Hi again, turns out my friend is coming over today instead, and I haven’t had much chance to listen since my wife has decided to work through the weekend and the house is filled with grumpy silence. So stay tuned for listening impressions.
If my system had higher gain overall I could just turn it up more. As it is the DAC and Roon volume are maxed out when I listen to many recordings with the correction. At the same level without it my speakers would be blown in an instant. I could just add a preamp back in if I like the corrected sound, of course, but I was going for the shortest signal path and the most efficient gain structure.
One thing I love about these full range single driver speakers is their dynamic, immediate quality with percussion and bass, and this goes away a bit with the correction. Of course, as you said there’s no free lunch.
I really need to listen more and get a second opinion before I can say more, though. I agree that I do need to measure again.
My doubts about the Omnimic are based on noticing some time ago that the mic capsule at the tip of the mic slides on and off when pulled on and the wires become exposed. Also, when my friend that’s an audio engineer and is used to listening and looking at plots came over months ago (when I was still trying to adjust using the PEQ) he asked if I was sure if the mic was OK. I’ve never dropped it or anything else, though. Dayton Audio did not respond to my multiple inquiries about how to test it. None of this gives me confidence in the measurements, and I wish I had gotten a different mic, but when I bought the mic a few years ago the reviews I read led me to believe the software Dayton provides was more useful.
Due to using negative gain in my correction, you can reset any Roon headroom setting to 0bB, in case you had that at some negative gain to avoid clipping due to your correction’s 8 dB of boost - this may gain you some more volume.
In your current acoustic situation as measured and seemingly confirmed by the room plan, I would not waste a thought on any minuscule audiophile mantra.
The speakers intrinsic deviations from neutral and the room acoustics’ contributions, as setup in your room, create idiosyncrasies that highlight some spectral components, which may work magnificently with some tracks/instruments/recording techniques, but not necessarily across the board.
Also note, that any correction, convolution or PEQ, can not diminish dynamics, as they’re just a frequency dependent factor to correct for the amplitude response.
You might have misunderstood, but that was meant only regarding overall system gain.
Doesn‘t he have a mic to do a quick sanity check?
That‘s important mainly for multiway speakers, if you‘re planning on using Rephase to optimize time coincidence - you’re using single driver full ranges.
That said, it’ll be more effective to concentrate on getting your ragged amplitude response straightened out some more, as long as you‘re not able to rearrange your listening area.
Thanks for these responses. The free lunch comment was about overall gain only. I have so little to play with currently.
I do understand that the eq is not affecting dynamic range directly but the subjective consensus from listening today was that with convolution applied the sound was more compressed and seemed squeezed between the speakers. We didn’t listen long enough or pay enough attention to gain matching, though. I’m going to listen more when I can, and with a range of music. Weekends are difficult.
I do think the main suspect is the integrity of my measurements in the first place, and that the next step should be a careful redo of the measurements with my Omnimic V2 followed by the same with another mic I have yet to find and a detailed comparison of the two. If they agree then I’ll know I really do have a lost cause room and equipment setup.
If I decided to buy a new mic what would you recommend? I doubt I’ll be getting into speaker design so it would just be for room eq. However, I do need one that mostly tells the truth. Cross Spectrum Acoustics sells Umik 1 and 2 units that are calibrated more thoroughly. Does this matter? What’s worth it for my application?
Unfortunately I cannot make any real changes in furniture layout and I sold my monkey coffin speakers.
A UMIK1 or alike with standard cal file will fully suffice, since the speaker/room distortion contributions usually are orders of magnitude worse.
We shouldn‘t forget, that human auditory perception isn‘t very sensitive to phase anomalies, otherwise multi way speakers wouldn‘t be this popular.
To sum up, I wouldn‘t sweat about the microphone and it‘s calibration too much, besides making sure it‘s not broken, somehow.
BTW, what‘s about your audio-engineer friend - hasn‘t he got some proper tools to bring over?
Anyways, a first and cheap sanity check is to remeasure the corrected response, while trying to replicate the setup as closely as possible - it‘s actually a no-brainer to do that after creating a correction …
I checked with my friend and he doesn’t own any usb measurement mics (what?! And you developed the AES67 standard?). He has others but says they’re not compatible.
It bothers me that the Omnimic doesn’t provide a vertical cal file and I wonder how much that changes the results. However, you’re probably right that these are all small potatoes issues unless the mic is for some reason hopelessly tweaked. I will try again, thanks.