16-Nov-2018, 20:54
Arup,
Without hearing how your system sounds in your room or knowing what you're chasing as a result, I have a few suggestions from my experience with my setup before and after the CI board upgrade and the games I ended up playing with my RealTraps panels after replacing my previous Dynaudio standpoints with my current Focal Sopra 2's. I have no idea if any of these things will work for you, the only thing I can say is that they won't cost anything apart from time and maybe a bit of effort:
1- If you're using SAM, try turning it off. I used SAM before the CI board upgrade to my 130, I've stopped since a month or two after the upgrade. I don't know what changed but the bass/mids balance seemed to change for me with the upgrade and perhaps one of the beta FW updates. There's a lot I like about SAM still but in the end I think I'm getting more natural/life like bass and lower mids with SAM off and I don't seem to miss the extra extension. This one is quick and easy to try so just do it without any expectations and see what you think. It's easy to turn SAM back on too if you prefer things with SAM :-) Conversely, I'd suggest that if you're not using SAM, try it. As I said, it makes a change in the area you're talking about. Whether you're using SAM or not, it is vaguely possible that turning it off or on may make an improvement for you.
2- Do you have your speaker spikes fully extended, in other words is there a bit of space between the bottom of the speaker and the floor surface? If so, try lowering the speaker height so that the bottom of the speaker is much closer to the floor surface. That made a difference with bass with my Sopras.
3- With your acoustic treatments, do you have some absorption at the mid point along the length/width of each wall? If not, and you have absorption at the side wall first reflection points, try moving the absorption from the first reflection point to the mid point along the length of those walls if the absorption is moveable. I know everyone recommends treating first reflection points on the side walls but a comment from Floyd Toole in his book that people prefer them untreated because of the wider soundstage it creates got me interested and I moved my RealtTraps panels from those points and discovered I liked the sound with the first reflection points untreated. I found I had to rework my acoustic treatment placement with the Sopras because they ended up in different positions to my previous speakers and I started experimenting with panel placement. I found I got the best results for bass control with a panel mid way along a wall. If you can move some of the treatments you have then it's worth trying. A tip when it comes to moving treatments: I found the best way to mark the location I was moving a panel from in a carpeted room so I could easily move it back to exactly the same spot was to stick a velcro cable tie to the carpet right next to the stand for the panel I was moving. Velcro hooks attach to carpet quite well, and come off just as easily as they do from their velcro opposite surface.
I don't know if you can try the last suggestion (not easy if treatments are permanently wall mounted) but they're 3 things I found helped me get the bass/mids balance right in my room when I changed from 2 way monitors to 3 way floor standers with more extended bass and a differerent way of loading the room. I think they're worth a try but ultimately you may just be used to the character of the sound in rooms with different construction. If that's the case then the only suggestion I have is to live with the way things currently are until you get used to it and the current sound is what you expect to hear. I've found that my perceptions of the character of sound often change after I become accustomed to the new sound. I think that until we become accustomed to the change in sound, we tend to be constantly aware of it and part of our attention is always on the change, leading us to feel dissatisfied with it. When we're familiar with the sound and it's meeting our expectations we can concentrate fully on the music and things sound better when our attention is undivided.
If that doesn't work then we get to the difficult options like building alterations and I think you'd prefer to avoid those. I know I would.
Without hearing how your system sounds in your room or knowing what you're chasing as a result, I have a few suggestions from my experience with my setup before and after the CI board upgrade and the games I ended up playing with my RealTraps panels after replacing my previous Dynaudio standpoints with my current Focal Sopra 2's. I have no idea if any of these things will work for you, the only thing I can say is that they won't cost anything apart from time and maybe a bit of effort:
1- If you're using SAM, try turning it off. I used SAM before the CI board upgrade to my 130, I've stopped since a month or two after the upgrade. I don't know what changed but the bass/mids balance seemed to change for me with the upgrade and perhaps one of the beta FW updates. There's a lot I like about SAM still but in the end I think I'm getting more natural/life like bass and lower mids with SAM off and I don't seem to miss the extra extension. This one is quick and easy to try so just do it without any expectations and see what you think. It's easy to turn SAM back on too if you prefer things with SAM :-) Conversely, I'd suggest that if you're not using SAM, try it. As I said, it makes a change in the area you're talking about. Whether you're using SAM or not, it is vaguely possible that turning it off or on may make an improvement for you.
2- Do you have your speaker spikes fully extended, in other words is there a bit of space between the bottom of the speaker and the floor surface? If so, try lowering the speaker height so that the bottom of the speaker is much closer to the floor surface. That made a difference with bass with my Sopras.
3- With your acoustic treatments, do you have some absorption at the mid point along the length/width of each wall? If not, and you have absorption at the side wall first reflection points, try moving the absorption from the first reflection point to the mid point along the length of those walls if the absorption is moveable. I know everyone recommends treating first reflection points on the side walls but a comment from Floyd Toole in his book that people prefer them untreated because of the wider soundstage it creates got me interested and I moved my RealtTraps panels from those points and discovered I liked the sound with the first reflection points untreated. I found I had to rework my acoustic treatment placement with the Sopras because they ended up in different positions to my previous speakers and I started experimenting with panel placement. I found I got the best results for bass control with a panel mid way along a wall. If you can move some of the treatments you have then it's worth trying. A tip when it comes to moving treatments: I found the best way to mark the location I was moving a panel from in a carpeted room so I could easily move it back to exactly the same spot was to stick a velcro cable tie to the carpet right next to the stand for the panel I was moving. Velcro hooks attach to carpet quite well, and come off just as easily as they do from their velcro opposite surface.
I don't know if you can try the last suggestion (not easy if treatments are permanently wall mounted) but they're 3 things I found helped me get the bass/mids balance right in my room when I changed from 2 way monitors to 3 way floor standers with more extended bass and a differerent way of loading the room. I think they're worth a try but ultimately you may just be used to the character of the sound in rooms with different construction. If that's the case then the only suggestion I have is to live with the way things currently are until you get used to it and the current sound is what you expect to hear. I've found that my perceptions of the character of sound often change after I become accustomed to the new sound. I think that until we become accustomed to the change in sound, we tend to be constantly aware of it and part of our attention is always on the change, leading us to feel dissatisfied with it. When we're familiar with the sound and it's meeting our expectations we can concentrate fully on the music and things sound better when our attention is undivided.
If that doesn't work then we get to the difficult options like building alterations and I think you'd prefer to avoid those. I know I would.
Roon Nucleus+, Devilalet Expert 140 Pro CI, Focal Sopra 2, PS Audio P12, Keces P8 LPS, Uptone Audio EtherREGEN with optical fibre link to my router, Shunyata Alpha NR and Sigma NR power cables, Shunyata Sigma ethernet cables, Shunyata Alpha V2 speaker cables, Grand Prix Audio Monaco rack, RealTRAPS acoustic treatment.
Brisbane, Qld, Australia
