TOPIC:

@gibbo9000... I'm aware of Roon's benefits, and was going to purchase outright when they raised the cost to USD$700 in an effort to steer users to their subscription pricing model. At the end of the day it's all about the enjoyment of music in your listening space, so whatever works for you. Either way, I'm happy with what the SHD Studio brings to the table.

Never say never, but I highly doubt I'd go back to a passive setup. Maybe for nostalgia's sake as a second system only. Cheers.

I recently moved to a small town and finally had time to have a local woodworker / hobbyist fabricate a couple of simple audio platforms. Provided him with a design, chose cherrywood, and left him to it.

My audio rig is minimalist, and the wood adds nice character.

Next step may be a couple of absorption panels behind the Phantoms, but I don't know if they would offer improvement. The miniDSP / Dirac digital room correction does a great job and was well worth the set up time.

supaDean wrote:

Next step may be a couple of absorption panels behind the Phantoms, but I don't know if they would offer improvement.

What would you be trying to achieve? Behind the speakers is about the last place I'd put a panel. The first reflection points on the side-walls, ceiling and back wall (behind the listening position) are all going to be more significant.

Ultrasonic wrote:

supaDean wrote:

Next step may be a couple of absorption panels behind the Phantoms, but I don't know if they would offer improvement.

What would you be trying to achieve? Behind the speakers is about the last place I'd put a panel. The first reflection points on the side-walls, ceiling and back wall (behind the listening position) are all going to be more significant.

What you mention is all good of course but behind the speakers is the only place you can control Speaker Boundary Interference with the front wall. That mattered hugely for me in my room with my large speakers, I'm guessing not so much in this system, but the key to knowing what room treatment to use is to measure the room and see what problems it has. The uncorrected Dirac frequency response can show you that, or REW.

Personally I suggest an iterative approach to room treatment. Find the worst problem and solve it, tune with Dirac and enjoy.
Find the remaining worst problem and solve it, tune with Dirac and enjoy more.
Iterate until you run out of money or issues to solve.

For me a standing wave 3-0-0 at 87Hz was by far my biggest problem, solved with absorbers on rear wall.
Second worst problem was SBIR from front wall, solved by asbsorbers on front wall.
Third worst problem was cross lateral reflections, left speaker reflecting off right wall, right speaker reflecting off left wall, solved with thinner absorbers at side reflection positions,
Fourth worst problem was ceiling reflections solved by absorbers on ceiling.
Then I added a binary amplitude diffractor to the ceiling just in front of the listening positioning mainly because it looked good but was fortunately amazed at how it helped.

Doing the treatment this iterative way has two main benefits.
1. Its more affordable.
2. Your ear/brain takes a while to tune into each new treatment and hear the newly revealed issues.

It still takes time and money and effort but if you think Dirac by itself sounds great you may be amazed how much better it sounds with room treatment. In my case I've spent more than twice as much as the SHD on room treatment but it has been worth it. I have never listened to so much music which suggests I am enjoying it more.

entripy wrote:

What you mention is all good of course but behind the speakers is the only place you can control Speaker Boundary Interference with the front wall.

Yes, but there are speaker boundary interference effects with every other boundary too and there is no reason to think the front wall is the most important. If it happens to be in one particular situation, and a thick enough absorber to be effective can be placed behind the speaker, then in that case it may be helpful. My point was to just jump to assuming that directly behind the speaker was the place to put any absorption didn't make sense. To me anyway.

For what it's worth I've done a lot of experimenting with absorption panels around my room, including on the ceiling. Ultimately I found absorption on the walls/ceiling ending up with my system sounding too dull and so I removed them. What I have found beneficial are large corner bass traps. What works for an individual in a particular room will be very individual, taking time and effort to get right, and note there is plenty of scope to make things worse as well as better.

Given that its common for small rooms to have dreadful booms due to the sparcity of modes at low frequencies, and that axial, tangential and oblique modes all have pressure maxima in corners, large corner bass traps would be my first choice too and are a fairly safe bet. In this room I only had one vertical corner available so I had to fit two large traps in the horizontal corners at ceiling and end walls. But I still say measuring what you actually get is the key. As is speaker placement which I know you've frequently mentioned. But yes, room treatment is complicated and you can make things worse by spending lots of money so its important to measure and listen.

All interesting thoughts here. Of course, you're not knowing the layout / design of my listening space, and the character of the Phantoms, this is all educated guessing.

What I have noticed, and why I mentioned back panels, is I find I've exaggerated bass when I walk by the Phantoms towards the rear wall. From my listening position the sound is fine. But there seems to be a lot of sound volume at the back behind the speakers.

This may be caused by the design of the Phantoms and their toe in. If you're at all familiar with the Phantoms, you'll see the woofers are laterally opposed... one on the left side and one on the right side of each speaker. With the toe in there's is sound being directed toward the rear middle of the wall... that big white space between the speakers. My thought was some absorption panels across the back wall might help, but of course not knowing what the result would be in my listening position. My thought was I would then redo my Dirac measurements and implement the new sound curve from the new measurements. Just brainstorming.

supaDean wrote:

From my listening position the sound is fine.

I'd suggest this is what matters.

If anyone walks around the room there will be fluctuations in bass level, and Dirac can make this worse actually. Absorbers and using multiple subs can help with uniformity across the room but I wouldn't worry about spots where you never seriously listen to music.

That is good advice, for sure. I should have mentioned I worry about my upstairs neighbours’ quiet lifestyle being infringed upon by my music! That is my only motivation. I can always play music at a lower volume which is not loud at all when they.re home. Or play music at louder volume that does not have much of a bass line!

Time to buy a fully detached house.

Unfortunately room treatment is only relevant to sound in the room. Sound control is what prevents sound escaping. If you thought room treatment was hard sound control is almost impossible (and much more expensive). Bass will easily get into the structure of most buildings making the sound in the air in the room almost completely unrelated to what escapes. There are ways of doing sound control properly but buying a detached property is typically easier and more likely to succeed. That's what I did.

Thanks for all the informative replies. Great bunch of folks here.

My latest stereo audio rig, which I've been putting together on and off the past 7-8 months, is now complete. It's bringing me a lot of music listening joy. It's an all digital setup; no analogue. A few weeks ago I shared some details of putting this setup together. This post wraps things up. This stereo system is my endgame (I think.. !), at least until some technology comes around that I can't resist.

Over the years I've had several setups, and have really enjoyed the journey. This time I went for an active, 2-channel, minimalist, hi-end system while keeping to a reasonable budget. One of the goals when building this system was to get away from multiple racks of audio gear with cables everywhere. The room is now a lot more open and I'm enjoying the reclaimed space.

So... I finally decided to replace an aging 2006 MacPro tower (my music server) with a late model 2018 Mac Mini. This allows me to use the latest version of Audirvana playback software with all its features when using a mobile device as a remote. This is especially useful when streaming Tidal via Audirvana. I find the current miniDSP SHD-Studio version of Volumio streaming, while sounding terrific, is lacking in features, so I prefer to use Audirvana when sending data to the miniDSP SHD-Studio.

Added an Uptime Audio USB Regen to the Mac Mini USB output, which regenerates the USB data signal and power before it arrives at the USB input of the miniDSP SHD-Studio. The sound is non-fatiguing with no noise-floor.

I had researched many dedicated music streamers / servers to replace the 2006 MacPro, but found the higher-end offerings all over-priced at retail for what they do. Replacing the 2006 MacPro tower with the CDN$1000 Mac Mini to existing hardware and software made the most sense. If and when it comes time to replace the Mac Mini down the road, it can be used as a desktop computer.

Also had cherry wood audio platforms made to sit my gear on. They are three inches from the floor so as not to affect the soundstage during playback.

This setup may not be the solution for others, of course. At the end of the day if you enjoy listening to music in your space, that is all that matters.

Here's a list of the gear: • Duo Devialet Phantom Reactor 900 • Devialet “The Legs” • miniDSP SHD-Studio • Apple 2018 Mac Mini • Mistral Audio W-3900

Cheers.