No problems imaging. In fact this position improves speaker response as it eliminates quarter wave cancellation in the bass (a big problem between 1 and 2 meters). Since little energy gets reflected off the back wall (as everything above about 150 Hertz is going forward given such a very large baffle) the imaging quality remains good. Narrow baffle speakers radiate more energy backwards and can definitely suffer imaging issues from the proximity of a rear wall - so I don’t recommend this placement in general. There is of course a bass boost and it tends to excite room modes. I can hear one mode but it is not excessive and I prefer not to correct this with DSP. Pulling the speakers far out into the family living room isn’t practical but would probably improve the sound further - ideally I should have them as far out as possible - so your comment is spot on!!
I do have another large room I could use but it has multiple keyboards, multiple guitars, three drum sets and is sound proofed and it is where me and the band practice. I enjoy playing music too much to give that up!
I’m loving seeing all of your set ups. Very envious of some(one day!)Moved my set up back to its original position. Had it merged with my TV for a while but couldn’t really use it as I wished to and felt the sound was compromised. Enjoying it more now with the speakers firing down the room.Need to sort my lps and cds now! If I could only tear myself away from R3 on my vintage Yamaha! I love Roon but it’s definitely a compliment to the rest of my well used kit. Enjoy the music!
Hi gasman,
very interesting. i am using the Illusonic IAP 8 for roomcorrection, crossover and as (the only) DAC. Before i tried my old DAC about the analog-In at the IAP and thought that it would sound better then directly to the IAP. But after listening for a while, it is clear to me that only the IAP8 is really great sound and better quality.
I am using a HFX-AsstetNAS as ROON core and output and i sounds very fine
Mario
I did try using the IAP itself as the DAC, which is the logical thing to do and it was fine, not great, just fine
With the DAVE/Blu2 combo thought the music is taken to a different level in terms of timing, detail retrieval and bass
I did discuss this issue with Christof at Illusonic and he said that when the IAPs had been used with vinyl sources the result had been very satisfying (well he would say that wouldn’t he ) so it might be that the ADA conversion, because it is happening on a single board, is transparent? Who knows ??
Well spotted! Genelec 8020 actives are a warm sweet sounding speaker that images well and is fairly revealing. Definitely I like a 3 inch mid range as a driver size as the dispersion is so even off axis. For such a small desktop speaker they go very loud. The ported bass response is lovely sounding but a bit resonant - impressive for such a small speaker but not resolving like a critically damped design. I like them for what they can achieve in such a small package. Similar to Harbeth in a sound that is pleasing but not as revealing in the mid range. Harbeth mid range being quite exceptional - being well damped internally.
Craig, this setup is pretty ridiculous. It reminds me of what I’d do with a near unlimited budget and a wife who’d lost her mind. And while many of us are looking at the McIntosh equipment and other audio goodies, I’m looking at the infrastructure behind it. You chose Unifi switches, routers and Wifi hotspots? Usually that stuff is put in stadiums and airports, not in a starter mansion. (Your layout document doesn’t even mention the Netgear 12 port 10g switch. Your entire household backbone is 10g fiber. You have a 48 port PoE switch that’s not even half used. And that Synology is more at home in an office given its capacity. Wow, wow wow!
I’m love to hear about the wiring project to get your Cat 6a and fiber everywhere unless you built the house that way to begin with. My house is a mix of Cat 5e, 6 and a little 6a between floors (no fiber). Wiring an existing structure wasn’t easy but my contractor is a wizard at drywall repair.
It may be a bit over the top but boys and their toys…
I actually don’t have fiber run in the house. My house had cat 5 installed years ago, but it will run 10G for the distances in my house and property. So I use one of the 4 RJ45 10G ports in my unifi XG-16 for those connections or if needed add a 10G SFP+ RJ45 transceiver. I do use fiber connections between switches and the router in my main network rack, And I am using 60% of the 48 port POE switch -I have about 70 or 80 other connected devices that are not shown on that diagram - video cameras, TVs, TiVo’s, computers, lighting control, thermostats, iPhone, iPads, Apple TVs, etc,etc…
While it does seem like overkill, it takes some pretty heavy equipment these days to get 1G internet speed in a house with a 1G internet connection IF you are runnng any kind of security in the gateway/router - this slows them down a lot. And 4K video at 50 or 60 fps will now take up to 18G bandwidth so it won’t be long before we’re chewing up a lot more bandwidth in houses.
On the NAS side I’m using 50% of the total storage already with my music, video, computer backups, and hot swap spares. So it’s a bit overkill but not that much.
At the end of the of the day my wife puts up with me…
Thanks. I’ve been debating purchasing a pair for my office at work. The comparison to Harbeth is certainly of interest to me as i have a pair of 30.1s and before that C7s and P3s.
My network backbone is designed with the same principals, just a bit more downmarket (Netgear 1G Ethernet). My point was to get everything off of Wifi that I could and leave the wireless bandwidths for laptops, phones, iPads, and IoT devices. So everything that has a physical Ethernet connector is using it.
10G twisted pair is still expensive per port, but Fiber switches or “mostly fiber switches” are almost affordable. And I forgot that you might be using SFP+ to RJ45 adapters until I looked closely at your posted photo. With the cost of SFP+ to RJ45 transceivers being so cheap, it’s a good alternative than spending $1600 for 12-16 ports of 10G/N-base-T. My problem doing that (outside of budget) is now my network clients can’t really take advantage of 10G Ethernet right now given the advanced age of my Mac Pros. But I could upgrade the backbone pipes now if I wanted to.
Your overall bandwidth is also sucked up by video surveillance cameras, which keeps the Comcast XG-6 busy. Upload speeds are still a problem with cable gigabit. One day we’ll all have fiber to the street. Until then…
Ok, back to the regularly scheduled eye-candy presentations. This is an updated version of my 7.1 system (more if you include the Magnepan tri-center) with the back of the room closed and open as sun porch (most of three walls open):
In 7.1 all the speakers are used; in 2.1 only the front mains and subwoofer (as LFE) are used; the Bryston SP3 is good enough to function both as surround processor and as a pretty great stereo preamp.
) so it might be that the ADA conversion, because it is happening on a single board, is transparent? Who knows ??
