In-Room responce measurement with Legacy Focus SE speakers
Evening all,
Odd request or question for folks with Legacy Focus SE speakers. I am doing some VERY casual speaker tests and room response measurements of dads big system. I have Legacy's smaller Studio HD bookshelf speakers, and have a VERY small space and I think they are incredible. In hearing my dad's much larger room/speakers/system (his listening room is literally the size of my tiny home!) with his larger Legacy Focus SE speakers.....I am honestly a bit underwhelmed, especially considering I have the 1/8th size Studios, and in my room/system they sound incredible.
In my home, the Studio bookshelf speakers sound 'mostly' full, warm, very taunt and articulate, and there is the right match of the tone of most all instruments and it's "weight". Like the pluck or strum of a guitar that is percussive, actually has a bit of an impact on your body. However, my dads system lacks this 'impact' or body and weight. Listening at 70-75decibell level is actually grating and feels like your head is being a bit compressed, but it doesn't "sound loud". My dad mentioned he usually doesn't play anywhere above 60ish decibels because of this issue.
Attached (I hope) is a screen shot of REW in room measurement of my system with the Studio HD bookshelf speakers for reference to what I am hearing. In my fathers system, there is a pronounced 100-130hz peak/hump and things sort of trail off rapidly in BOTH higher and lower frequencies. I'm trying to get a similar measurement to illustrate, but thought I would try to get some thoughts first.
Thanks for time!!
Here is the room "treated" sort of over the top with utilizing what we have on hand, and making the largest change to hear/measure what is improved/worsened. From the RT60 measurements, you can see that we dramatically reduced the echo/ringing from over 700ms to just around 500ms, which some state is around average/acceptable in most contexts.
|
I have both of the mentioned speakers. Legacy Focus SEs in my main listening area and the Studio HDs in my PC setup. Studio HDs are very fine speakers, indeed. But nowhere near what you should be hearing from the Focus SEs. I've been fortunate to live in my home for nearly 22 years. And I've been into audio and HT long before that. When I first moved in, I had Legacy Classic speakers. They sounded fantastic and 'hit' or slammed really hard. Then I moved up to Focus (originals). The bass all but left even though I went from (4)10" bass drivers to (6)12" bass drivers. So I went to work on sound panels and a few bass traps. Tons of experimentation on speaker positioning as well... I'm talking countless hours of moving (even by mere fractions of an inch), listening for a few days and then moving again. It took a lot of time and effort between placing panels in the right places and speaker positioning. But once I upgraded to the new Focus SEs, all I needed to do was find the sweet spot of positioning. If I put on something like the Beastie Boys, I get a very nice, full body massage. You should be getting gobs of deep bass from these things. |
@audiom3 Oh that is awesome to hear!! I -LOVE- my Studio HDs in my small living room Home Theater 2.5 channel set up. I had Epos ES12s for awhile, which were "nice", but man the upgrade to the Studios was DRAMATIC!!! I think with my fathers system, his speakers are in an enormous cavern, and there is a lot of reverb and ringing that are masking a fair amount of bas, (as noted and instructed by @erik_squires ) For him, the lack of bass is perfectly fine (he doesn't hear it that way), but for me......if I were playing Sabotage....YOU BETTER BE BRINGING THAT BASS!!!!!!!
Out of curiousity @audiom3 have you ever used REW and would you be able/willing to do an in room measurement? I'd just like to see the difference in the bass response and levels comparatively.
|
@amtprod man, it's been a long time since I've messed with REW. I still have the UMIK-1 around here somewhere though. Give me a bit of time and I'll try to do some measurements. My Ayre power amp is away for a 'faulty' fault (blown fuse fault but never has it blown a fuse). I should have it back in a few weeks. I'm also rearranging my media room due to buying a new LG 83" OLED (from a 65" OLED). So my Focus SEs are going to be moved out 1.5-2' further to accommodate and I will need to dial-in the positioning.... Brass Monkey is the song I like to crank when I'm pissed at my neighbors! That gets back at them every time! :D |
@amtprod Here you go. The chart shows L=R which isn't the best way to do it, but I wanted to show a Class D manufacturer the chart with his amp (green) being much hotter than my Ayre, even though they have the same gain (26dB). After moving the speakers much further apart to accommodate my new 83" OLED, I have work to do with my panels and traps to help tame all of that extra bass energy. I am going to experiment this weekend and try to enable the bass switch on the back of the Focus. It has a centered frequency of 60Hz which will also help. The Ayre amp never sounds over-powering even when up over 100dBs. It remains clean and fairly balanced even though the bass is too strong, I like feeling the impact. So I don't want to tame it too much. The bass toggle switch on the back of the speakers may do the trick.
|
