Well I had an EtherREGEN in my setup…maybe for me I guess either my system is so crap that nothing can help it or something so many find so great can’t help me as my system is above and beyond any tweaks as when I took it out to loan to a friend to try I really hand on heart can’t say I can’t live without.
He on the other hand said when he got into his system that he was likely going to want it stay…and I can consider it sold. His ears are half the age of mine.
Another friend swears by his one too and several others I know do too.
Maybe my 60+ year old ears and diy speakers are not up to the task but I’m happy it’s found a new home and help getting a friend get more from his setup.
So nothing to worry about in a domestic setting then.
What I would like to see is some measurements, because if the ‘clarity’ has really increased, and if the sound is indeed ‘thinner’, then these differences will be measurable. To date, not a single person in any of the various network ‘gadget’ threads has produced anything other than anecdotal evidence.
Thanks @Graeme_Finlayson They are several of the LinkwitzLab.com designs…Pluto, Orion, LXmini and my main rig LX521.4. All use Analogue Signal processors, not DSP. If anyone is interested to learn more there is a commercial builder at https://linkwitz.store/ who took over development after Siegfried passed away, and with his agreement. Or try https://www.linkwitz.com
Experiential things are not easily measured.
Love
Hate
Scepticism
Jelousy
Happiness
Persuasion
Jimi Hendrix
Sound Stage
Are there tools that measure sound stage or is that experiential, and do we all experience sound stage the same way? I think not. We all perceive the world differently, including our music.
No need to dis those who see and experience the world differently than you do.
That is a form of prejudice.
Bill_Janssen
(Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)
120
Sorry, Mark. I don’t think the ability to fantasize is an insult. So we’ll have to agree to disagree on that point.
But yes, that would be my best guess. Most likely hypothesis. As a scientist, I’m willing to keep an open mind about that and update hypotheses as more information becomes available. Do you have any?
Bill, this tit for tat is a complete waste of time.
Bill_Janssen
(Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)
122
Agreed.
But I misspoke in my last post. The fantasies I refer to are not yours. They are conceived and circulated by heartless vendors of crap, who hang around the audio circles and pick off the ignorant and the uncertain with their marketing. It breaks my heart to see others help with their unscrupulous schemes, no doubt in all innocence. But to then characterize my attempts to help as “mean” and “insulting”… well that breaks it a bit more.
OFF TOPIC ALERT - OFF TOPIC ALERT - OFF TOPIC ALERT
Solid science exists, able to fully describe how the sensation of sound source localisation works.
Here’s just one of many links for you to read up on it.
Of course everybody’s got different heads, pinnae, ear canals and so forth, but by experience over many years the brains learn to correlate and interpret correctly, as well as adapt to a certain degree to ageing deficiencies - and yes, one can further train acuity of localisation, but that’s not the issue here.
That said, I firmly believe that this continuously trained sense works very closely the same for everyone in the same exact environment.
Now, if you take the average audiophile’s listening room, it does a lot to confuse their perception mechanisms by adding reflections, resonances, suck-outs and what not, sometimes enhancing certain aspects or even creating startling sound stage effects, but mostly greatly distorting what may have been captured by the recording in the first place.
So given everyone’s system and listening environment, we do not experience sound stage the same.
There is no single measurement showing you “sound stage”, but a full set of competently measured aspects of a system in the listening environment will be able to predict an average listeners preference for or against said system.
You may want to digest Floyd E. Toole’s book about the science behind “Sound Reproduction - Loudspeakers and Rooms”.
I actually think it would be very enlightening to see properly acquired room response measurements from the systems of some hard-core proponents to the plethora of tweaks like the ones discussed here and some other threads, that get the juices boiling on both sides of the trench.
My guess is that these, at the very best, minuscule enhancements are completely swamped by the electro-mechanical transducer distortions and speaker/room interaction deficiencies.
Well here’s one. Even though I also like to try some controversial tweaks with my system and have found some of them beneficial, I have also measured my system with UMIK-1 + REW. Based on that I’ve made two corrections to the FR under 100hz and uploaded these as convolution filter to Roon DSP. I did try to EQ 20-200hz and 20-20000hz also but it sounded best to my ears to just fix the only real problem I had with the room mode at ~36hz and slightly adjust the peak at 65-75hz.
The first picture is a raw measurement and the second picture is a predicted FR with the EQ settings I’ve made so it’s not an actual measurement after the EQ was done.
The speakers measured are ATC SCM50ASL measured in a ~30m2 room with all surfaces solid concrete. The graphs show the average of L and R channels. The room has some modest amount of acoustic treatment and bass traps but could do with more obviously. I think that the FR looks quite good above 100hz and under that there are some room related problems. Those dips in bass range are extremely difficult to solve with acoustic treatment and I don’t want to boost them with REW either. According to some sources, boosting is not recommended at all with DSP. I did try it and preferred the sound without any boosts. Subjectively my setup sounds better than ever now.
Or use HAFS tool and get Thierry to make your filters, you get to test them before you buy and he will tweak until your completely happy or you walk away if no better than your own.
Strangely, the audible differences between the house curve and my flat response are actually very subtle. The house curve sounds a little more ‘natural’ despite my ageing hearing cutting off around 16kHz.
What isn’t subtle is the difference between the uncorrected and corrected room responses. The difference in the “soundstage” is simply unbelievable (apologies to my fellow objectivists for the audiophile dictionary speak!). Width, height and depth are vastly improved. The centre musician/vocalist is very firmly centred and everything else’s locality relative to the centre is clear and defined. On some tracks, I can hear sounds coming from so far left/right and behind me, it feels like I’m sitting in a live venue.
I’ve been working from home today and in between phone calls and virtual meetings, Roon has been playing non-stop with a whole host of my favourite tracks and some new stuff. Musical enjoyment has moved up to an entirely new plane, and best of all the differences are quite clearly measureable!
Once upon a time, I used to frown upon DSP - probably because I didn’t fully understand it and it went against my ‘purist’ grain. Combined with a decent amount of room treatment, it’s the best money you can spend on your hi-fi by far.
I can see I’ll be tinkering for a while yet, though it’s confined to when my wife is out - she’s not really sold on me taking over the lounge with devices and cabling whilst playing test tones and waving a microphone around!
