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This was quite a long time ago, so may not relate to current amp models totally. But all else the same, when I changed from a SE34 to a Torii III, my room overloaded, the Torii bass overwhelming the balance. I talked with Steve, and he gave me good ideas for how to make low range diaphragmatic bass traps, and other pointers. With a fair bit of reading online as well, I also made some absorbers for mid bass, and for higher frequencies. Putting these everywhere I could without too much visual distraction in my living room, I used a full box of rigid fiberglass in this process and a fair bit of foam on top of some some of the absorbers.
Much better, and not wanting to impose more absorbers on my room, I started experimenting by-sound with EQ. I started by making a very narrow parametric EQ peaking at 10-12 dB and slowly swept it from bottom to top with bass strong music playing. This EQ was in Pure Music player software, so I was adjusting the actual digital files Pure played from my hard drive. No added hardware or cables made it a nicely transparent way to adjust EQ.
Then doing these sweeps again while playing a small selection of heavy bass recordings, room resonant frequencies as I met them sounded hyped and unnatural, overwhelming the sound. In rare cases the 12 dB EQ bump did nothing apparent, implying a place the room was cancelling frequencies rather than accentuating them. Not many of these, I focussed more on the ones that were being amped up by the room, writing down those frequencies from my sweeps, including perceived intensity of each.
The rest of the spectrum seeming quite good with my particular room and absorbers, but I did find some minor resonant frequencies in the mids and highs also. Though much less extreme, I noted them too.
Then I carefully attenuated peaky frequencies using very specific, quite narrow parametric Qs. Going further by carefully locating the worst peak frequency of each noted area, I then conservatively found an ideal level of attenuation by sound, and the best width for the EQ. The same method applied one by one to all problem frequencies, the remaining room modes absorption had not fully resolved were very musically improved.
Bass the worst, several bass area cuts were ±5-6 dB, and I found I could further improve on this with a few general bass self cuts of a dB pr two, finally putting in a big bass shelf cut (-18 dB) from 16-18 HZ down.
Other than low bass, EQ adjustments were much less intense, usually from plus or minus 0.11 dB, to 1.57 dB, and only a few at 1.57 dB. And these too were quite narrow, most 0.1- 0.15 octaves wide, with a few around 0.19. So above low bass, I used mostly very small EQs, but these were very nice refinements, especially collectively. Very small adjustments indicating to me that my room was quite good through most of spectrum, still, the “real” sound emerged notably from these little changes, so doing the work was well worth it.
Using this method, my first adjustment run was highly effective, the sound getting better balanced, faster and more musically complex by chilling the most aberrant room-accentuated/created EQs. Then, over time, as odd sounding problems showed up with the occasional recording, now and then I would do another sweep to locate trouble areas, but mostly just played with predetermined EQ widths and intensities.
Hearing more altogether as things got less masked by excess frequencies, subtler imbalances, lows, mids and highs were better revealed, allowing further identification and refinement with new EQ adjustments. All along I was seeking sound I thought was balanced, natural and more real sounding, and doing this across recordings, going too far, or not far enough for good balance across recordings also became more obvious.
Having enjoyed playing acoustic and electric instruments much of my life, and loving to work on things like tuning braces on guitars, or adjusting violin sound with sound posts and bridge tuning, I felt like I had developed relatively believable discernment, so trusted what I heard.
And generally not trusting our immature tech over very complex and advanced human perception, I intentionally did not use Room EQ Wizard or the like. I did not want to get stuck on what was measured as "right," preferring to find it by what my body/mind "measured." I also thought this might be a better way to balance frequency issues considering phase/time issues being inherently different when amping up or attenuating different parts of the frequency range.
I still use this foundation many years later, and as my system gets better, sometimes I start noticing places I can improve, and usually can refine whatever I am hearing by casually fine tuning over a few days on various recordings.… By adjusting a little EQ bump or valley up or down, often by only 0.01- 0.07 Db, and/or by moving it a touch, or widening or narrowing the Q with slight adjustments, I can refine as needed. Over time, refining remaining room issues with relatively subtle EQ for the most part, it just sounds more right, more balanced and alive, faster and more resolving.
While exploring fixing my room issues, I found other helpers....like Marigo resonance damping dots, very good at subtly and progressively reducing speaker driver resonances in musical ways....tightening bass and increasing space and resolution due to solving resonances that cause loading and smearing. Also I learned to carefully tune the speaker plinth space, adjusting the passive bass from the MG944s and HR-1s to sound best. And this led to exploring internal damping more, further clarifying the tone across the spectrum, but particularly making bass more natural, full but tighter, so more impactful with better leading edges and decays. I found Schumann Resonators, ending up with one made by Kemp when they were on sale... and liking it, later got another when on sale. Can't say exactly why they work, but in my setup, optimally set, they somehow make the room accept musical frequencies from bottom to top more openly, less smeared, revealing more fine detail and space, and thus a cleaner more complex sound with better atmosphere and soundstage. Here, it sounds like it somehow makes frequencies more coherent, less interactive with one another. Also I discovered ways to use tumbled crystals of different types and mixes. Functioning like a filter, among other things, they can apparently draw off noise energy and convert it to heat, increasing clarity and dynamics with careful use and placement.....Some rock and metals are deadening, and some awakening, so I continue to explore this, always discovering new ways to improve these "filters."
Also, like Lon sometimes talks about, I too have found you can do a lot to help resolve room sound issues by making all the system parts more resolving and musical. Roughly, the way I see it, one reason this works is that the less smearing and aberrant distortions and frequency imbalances coming from the speakers, the less there is for the room to mess up further.
Within all of this, I have been really careful to keep what I think is a fundamental baseline of full spectrum balance so that I can trust changes I make with system parts or modifications. And so far, I feel like I have been pretty successful in that.
Each time I listen to Decfest, though not the best comparison being streamed, heard through my headphone setup, and pre adjustments being played with during the Fest.… But within this, consistently, my sound seems to be a lot like the most listened-to setups each year, and better than the rest.
Several years ago, I was able to listen off and on throughout, and my favorite sound was the Mystery amp through the el Caminos with tape as source. The el Caminos, fast and musical, and tape resolving, this was very close to the sound in my setup with my tuned up computer/DAC, seriously adjusted amps, and modified HR-1s.
Then, a few years ago, I think the last Fest, my spectral balance and speed here sounded in between the two most listened to setups I noticed that year. Closest to the 25th SE84 playing through the original Big Baffles, my sound was a little softer and more atmospheric to me. Those super hardwood big baffles were a little overstated by my tastes, so my sound was not as dramatic as them, being close, but having more of the atmospheric magic of Bob's new HR-1s driven by the Mystery amp. To me that HR system was also a little overstated, too “warm,” dark and slow for my tastes. So I found it interesting that my sound had some of the sweet atmosphere of the HRs, while also being faster and clearer, in ways more like the big baffle/25th sound. In the middle somewhere, I figured I was on a good track.
In both years, if my headphone interpretation of the streams was relatively accurate, the biggest difference was that my setup was more resolving of the finest details and spacial information. But I have been tuning with this in mind for many years, so this made sense to me. The upshot though, these listening comparisons supported trusting my perception as I tune my system/room, while implying that whatever I was doing to hold a realistic balance intact as I change and modify things was working pretty well. What a trip!
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