is great too, I have heard nothing but great things about your speakers, those changers must be a huge convenience!
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...
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)
I helped friend build a straw bale house. It was acoustically awesome till we covered the bale with plaster then less so. Also much more fire resistant than a stick built home. So probably safer than logs I suppose.
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.
"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
Q. Anyone else try this? A. Not me. Q. Is this crazy, dumb, wild or what? A. In my opinion: -------->Not crazy, especially if it works. -------->Not dumb, quite the opposite, I'd say. -------->Not wild, unless being creative, showing initiative and not following the "herd mentality" is "wild." If that's wild, then I aspire to be wild. -------->"What" it looks like to me is encompassed, at least partly, by the following list: Intelligent, very highly creative, extremely well planned and executed, aesthetically pleasing, rather unique, and just downright cool!
Thank you for going to all of the time and effort to post a step by step pictorial and narrative of your fine system. Your virtual system is a good example of why the Virtual System area of Audiogon is one of my very favorites. It's nice to see people who are happy with what they've achieved, and justifiably happy to boot!
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.)
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.
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!
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?
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.
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.
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!
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 great pics, waiting for more :) on the first pic main speakers are quite close to each other - any plans to increase the distance between them? my scm35's are quite far apart delivering a full wide stereo image. ant the rotary bass controll - cool thing
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 on V. OLD SETUP NOT CURRENT