24-Dec-2014, 11:53
I had posted this previously, however, it is far more relevant to this, rather interesting, thread....
I have been approaching the optimising of my newly SAMed and dual mono'd system from a different angle. With SAM at 100%, I might occasionally play a specific track where perhaps I feel SAM is doing a bit too much with the bass, or indeed there are occasionally what I call "SAM artefacts", where something sounds just a little bit wrong with the bass, a bit like SAM is working too hard at the very extremes of bass extension. (I get very rare cases where the lowest bass seams to kind of "stall", hard to describe in words) When I happen across such tracks, I stick them into a playlist reserved for such music. The plan is, that when I have built up sufficient examples of such recorded music, I am then going to take some time to re-visit speaker positioning, maybe a bit of room conditioning and similar, to see if this can remove the issues. Such trials would be attempted with other music also, I don't want to risk optimising purely with what might just be a playlist of badly mastered music, for example. And I do think that some of the occasional material where SAM 100% might appear problematic is due to mastering issues, SAMed Blades may well have far deeper and louder bass extension than the original studio monitors. Once I'm happy that speaker positioning etc. is optimised for 100% SAM, then I might try experimenting with 80% 60% or whatever. I suspect the end result might be personal preference or music / mastering dependent anyway.
It's worth mentioning that much of what I have tried to explain here is possibly related to my own personality defects, that is if I have something good that can be set to 100%, then that I where it must be set, I want 100% of it, no less! I'm like this with many things, I couldn't buy a 3 litre engine car, for example, if there was a 4 litre version in the range. I agonise over buying the cheaper "normal" unleaded petrol, when lovely "super" stuff is also available.
That said (having psychoanalysed myself), I think there is some merit in trying to get SAM to work at 100%, because it is designed to work, to be correct, at 100%. Once happy with this, it may well be worth some serious experimenting with lower percentages. I'll keep you posted with anything I find in the future!
I have been approaching the optimising of my newly SAMed and dual mono'd system from a different angle. With SAM at 100%, I might occasionally play a specific track where perhaps I feel SAM is doing a bit too much with the bass, or indeed there are occasionally what I call "SAM artefacts", where something sounds just a little bit wrong with the bass, a bit like SAM is working too hard at the very extremes of bass extension. (I get very rare cases where the lowest bass seams to kind of "stall", hard to describe in words) When I happen across such tracks, I stick them into a playlist reserved for such music. The plan is, that when I have built up sufficient examples of such recorded music, I am then going to take some time to re-visit speaker positioning, maybe a bit of room conditioning and similar, to see if this can remove the issues. Such trials would be attempted with other music also, I don't want to risk optimising purely with what might just be a playlist of badly mastered music, for example. And I do think that some of the occasional material where SAM 100% might appear problematic is due to mastering issues, SAMed Blades may well have far deeper and louder bass extension than the original studio monitors. Once I'm happy that speaker positioning etc. is optimised for 100% SAM, then I might try experimenting with 80% 60% or whatever. I suspect the end result might be personal preference or music / mastering dependent anyway.
It's worth mentioning that much of what I have tried to explain here is possibly related to my own personality defects, that is if I have something good that can be set to 100%, then that I where it must be set, I want 100% of it, no less! I'm like this with many things, I couldn't buy a 3 litre engine car, for example, if there was a 4 litre version in the range. I agonise over buying the cheaper "normal" unleaded petrol, when lovely "super" stuff is also available.
That said (having psychoanalysed myself), I think there is some merit in trying to get SAM to work at 100%, because it is designed to work, to be correct, at 100%. Once happy with this, it may well be worth some serious experimenting with lower percentages. I'll keep you posted with anything I find in the future!
