Review: Jim Smith RoomPlay voicing Tweak


Category: Accessories


I attend about five concerts a year at the Boston Symphony Orchestra. As my interest in classical music has grown, I have used these performances from the listening perspective of the eighth row, center, as a reference for how reproduced music should sound in my home. Over the last ten years I have assembled a good collection of audio gear and have strived to make that system approach what I hear at the BSO. Toward that end, I bought a copy of Jim Smith’s book, Get Better Sound.

The book is well written and easy to understand. I was particularly interested in the speaker placement and room interaction sections as I had recently purchased a new pair of speakers. By following the advice in the book, I was able to improve my system to the point where I was quite pleased but not truly satisfied. Compared to what I heard at the BSO, my system still lacked dynamics and that palpable presence of a live performance.

Jim suggests in his book that careful placement and proper integration of sub woofers can often provide dramatic improvements to a system. With this in mind, I bought a pair of high quality sub woofers and hired Jim to voice my system and to integrate my subs with my main speakers. After some communication about system details and scheduling, Jim agreed to “voice my system to my room”.

Jim arrived the night before the RoomPlay session and connected his laptop and DAC to my system. He listen to some music in order to get a general sense of how my system sounded and what we could do the following day to improve its performance. The following morning we set up Jim’s test equipment. Jim began by running test tones and measuring the room. He wants to first establish the correct seating location based on the smoothest and best bass. We then moved the speakers back and forth listening for the most balanced overall frequency response. This distance relationship between the listener and the speakers, relative to the dimensions of the room, minimizes frequency peaks and nulls and establishes the smoothest frequency curve. The next step involved establishing the proper distance between the speakers. Here Jim listened for a sense of weight and body to the voices and instruments and for appropriate inner detail and center-fill. Finally, we tried different degrees of toe-in and tilt, listening for tonal balance. All of these extremely precise adjustments required the use of laser levels and measuring devices. It was an exacting and very deliberate process.

Once the main speakers were correctly positioned, we worked on integrating the two sub woofers. We tried many different locations and orientations as well as phase angles, cut off frequencies and slopes. After a few hours and much effort, we agreed that in my system and in my room, the subs, though extending the frequency range of the system, detracted slightly from the overall sense of tonal balance and clarity. We decided the trade-offs were not worth it, so the subs were removed from the room.

It has been about six weeks since Jim’s visit. I have had some time now to reflect on the visit and the results of his work. I had read his book and worked diligently to improve my system to the point where I was not sure what further improvements Jim could bring. Nevertheless, my anticipation of and expectations for his visit were high. If he could improve the sonics even slightly, I would be happy. I can now say that I was not properly prepared for the degree of improvement Jim made to my system. Jim speaks about Tone, Presence and Dynamics. He tells his clients that he will make the musicians perform for them in their rooms. His goal is to have the client thinking about a listening session long after it is over, in a similar way that he continues to think about a great live performance days after it is heard. Jim achieved all of this and more. I simply did not realize to how high a degree my system could perform.

Jim is a very personable fellow, full of knowledge and experience. Though I learned a great deal watching him work, I also really enjoyed being in his company. The improvements he made to my system are dramatic and I consider his fee to be a bargain relative to the overall investment I have in my system. His RoomPlay service is the single best purchase I have made in this hobby. I listen more intently, enjoy the experience more completely and have a much deeper appreciation for my music. I would have thought that results from his efforts were some kind of lucky fluke were it not that he performed the same service with very similar results on a friend’s familiar system. Our two systems improved in similar ways and are similarly involving. I am now fully convinced that the speaker/listener/room relationship is the primary component to good and convincing sound and that the equipment plays a subordinate, though important role.

On Good Friday, I went to the BSO to hear Bach’s Passion according to John. It is a large choral piece with full orchestra and six solo vocalists. The performance was deeply moving. On Easter evening, two days later, with Bach fresh in my mind, I listened to an LP recording of Jesus Christ Superstar, the Passion according to Andrew Lloyd Webber. No, it did not sound quite like the real thing, nor was the scale of the music as majestic as in Symphony Hall, but the performance was just as emotionally involving. I was just as moved by the recording and as Jim predicted, I continue to think about how good it sounded.

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peterayer
You are very welcome Erndog. Jim has a lot more experience than I do. So he uses his measuring instruments and then plays 20 or so digital songs that he knows extremely well and he basically fine tuned what I had started. He spent ten hours straight without a break. The difference is that he knows better than I did at the time what to listen for.

I got close but his small changes really improved the sense of presence and dynamics mostly. But imaging and extension increased a bit also. In the end, my listening seat was lifted about two inches, the sofa was moved back 7 inches, the speakers came into the room about 4 more inches, and the distance between the speakers changed about 2 inches closer together. But this small changes had a dramatic effect.

I read and followed the advice in the book, and he said that I came pretty close, but I did not know how to take it to the next level. That's where he came in.
I don't know about the tweak, but I can tell you about the squeak that his much-vaunted Kickstarter project was.. he has usurped - stolen is a better word - almost 100000 USD from a Kickstarter project without sending out the rewards to the guys who funded his *project*. Been more than seven years now.
Thanks for your post Peter.  Very interesting read.  I began trying to figure out room/speaker optimization about 5 years ago.   I've worked on my room in several phases since that time, and I think I'm finally closing in on the end.  I learned as I went along.  What I have found in the end is pretty much dead on with the 5 step process you outlined above, except that I would work on speaker placement first and then listening position.   I have a dedicated listening room, so I have complete freedom with respect to positioning both.  Each person can decide for himself between hiring a consultant and getting things done in a couple of days or investing the substantial time and effort to learn all this stuff without help.  What shouldn't be missed is that either approach can utterly transform a system.  My encouragement to every audiophile is to either figure it out yourself or hire an expert to do it for you.   Getting room/speaker interaction, main listening position, and supplemental room treatments right can in some instances dwarf equipment changes in terms of impact on sound quality. 

Last winter I visited my son and we spent an evening getting his room optimized.  We got speaker placement and listening position optimized and found a good, though perhaps not optimal, position for his sub.  We spent one evening (about 6 hours) getting this done.  I got him set up with doing his own measuring doing REW, and explained what I was doing and why I was doing it as I went along.  I spent a bit of time talking about types of treatment, reflection points, etc., so that he could proceed with that phase of his project well informed.

I surprised myself in how rapidly I got his set up optimized.   Once you get it figured out, it isn't that hard.  As for me, I'm glad I did it myself.  It is sort of the give a man a fish/teach a man to fish thing.  Now I don't  have to hire a consultant every time I change speakers or move. 


I don't blame Audiobonk, though I notice he has only made three posts here - all the same - for his opinion.  The Through The Sound Barrier Project has been a much more massive project than I ever imagined, plus I have kept adding to it to make up for it being late...
I have also fulfilled over half of the TTSB commitments to backers who went beyond the standard pledge - RoomPlay, RoomPlay Reference, & StraightTalk.

In order to save some time, and give you up-to-date info, here is a l-o-o-o-n-g copy of an update that I recently sent to another backer:

"I appreciate your note and your patience.  I do still have some health issues - in fact, I am prescribed a twice-weekly Physical Therapy session which has been put on hold with  the C-19 lockdown...

However, none of that is really slowing me down much.

I am sorry for the lack of communication.  There’s no excuse, even though I have been working pretty much non-stop on this huge project.

Here’s the TTSB current report - it’s kinda long - but I hope it helps:

All 23 TTSB CD tracks that require it have finally been licensed.  All 27 have been mastered.

I am still finishing up Book Two - it’s trickier than I expected, as I am writing the info re all of the tracks, plus others that I use, now that streaming make it possible to recommend them as well - for very little money - without licensing - but I think it will be very helpful for use with the CDs, along with the DVD as an aid, as well as the additional surprise item mentioned below....

I do have an unforeseen hold-up due to website hosting issues.

If all goes as planned, we will have a new host/website soon.  It will still be getbettersound.com, but with a new design & new host. (Yay - just completed yesterday, 5-30-20!)

It will be hosting TTSB as well as GBS.  The QNs mailings (last one 14 months or so ago), which also had become quite burdensome with the mailing company we have been using, will be able to be sent directly - and much more easily, with better delivery - from the new GBS website.

I have been working hard on preparing the DVD, which I know will be vastly more useful than what I had originally planned.

I am painfully aware of how late this project is. However, this project is massively more informative than originally planned, with two books, a system log, three fully licensed CDs, a much more impacting & useful DVD, plus another big surprise item

Book One is essentially What are Sound Barriers & Why we should be aware of their effect on our music. Book Two is How To Unlock Your Music in a more powerful way.  The CDs are there to use only after reading Book Two, the DVD makes it even more useful, and the System Log enhances the solidity of the project as well as organizing future music considerations.

Believe me, with this ridiculous delay, I am driven to partially make up for it by delivering much more at this late date than was originally promised.

And FWIW - I have learned-by-doing (through RoomPlay & RoomPlay Reference sessions) a great deal re just how musically compromised 95% of all audiophile systems are, even including Get Better Sound owners - an issue that I wasn’t nearly as aware of as I am now.  Which is why the additional - yet unannounced - item will have such musical impact...

Since I have been so incompetent in estimating the size & ETA of this huge project, I know not to make any ETA guesses at this point.

Maybe the only good thing about the COVID-19 situation here is that I can not go on RoomPlay voicing sessions around North America, nor has anyone been encouraged to travel here for a RoomPlay Reference session.

Therefore, no distractions.  

My wife Pam can readily attest to the long hours of each day, as I try to complete two books, a system logbook, three CDs, and the DVD, plus another highly valuable surprise item...

AFAIK, I am still at the top of my game re sound system set-up & unlocking the music, but producing such a massive project is obviously not in my highest skill set... 

Please feel free to inquire any time.  I do check e-mails more often than other types of messages.

May I ask - did you participate in the TTSB Kickstarter project, and if so, at what pledge level did you participate?  

The reason I ask is that some backers (Barrier Talk, RoomPlay Reference, & RoomPlay) did more than the TTSB package alone, and sometimes I can help them with the other part of their pledge - in fact about half of them have been done to date."

Best wishes,

Jim Smith"