Is DEQX a game changer?

This reply is to Bruces' questions - From your measurements I would say you are already using very good speakers as the response is better than I managed to achieve in-room with my original Shahinians. I guess you used quite a lot of sound absorbtion material

Investing in time aligned speakers is not really the issue as the DEQX algorythm has already time aligned all frequencies that the mic picked up from your exiting pair (including the reflections of course!)

I think the 'heavy hand' probably results from a combination of:

- In-room measurement reflections which are included in the subsequent calibration
- A poor room or placement
- Your inexperience with the room equalisation and reliance on either the auto-eq or Larry trying to set this, based on your comments over the 'phone

I sent you a couple of emails with screenshots & a suggestion to experiment by starting with less room equalisation based on the lower frequency peaks you can see on the software, playing music which tends to excite room bass nodes and adjusting or adding further points on-the-fly. You won't do any harm and you will also learn a lot!

The amount of equalisation Larry has used suggests either that your room is really challenging or that he was being guided by you by telephone & couldn't hear what was happening to adjust himself

I actually found that once the speakers are properly time aligned and using a second sub in a different position then the need for room eq becomes almost irrelevant (but setup and time alignment using step responses with the second sub etc becomes more complex). Believe me, my room created all sorts of issues back in 2011 before I started out with this. There really are none now.... so it can be done

Time Alignment outside - Looking at the screenshot of my speakers, you can see how the main impulse is sharp and fades away clearly and very fast to a flat line until the first tiny reflection at 26.2ms. The speakers are at the extreme front edge of a narrow platform, DEQX and amps are on another table many feet away to the side and the ground, 3' below the speakers is soft grass. I believe the tiny reflections are actually caused by the mic & stand because when I measured one of the subs at 3' and then 6", the same reflection appears much sooner on the closer measurement

Andrew

(note: when I say 3', I really mean 3.28 feet, ie 1 metre but as I am an older Brit, my generation is still a bit more American than European !)

Bruce, the only thing I can add at this point to the good responses that have been provided to your questions is to mention that in contrast to speaker correction, DEQX allows you to perform room correction adjustments on the fly, in real time, by inserting and/or dragging adjustment points on the computer screen while you are looking at the measured frequency response plots on that screen and while you are listening. Which is a neat and I believe pretty much unique feature.

You can also click a button which inverts the room correction curve, then insert and/or drag correction points so that the inverted curve lines up with the most significant peaks and dips in the measured frequency response ("most significant" based on the combination of magnitude and width), then re-invert the correction curve and assess it sonically. Also a neat feature.

In doing that you would of course not want to risk messing up the real .mzd file that is in use. The manual describes a procedure for creating a duplicate file that can be played with, but it seems unnecessarily roundabout. I've found that a simpler procedure is to copy the .mzd file to a different folder, then change its name and copy it back to the original folder. Then double-click its icon to open it with the DEQX software, or else open the DEQX software first and use "file/open."

When you're done you can then re-upload the original file to the DEQX, if you want to.

Best,
-- Al

Just wanted to say that I have used the technique of building a "box" of acoustic panels around a speaker for in room measurements. I have a bunch of Realtraps HF (not the standard kind) I use for this, mostly because they have metal frames and so stay upright and don't mind being transported from place to place unlike regular resin hardened panels which are not fully wrapped on the back side with fabric.

There is a much simpler way to create a duplicate or modified file: open your original file as normal in the software then immediately click 'save as' from 'File' on the menu bar (top LH corner)

When the smaller window appears, simply change the file name and save. It will then create another identical .mzd file in all but name into the same root folder as the original

Provided this file remains open while you modify or add anything, any further mods or saves will apply to this, not the original. My 'working' .mzd file was built up by multiple saves this way and eventually I went back and deleted all the older, no longer needed versions

05-20-15: Bifwynne
...... For example, any thoughts if I were to invest in a pair of Vandies which start out time aligned?

Hi Bifwynne, if you haven't already, you might want to read the following Vandersteen Seven loudspeaker review in the Speaker forum. Looks like a really good review by a user (not a reviewer)

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?cspkr&1431987937&&&/Vandersteen-Seven-Review