Another try with holding the iPad the right way around I think I’m good now for the built-in mic stage. Upped the filter count to 16 and extended the frequency range a bit. There’s certainly a marked improvement in the bass compared to the uncorrected sound, and voices sound a bit clearer and more real. Really not bad for 6.99 euros. Thanks @Greg_Wilding for the great tool and @Roland_von_Unruh for the help. I’ll borrow a measurement mic from my hifi dealer another time for final perfection.
Somehow disturbing outcome. Pundit found. Even downloading the test signal and playing it out of Roon gave me one time I could hear the chirp. Next iteration - chirp was gone. Love it
I still had the amps roomEQ feature (correcting the room from 20-1000Hz) on. Maybe not ideal. Ok. But why the heck would Buchardt’s algorithm eliminate the chirp?? I have questions, Denmark! With that roomEQ switched off I can use HC as intended.
Gadnoz_Seek
(Running low on working days until retirement...)
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Same kind of “problem” here with a Sonos Connect:Amp - had to turn the volume up to avoid that the silence between the test sweep and the next chirp turned the Amp off - so I always missed the chirp that turned him on again…
Not necessarily the case here, but some room correction and digital processor products that use proprietary FIR digital filters intentionally mute upon input of an impulse type signal in order to prevent capture of the FIR coefficients for use outside of those products.
Glad you found a workaround. Some audio systems just don’t want to play that first ~1 second of audio. The test signal actually contains a quiet tone just before the chirp to try and “wake up” the system. It helps with some systems, but not all.
HouseCurve only cares about what happens after the chirp. In theory, one could insert a few seconds of sound to the beginning of the test signal .wav file and still measure. That may help avoid the issue. If anybody tries that experiment, please let me know
It is also possible to define a delay before music is played in roons device setup to avoid losing the first notes if the DAC mutes the first x ms to a avoid clicks and pops.
But I think the explanation by @WiWavelength sounds like that’s what is going on here for @Bernd_Kurte.
I would recommend anyways not to cascade several room corrections. Even if nothing bad should arise from this, at least you’re unnecessarily adding up on processing delay this way.
@Bernd_Kurte: Curios to see your results, especially a comparison between the Buchards own corrections and the results with House Curve.
Side question because this was my first time with Roon DSP as well:
Initially I had a problem turning off the convolution filter after setting it up. Figured out that this was when I had two remotes (macOS and iPad) running. I would turn off the convolution on one of them and pressed play, but the signal path continued to show the convolution filter. It worked after I ensured that only one remote was running when making these changes. Is this normal? Seems odd.
I agree - cascading this wasn’t my brightest moment. And for the fundamentals: Buchardt’s roomEQ deals with the spectrum from 20-1kHz while HC does ‘a bit’ more. Not not exactly apples with apples. However, I still use the I150 DSP crossover to high pass the speakers at 60 Hz, low passing the sub at the same point. I haven’t dealt with HC in any detail and so here are the early results. I should add that I dialled down the sub quite a bit now.
Very different approaches for one. HC could live on just a single measurement from the main listening position, Buchardt’s method is a 1 minute recording while you are moving the iPhone throughout the entire room with special attention to the rear wall corners. HC uses sweeps or white noise. Buchardt only the latter.
@GregD
Hi Greg, if I play the external sweep via roon, roon shows, that the volume of the sweep is not constant. See the screenshot. My understanding is, that the volume of the sweep should be the same from start to end.
Thanks so much for this app, it’s given me the courage at attempt applying filters for the first time ever.
I’m going to try to borrow a mic to do more measurements but it is a “iMM-6S”. I guess this Dayton model will still work as per your list of microphones.
I’m wondering why, though. I don’t think it really has to be a constant-volume sweep - the app just has to know what the volume is at each point, then it can account for it.
Maybe it simplifies measuring if it’s not as loud in the bass; with Dirac I had to spend 15 minutes before every measurement round to remove or secure a lot of stuff that clattered at various bass frequencies.
This doesn’t explain the variable volume across the bass, though. Looking forward to Greg’s explanation
I think I’m good now for the built-in mic stage. Upped the filter count to 16 and extended the frequency range a bit. There’s certainly a marked improvement in the bass compared to the uncorrected sound, and voices sound a bit clearer and more real. Really not bad for 6.99 euros. Thanks @Greg_Wilding for the great tool and @Roland_von_Unruh for the help. I’ll borrow a measurement mic from my hifi dealer another time for final perfection.
