Sweeps also include reflections, but you can use various techniques to get rid of them. However, my thinking is that whatever reaches your ears should be room corrected, and that includes reflections. To get rid of reflections, you need to treat your room with acoustic treatment (Auralex etc), but whatever reflections you have should be included.
An interesting thing about reflection: if you have a specific listening position, its better to have speakers with a narrow sound dispersion, since they focus the sound more towards your ear and will result in less reflections (usually the reasoning is that wide dispersion for speakers is good).
Phase matters less than most thinks in normal room correction, I used a trial of Dirac and compared and could not hear any difference between my own REW room correction. I also talked to the developer or software rePhase and he said that room correction should be minimum-phase EQ correction and nothing else.
Built another set based on my interpretation of the B&K curves, which is what I ended up preferring with Dirac.
Iāll then add some extra bass hump in PEQ until I settle on something I like - too much LF addition and my speakers go a bit āboxyā, too little and you just donāt get the bass āthumpā. Well, nothing really thumps in my lounge and with these speakers - especially at the volumes I listen at these days - but you know what I mean.
Beyond that Iām going to just enjoy some music and wait until I can measure again.
If anyoneās interested I aded a house curve following Magnusā example up above, and used these numbers which I think reasonably reflect the B&K curve.
As I was driving to work yesterday, I began thinking about what I would have to do to bring Roon with room correction into my car. I really canāt wait for Roon to provide support for remote/mobile playback and control!
In the meantime, I might apply this guide to in-car measurements and apply the EQ filters to a PEQ app on my iPhone ā if I can find one that works with HF Player.
Iām no expert on DRC but when I spent a fair bit of time setting up Dirac in the past, I had similar experiences to yours when toggling back to the uncorrected sound.
The thing is, looking at both our measurements weāve probably been hearing too much atmosphere - due to room, or speaker manufacturers choice, or both. So at first listen the corrected sound seems too dull, but for me anyway after taking time to get used to the corrected sound, reverting to uncorrected seemed horribly bright.
Iāve learnt that I take quite a bit of time to adjust - like weeks or even months - so flicking between A/B type comparisons is less helpful in this scenario.
As an aside, I do often hear people saying theyāve heard DRC but didnāt like it because it āsucked the lifeā out of the music. Maybe theyāve just become accustomed to ātoo much lifeā, or theyāve heard bad (I guess earlier generations using very simplified algorithms) DRC. Maybe they had near perfect environments already. So far even using this free approach has bought much more life back to my music. Even if Iām still dialling in the settings and getting used to it, itās much more real than I had before. Stereo image is much better, and I can go louder without fatigue. Itās much more fun to listen to - pretty much like when you do a big hifi upgradeā¦
i completely agree. my updated settings 20-1k with the PEQ adjustment are much more natural than the uncorrected sound. but i am still experimenting. and thatās not a bad thing.
I have to confess, having used the B&K curve, Iāve ended up adding a little steeper HF roll off in PEQ - so probably more like the REW default that end. A slightly darker sound maybe, but I prefer it - after a year with a bright system itās nice to go a bit darkā¦
There hasnāt been much traffic here this week, so I just wanted to say Iām really happy with the result here. Iāve been really enjoying music the last week, and the ability to make subtle but effective tweaks to the sound is very satisfying. Low-level listening (which sadly Iām doing a lot of) is particularly enjoyable.
Itās got me thinking how much better full convolution filters from the likes of Acourate might be, but at the same time Iām happy enough that Iām going to save the money and rest here for a while. Sometimes itās good just to enjoy!
REW produce full convolution filters as far as I know, but without any time/phase modifications. But in a normal room, phase modifications arenāt that useful anyway. I compared REW with Dirac (trial) using the same house curve and I could not tell any difference (Dirac claims to do much more than frequency/amplitude correction). Having said that, its possible there is a difference and I could not hear it.
I recently upgraded my speakers from $300 ones to $1600 ones (Dynaudio X14A) and they sound awesome, but the old speakers sounds much better with room correction than the new ones does without room correction. Just a hint of how much room correction can do.
I feel confident that, in my room, there is no audio equipment that sound better than what I have (no matter the price) without room correction, compared to my relatively cheap stuff with room correction.
I think people can really maximize their speakers value with some room correction! No need for me to upgrade speakers at this point in large part to Roon DSP/REW room correction. I added a house curve as well and the results are outstanding.
Well, what it produces is just the combined result of all the active parametric filters you see in REW - its a very cleanā impulse response curve. So saving each out as different sample rates and using them as convolution filters is unnecessary - you might as well just load them into Roon as parametric EQs. Of course the problem there is its not easy to import them.
From my understanding, a true convolution filter would use the parametric EQ curves to get the resulting curve you see in REW, but then it would build a final filter by negating the resultant waveform and combining this with the EQ curves, so that youād get a āperfectā and detailed filter with all the nuances the PEQ couldnāt deal with. I could of course be wrong here and it not being my field have probably explained it badly.
In any event it was more curiosity since it was a while ago I used Dirac so need a more up to date comparison. I do think the phase adjustments are worthwhile, but I donāt really want to pay Ā£300 and far around with another complex package just to find out thereās not much in it!
So Iām going to stay happy and let it remain unknownā¦ its more mysterious that way anyway.
Yes, the difference is very big, but it not always you get the perfect result even with a fairly detailed guide like this. But what scares some people is the notion that any modification is bad, since it makes it less bit-perfect and clean. It might also be hard to switch from the old sound to the room corrected sound, since its so different and people get used to things sounding wrong.
About convolution filters: it does only use the EQ settings thatās corect, but it has 131k taps so the resolution is quite high. But yes, the same setting in Roon EQ should produce the same (or very similar) results. And I suggested that Roon should be able to import filter settings from REW which was put on the āTODOā list, so maybe a future version or Roon will be able to import EQ settings from REW (which will be a benefit for high sample rates, since REW has a rather low limit on its export).
Not sure how DSD and convolution/EQ works, have to get a DSD DAC first to try
Thatās kind of what I mean. 131k taps but arenāt really needed since PEQ curves are defined mathematically and can be stored in their perfect precision for all sample rates with minimal data (Q, gain, frequency).
I saw your suggestion and itās a good one. Iād love to compare convolution to PEQ, but thereās no way Iām typing them in!
Iāve got so few DSD albums and Devialetās AIR is broken with DSD on a Mac so Iām out of luck anyway.
Got a window to get some new (better) measurements today - much better conditions, and done at a decent volume. It was a lot easier second time round.
I also finally measured the result of the previous filters, but at first glance the results werenāt as good as Iād expected from listening. Then I remembered I tweaked the speaker positions very slightly last night in prep for doing the new measurements. I wouldnāt have thought it would make the difference Iām seeing, but it may have done, so am just going to ignore that for now and concentrate on the new set.
Sadly, not sure when Iāll have time to make the new filters, let alone measure the results, but at least Iāve got the measurements done!
Will post some more graphs etc when Iām a bit further along.
I have been reading this thread closely and tried to do some measurements today. I set the SPL to around 76 db before I did the measurements in the RTA. Why do I get this kind of measurements with lower levels? Do these seem like valid numbers? My kid was a sleep so I didnāt wanna play the for too long, but will try again tomorrow. I also used a too short USB-cable so my mic movement might not have been as systematic as I intended.
Any feedback for my next attempt is greatly appreciated. I donāt wanna spend too much time working with filters before Iām confident iām doing proper measurements!
@Gustav_Persson, that looks about like mine did. If you zoom the X axis into 20/20K (thereās a button in the lower right to do that), and then zoom the Y axis in till youāre just looking at (say) 20dB to 80dB, then it should look more like what you expect.
As to why the mean output is about 50dB when you set the SPL to 76, I donāt know. It was similar when I did it.
Is that graph from corrected sound (Roon playing Pink PN), or directly from REW? If it is from Roon, the lower level is probably due to automatic volume correction. If the measurement is from REW, I donāt know why the levels are so low, but the graph itself looks good.
It is directly from REW. I ran the PINK-PN signal from my macbook to my Xeo 2 speakers through bluetooth. I didnāt have time to try the filters I created through Roon.
In my main window it shows I have an input of around 75 db (I think?). I will see if can get a longer USB-cable today and redo it tonight. But it seems reasonable that there is a spike around 50 hz for the left speaker as it is almost placed in a corner.
I tried again with the same result of low levels in the measurements. HoweverI also made a sweep from 10-22khz (?) for each speaker, through the measurement ikon and got the following measurements. Also by adjusting levels beforehand to 75 db. They look more reasonable. No idea why this is?
