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digital room correction

My system consists of the following:

B&W 803S
Mac 352
Mac C41
Wyred4 Sound dac2

I have a fairly congested great room as far as furniture, but have managed to get my speakers about 44 from back wall, but unfortunately around 46" from side wall. I do have a cabinet between speakers, but speakers are fairly far infront of the cabinet. Listening position is about 9 feet from each speaker.

I have tried for years with moderate success to position my speakers. My soundstage is OK and my detail is pretty good, but I never have reached the holy grail that I read about, which is more depth, wall to wall soundstage and that holographic feel.I am starting to think its a myth (seriously)after hundreds of repositions.

I know my room is tough. I really like my Dac2 and have been using J River 15 as my software. Has anyone played with their limited room correction, Is there a good, reliable but not too technical room correction package that may help get me to the next level?
dmm53
bryoncunningham
893 posts
 
I never have reached the holy grail that I read about, which is more depth, wall to wall soundstage and that holographic feel.

I don't think room correction is the right approach to this problem. I use room correction myself, so I am not discouraging you from trying it. Room correction, or simply EQ, can yield huge improvements in bass SQ, but it is not the best approach to issues relating to imaging and soundstaging, IMO.

I strongly suspect that the problem is your listening room.

If you want more depth, I'm afraid you're going to have to get rid of the cabinet between the speakers. IME, any large object between the speakers diminishes soundstage depth and interferes with "holographic" imaging. If you could get your speakers farther from the front wall, that might also help improve depth.

If you want to improve the overall size of the soundstage, you may want to look at the ratio of diffusion to absorption in the room. Is the room overly damped? Adding diffusion can dramatically improve soundstaging.

If you remove the cabinet from between the speakers and add diffusion both behind the speakers and at the first-order reflection points on the side walls, I think you will be well on your way toward finding what you're looking for.

Good luck.

Bryon
zmanastronomy's avatar
zmanastronomy
738 posts
 
I agree with Bryon. Treating a room with room treatments will give the depth and imaging that you've heard so much about.
So many people buy the best gear and stop short of treating the room. They're only half way there if they do.

Nothing, and I mean nothing will do more for a system than a well treated room.
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
I also agree with Bryan. Find the sweetspot for the speakers, and the correct toe-in first. You should have some basic room treatments, including side-wall reflection absorbers. Use a hand-mirror on the sidewalls to determine where to put them. 4" sonex works great, but its ugly. If you have WAF to deal with, then see the nice graphics you can get on the GIK acoustic panels.

Once you have these installed and the speakers located and toed-in properly (this can take months of trial and error, but worth it), then you might consider adding some 1/4 round ASC tubetraps near the rear insides of the speakers. Face the round surface inwards. These then can be "tuned" by moving them forward and backward along the inner line of the speaker walls. You can also rotate them slightly outwards to improve width of soundstage. These tubetraps in this configuration are not being used for bass, then are reflective in order to scatter unwanted backwave.

Finally, once you have these all done and it sounds pretty good and the image is focused (the source components must be really good for pinpoint imaging), then use Amarra EQ to dial-in the remaining bumps in the response. You will need a decent capacitor mic and a handheld spectrum analyzer. Then you will know where the bumps are and be able to input these to Amarra EQ and eliminate them. As long as you do 6-8dB of correction for each bump, this will sound good. Dont get carried away. Amarra EQ is extremely transparent and has 3 tunings for 3 bumps or rolls in the frequency response.

Room correction is less important than tuning the speakers in the room to get them as flat as possible.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
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