Showing (off) your Roon setup - description and photos [2015-04 .. 2021-03]

I wasn’t impressed with the DVD’s to be honest. Much the same as the book but as much as I admire Jim for his knowledge, I reckon he should have hired an actor to do the DVD. Presentation isn’t his thing. neither is mine so I admire him for trying at least.

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Like most engineers we make bad actors. It’s rare to find to one who has the ability to deliver the knowledge one has. Indeed props due for trying :nerd_face:

One could also read that the other way around; If someone is a good actor, they’re probably not the best engineer.:joy:

I have GL KT77 s in my Icon Audio st40, replacing KT88s, and found them a significant change for the better.

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Our ceiling is not made with traditional plaster but has a 5 cm stonewool material which is coated with an accoustic transparent layer. Looks normal but is actually brittle and soft due to open structure underneath

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Both are still available…

Book and DVDs

Hey there. Maybe I sounded like some triangle fundamentalist (a mason?), but I’m far from that. I was only expressing my amazement to see photos of incredibly gorgeous and expensive setups where the speakers are placed 3 feet from each other in much larger rooms, just that. Of course, I’m sure the shape of your triangle will greatly depend on the shape of your room and many other factors.
Actually neither I can respect the triangle (equilateral or not) rule at home. I spend most of the time at my desk, at the other side of the room -hence the headphone setup: I got tired of listening with just one ear! But from time to time, some nights I push the table to one side, bring a deck chair and lie there, at an equidistant vertex, tweeters at ear height, and spend some hours lost in music with just some nice bottle of something as company. I’m sure we’ve all been there.
Next time I’ll follow your advice and try sitting a bit further away and see where that takes me :slight_smile:

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I get where you’re coming from. I once saw a setup on Audiogon where the speakers were way wider than the listening seat so I commented on that. You wouldn’t believe the negative response I got. How did I dare to give someone advice without having actually heard the system! Anyway, his loss.

It’s a shame though that there seem to be a lot of people out there who think they can buy good sound without knowing how much better their system could sound when it’s properly set up. I guess that lack of knowledge amongst audiophiles is good business for the tweak salesmen.

Looking forward to reading about your next session. I’m not sure this is the right thread for it but then again, it is about showing of you SETUP.

Yes, i like this too, more info please.

Spot on, @Pim. Some people buy a Ferrari and the only thing they do with it is drive to the nearest supermarket… They never get the chance to experience what their car is actually capable of…

Garage.
Thiel powerplanes put inside a pair of 1977 Castle Kendal cabinets. Source a Chromecast Audio and a Cambridge audio amp.

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Setup is SO room-dependent, that “rules” such as the triangle, bringing the speakers out from the wall, etc. end up just being strategies that are are more successful the more your room size/dimensions approach a typical, rectangular box. I’ve moved around so much since I started in this hobby, and I’ve never had anything like that perfect room.

As soon as you introduce any variances, the rules become less predictably useful: hallways going in/out of the room; open areas; architectural features; wall lengths that are multiples of other wall lengths; non-parallel walls/ceilings; variances in wall/floor/ceiling materials; domestic commitments (the TV HAS to go there!). Experimentation, guided by those “rules,” is the only way to get setup right. Experimentation is really hard, especially since moving the speakers just a few fractions of an inch can dramatically change the sound qualities in play, and it’s not a linear experience.

My current room is fantastic for bass and linearity, but it is horrible for soundstage/imaging. The best setup system I’ve tried so far is the Sumiko method. However, that method did nothing to improve imaging. The room has no qualities that the “rules” can help with: vaulted ceiling; open lay-out; bay window; non-symmetrical; almost no first-reflection points at the standard locations. What a pain.

I think that acoustic treatments can go a long way to help with any room, whether typical or atypical. For my weird room, I’m trying to address the big problems with treatments: more absorption to tame the excess of reverberant sound; diffusors to keep the sound power but create more “open space” in the not-so-open spaces; absorption in the only nearby first reflection points that aren’t floor (the ceiling). It’s frustrating, though: the usefulness of acoustic treatments is documented/described in the context of typical rooms. I have to extrapolate from those accounts to guess what any given treatment might do for my weird room. If I finish building a 12-foot span of fractal QRDs and they don’t help, I’m going to be a bit upset…

One product that I wanted to try seems to address the room issue by creating a virtual room that is better behaved than the actual room. The SMT wing products seem to do that, but there is very little documentation about them, and the owner is a bit flaky about communications. I’ll keep trying.

Anyway, whatever works. And if you have to give up one thing to get another, that’s the nature of the game. Good luck to all of us!

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Few changes here

We rotate our setup by 90 degrees and bought a pair of Jamo Concert 8 for stereo and going to create a separate 5.?.2 home theatre setup with the 11’s as front speakers.

Stands are from Pillartech Audio filled with sand and with BluTack between the speakers and the stand.

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I think that depends a lot on the personality. I made a comment over on the PS Audio forum a little while ago about speaker placement, and while the guy originally said that there wasn’t much he could do, he posted a couple weeks later that he had done some experiments and had improved his sound quality. You never know :wink:

SL (RIP) has some good material on audio in the home.

http://www.linkwitzlab.com/ALMA’14/Sound_quality.htm

Click around the links (while much of the work is speaker neutral some is based around his own designs that are very good at removing many of the room issues we have to deal with…placement is always key to good sound.

I personally have built Pluto, LXmini and LX521 and also own a pre loved factory built pair of Orions. I would not part with any of them. Others here also have SL’s designs too.

Thanks for the link @wizardofoz! Very interesting read.

This is the center of my setup. To the left there is a TV and a second speaker; to the right a turntable and phono stage. Until recently I also had a Allo DigiOne and a switch on the lower shelf but replaced with the LPS for direct USB connection from ROCK to DAC. It sounds great and I’m not missing the DigiOne at all.

Like many, back in the late '80s and early '90s I bought many CD reissues of my favorite LPs. I’ve discovered just how bad many of those CDs are so I’ve been replacing some with newer digital remasters, both in rebook and 96/24. It’s been a lot of fun.

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The labels on your Schiit are on point! Much better than the icons Schiit provides. :see_no_evil:

I’ve owned a Schiit DAC for 5 years now. Still cannot remember the difference between Coax BNC, Coax RCA, and USB. I just push the button till I hear something. Thanks for the laugh.

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Ha. Even with the labels I’m the only person in the family that will listen to the TV thru the stereo. The only good thing about those icons is that they remind me I need to get checked for cataracts.

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One of my endpoints, I have two.

MB Quart 560A

Year : 1987

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