Time for an update. Events have been progressing very slowly, in recent weeks I have only been able to get any serious listening time at the weekends, and some weekends (last weekend being a good example), the listening time has been fun, with company, but not that serious! Meanwhile, things have been progressing, albeit slowly, as I have been trying various “HAF” convolution filters as provided by Thierry’s Home Audio Fidelity service.
Let’s jump back a few weeks and summarise key events. This is a long thread and many of my trials and tribulations have been dead ends or distractions, the following is a summary of the important bits.
I added the SOtM bundle, first impressions were disappointing, the SOtM kit sounded a little thin, treble and presence range seemed too prominent. After much analysis, I could tell that the SOtM kit sounded good, but I did not like the overall sound. I had quite simply stopped enjoying my system, with everything sounding a little thin and too bright with the SOtM kit in place. I was convinced that the SOtM kit would be measurably brighter when compared to AIR or my old microRendu. I measured using REW and a calibrated UMIK-1, and found that AIR, the mR and the SOtM kit measured more or less identically in terms of the frequency balance. Let’s be clear here, subjectively the SOtM kit sounded maybe +3dB brighter, but the REL SPL curve indicted this was not the case. This was puzzling. I spent much time switching between the mR and SOtM kit, listening very carefully to different aspects of the presentation. The conclusion was that the SOtM kit sounded better in all areas, more realistic bass, more accurate treble, more detail in the mids, I could go on and on, but overall, I would still rather listen to the mR, somehow nicer to listen to, more full bodied, and without the (un-measurable) prominence in the highs. This was both puzzling and frustrating. Many of us are interested in making those small improvements, someone declares component A performs better than component B, others try this, everyone seems to agree that component A is the one to have. So you try component A in your own system, you can see (hear) why it is better, but overall, your nice new (and expensive) component A has made your system sound worse. Where do you go from here? Logically, if you then get something that performs even better than component A, is this not just going to exacerbate things further? It was about this time that it dawned on me that maybe this was not just an SOtM issue, that I had been experiencing this already, albeit to a lesser degree. This was with the upgrade from my old D800 Expert to the 1000Pro. For me, the 1000Pro is clearly the better machine, far more realistic, more detail, higher resolution, better bass power, the whole lot. Yet thinking back, with some material I was finding the 1000Pro a little more difficult to live with than the more relaxed D800. The key point here is that these niggling negatives for the 1000Pro were exhibiting themselves in exactly the same areas that the SOtM bundle was spoiling my listening enjoyment. So maybe the SOtM kit was not having as big an effect as I first thought, this was cumulative, with the SOtM kit adding to something that the switch to the 1000Pro was already invoking. So the impact of the 1000Pro I could live with, the SOtM kit was simply pushing things over the edge.
I concluded from the above that if every improvement I make to the electronics is making things sound worse, at least in part, then something else must be wrong. It was at this point that I decided to try Thierry’s Home Audio Fidelity service. The logic being that the issue was most likely to be related to my room, and if Thierry’s convolution filters could correct this, then maybe the improvements in the electronics could shine through. It would at least provide some data and experience to try to understand what remains a puzzling issue.
Two things happened almost at the same time. For Thierry to make the filters, you need to make many REW measurements for the left and right channel independently, both at the listening position and spaced around the listening position, so this is maybe 14 or more measurements. I made the measurements and sent them off to Thierry. The next day, I had my first convolution filters. I loaded these into Roon, and had a listen. I could hear many things I liked about the filters, but there was an issue with the bass. Wondering around the room, the bass sounded fine. As an example, standing a meter or so behind the listening position the bass sounded great, but at the listening position the bass was very lean, quite good bass but nowhere near enough of it for me. For the record, the listening position is at a point in the room that normally has a bit of bass reinforcement, so a little more bass at the listening position apparent than elsewhere in the room. Anyway, some correspondence with Thierry, he explained why the bass sound as it did, the next day he provided some new convolutions with changes to phase & low end correction. There was something interesting here though, intuitively, you would think that some convolution filters that reduce bass would be the last thing you want if your system was a little bright, but even with these bass light convolutions, the treble issue seemed to have pretty much vanished. My assumption was that maybe the convolutions had reduced the HF in some key areas, hence providing this result. I started this paragraph stating that two things happened at the same time. The other thing I was referring two happened after I had listened to the first convolution filter, but before Thierry had sent me the update. It was about Sunday lunchtime, I had listened to the filter, and emailed some feedback to Thierry. Now it was a case of simply waiting for Thierry’s response. Without going into all the reasons why, I was sat at my computer and was listening to some semi-background music, this was from a playlist in iTunes feeding the SOtM kit via Shairport. OK, I know this is not the best way to use the SOtM kit with respect to SQ, it was just convenient for what I wanted to do at that time. Anyway, some music was playing, and yes, it did sound a bit harsh and unpleasant in the presence range.
This was a little annoying and it got me thinking. I opened up REW and loaded in the very many measurements that I had made to send to Thierry. So this is 14 measurements, taken in 7 different positions for both left and right channel. Using REW I produced an average curve from all these measurements. Looking at any individual measurement curve, you might see a bit of a peak at 4750kHz or something, other curves taken in different positions might show a peak at a different frequency, but the averaged curve from all the readings actually looked very good in the mid to high frequencies, no obvious peaks and troughs, and a very fractional downward slope. What was more obvious was a bit of a trough between 420 and 720 Hz and more prominent bass null at 125 Hz, followed by bass reinforcement above about 70Hz. I was still listening in iTunes, so just as an idle experiment, I opened up the equaliser, nudged up the 500 Hz region (about +5dB) and nudged up the 125 Hz region. To be honest, this was just a bit of idle fun, I was not expecting much. Well I was wrong, this tweak on the iTunes equaliser killed the apparent presence / treble issue dead. I then sat down for a serious listen, in doing this one thing was clear, going from Roon / HQPlayer to iTunes Shareport, this with iTunes doing some of it’s own processing with the equaliser invoked, is a clear step backwards. So not a solution, but with iTunes and equalisation it was listenable.
Taking these two results, the iTunes equaliser solution is perhaps easy to understand, adding a touch more bass and then a little body at 500 Hz takes the presence / treble range into balance. I can only assume something similar is happening with the first convolution filter from Thierry, but in this case it is a little harder to understand intuitively, as this filter offered a clear drop in bass. I guess similar forces are in play though. As my next experiment the same Sunday afternoon, I created a parametric equaliser curve in Roon, using the Q values to try to match the 420 to 720 Hz dip as accurately as possible, plus a degree of correction for the bass null. This actually sounded pretty decent, and a mile better than the iTunes tweak.
After the above, three weeks have gone by. In this time I have received revised HAF convolutions from Thierry, tried them, given feedback, and then Thierry supplies a tweaked version. This process has taken far longer than it should. This is not Thierry’s fault, he has been incredibly helpful and responsive. It has just been bad timing, as it has just happened that whenever Thierry sends a new convolution, it has been at a time when I have been away from my system for a few days so it has taken a while before I can try the update. So whereas it is theoretically possible to try 3 or 4 tweaks in as many days, it has taken about a week per iteration.
So to last weekend, this did not offer any time for any quiet listening on my own, but there was much music played with others in the house. This did include one very extensive listening session. In the interests of full disclosure, this session included two things, company and a modest (?) amount of alcohol, so more of a time to enjoy music, not analyse hifi kit. This session was running Roon HQPlayer and Thierry’s latest HAF filter. All I can say here is that I was quite simply enjoying the music, I was pretty much forgetting about my recent woes and enjoying the music enormously. There were a few wow moments with the music too, safe to say things were sounding very good indeed. I did drift back into audiophile mode at one point. Armed with the iPad it is possible to turn the Roon’s DSP engine on and off, or even change settings. With a mate, I played about 2 minutes of one track, and switched between DSP off, my own Roon Parametric EQ effort, and Thierry’s latest HAF filter. I referred to these as one, two and three, so my mate was blind. After a very short while, my mate said something like “it sounds best with three, leave it at that and stop (word omitted) about with your system. So not exactly a scientifically sound level controlled double blind listening experiment, more of a 10 minute bit of fun with a slightly inebriated person, but a victory for Thierry’s latest HAF filter nevertheless. Interestingly, at this point the SOtM kit did not sound thin at all, and the HF is actually becoming a highlight of the systems performance, incisive crashing cymbals and similar actually providing some of those aforementioned wow moments.
Then to today. I have had the house to myself, I have consumed nothing stronger than coffee, and I have had time to listen to both the latest HAF and HAF crosstalk reduction filters. This was some careful listening with some familiar material, and the system sounds superb. The best way I can think to describe the difference with the HAF filters is to simply state that listening with DSP off is like listening to some obviously very high quality very resolving electronics with some very revealing speakers, DSP on and the HAF convolutions in play is like listening to superbly reproduced music. So thoughts of the system drift away, enjoyment of the music takes it’s place. Everything sounds far more real, closer to the original and further away from reproduced music, sound staging is vastly improved also, allowing you to drift further into the music. This is a seriously good result! I now feel that I just want to sit down and listen to stuff.
So, is this the end of the tail? It is certainly the end of a very difficult chapter, but there is more to come. Thierry’s latest filter is now getting very close to where it should be in terms of frequency balance, but I do not think it is 100% there. So I think I shall be going back for yet another iteration, I am sure at some point the next iteration will be worse than the one before, then I shall stop. So far, I provide feedback to Thierry, he provides a new convolution that is just a little bit better. It has to be said, the service and expertise that Thierry has provided has been absolutely first class, truly exceptional. If you have occasional thoughts about trying his service, I would say go for it, I cannot recommend enough.
I also have a whole list of other things that that I plan to do, but this post is already too long, I shall save these for another day. Safe to say for now that some changes to my room and room treatments are on this list, along with some hardware stuff to try.
As for the rest of this weekend, it occurs to me that I am still running Beta 12. There were rather mixed reports regarding Beta 14, but some claimed better bass and similar, so it occurs to me that if I am fine tuning with Thierry’s filters, now would be a very good time to switch to Beta 14, I may as well do the final tweaking with the very latest firmware.
Tomorrow I think I will take stock and try to get some idea if all this effort with the SOtM kit, the REF10 and MC3+USB was really worth it. Today it seems so, tomorrow I will try a simple head to head between Roon AIR on latest Beta 14 and the SOtM / Mutec kit.
Should be interesting.
Let’s jump back a few weeks and summarise key events. This is a long thread and many of my trials and tribulations have been dead ends or distractions, the following is a summary of the important bits.
I added the SOtM bundle, first impressions were disappointing, the SOtM kit sounded a little thin, treble and presence range seemed too prominent. After much analysis, I could tell that the SOtM kit sounded good, but I did not like the overall sound. I had quite simply stopped enjoying my system, with everything sounding a little thin and too bright with the SOtM kit in place. I was convinced that the SOtM kit would be measurably brighter when compared to AIR or my old microRendu. I measured using REW and a calibrated UMIK-1, and found that AIR, the mR and the SOtM kit measured more or less identically in terms of the frequency balance. Let’s be clear here, subjectively the SOtM kit sounded maybe +3dB brighter, but the REL SPL curve indicted this was not the case. This was puzzling. I spent much time switching between the mR and SOtM kit, listening very carefully to different aspects of the presentation. The conclusion was that the SOtM kit sounded better in all areas, more realistic bass, more accurate treble, more detail in the mids, I could go on and on, but overall, I would still rather listen to the mR, somehow nicer to listen to, more full bodied, and without the (un-measurable) prominence in the highs. This was both puzzling and frustrating. Many of us are interested in making those small improvements, someone declares component A performs better than component B, others try this, everyone seems to agree that component A is the one to have. So you try component A in your own system, you can see (hear) why it is better, but overall, your nice new (and expensive) component A has made your system sound worse. Where do you go from here? Logically, if you then get something that performs even better than component A, is this not just going to exacerbate things further? It was about this time that it dawned on me that maybe this was not just an SOtM issue, that I had been experiencing this already, albeit to a lesser degree. This was with the upgrade from my old D800 Expert to the 1000Pro. For me, the 1000Pro is clearly the better machine, far more realistic, more detail, higher resolution, better bass power, the whole lot. Yet thinking back, with some material I was finding the 1000Pro a little more difficult to live with than the more relaxed D800. The key point here is that these niggling negatives for the 1000Pro were exhibiting themselves in exactly the same areas that the SOtM bundle was spoiling my listening enjoyment. So maybe the SOtM kit was not having as big an effect as I first thought, this was cumulative, with the SOtM kit adding to something that the switch to the 1000Pro was already invoking. So the impact of the 1000Pro I could live with, the SOtM kit was simply pushing things over the edge.
I concluded from the above that if every improvement I make to the electronics is making things sound worse, at least in part, then something else must be wrong. It was at this point that I decided to try Thierry’s Home Audio Fidelity service. The logic being that the issue was most likely to be related to my room, and if Thierry’s convolution filters could correct this, then maybe the improvements in the electronics could shine through. It would at least provide some data and experience to try to understand what remains a puzzling issue.
Two things happened almost at the same time. For Thierry to make the filters, you need to make many REW measurements for the left and right channel independently, both at the listening position and spaced around the listening position, so this is maybe 14 or more measurements. I made the measurements and sent them off to Thierry. The next day, I had my first convolution filters. I loaded these into Roon, and had a listen. I could hear many things I liked about the filters, but there was an issue with the bass. Wondering around the room, the bass sounded fine. As an example, standing a meter or so behind the listening position the bass sounded great, but at the listening position the bass was very lean, quite good bass but nowhere near enough of it for me. For the record, the listening position is at a point in the room that normally has a bit of bass reinforcement, so a little more bass at the listening position apparent than elsewhere in the room. Anyway, some correspondence with Thierry, he explained why the bass sound as it did, the next day he provided some new convolutions with changes to phase & low end correction. There was something interesting here though, intuitively, you would think that some convolution filters that reduce bass would be the last thing you want if your system was a little bright, but even with these bass light convolutions, the treble issue seemed to have pretty much vanished. My assumption was that maybe the convolutions had reduced the HF in some key areas, hence providing this result. I started this paragraph stating that two things happened at the same time. The other thing I was referring two happened after I had listened to the first convolution filter, but before Thierry had sent me the update. It was about Sunday lunchtime, I had listened to the filter, and emailed some feedback to Thierry. Now it was a case of simply waiting for Thierry’s response. Without going into all the reasons why, I was sat at my computer and was listening to some semi-background music, this was from a playlist in iTunes feeding the SOtM kit via Shairport. OK, I know this is not the best way to use the SOtM kit with respect to SQ, it was just convenient for what I wanted to do at that time. Anyway, some music was playing, and yes, it did sound a bit harsh and unpleasant in the presence range.
This was a little annoying and it got me thinking. I opened up REW and loaded in the very many measurements that I had made to send to Thierry. So this is 14 measurements, taken in 7 different positions for both left and right channel. Using REW I produced an average curve from all these measurements. Looking at any individual measurement curve, you might see a bit of a peak at 4750kHz or something, other curves taken in different positions might show a peak at a different frequency, but the averaged curve from all the readings actually looked very good in the mid to high frequencies, no obvious peaks and troughs, and a very fractional downward slope. What was more obvious was a bit of a trough between 420 and 720 Hz and more prominent bass null at 125 Hz, followed by bass reinforcement above about 70Hz. I was still listening in iTunes, so just as an idle experiment, I opened up the equaliser, nudged up the 500 Hz region (about +5dB) and nudged up the 125 Hz region. To be honest, this was just a bit of idle fun, I was not expecting much. Well I was wrong, this tweak on the iTunes equaliser killed the apparent presence / treble issue dead. I then sat down for a serious listen, in doing this one thing was clear, going from Roon / HQPlayer to iTunes Shareport, this with iTunes doing some of it’s own processing with the equaliser invoked, is a clear step backwards. So not a solution, but with iTunes and equalisation it was listenable.
Taking these two results, the iTunes equaliser solution is perhaps easy to understand, adding a touch more bass and then a little body at 500 Hz takes the presence / treble range into balance. I can only assume something similar is happening with the first convolution filter from Thierry, but in this case it is a little harder to understand intuitively, as this filter offered a clear drop in bass. I guess similar forces are in play though. As my next experiment the same Sunday afternoon, I created a parametric equaliser curve in Roon, using the Q values to try to match the 420 to 720 Hz dip as accurately as possible, plus a degree of correction for the bass null. This actually sounded pretty decent, and a mile better than the iTunes tweak.
After the above, three weeks have gone by. In this time I have received revised HAF convolutions from Thierry, tried them, given feedback, and then Thierry supplies a tweaked version. This process has taken far longer than it should. This is not Thierry’s fault, he has been incredibly helpful and responsive. It has just been bad timing, as it has just happened that whenever Thierry sends a new convolution, it has been at a time when I have been away from my system for a few days so it has taken a while before I can try the update. So whereas it is theoretically possible to try 3 or 4 tweaks in as many days, it has taken about a week per iteration.
So to last weekend, this did not offer any time for any quiet listening on my own, but there was much music played with others in the house. This did include one very extensive listening session. In the interests of full disclosure, this session included two things, company and a modest (?) amount of alcohol, so more of a time to enjoy music, not analyse hifi kit. This session was running Roon HQPlayer and Thierry’s latest HAF filter. All I can say here is that I was quite simply enjoying the music, I was pretty much forgetting about my recent woes and enjoying the music enormously. There were a few wow moments with the music too, safe to say things were sounding very good indeed. I did drift back into audiophile mode at one point. Armed with the iPad it is possible to turn the Roon’s DSP engine on and off, or even change settings. With a mate, I played about 2 minutes of one track, and switched between DSP off, my own Roon Parametric EQ effort, and Thierry’s latest HAF filter. I referred to these as one, two and three, so my mate was blind. After a very short while, my mate said something like “it sounds best with three, leave it at that and stop (word omitted) about with your system. So not exactly a scientifically sound level controlled double blind listening experiment, more of a 10 minute bit of fun with a slightly inebriated person, but a victory for Thierry’s latest HAF filter nevertheless. Interestingly, at this point the SOtM kit did not sound thin at all, and the HF is actually becoming a highlight of the systems performance, incisive crashing cymbals and similar actually providing some of those aforementioned wow moments.
Then to today. I have had the house to myself, I have consumed nothing stronger than coffee, and I have had time to listen to both the latest HAF and HAF crosstalk reduction filters. This was some careful listening with some familiar material, and the system sounds superb. The best way I can think to describe the difference with the HAF filters is to simply state that listening with DSP off is like listening to some obviously very high quality very resolving electronics with some very revealing speakers, DSP on and the HAF convolutions in play is like listening to superbly reproduced music. So thoughts of the system drift away, enjoyment of the music takes it’s place. Everything sounds far more real, closer to the original and further away from reproduced music, sound staging is vastly improved also, allowing you to drift further into the music. This is a seriously good result! I now feel that I just want to sit down and listen to stuff.
So, is this the end of the tail? It is certainly the end of a very difficult chapter, but there is more to come. Thierry’s latest filter is now getting very close to where it should be in terms of frequency balance, but I do not think it is 100% there. So I think I shall be going back for yet another iteration, I am sure at some point the next iteration will be worse than the one before, then I shall stop. So far, I provide feedback to Thierry, he provides a new convolution that is just a little bit better. It has to be said, the service and expertise that Thierry has provided has been absolutely first class, truly exceptional. If you have occasional thoughts about trying his service, I would say go for it, I cannot recommend enough.
I also have a whole list of other things that that I plan to do, but this post is already too long, I shall save these for another day. Safe to say for now that some changes to my room and room treatments are on this list, along with some hardware stuff to try.
As for the rest of this weekend, it occurs to me that I am still running Beta 12. There were rather mixed reports regarding Beta 14, but some claimed better bass and similar, so it occurs to me that if I am fine tuning with Thierry’s filters, now would be a very good time to switch to Beta 14, I may as well do the final tweaking with the very latest firmware.
Tomorrow I think I will take stock and try to get some idea if all this effort with the SOtM kit, the REF10 and MC3+USB was really worth it. Today it seems so, tomorrow I will try a simple head to head between Roon AIR on latest Beta 14 and the SOtM / Mutec kit.
Should be interesting.
1000 Pro - KEF Blade - iFi Zen Stream - Mutec REF10 - MC3+USB - Pro-Ject Signature 12
