Sogood51's idea is a good one I believe! |
Thanks for steering us back to the subject at hand. |
Dave,
Yes in theory, but it very much depends on the room, finding the right volume, the phase- and crossover points , the proper placement of the sub(s) to get such a blend with the mainspeakers that the sub disappears. It is quite tricky to get it right. I would suggest to first get everything else right to sound to your satisfaction and then later play around with the deeper frequencies and ...if you can find a sub fast and controlled enough within your budget, aim for 20 not 30 hz. |
So it appears getting the right subwoofer is absolutely critical first step in this endeavor. I find that ironic given many classical enthusiast probably consider bass the least important characteristic when selecting speakers. I up to now thought subwoofer was more for home theatre and not for serious musical reproduction. Thanks again for all the suggestions. Anyone recommend a good musical subwoofer that's physically compact?
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Detlof
I have 4 subwoofers, 2 fullrange speaker systems, and 40 years experience.
I hope that doesn't sound like bragging?...but I wasn't using theory in my post.
Dave |
Again, I would advise against getting a sub first. Have everything else set up to your satisfaction first. After that, yes I would say that a sub is essential. ( or even one for each channel) A sub is not only about getting the bottom octaves more right, but if set up correctly, will give you a lot of ambient cues about the recording venture and you can fine tune soundstage and transparency. Also finding the right sub to sound right in your room will depend on wether you decide on SS or tube amplification. Many subs of today have digital amplification, which according to my experience does not homogenize properly with the rest of the system, if you use tubes. I'd advise not to rush it and later, once you are happy with your system, try out a few brands if you can until you are satisfied. |
I'd try playing with current speaker location 1st as SoGood suggested because that's easiest and no cost.
Try to listen with them out away from rear and side walls for better imaging and in order to allow those beautiful piano key strikes some breathing room with which to reverberate .
The next step if things are looking up at that point (good chance) might be adding the sub(s) to fill in the low end.
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Dave,
then you should know how difficult it is to get it right. Don't forget Plaser is new to this and as you should know with your experience, it is the easiest thing in the world to ruin your entire system with subs which are not blended right into the rest. Having had a look at your system, which I find impressive, I don't think it is built around the idea of getting classical piano right foremost and all. Plaser however seems to aim at that and I had that in mind, when I issued my warning.
Sorry, should I have stepped on your toes, in my over 50 years experience (; I have learned that many ways lead to Rome but it mostly brings mediocre results if you rush on the way. |
Plaser
My suggestions relate to the room you are in now, and the components you are using now...and not the room you are going to build (which I know nothing about).
I also don't know when you plan on moving to your new home. The intent is to get you some passable results in the nearer term (I am also assuming you like your speakers for the most part, I think you said you did?).
What you probably don't like (regarding piano recordings) is the missing heft, of the lower notes, that the piano is producing, but your speakers are not reproducing (because they can't).
Like many audiophiles I have several speaker systems, two fullrange systems, and three less than fullrange speaker systems.
I like them all, and I also play a lot of piano music (we probably all do). That said, the piano sounds more real, and much better overall, on the two fullrange systems. The answer for that is simple...the fullrange systems paint a better picture, or at least...a better copy of the original picture, than the smaller speakers are able. No rocket science involved.
I suggested 30hz, and small subwoofers based on your room...and what looks to be, limited placement options in that room.
I would not buy any components for your new home, until well after the move in. because you will need lots of time to think things out, unless you like doing everything twice (-:
When I retired around 8 years ago, I built a fairly large dedicated room (my son helped me), and it took us around 6 months... (4 months of thought, and two months of work).
I can tell you that it was well worth it.
Good luck,
Dave |
Detlof
No, you didn't step on my toes at all, no problem (we are all trying to help, and usually with somewhat limited info)...I guess I just don't find subwoofers, that complicated an animal to tame.
Dave |
Plaser
Subwoofers were around long before home theater made them popular to the masses.
Rel, Martin Logan, Audio Concepts Inc, Sunfire....lots of others make, or have made smaller subwoofers. I have to be honest...my subwoofers are huge. (but my room is larger)
The ACI subwoofers are very nice, the Rel subs are well liked here at this forum...and the little Martin Logan Dynamo is well reviewed. (I like the ACI subs, but I haven't heard the others?)
Of course, if you want a wood finish to match your mains...you will need to do some research.
I would buy some room correction hardware, it will help make integration with the mains a breeze.
Dave |
I looked at Plasers room for the first time (boy am I slow or what). Setting up and integrating a sub woofer in a small room isn't a walk in the park, and IMHO, with all due respect to all, in a room this size may still not produce the sound that will make a piano sound more 'real', just with more bass, probably uneven bass. I really don't know........
But consider, that a lot of the warmth of tone, that will make a recording of a piano sound more authentic, may not be just in the deep bass, but may result from some elevation in frequency response say between 75 and 200hz. The use of a small sub, with a 2nd order crossover, set at 80 hz and the main speakers run full range could produce a bit of an increase in the frequency response between 100 and 200 hz - just enuf warmth to make a piano sound more real, without doing serious damage to imaging. (All of this of course ignores room and placement FR response issues).
Or not, just an idle thought I had in the john........ |
Newbee
Thats pretty much what I was thinking, I would be inclined to think that a pair of small subs placed on the side walls, just in front of the mains, could work well in that room?
30hz is plenty deep for piano...and that could be filtered a few db's if need be? I'm sure listening levels aren't over 75-85db's.
A pair of Martin Logan Dynamo are around $700 used, easy to sell when Plasers moves to his new home.
Of course I can't tell how deep the room is from the pic's...I was guessing 14-16ft?....and not a cube.
Dave |
Newbee and Dave,
You guys are on to something - how to make a grand piano sound real in a room that is not big enough for a grand piano. It seems we all missed the obvious...it just ain't possible. The room is a good 50% of what you hear... |
I'm no sub expert, and don't speak tech with great authority. But I can respond from gut experience (pun intended). A sub will add the kind of bass you 'feel' as opposed to that kind of bass with detail and nuance that you 'hear'. I wonder what part of the range of piano, or rather how much of what you actually listen to, might be 'enhanced' by use of a sub. Two subs, one sub, they'll both address the same thing (bass that is mostly felt rather than heard, without much nuance, and at a possible sacrifice of imaging), some better than others, and better in pairs, yes. Setup is critical. I read somewhere that the extra keys on the Bosendorfer can reach down to 16hz (seems unlikely, but?). I use an ACI Force XL sub (current model) in a smallish / midsize room. It is indeed tricky to setup and integrate well. I got it pretty well done, down to 20hz after which I loose about 8db (I think at 16hz). Lots of trial and error. They are good subs, indeed. Very fast and good for music (as opposed to HT). I still have some suckout issues to deal with my room, but most of that is a WAF sacrifice I fear. I'm working on it. If you're looking at subs and have a bigger budget than ACI or REL I really like the JBL subs - my friend's got one integrated beautifully with his Avalon Indras in a moderate room and that system does piano beautifully to my ears. I don't know how much the sub has to do with it though as it does a damn good job with or without the sub. I notice it's absence only in the lowest octaves (obviously), but I don't think that has an overall impact on how well his system reproduces piano. I think he's running a straight line-out from the pre with no filters on the mains (as I run my sub). I've tried filtering the mains too at 60hz, but I felt I was loosing some detail somehow so went back to line outs to both. |
OOps, yes I must repent, being even much much slower than Newbee, I only now realized that Plaser had pictures of his room here! I've always had a mental picture of his "new room" in my head. Considering the room pictured here, I'd fully agree with what Mapman and others had to say and 30hz would indeed do.
So sorry folks, didn't want to be complicated.
Happy listening,
Detlof |
"-how to make a grand piano sound real in a room that is not big enough for a grand piano."
I know what you're saying Shadorne, but my living room is not big enough for a symphony orchestra.....come to think of it....it's not big enough for the Beatles??!
But it doesn't stop us trying to suspend belief? Isn't that what we're all trying to achieve? |
Dave (Sogood) said Detlof
I guess I just don't find subwoofers, that complicated an animal to tame. Actually the complexity Detlof refers to may stem from his use of 2x the product we usually refer to as "sub-woofer" (one as woof, the other as subwoof) AND a super-tweet which enhances the lower register when done right. Generalising, this set up seems the best so far as things stand (and as far as I can tell, which may not be very far): one "full range" speaker. This will be used to cover, as well as possible, the range between ¬100 - 10kHz give or take some. THEN, you need to go down & to go up. Especially if you want to reproduce piano which, in the unlikely event of a good recording, will play percussively from ¬17Hz up there with the dogs if not bats. IMO Detlof's approach, i.e. to add both an upper tweet is most opportune. I've tried it myself, with outstanding results. Thereafter the two separate units to deal with the 2-3 bass octaves is an excellent way of dealing with a difficult subject; it seems that Sogood is doing the same thing with his 4x external woof units. Couldn't such a set up be replicated in a cheaper version? |
Hi Shadorne, Great article that I had not seen before. It helps explain a few thing I have thoughts about. And confirming others.
Bob |
I have a slightly different perspective on how a piano should sound - from the keyboard. Yes, I play.
I've often found that someone who listens at concerts to a piano on a stage has a very different view of what that piano should sound like than someone who sits and listens in their home, or from someone who (like myself) sits behind the keyboard and plays.
There's so many different recordings of piano with such differing results. My personal favorites tend to be the ones that sound like I hear it when I play. I tend to like recordings by Herbie Hancock, Chic Corea and a few others for this very reason. Others may have different opinions, of course.
Good luck with your quest,
Bob |
Jax,
The lowest pitched key on a typical piano is tuned to 27.5 hz. Bosendorfer makes a 96 key grand which adds an extra octave of bass - so the spec you cited is about right. Now, finding a recording which contains that information is another story!
IMHO, use of subs is appropriate to this instrument - and good digital pianos are often demo'd with subs for this very reason. It's certainly possible that there's a full range speaker out there which will reproduce the lowest notes of a full grand without compromising the rest of the response, but I believe that you've got a lot better shot at success if you use a sub, or a speaker with a built-in sub for this application.
As to the room - this is always a limitation to loudspeaker perfomance, particularly in the bass region. There are other contributors here who are more technically informed on the subject, but I can say that flat frequency response into the mid 20hz range is acheivable in a reasonably sized room. I have eq'd to this performance (and measured it) with subs and a Velodyne SMS-1 sub controller/PEq/room analyzer. I've also heard this response with quality pipe organ recordings. Honestly, that feels a bit like a parlor trick, but the SMS/sub combo really does a great job on the lowest octave of my best piano recordings.
Marty |
Oops!
I just looked at the photo of Plaser's room. As per Emily Litella...never mind!
Marty
PS - For those interested, Synthology software makes a program called Ivory, which contains hypersampled "voices" of 3 pianos for use with a midi keyboard controller and audio system (digital piano). One of the pianos is the 96 key Bosendorfer. |
Shadorne
I agree with you:
"You guys are on to something - how to make a grand piano sound real in a room that is not big enough for a grand piano. It seems we all missed the obvious...it just ain't possible. The room is a good 50% of what you hear..."
And my opinion:
A large slice of something good, is still very good...even if it leaves you wanting the whole pie.
30hz or so, while not the whole pie, would still be quite filling.
I know that in my room, listening to piano with one speaker system or the other (-3db@17hz) or (-3db@27hz)...there is not enough bass difference to even bother with.
The only difference between the two speaker systems is sound quality, one system being a large multi-cone type, and the other, a large planer. (I prefer dipole bass for music).
Dave |
I just had a thought - maybe the problem is not pant flapping bass, or even deep bass, maybe it is a simple as a suck out in the upper bass. A broad and deep enuf suck out in the 60 and/or 120 hz range for example would surely rob enuf tone to make a piano sound unreal. Wonder if, or if not why not, Phaser hasn't evaluated the performance of his speakers in room performance. Perhaps he has some issues that are remedial by speaker movement, listening chair movement (often a biggie), or which are NOT remedial by addition of a sub (deep nulls related to the rooms dimensions for example). A test disc and a SPL meter might be of move value than any sub at this point in time. :-) |
Greg,
Thanks for voicing your understanding of the true core or rather coeur of my efforts. Wished it could have been done more cheaply. But for that the technical resources, outward as well as inward ones were wanting.
Dave,
dipole bass with planars is actually a must, I agree. Another reason why Quads with Gradients sounded so good in combination and your planars were rightly famous for this. For this very reason I tried to keep the Grads when I changed to the Sound Labs but found they were bettered after all by the Soutiens plus Rel combination. The latter by the way is -6db@9hz in room. Helps to chase burglars away (and scare the shit out of you) but also to get the lowest registry of the grand piano in (almost) all its authority with (almost) perfect timing and pitch after much much fiddling, sweating and swearing. Since subbass systems are not only important for bass but for ambience cues ( the Rel is linear down to below 12 hz) which are more felt than heard, all that fiddling was certainly worthwhile. |
Whoops, I noticed a confusing typo in my last post. I meant "JL" subs, and not JBL! The sub my friend has is a JL Phathom f113. Great sub! Also, my own low-level readings are from a RS SPL meter and are not adjusted (it is quite inaccurate in those low readings) so are likely more conservative than my low estimate.
....carry on... |
Try some mono albums with a mono needle. |
Hevac1,
Listening in mono is an excellent idea also!
The mike placement during recording of solo piano pieces varies greatly from recording to recording it seems and is often done for enhancement of stereo effect at cost perhaps of a more natural presentation as one might hear located within optimal listening distance of several feet of the piano. Stereo may not offer much other than an unnatural perspective in this case. If so, who needs it.
Maybe this is part of why other genres sound real enough but solo piano doesn't?
If your pre-amp has mono switching, try that...it's easy
Also, most recordings have compressed dynamics to some extent compared to live. Adding and properly applying a dynamic range enhancement device like say a dbx 3bx series 3 or 4bx will make a diffence in recordings where the dynamics just ain't there to start with. |
I just figure if your listening to a solo piano, your not tring to get image location as you would want for more instraments as stereo would give you. Even live it is mono and very intimate. I have a Lyra mono and found some music just sounds much better and again more intimate with mono than stereo. I have a mono switch on my preamp but the mono cartridge just sounds that much sweeter. |
I kind of wonder that day I walked into Keith Yates's main music room and heard someone playing a piano somewhere down a hall. It didn't matter where I moved around the huge room, the piano was down the hall. It might have been played mono.
Stereo piano stretches the piano keys across the speaker plane when recorded that way. It is common enough. The piano is right there in front of me, but I still would like to hear the piano down the hall just the same. |
Re mono in the next room or down the hall, I agree, as I indicated on Page 1, BUT its not the same when you listen to mono in the same room from your sweet seat.
With a grand piano in an enclosed space even though the source of the direct sounds are obvious the resonances created by the room surfaces in a live performance will be absent in mono - you will have a small central image and no sense of the acoustic.
Thats why 'in the next room' works so well, IMHO, you get both the 'mono' sound and some room resonance sounds without having to sit in front of the speakers and be distracted by less than the sound of a performance from a prospective that you prefer. |
Try staying in stereo but moving the speakers closer together than you might otherwise to better represent the actual width of the recorded piano.
Just another idea... |
Well I got a Velodyne Optimum 8 subwoofer today. I'm having bit difficulty seamlessly incorporating it. I can either turn MA2275 bass control (-12 db at 100hz) down and cross over at 100 hz or just try crossing over at lower frequency ~65 hz. Any suggestions? My first foray into subwoofers and bit over my head. Thanks for all the advices.
The dedicated listening room will be long process and won't happen in the near future so this will do for now. |
Plaser,
Velodyne makes the SMS-1 sub controller (X-over, room analyzer w/ calibrated mic and PEq) that is tremendously effective for your needs. App $500-$600 on-line (AudioAdvisor.com and others).
Marty |
Plaser,
In case you did not want to spend the extra money for the sub controller or are unhappy with the results, here is what I found useful when setting up subs. Probably you have already done all that and are happy. In that case just ignore me, if not, perhaps I may be of some use.
1. Place the sub, just as Mapman has suggested behind one of your main speakers in to the corner of the room.
2. Get an LP or a CD with steady really deep bass. The Rel people suggest here the "Sneakers" CD, film music composed by James Horner on Columbia. You can find that on eBay usually for little money. Use track four, which has a timely evenly spaced deep bass drum. Play your system at normal levels with the sub powered up and play around with the phase switch. Ignore the midbass music on the disk, just listen to the really deep bass drum and find out the loudest setting at either normal or inverted phase. Once you've found that, stick to that.
3. Next move the bass unit a few inches to and fro on an imaginary diagonal line through your room aimed at the opposite corner to where you've placed your bass unit. Have a friend at hand to listen where the bass drum gets loudest. This is probably the best spot for your sub.
4. Next settle for the right X-over points. If at all possible run you main system never ever through your sub's X-over. It practically always ruins the sound. To find out where to best let the sub cut in and at what slope, if the latter is possible with your unit, familiarize yourself well with the the sound of your test cut on the cd, WITHOUT the sub first and then experiment with the sub switched on. The sub must not interfere with, cloud or blot out in any way tjhe subtle information in the music on the disk, but be clearly heard when the bass drum is put into play. With the Sneakers cd this can be achieved very easily if you listen and have a friend fiddle with the X-over points. I've had very good success with this method, which also the Rel people use.
Good luck and happy listening,
Detlof |
Johnathan Valin did a review of the Wilson benesch Torus Infrasonic Generator. It uses an 18" very stiff carbon fiber diaphragm that operates in push pull, much like an electrostatic. Very, very fast. Breath taking fast. Lots of patents at work here so you should go to www.wilson-benesch.com and download the tech paper on it. None better in my opinion for music. I am guessing the JR is better for home theater.
Don't be put off by the fact that I am a dealer either, I am sure you have a local dealer to audition at. |
Martykl and Detlof thanks for your suggestions. I probably will get the SMS-1 in the near future. In the meanwhile, I took your advices Detlof and used one of Charlie Hadyn's deep bass CD's to find the optimal position for the sub. I also used Grados GS-1000 headphone to calibrate the sound so that the music from speakers+sub closely matches that of the headphones (assuming the headphone is most true to the recording). I settled on the left corner just behind the main speaker with 180 degree phase and 60 hz cross over (bass augmentation and not running throuh sub x-over). Also I put a marble slab below it to isolate it and hopefully to avoid disturbing the neighbors.
Overall, the soundstage has increased dramatically and now I'm getting some resemblance to live grand piano sound although still far ways to go, but a huge improvement nontheless (Beethoven sonatas and Rachmaninoff Etude-Tableaux and Preludes seem to have benefitted the most so far). Also the subwoofer has given new life to most jazz CDs I have. I never thought subwoofer can enhance listening experience this much, music just sounds much more wider and feels real. Before spending $1000+ on cables, I think all 2 channel music lovers should get a sub first. |
Now that you have one sub, would you consider trying a stereo pair? |
