AudioCircle
Other Stuff => Archived Manufacturer Circles => Aspen Amplifiers => Topic started by: AKSA on 13 Mar 2009, 11:23 am
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Some here may recall Steve Harrison commenting once upon Master Set, a method of aligning and optimising a pair of loudspeakers into a listening room. I now have first hand experience of this, and it is astonishing, a genuine revelation. :idea:
Those who know my setup will realise that my sheepish comments that '...it's all in the room treatment' are merely laconic lip service. My setup was appalling, and it was a credit to the system that it sounded any good at all. But thanks to Steve, and Marty Walker, who came along for the day to assist, it's now transformed. And the results are nothing short of magical...... :rock:
I never gave much thought to the room, thinking it was maybe important but not too much of an influence. Now I know better..... :oops:
Essentially, the speakers are placed against the wall about 8' apart (250cms) and oriented towards the listener, so that both speakers and the listener appear at the apexes of an equilateral triangle. The left channel is then disconnected from the amp, the right channel only playing on a bassy passage. We used the first track, 'Cowgirl', on Famous Blue Raincoat by Jennifer Warnes. This is just a vocal accompanied by double bass. Ignoring the vocal, you listen carefully to the bass line, and try to pick any resonant buzzing. We noticed it strongly resonating on the tenth note into the piece. This requires constant repetition, of course, but the music is slow, and after a time you can easily identify a buzzing resonance on one note. At this point we began moving the right speaker (left disconnected) out from the wall. At 18" from the wall, the buzzing disappeared, and no bass note was any more prominent than any other.
The right speaker done, we then reconnected the left channel, and repeated the procedure with both speakers driven. Of course, any room will have asymmetries, and these will load the speakers differently, so the room gain arising from corner and wall proximities will necessarily differ for a fully balanced listening experience. We found that the bass resonance, and more than that, the soundfield integrity, was optimised at 13" from the wall. Both speakers are unfashionably oriented towards the listener, each at 60 degrees to the rear wall. We also found that at this particular point, and the tolerance is critical at around 1/16" (2mm), the soundfield and image was pretty much unchanged regardless of wherever you stood in the room! :drool:
I now have a system truly integrated with my listening room which I can proudly demonstrate to anyone seeking a true high end experience, absolutely every quality of the sound is now superior!! Performance on percussion, orchestra, vocals, and horns is nothing short of phenomenal, and I'm gobsmacked by the differences. :thumb:
I sincerely thank Steve for his gracious expertise, and his willingness to come all the way from Ballarat, a provincial city about 1 1/2 hours out of Melbourne, to share his wizardry. I thank Marty too for his greatly valued input cleaning up the room prior to Master Set!! Thank you Steve, Marty is next!! Laurie, you gotta hear this!! :beer: :drums: :thankyou: :bounce: :wine:
Cheers,
Hugh
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Hugh,
Congrats on achieving the perfect synergy in your room. I must say i tried to the same a few months back, when i first read about this method of speaker placement. I got no luck though.
I believe one ends up concluding that not all rooms are "treatable" on that theory basis, simply because you have to sacrifice other object placements. Of course 2 speakers in a practically empty room (carpets and sofas) could be placed in whatever spot is best for sound issues...if that room is a "listening room".
Much has been talked (here and other forums) what WAF matters in our lives. I think most will agree on that. MY room specifically must compromise the TV placement, sofas and some furniture. I thought i had a pretty "viable and modifiable" room...but soon i realized that the speakers can only move a couple of feet back or sideways...a little more and they are out in the wife area !! I cant reverse the room the other way around...so basically i got stuck in the process...never achieving that karma integrity.
Maybe i got the procedure wrong...maybe one cannot be limited by other factors to achieve it...maybe i don't know what i am talking about :scratch: :scratch:
Any way....glad to hear someone really got it and its not just science fiction !!
Do post whateve your experiences are...
Best regards,
Filipe
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Laurie, you gotta hear this!!
And me??? :oops: :drool:
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Lyn,
Any time, amigo, bring it on. Today, perhaps?
Hugh
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Hello,
For those who wish, you can read everything here: http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=64320.0 This will also link to the procedural steps.
Master Set will essentially work with ANY speaker in ANY room, or so the master set gurus have told me and others.
My steps need to be followed religiously, and even then it can be hard to do. It can be hard to hear the unevenness in the bass note(s).
There can also be a very small tolerance space for mitigating the bass resonance in the speakers, like only 3-4 mm, which is not much.
I wrote my above writings on Audio Central and The Lab after successfully performing Master Set in my room in Ballarat. I think it was the 3rd or 4th attempt. The last time was definitive in every way. I was quite confident in every way, but maybe just got lucky.
The Master Set procedure yesterday at Hugh's was in interesting time. I think we got fairly close to perfection. The music sound is the same anywhere one listens in the room, and that means you are within a millimeter or two of perfection.
I thank Hugh for the writeup and I encourage any local Melbournians to come by his place for a listen. I'm sure Hugh will enjoy the company so as to procrastinate even further from needed and necessary other important duties that need to be done. If nothing else, one can marvel at the New Aksa Music Salon.
Just a couple more things, where the speakers sit in the room for perfect matching between them is not a matter of dimensions and distances, it's all about where the little spots happen to be. Each speaker and each room will be different. Even the bass notes that need atoning are different with each speaker in each room. I've now done Master Set with 3 speakers in 4 different rooms. The bass note(s) that I have had to focus on has been different each time. The final placement of the speakers has been quite different as well. It all depends on the set of variables that the speaker/room interface present.
Also, for those who attempt this, don't be discouraged if at first you do not succeed in any way. Give yourself a break and some time, read up again, and try it all again. Doing this blind is VERY difficult as it can be very hard to hear the needed things. It took Hugh a bit of time yesterday to hear what I told him I was hearing. Marty had very difficult time as well. My initial efforts, some time ago, were the same. Eventually Hugh spoke the words that had once been spoken to me in advise by the Master Set guru, "you listen to any unevenness in the bass notes, and then try to make things as even as best you can".
Perseverance and patience are needed, some times in heaps.
Steve
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Did you take any measurements after performing Master Set to confirm that you've even out the bass?
What are the dimensions of Hugh's listening room?
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Did you take any measurements after performing Master Set to confirm that you've even out the bass?
What are the dimensions of Hugh's listening room?
Measurements of what?
You listen to the bass line and move the speaker so as to obtain the most even response in the bass notes.
Granted, the ear as a measuring device is poor, but it is a good listening device.
The room dimensions are essentially irrelevant, and I don't know the dimensions of Hugh's room anyway. What you first listen for is the bass resonance of the speaker/room interface. There are only a few select spots where this is diminished, and that's what you try to find. The ear is as good a means as any, though I do think if one has a capacity for measuring that that could be quite useful. But we didn't have that capability.
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JHM731,
No measurements taken, no expensive gear used. Just priceless ears, backed by organic microprocessors, seasoned by human fallibility and suggestibility. This makes the process achievable by anyone, and inexpensive. You are looking for resonant peaks, clearly audible, as a bass instrument runs up and down the scale. A lot of measurements were taken during development of the speakers, but in the room, it's all subjective....
The procedure attempts to identify and correct the resonant peaks in the room by careful placement of the speakers. Once achieved for a particular set of speakers and a room it seems transferable to any kind of music. It does not guarantee WAF, sadly, so it may not be workable for all.
Room is 4m x 5.5m, quite small. Speakers are VSonics, two way transmission lines, designed by Laurie Menogue, also a Melburnian. They are 89dB/watt/metre, crossover at 2600Hz, minimum impedance 5.7R, using the Peerless 884 woofer and 921 tweeter. Phase shift across the 200Hz band at crossover is just 0.2 degrees.
Hope this is helpful.
Cheers,
Hugh
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Any time, amigo, bring it on. Today, perhaps?
Hi Hugh,
Possibly. I'm still officially on standby for Avalon but as I sit here listening to the thunder and hearing the rain fill my garden tanks after 2 months of waiting, I'm pretty happy they cancelled out on today's display and now I'm just waiting on the decision for tomorrow. Think I might well be free this arvo when Rob is back from work.
It's not just Avalon that's under a cloud (like that one? - sorry) but the benefit concert for bushfire relief is on at the MCG today, Ironic but its bucketing down. Hope it still works out for them. Give you a call as I'm most interested in the speaker positioning.
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Hi All,
Speaker placement is very critical. Following Master Set procedures is an excellent method of finding the correct speaker placement for your listening room, no doubt about that. But in my listening room it is not possible to live and have the VSonic speakers in the ideal position, they simply get in the way and I can't get the chairs far enough away from them. In my case the ideal listening position should be some 2 meters (8") further away from the speakers. Yes, and the room was designed as a listening room (18'w x 28'L x 12'H) with open spaces but over the years the spaces have been filled with stuff very successfully damping the speakers. But if speakers work well in my room they work much much better anywhere else.
When I fired up Hugh's VSonics for the first time (A/B them against the prototypes) in my room all was well and the bass had good slam but there was something lacking as Hugh's VSonics were in a slightly different position. I moved them (Hugh's speakers) around a bit and there was a really great improvement particularly with the soundstage, detail and imaging etc. I delivered them to Hugh a few hours later and the bass had extra slam, richness and depth. The speakers had more room to breathe, not as much furniture and stuff in Hugh's room, believe it or not! Later I heard, along with Martin a secondary bass note reflecting from subterranean levels below the floor. The speakers were duly placed on thick insulating carpet and all the parameters were lifted yet again. Now I will have to wait until Wednesday for a listen,
This revelation prompted me to move my speakers around a bit while playing "Cowgirl" getting the bass right as described earlier and what an improvement, and the speakers are not in the way. I moved the woofer around too and the imaging is about and it is about as good as it gets. But the slam and the overall bass is something really to be felt too. I have known that speaker placement is critical but have been too slack to do much about it. But what can someone do on a rainy day. Yes the rain is torrential in Melbourne at the moment.
I will be over on Wednesday Hugh, can't wait.
Cheers,
Laurie
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Hugh-
Mahalo for the info.
Steve-
Measurements of the in room speaker response using a calibrated mic at the listening postion and a PC based measurement program
can help confirm speaker placement.
Room dimensions can also be used to determine speaker postions that will minimize the interaction of room nodes, see:
http://www.cardas.com/content.php?area=insights&content_id=27&pagestring=Room+Setup
I've also found that it helps to decouple the speakers from the floor by using isolation platforms like the Townshend or devises like the
Symposium Rollerblock Jr.
Aloha,
Dan
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Hugh-
Mahalo for the info.
Steve-
Measurements of the in room speaker response using a calibrated mic at the listening postion and a PC based measurement program
can help confirm speaker placement.
Room dimensions can also be used to determine speaker postions that will minimize the interaction of room nodes, see:
http://www.cardas.com/content.php?area=insights&content_id=27&pagestring=Room+Setup
I've also found that it helps to decouple the speakers from the floor by using isolation platforms like the Townshend or devises like the
Symposium Rollerblock Jr.
Aloha,
Dan
Hi Dan,
That's all fine if you want to buy all the needed stuff to do that measuring and etc. In fact, if it can be done on a real time basis this could be useful in instances where it's all a bit hard to hear things. But it's not really necessary as it can be done by ear.
I've read the Cardas information and used to set my speakers up that way. However I find the Cardas information to be a bit random and with no explanation, let alone documentation, of the numbers as to what the numbers mean, or where they came from. A three decimal point number is pretty specific and should represent something, but there is nothing about that.
The most important part of setting speakers in the room is where they sit in relation to each other so that each speaker pressurizes the room equally. This can get to be a rather long winded explanation that will likely only confuse, so I'll leave it.
Master Set works on making each speaker equally pressurize the room making for a stable sound anywhere in the room. The Cardas method does not do this. Cardas is pretty easy to set up, just a tape and some arithmetic. Master Set is a bit difficult.
With Master Set you can sit anywhere in the room with same sound. With Cardas there is a small sweet spot of a few inches only. Move from that and the sound changes.
Oh, there is no real studied documentation on Master Set either. But it does do what it purports to set out and do. It works.
Steve
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Hi Steve,
Last year when I was at a friends place he used the Master Set method of speaker algnment in a room. The first time I had heard of it and since nearly forgotten about it. The speaker alignment was satisfactorily done in less than a half hour. Later, after about 1/2 of set up a sweep with a Cardias equipment was completed. And although there were a lot of numbers produced they indicated that the speaker placement was about spot on. As long as one knows what you are listening for IMHO the ears have it!
We have a holiday house and to set up a reasonably good listening area has defied every attempt to date. One speaker stuffed under a breakfast bar and the other is free standing at least 2 meters (6') from anything. Solution; wreck the room/house and completely alter it to suit music. Unfortunately there are some listening areas which are far from optimum and the poor old speakers are blamed for poor sound.
Cheers,
Laurie
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This thread could easily lead to conflict between those who measure and those who do not. :duel:
There are two camps on this matter of speaker setup. I am not saying measurement is unnecessary, or unimportant. It is a legitimate, proven methodology. A lot of measurement is also required when designing a speaker. There is moreover a wide range of software available for sound and acoustic measurement. But the correlation between what the software can do, the metrics it creates, and what the subjective, repeatable results are in the room is poorly documented. Taking account of cost and effectiveness, with the input of a lot of work, Master Set gives good results which makes listener position almost irrelevant in the room. To my knowledge nothing beats it on price, either.
If this thread deteriorates into a fight, I will terminate it immediately. I will not tolerate fighting on my forum regardless of right or wrong. :deadhorse:
Cheers,
Hugh
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Hi Steve,
Last year when I was at a friends place he used the Master Set method of speaker algnment in a room. The first time I had heard of it and since nearly forgotten about it. The speaker alignment was satisfactorily done in less than a half hour. Later, after about 1/2 of set up a sweep with a Cardias equipment was completed. And although there were a lot of numbers produced they indicated that the speaker placement was about spot on. As long as one knows what you are listening for IMHO the ears have it!
We have a holiday house and to set up a reasonably good listening area has defied every attempt to date. One speaker stuffed under a breakfast bar and the other is free standing at least 2 meters (6') from anything. Solution; wreck the room/house and completely alter it to suit music. Unfortunately there are some listening areas which are far from optimum and the poor old speakers are blamed for poor sound.
Cheers,
Laurie
Laurie,
Everything has it's compromises, to be sure.
Master Set merely requires somewhat of some clean uncluttered wall space and a clear area in front of the speakers. The rear of the speaker is usually out into the room somewhere around a foot or so. But for sure, not every room is adequate for doing this.
As with many things, you just do the best you can.
Steve
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The most important part of setting speakers in the room is where they sit in relation to each other so that each speaker pressurizes the room equally. This can get to be a rather long winded explanation that will likely only confuse, so I'll leave it.
At your convenience and pleasure Steve, I would very much like for you to indulge us in your ideas and understanding about Master Set. The subtleties are always the hard part to grasp. Your experience doing it a few times is valuable to us who are learning to do it.
I bought a used CD with the Cowgirl song and it arrived scratched to hell, lots of dropouts. Inspired by this thread today, I finally found a way to play it without errors, so I am ready for 1st attempt at Master Set this weekend. Tonight while listening to it, I was thinking: The song only plays about 8 different bass notes in three chords. I have some bass measurement audio tracks which have sine tones at 1Hz increments, courtesy Realtraps. I was wondering if the two concepts could be put together in some way. Would it be useful to create an audio track of acoustic bass playing a simple chromatic scale to hit more freqs while tuning? Or a series of tracks which focus on specific notes held for longer tones. I have gigastudio with a great acoustic bass sample, so I can create an acoustic recording of any pattern that might be valuable in tuning the speakers. Also, I find the singer's voice to cover up the bass at times, so maybe the cowgirl track can be used to tune mids after the hard work on the bass is done with a bass only track. I believe that the texture of the acoustic bass is critical to hearing resonance as a deviation from clarity. Sine wave signal has no texture so it would be useless for listening. A music signal is a more valuable test signal to test the room, just as it is with testing amps. I would love to know your thoughts on this Steve and Hugh. Thanks
fwiw, I have used Cardas Golden ratio setup and preferred placement by ear. I have moved the speakers (and treatments) where the software measurement told me to move them, it still wasn't anything special. Tact was pretty awesome, but gave me a headache from the fake space it created. My current setup is by ear, but symmetrical along the lines of traditional setup rules and sounds pretty good in the sweet spot, but less so elsewhere. I hope the master set can improve that as it has for you guys.
Thanks
Rich
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Hugh,
Looks like I'm now free tomorrow - I'll give you a ring later.
Steve,
I'm a little like Laurie, I have what is essentially a devoted listening room but it has a couple of fixed structures (let alone furnishings) that intrude and make it a rather asymmetric space and which leaves me with rather limited options for placement of each speaker. I used the rules in the Vandersteen owners manual as a start point (does cater to some degree for asymmetry) and then moved the speakers in small increments till I was pretty happy with what I was hearing; but I'm equally certain there is still scope for improvement. I guess the potential I'm seeing in this Master Set method is that it might well offer something towards improving my 'not strictly rectangular' room situation. What do you think? :D
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The most important part of setting speakers in the room is where they sit in relation to each other so that each speaker pressurizes the room equally. This can get to be a rather long winded explanation that will likely only confuse, so I'll leave it.
At your convenience and pleasure Steve, I would very much like for you to indulge us in your ideas and understanding about Master Set. The subtleties are always the hard part to grasp. Your experience doing it a few times is valuable to us who are learning to do it.
Rich
Rich,
I'll try writing something up and posting it, but could take a little bit. I've thought a lot about what's going on with this, and coupled from what I've heard from the Master Set guru, Rod Tomsen, I might have something intelligible to write that goes beyond what I've already written.
The bass line in the Runaway Horse song is a bit limited in that there are only a select number of frequencies generated. However, I've always found that I have been able to hear an enhancement somewhere, and then been able to smooth it out, which is all that's really required. I have often thought that a bass track, such as you suggest, could be helpful.
In some of my early attempts at MS, before I acquired the Horse song, I used a jazz track that opened with an acoustic bass scale that was repeated. But I had trouble getting the required bass enhancement from it.
For what ever reason, the bass line in the horse song works pretty well for what's needed. The one thing I've found about the voice line is that when you get things real close to the matched point, the voice really tightens up into something nearly surreal. I've never been able to tune the mids, with the slight toe out of the speaker, as suggested in Master Set. I've always heard near perfect evenness in the notes.
Steve
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Steve,
I'm a little like Laurie, I have what is essentially a devoted listening room but it has a couple of fixed structures (let alone furnishings) that intrude and make it a rather asymmetric space and which leaves me with rather limited options for placement of each speaker. I used the rules in the Vandersteen owners manual as a start point (does cater to some degree for asymmetry) and then moved the speakers in small increments till I was pretty happy with what I was hearing; but I'm equally certain there is still scope for improvement. I guess the potential I'm seeing in this Master Set method is that it might well offer something towards improving my 'not strictly rectangular' room situation. What do you think? :D
Room shape doesn't matter too much, as long as you have a clear wall to set up the speakers at the start. One of the "points" in MS is to find the small zone where sound is heard from one speaker with both playing. This only occurs in a small zone close to the wall, with the other speaker coupled to the wall. This setting of the "anchor" speaker is then independent from the other speaker and stays stable when the other speaker is moved.
One thing that should be remembered is that what one listens to from the two speakers is the summed response of both speakers. Thus there are two variables at play. In a non MS alignment, changing one speaker automatically changes the other one. With MS, you tend to just have one variable at play, and that does make things a little easier.
Steve
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Hi Dan,
That's all fine if you want to buy all the needed stuff to do that measuring and etc. In fact, if it can be done on a real time basis this could be useful in instances where it's all a bit hard to hear things. But it's not really necessary as it can be done by ear.
I've read the Cardas information and used to set my speakers up that way. However I find the Cardas information to be a bit random and with no explanation, let alone documentation, of the numbers as to what the numbers mean, or where they came from. A three decimal point number is pretty specific and should represent something, but there is nothing about that.
The most important part of setting speakers in the room is where they sit in relation to each other so that each speaker pressurizes the room equally. This can get to be a rather long winded explanation that will likely only confuse, so I'll leave it.
Master Set works on making each speaker equally pressurize the room making for a stable sound anywhere in the room. The Cardas method does not do this. Cardas is pretty easy to set up, just a tape and some arithmetic. Master Set is a bit difficult.
With Master Set you can sit anywhere in the room with same sound. With Cardas there is a small sweet spot of a few inches only. Move from that and the sound changes.
Oh, there is no real studied documentation on Master Set either. But it does do what it purports to set out and do. It works.
Steve
Steve-
I use the Cardas formula as a starting point and move the speakers around from there. My room is just a bit smaller than Hugh's (138" x 210").
My speakers have rear firing ports. I've found that they sound, image and measure better further out from the rear wall. The sweet spot is not just a few inches.
BTW- Sumiko trains their dealers on the Master Set methodology. Here's a review:
http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?rspkr&1197744079
The Wilson Audio set up procedure also uses a similar methodology.
"With Master Set you can sit anywhere in the room with same sound."
If you're sitting a few feet directly in front of either speaker, the image/soundstage is the same as sitting between the speakers?
Dan
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Steve-
I use the Cardas formula as a starting point and move the speakers around from there. My room is just a bit smaller than Hugh's (138" x 210").
My speakers have rear firing ports. I've found that they sound, image and measure better further out from the rear wall. The sweet is not just a few inches.
BTW- Sumiko trains their dealers on the Master Set methodology. Here's a review:
http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?rspkr&1197744079
The Wilson Audio set up procedure also uses a similar methodology.
"With Master Set you can sit anywhere in the room with same sound."
If you're sitting a few feet directly in front of either speaker, the image/soundstage is the same as sitting between the speakers?
Dan
Dan,
Dave Stephens wrote a good review of Master Set. I've corresponded with him for awhile. In fact he is one of those who helped me in my DIY efforts at doing Master Set. Dave is a customer and friend of the Sumiko dealer in Denver, Rod Tomsen, who I have known for 15 years, and who has helped me the most in my DIY Master Set. If you search the audiogon forums for "Master Set" or "Iron Chef" you'll get most of what's been written on Master Set other that what I have written here on AC. At some point in time, Rod Tomsen may write an article for one of the audio magazines, which would be good. Rod is probably the number one practictioner of Master Set of all the Sumiko dealers. He does not sell a set of speakers without home delivery and Master Set setup, and the customer pays extra for this. You get a perfect setup by the master.
With Master Set, the sound is pretty much the same, no matter where you sit. The sound always stays in the center and does not move with you. If you move way to the side like to the right of the right speaker or left of the left speaker, the perspective to the centered sound will change a bit. It's analogous to moving seats at a symphony from the right section to the left section to the middle section.
As long as the speakers are pressurizing the room equally the sound always stays the same. What happens when the speakers are even slightly different is that you always then tend to hear the louder speaker, especially if you move to that side, even just a little.
In my set up here, I have the choice of a seat perpendicular to the right speaker, a couch seat way to the left of the left speaker, or a moveable seat that I can put in the middle. I no longer sit in the middle position as the right seat is comfortable and the sound is the same. BTW, my speakers have a rear port, and it presents no problems whatsoever.
At Hugh's yesterday, we had a seat in the middle, a seat to the right of the right speaker, and a seat to the left of the left speaker. We all moved around and agreed that it was the same in each seat. Hugh and Marty were amazed. I knew it would be that way if I had gotten it correct.
Master Set is not really the only way to get this equallization of speaker sound pressurization into the room, it's just one way. I really don't know any other way, so I use this one. The more I do it, the better I get at it, it's a long learning curve.
Steve
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Dan,
Dave Stephens wrote a good review of Master Set. I've corresponded with him for awhile. In fact he is one of those who helped me in my DIY efforts at doing Master Set. Dave is a customer and friend of the Sumiko dealer in Denver, Rod Tomsen, who I have known for 15 years, and who has helped me the most in my DIY Master Set. If you search the audiogon forums for "Master Set" or "Iron Chef" you'll get most of what's been written on Master Set other that what I have written here on AC. At some point in time, Rod Tomsen may write an article for one of the audio magazines, which would be good. Rod is probably the number one practictioner of Master Set of all the Sumiko dealers. He does not sell a set of speakers without home delivery and Master Set setup, and the customer pays extra for this. You get a perfect setup by the master.
With Master Set, the sound is pretty much the same, no matter where you sit. The sound always stays in the center and does not move with you. If you move way to the side like to the right of the right speaker or left of the left speaker, the perspective to the centered sound will change a bit. It's analogous to moving seats at a symphony from the right section to the left section to the middle section.
As long as the speakers are pressurizing the room equally the sound always stays the same. What happens when the speakers are even slightly different is that you always then tend to hear the louder speaker, especially if you move to that side, even just a little.
In my set up here, I have the choice of a seat perpendicular to the right speaker, a couch seat way to the left of the left speaker, or a moveable seat that I can put in the middle. I no longer sit in the middle position as the right seat is comfortable and the sound is the same. BTW, my speakers have a rear port, and it presents no problems whatsoever.
At Hugh's yesterday, we had a seat in the middle, a seat to the right of the right speaker, and a seat to the left of the left speaker. We all moved around and agreed that it was the same in each seat. Hugh and Marty were amazed. I knew it would be that way if I had gotten it correct.
Master Set is not really the only way to get this equallization of speaker sound pressurization into the room, it's just one way. I really don't know any other way, so I use this one. The more I do it, the better I get at it, it's a long learning curve.
Steve
Steve-
Did you look at Dave Stephens' bass response? See:
http://cgim.audiogon.com/i/vs/i/f/1211754811.jpg
The off axis performance you're getting maybe acceptable for listening to studio recordings, but to recreate the illusion of a soundstage (if it's been captured on a recording) requires that your ears receive direct sound from the speakers before multiple room reflections come into play. This is why many people listen in the nearfield set ups.
BTW- I'd love to see a picture of yours and Hugh's set up.
Dan
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Dan,
I'll take a picture of the setup in the bloom of full sunshine tomorrow. It's been overcast and raining most of today!
Cheers,
Hugh
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Hi All,
I have been moving the speakers around a fair bit this evening to try and position them in the "right" location. It has been an interesting exercise to say the least. I have managed to get two locations for the speakers which are fairly different. But the results produced are nearly the same in the listening area. Now I have a choice of two very symmetrical listening areas extending out beyond the left and right speakers with no really identifiable sweet spot like before. But I econ pole position is still the best though. However the imaging is very good and with instrument placement within the sound stage. So when I have lost the race for the sweet listening spot I won't be all thet put off now.
I appear to have overcome the hard sound reflecting surface of a sideboard close to the right speaker although the RH speaker is now some 600mm closer to it. I would suppose that the reflected sound waves are now deflected somewhere towards the back of the room outside the listening area.
Steve, thanks for getting me off my butt and getting my enthusiasm up enough to play around trying for audio Nirvana.
Hey, I can't let Hugh's virtually identical system sound better better can I?,
Made my day!
I'll paly a few tracks and call it quits for the day.
Cheers,
Laurie
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Found it. You all may be referring to Balad of Runaway horse....
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May i ask what CD of Jennifer Warnes has that 'Cowgirl' Track ???
The one eveyone seems to talk about here - Famous Blue Raincoat, has this track list :
01 First We Take Manhattan 03:47
02 Bird On A Wire 04:42
03 Famous Blue Raincoat 05:33
04 Joan Of Arc With Leonard Cohen 08:01
05 Aint No Cure For Love 03:22
06 Coming Back To You 03:44
07 Song Of Bernadette 03:55
08 A Singer Must Die 04:53
09 Came So Far For Beauty 03:40
10 The Night Comes On 04:51
11 Ballad Of The Runaway Horse 08:22
12 If It Be Your Will 03:09
13 Joan Of Arc Live 07:54
I don't seem to find 'Cowgirl'...
Best regards,
Filipe
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Sorry Felipe, it is the "Ballad of the Runaway Horse," you got it right. It is a duet with Warnes and Rob Wasserman, the bassist. It was referred to earlier in this post as cowgirl something, which is a lyric in the song, and I couldn't remember the real name. Just in case you haven't seen them already, here are links to stvnharr's previous posts describing the Master Set instructions in detail.
Master Set Speaker Placement (http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=64320.0)
DIY Master Set Procedure (http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=64321.0)
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Thanks Richie, much appreciated, my memory is exquisitely shot through like Swiss cheese, I'd forgotten the name....
Felipe, let us hope that Master Set meets Mistress in perfect harmony at some time in the near future..... (and tell her from me that I think she is very beautiful, that might help a little.....)
Cheers,
Hugh
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At your convenience and pleasure Steve, I would very much like for you to indulge us in your ideas and understanding about Master Set. The subtleties are always the hard part to grasp. Your experience doing it a few times is valuable to us who are learning to do it.
Thanks
Rich
Rich,
I'll give this a go now, and see how it goes. What I'm about to write is purely my own thoughts based on my own observations and listening experiences to speakers set up with Master Set, and the ideas I received in the comments from Rod Tomsen at RMAF and on the phone, and from Dave Stephens in emails. I'll try not to repeat too much what I have written before. I just hope I get things correct and somewhat easy to understand. Here we go>>>>>
Let's start first with 2 channel speaker listening. Basically what we hear is the sum of the response from each speaker. The sound is distributed in the recording so as to sum in the middle of the two speakers. That's how recordings are made. When we put two speakers in a room we thus then invisibly divide the room along a line that runs perpendicular between the speakers. This is where the sound from the two speakers sums. If you sit anywhere on that line, you get a fairly balanced left-right image of the sound. You also are dividing the room into two sound pressure zones, left and right, each zone being pressurized by the speaker in that part of the room. Now, sound (air) pressure is what the speaker driver creates. This is what then vibrates the eardrum and what the brain interprets as sound. You won't find much mention, or at least I haven't, about sound (air) pressure in audio writings, so hope you understand what I am referring to here, as it's vital to understanding Master Set.
Thus, we have a situation where the right speaker is filling the right part of the room with sound pressure, and the left speaker is filling the left part of the room with sound pressure. And the sound pressures meet in the middle. If only one speaker is playing, it will fill the whole room with sound, and you instantly recognize that all sound is coming from that one sound source. But with both speakers playing you are recognizing that the sound is coming from the middle of the two sound sources.
Now, the two parts of the room will invariably be different, in size, shape, and reflective and/or absorptive properties. One part of the room will be larger than the other, even if only by a very small amount, though it is theoretically possible for the two parts to be perfectly alike down to a decimal point or two, in practise this is not too likely to occur. Anyway, this larger part of the room will require slightly more sound pressure than the smaller part of the room in order for the sound to sum perfectly in the middle as designed.
Remember, each speaker is playing at exactly the same level from the amplifier, and should be equally balanced in signal level. These equal power levels are then put into the room, and the larger area needs just a little more sound pressure to equally fill the area with the other part of the room.
I hope this is not confusing anybody, but I think that it is a different concept from the common audio thought, or at least it was to me.
Anyway, you then must adjust one of the speakers to be louder in order for the sound pressure in each part of the room to be equal and perfectly sum in the middle. This is what Master Set does, and why each speaker is set individually in the room and in relation to the other speaker. In the end, you have one speaker slightly closer to the rear wall than the other one. Room gain will give the closer speaker slightly more sound pressure to fill the slightly larger area.
When the sound pressure is equal in both parts of the room, then the sound will sum perfectly in the middle creating a single source of sound. And because of the equal sound pressure levels anywhere in the room, the sound will be virtually the same anywhere in the room.
That is what is being done with Master Set.
Some points about Master Set:
The long wall in the room works best. Remember, the room is invisibly divided by the two speakers. Dividing along the long wall gives a more square shape and the sound will more evenly fill the space without reflecting off the walls. Dividing along the short wall gives a long narrow shape that will be very subject to wall reflections. BUT, if the room dimensions are fairly close, you can set up along either wall without too much difficulty.
Listener should sit at least a foot away from a wall. You can get some sound bounce off a wall if you sit too close. But you don't have to move too far away from a wall.
The equal sound pressure throughout the room usually negates any need for room treatment or correction. Experience will tell you about this, once you listen. I've seen little to no correction in the Master Set rooms that were done professionally.
You will be able to sit anywhere in the room with the sound only differing in perspective, like changing seats in symphony hall, or any concert venue.
The steps of Master Set are analogous to those of focusing binoculars:
1. Adjust lens to one's head/set speakers apart in room for good centered sound.
2. Focus the fixed lens on the object/set the "anchor" speaker in the spot of smoothest bass
3. Focus the adjustable lens to match the fixed lens/set the other speaker to match the bass level of the "anchor" speaker.
The hardest part about doing DIY Master Set is listening to the bass line and hearing the plonky, unevenness, and then finding the spot that mitigates this. This is usually not easy to hear, and will test your patience. However, you can just guess with this. But it makes it a lot harder to find the matching level with the other speaker, as the bass mitigation spot does give you a reference point to match.
Master Set is a close to rear wall set, rather than a set up way out in the room.
In the first step, you move one speaker out until all sound is heard from just that one speaker. There is then a small area of 5 or 6 inches where this occurs. If you move the speaker out farther, it reconnects with the other speaker. This small area is where the moved speaker disconnects from both the rear wall and the other speaker. It's setting is independent of both. I can only say that this is desireable, and a tenet of Master Set, but I can explain no more.
Obviously, the speakers could be set anywhere in the room and you could somehow match the sound pressure levels as described above. But it would be hard, and a real trial and error process, but you could do it, and have very good sound.
Master Set will allow you to fully hear what your system is capable of doing. It's a great way to evaluate your system. Music tends to sound better with Master Set so you tend to find that you've got a better music system than you thought, and that's always a plus.
I hope all of this helps, and that I have not confused anyone.
Steve
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Steve-
The off axis performance you're getting maybe acceptable for listening to studio recordings, but to recreate the illusion of a soundstage (if it's been captured on a recording) requires that your ears receive direct sound from the speakers before multiple room reflections come into play. This is why many people listen in the nearfield set ups.
BTW- I'd love to see a picture of yours and Hugh's set up.
Dan
That's why you don't put speakers close to side walls!
With Master Set any room reflections will arrive too late to be recognized, unless you sit up against a wall.
The only study of room reflections that I'm aware of is a 1984 AES study, (James. M. Kates, "A perceptual criterion fo rloudspeaker evaluation, "Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, vol. 32, pp. 938-945, December 1984. This study established that sound arriving at the ear within 5 milliseconds of direct arrival is recognized as direct sound.
There seem to be various numbers for how long the brain will recognize reflected sound, but I don't think there is any validated time on that. Some say anything over the 5 millisecond time is unrecognized, others say up to 30 milliseconds is recognized.
My experience with Master Set is that reflections are mostly eliminated or too late in arriving, unless you have a really live room.
BTW, I have a very small room. Fortunately there is a 10 foot ceiling. I have very good sound. Maybe a pic some day.
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Master Set is a close to rear wall set, rather than a set up way out in the room.
Steve
Ah thanks, Steven, for explaining that point. I think that stops the Master Set being used for Maggies, as they require at least 1.2m behind them to give the beautiful spacious soundstage which is the Maggie hallmark (the centre of my bass panels are 1.6m off the front wall).
Thanks anyway.
Regards,
Andy
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Hi All,
Steve, Thanks for taking the time to post the Master Set theories in a well ordered manner. I'm sure that you will put grins on the faces of people who faithfully follow the set up method.
For those interested I also use another CD that is helpful to align the speakers. I also use a high quality CD titled "ABC Jazztrack Sessions home grown and rare" #476 5947. Most tracks were recorded at the ABC Southbank studios. I use track 4 on which Michelle Nicholle sings "Ah wish" with a great double bass backing from Belinda Moody. Actually this track was recorded live at Bennetts Lane Melbourne during the 2000 Women's Jazz festival by the ABC. You learn a lot about the artists when you read the blurb!
Have fun,
Cheers,
Laurie
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Steve, let me preface this post by admitting that I've never tried the Master Set philosophy and that my thoughts/opinions should be taken as me thinking aloud and offering points for discussion rather than necessarily disagreeing with you or stating anything as fact ....
...Room gain will give the closer speaker slightly more sound pressure to fill the slightly larger area.
When the sound pressure is equal in both parts of the room, then the sound will sum perfectly in the middle creating a single source of sound. And because of the equal sound pressure levels anywhere in the room, the sound will be virtually the same anywhere in the room....
OK, I think I can see how the sound pressure will sound even at the frequency/ies you used during the Master Set exercise (ie. bass). However, vocals and other midrange and high frequency instruments that are above the frequency range impacted by the room's shape/capacity (ie. above ~200hz) will not be equidistant from the listening position (assuming it is the regular equidistant triangle setup) and these vocals/instruments will be pulled toward the nearest speaker. Also, dependent on the speaker design, moving the speaker closer to the wall will reinforce a certain bass frequency range and this frequency range will move as you get closer to the wall. Some bass frequencies will be more in phase with the other speaker, but others will be more out of phase and possibly produce nulls.
...The long wall in the room works best. Remember, the room is invisibly divided by the two speakers. Dividing along the long wall gives a more square shape and the sound will more evenly fill the space without reflecting off the walls. Dividing along the short wall gives a long narrow shape that will be very subject to wall reflections...
Crossing the speakers in front of the listening position will significantly reduce side wall reflections, making the music sound far more relaxed and less edgy. You are still sitting at the same number of degrees off-axis, just to the other side of the axis. This has the additional benefit that when you sit closer to one speaker (in a right-left of sweet spot sense), you become further off-axis from the speaker you are moving closer to and more on-axis to the more distant speaker. This means that the amplitude from each speaker remains even and the imaging remains intact ... no dragging of vocalist to the nearest speaker.
...The equal sound pressure throughout the room usually negates any need for room treatment or correction. Experience will tell you about this, once you listen. I've seen little to no correction in the Master Set rooms that were done professionally...
From a bass perspective perhaps. But, if the room is bright and reflective with a longer than ideal reverberation, the only way to remedy this is by a combination of diffusion and absorption.
...Master Set is a close to rear wall set, rather than a set up way out in the room...
I'm sure there are exceptions but IME, when speakers are placed close the the wall behind, the soundstage depth suffers.
I agree completely that it is important to get the bass right, it underpins everything. Most people have only ever heard poor subs or subs setup poorly and/or integrated poorly. They therefore hear a muddying of the mids and view subs as the devil's work. However, when really good subs are really well integrated with the mains, you are not really aware (most of the time) that there is a sub, and the mids actually sound more natural and realistic. Without excellent lower bass, mids will sound lean with unnaturally sharp image outlines.
IME it is very difficult to integrate a sub well by ear. It is possible but can be a long and frustrating exercise. I have had great results using measurement tools such as ETF5, third octave pink noise, and the good ol' RS meter (with calibration adjustment). I haven't (yet) spent as much time on the integration with my current speakers, but measurement at the listening position shows response of +/-3dB from 20hz-4khz (using third octave pink noise). There is definite improvement despite the mains being rated at -3d at 25Hz or so. In the room they were rolling off well above this, but bringing the sub in at ~40Hz with a 24dB/octave LP filter provides a beautiful extension of the bass and a greater sense of the "space" of the venue. The walls of the listening room just seem to melt away.
When I get some time, I'll be interested to play around with the Master Set setup to see what I am able to achieve in my room. Thanks for putting in the effort of writing it up Steve.
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Steve, I've not yet had time to read your reply (sick kid), just wanna give a quick thanks for your long response. I've got it printed out so I can read it while sitting in the dark next to the little puker. hehe
Hugh: swiss cheese :lol: :thumb:
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Hello again,
Here are some more Master Set points that came to me after yesterday's long post:
In Setting the anchor speaker, I have made mention of bass plonkiness, resonance, etc., as if that will just stand out and hit you in the face or something. Not so! You need to just listen to the bass line and note the smoothness and/or accentuation of all the notes. In every set I have done there has been an accentuation of the 10th note. This note is plucked harder by the bassist, and you will hear that. Some times there are other notes that will have a plonky character, some times not. You just need to listen and note what is there. When you get the speaker out where you only hear the one speaker, "The Dead Zone" as some have called it where the speaker is separated soundwise from the wall and the other speaker, you move the speaker out in very small increments and note any change. You continually do this until you "THINK" you hear something change. You are seeking for the evenness and smoothness in ALL the notes, as best as you can hear. It can be very very hard to hear. On Friday I did disconnect the speaker against the wall while doing this, as it was all quite difficult to hear any changes. I did find a point where there was a very slight change and smoothing in the bass line. It wasn't much. BUT IT DOESN'T MATTER. You are only looking for a point of reference!!!! Thinking you hear something is good enough!
In Setting the second speaker, both Hugh and I immediately heard the matching point of reference in the bass line. It was not much, but we both heard it and spoke at the same time. That was real good confirmation. And I'm sure that Hugh can verify that it all was not much of a change, but we could hear it.
That's all you are looking for, a reference point in Setting the Anchor that you can match in Setting the other speaker.
Also, I have mentioned the need for small movements of the speaker. In Friday's session I was making 2-3 mm movements, or about 1/8th of an inch. The window for hearing the change in Step 1 was about 3-4 mm's. The window of matching in Step 2 was 2 mm's. I only heard the matching in one move. The move before and the move after was out. I made several moves after finding the spot, just to make sure I had indeed found it, and just moved back to that one point, and that was that. And we all agreed on that.
Needless to say, this can be hard to hear, and easily missed. Many of my early trials and errors in Master Set were due to making moves that were too large, and I missed the spots. Small moves can try your patience, but I have found that I get really involved in everything and just lose all perspective of time.
I might add that I think everything was hard to hear on Friday because the speaker was so well designed in the low end response. The bass was exceptionally smooth, even with both speakers against the wall, where it can be a little rough. Most people have ported speakers, and I think they will act up a little more.
Hope this helps.
Steve
BTW, At times I have used other discs in doing parts of Master Set, or verifying afterward that it is all good. But I have found that I have had the best success in just using Ballad of a Runaway Horse while doing the MS. However, by no means is there any exclusivity in this song. In fact, I wish I had taken a couple other discs with me, that I am most familiar with and have used in the past, for verification that I got things correct, because I know how they sound in perfect Set.
One more point: my usage of the term "close to the wall" has caused a bit of consternation, and I should not have used it, as it is a relative and undefined term. More to the point, the speakers are essentially in "The Dead Zone", as described above. This begins when the middle of the REAR of the speaker is about a foot out in to the room, but it is different with every speaker and room. The FRONT of the speaker, where the sound is generated, is of course that foot plus the depth of the speaker. So lets then say that the speaker(s) are a couple feet or so in to the room. I believe that most people generally refer to the front baffle when talking about how far the speaker are out in the room.
Anyway, hope this clarifies things a bit.
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Darren,
Nice to hear from you and read your long and considered post.
Your thoughts/opinions are those of the more traditional audio sense with all the references to frequency response derivations, speaker crossings, etc.
Master Set is none of that, it is a different way of looking at things.
In nature, ALL sounds are single source sounds, as the laws of physics prevent something from being in two places at once. There can be multiple single sounds, and moving sounds, but no sounds from two places at once.
Two channel audio playback tries to break the laws of physics with two sound sources at once. Of course what we hear is the sum of these two sources, and think that they are one.
Master Set sums the 2 sound sources by equalizing the sound pressure that is generated by each loudspeaker and creates equal sound pressure everywhere in the room as the sum of the two speakers is the same everywhere in the room. Some correction to this may be needed, but it's usually very little.
Conventional methods of placing speakers in the room leave the sound sources as two unequal sound pressure generators giving different sound everywhere in the room as they will always sum and balance differently in every single place in the room. Then one tries to correct this unequal summing in various ways, that all work fairly well, but they are only correct for that one place.
Remember it's ALWAYS the sum of the two sources that you hear.
Master Set is a different way to look at things, to be sure.
Darren, all I can add is that you need to hear a Master Set. OR, you can take an afternoon and give things a go. If you can't make heads or tails of it, you just move things back.
All I can add is that all I did that October afternoon was walk in to a room to say hello to an old friend. There were all these posters with "Master Set" on the walls. I had never heard of it. It sounded like another catchy audio marketing phrase. The music system was just another system at a show of hundreds of music systems, all pretty good audio systems. I did as everyone does, wait until I got a chance at the "sweet spot". Noticed that the "sweet spot" was the same as 3 chairs over. I got more intrigued when I sat way to the right of the right speaker, and had the same sound. I then noticed that the vocals sounded more life like than I had ever hear audio playback sound period. I then wanted to know more. I wanted to know how I could get "That Sound".
Steve
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Hi Hugh,
The cleaner lady moved the speakers this morning and now they have to be reset. And I can'r remember EXACTLY where they were positioned so I have to go through the Master Set process again.
So Hugh, please mark the position of your speakers with a texta should they be moved ever so slightly before I have a listen.
Cheers,
Laurie
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Laurie,
Great idea! See you here tomorrow for a listen!
Hugh
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Hi Hugh,
The cleaner lady moved the speakers this morning and now they have to be reset. And I can'r remember EXACTLY where they were positioned so I have to go through the Master Set process again.
So Hugh, please mark the position of your speakers with a texta should they be moved ever so slightly before I have a listen.
Cheers,
Laurie
You allow your cleaning lady to move your speakers???!!!
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HI Mark,
Got no say what gets shoved around let alone by how much!
The "cleaner lady" is the missus. Lucky she doesn't get to look at this site or I would be shot with a reference like that I would be shot. It was suggested that I do the cleaning if I don't anything moved. As for a speaker locating texta mark on the floor, I don't think it would be a good idea here for health reasons.
Interestingly, while re-establishing the placement for the speakers using the bass to locate "the spot" I noticed that the voice coming from the R/H speaker was suddenly harsh. The L/H speaker sounded sweet. I swapped the speakers over and the harshness from the R/H position still persisted. I noticed that a lounge chair in the corner adjacent to the R/H speaker had been moved some 18" from the wall closer to the speaker. Shoved it back to its original position and the harshness has vanished. I have taken a few measurements of the positioning of the speakers for future reference.
Cheers,
Laurie
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Well, if the "cleaner lady" is the wife, then say no more, say no more...
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So, I guess it's ok if you're giving the cleaning lady one then :wink:
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HI Mark,
Got no say what gets shoved around let alone by how much!
The "cleaner lady" is the missus. Lucky she doesn't get to look at this site or I would be shot with a reference like that I would be shot. It was suggested that I do the cleaning if I don't anything moved. As for a speaker locating texta mark on the floor, I don't think it would be a good idea here for health reasons.
Interestingly, while re-establishing the placement for the speakers using the bass to locate "the spot" I noticed that the voice coming from the R/H speaker was suddenly harsh. The L/H speaker sounded sweet. I swapped the speakers over and the harshness from the R/H position still persisted. I noticed that a lounge chair in the corner adjacent to the R/H speaker had been moved some 18" from the wall closer to the speaker. Shoved it back to its original position and the harshness has vanished. I have taken a few measurements of the positioning of the speakers for future reference.
Cheers,
Laurie
Laurie,
Sounds like you have to make a drawing of both the speaker(s) and chair.
I drew up a drawing for Hugh with all kinds of fancy measurements before I left Friday. OF course that works until the drawing gets lost or moved or something.....
Steve
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Steve,
You're right .. I need to hear it and/or play with it for myself as I'm not quite "getting" it on paper. Ignoring reflections, rooms only effect frequencies below 200Hz. So, I can understand the equalisation of pressure under 200Hz, by making speaker positions asymmetrical, could offset room effects and equalise pressure at the listener. But this will only be at various points of the wavelength of various frequencies. As each frequency has a different wavelength, the equalisation for each occurs at different distances from the front wall. The ideal result is to find a speaker position where there are no significant peaks or nulls ...perhaps this is what provides the "smooth" response you are hearing? I think this is what I have achieved in the past via extensive measurement, using third octave pink noise (closer to how we hear than single frequency tones). I must admit that I did keep the speakers symmetrical but I did achieve very flat results.
But, the frequencies above 200Hz are not effected by the room and if they are not equidistant from the listener, then ... surely ... the difference in amplitude must pull them toward the nearest speaker. :scratch:
Oi ... my brain hurts :lol:
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Steve,
You're right .. I need to hear it and/or play with it for myself as I'm not quite "getting" it on paper. Ignoring reflections, rooms only effect frequencies below 200Hz. So, I can understand the equalisation of pressure under 200Hz, by making speaker positions asymmetrical, could offset room effects and equalise pressure at the listener. But this will only be at various points of the wavelength of various frequencies. As each frequency has a different wavelength, the equalisation for each occurs at different distances from the front wall. The ideal result is to find a speaker position where there are no significant peaks or nulls ...perhaps this is what provides the "smooth" response you are hearing? I think this is what I have achieved in the past via extensive measurement, using third octave pink noise (closer to how we hear than single frequency tones). I must admit that I did keep the speakers symmetrical but I did achieve very flat results.
But, the frequencies above 200Hz are not effected by the room and if they are not equidistant from the listener, then ... surely ... the difference in amplitude must pull them toward the nearest speaker. :scratch:
Oi ... my brain hurts :lol:
Darren,
Ya, you need to have a listen. I can tell that you are not quite getting it on paper. Listening is a lot easier on the brain.
I need to go have a listen too, so as to rest my brain.
Steve
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Darren,
Steve has done a LOT of writing and is now all Master Set'd out..... You need to hear my system, which you know pretty well.
Steve,
I STILL HAVE THE PIECE OF PAPER. I TREASURE IT!! :rotflmao: :duh: :bowdown:
Hugh
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But, the frequencies above 200Hz are not effected by the room and if they are not equidistant from the listener, then ... surely ... the difference in amplitude must pull them toward the nearest speaker. :scratch:
I agree. Plus, there's a difference in delays.
Take a look at the on and off axis response of the tweeters in Hugh's speakers:
http://www.madisound.com/catalog/PDF/peerless/810921.pdf
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Steve,
I STILL HAVE THE PIECE OF PAPER. I TREASURE IT!! :rotflmao: :duh: :bowdown:
Hugh
Hugh,
Never has a piece of paper been so valuable in your house!!
I'll have some writing in the making that will be posted a bit later.
Steve
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Hey, Hugh, You had better get that treasured bit of paper laminated and nailed to the rear of one of the speakers. That would save paper chases lasting for hours, eh?
Laurie
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Steve,
In the annals of high end, extending through the centuries, never has a sheaf of paper assumed such hallowed status, nay, not even the Magna Carta...... :notworthy: :thankyou:
You will appreciate, after what seemed a lifetime in the military, I NEVER want to see another file again, unless, of course, my memory fails completely. I must remember to do something about that, blueberries anyone?
Laurie,
It's sitting just under the amp, I think. Must check...... :duh:
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I bet Hugh hasn't checked to see if the resident army of silver fish had a party under the amp last night.
Laurie
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Steve,
I STILL HAVE THE PIECE OF PAPER. I TREASURE IT!! :rotflmao: :duh: :bowdown:
Hugh
Hugh,
Never has a piece of paper been so valuable in your house!!
I'll have some writing in the making that will be posted a bit later.
Steve
Well, after spending a fair bit of time trying to come up with something new to write, I've given up. I think I would only muddy things further. Listening is the only way to clarify things.
And Laurie, Marty and I cleaned them out last Friday with the Hoover.
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It's nice to see this in depth discussion of the Sumiko Master Set and several people actually trying it. Steve has done a great job of fielding questions.
I'd only emphasize that in most rooms the difference in distance of the right vs. left speaker from the back wall and listener is very small. Once you've anchored the left speaker then you're moving the right speaker in relation to the anchor, the side wall and back wall and any other physical features of the room. In the several Master Sets I've seen, the distance from the listener is within a very few inches. Also, keep in mind that one fine tuning step after bass energy is equalized is minute movements forward and back to synchronize pulse arrival. The rake of the speakers is the final step, after toe has been set, which brings out the air openness with some speakers. After this is completed, there's no sense of imbalance side to side.
About Maggies, remember that the front plain of the speakers is NOT really that far into the room. When you compare say 1.5 meters to the distance of the front plain of my floor standing Vienna Acoustics Beethoven Baby Grands, it's not that different. So, if you're interested and willing, try doing the Master Set with your Maggies, but don't assume a certain minimum distance, rather discover that through the process. It's not going to be 6-inches, but it might not be 1.5 meters either.
Some of this is a bit hard to believe, so I'd join Steve in encouraging music lovers to have a little faith and give it a try.
Oh, BTW, make very precise measurements when you've found "the spots" for your speakers. I use a laser and measurements down to 1/16" to assure that I can get mine back in place. One other "trick" that I learned from watching the Sumiko guys is to lift the right speaker slightly off the floor once you've got it almost in place. With the test music playing and in one of its strong bass areas, slower lower the speaker and it will "set" itself. It's truly amazing how much difference truly tiny movements can make.
I was going to stop, but that brought one more thing to mind. At the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest I was helping my friend Guido Corona around the site. Guido writes for The Absolute Sound and he's completely blind (he prefers that term, so don't lecture me about some PC term to use). Anyway, we're watching (as Guido would say) Sumiko set up the Vienna Acoustic Die Muzik speakers in Soundings' room at RMAF. They spent two hours, including a false where the preamp had be set at mono!! (They were going crazy). Anyway, once they got the set about 99% right, they tipped the speakers vertically a degree or two at a time. Of course, Guido couldn't see what they were doing and didn't realize how tiny the movements were, but he'd say "there, that's it" and I'd hear the same large changes in focus based on very small movements. Once they got that, two of them lifted the right speaker an inch or so off the floor and let it "set" itself.
So, if you work hours and get it sounding really sweet, then take careful measurements. Also, use a level to make certain that you're consistant in a vertical plain also. (I keep the front edge of my Baby Grands level and have a certain degree of rake based on how far the spikes screw in).
Dave
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Thanks Dave, nice info. I also enjoyed reading your Agon review. I met Guido at RMAF 07, nice guy and a very serious audiophile.
The lifting step is for adjusting the vertical position minutely, correct? How does it "set itself?" That's what I don't get. Thanks
I got my anchor speaker up on sliders and the bass treatments cleared out almost ready to start. I'm gonna take my time and try to learn something along the way.
Rich
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Thanks Dave, nice info. I also enjoyed reading your Agon review. I met Guido at RMAF 07, nice guy, very serious audiophile.
The lifting step is for adjusting the vertical position minutely, correct? How does it "set itself?" That's what I don't get. Thanks
Thanks for you kind words Rich.
No, the lifting step fine tunes the front/back/sideways placement. It'll only move a fraction of an inch, like between a 32d and a quarter. If you were sitting out front when it's done you'd hear it. You feel it when your the one doing it.
Dave
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Thanks Dave, nice info. I also enjoyed reading your Agon review. I met Guido at RMAF 07, nice guy, very serious audiophile.
The lifting step is for adjusting the vertical position minutely, correct? How does it "set itself?" That's what I don't get. Thanks
Thanks for you kind words Rich.
No, the lifting step fine tunes the front/back/sideways placement. It'll only move a fraction of an inch, like between a 32d and a quarter. If you were sitting out front when it's done you'd hear it. You feel it when your the one doing it.
Dave
Oh, now I know who Guido is. I've seen him at RMAF every year.
BTW, my Master Set procedures are just basic ones, and that will get you 99% of everything. It took me a long time to get there. Once I get this down well, I can move on to the fine tuning steps. It's often a real mistake to try and go for the advanced stuff first in most anything I have found in my experiences with a lot of things.
Steve
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Oh, now I know who Guido is. I've seen him at RMAF every year.
You probably saw me also this year, since I was escorting Guido. Introduce yourself next year as a Master Set aficionado. Guido will love that.
Dave
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I now think I understand this concept a bit more. I had heard Hugh’s new speaker positioning the other day and was impressed and so when he popped in for a bit last night, it ended up as something of a listening session as I ‘played around a bit’ with my own speaker positioning. The existing positions were of course carefully marked so I could return to them as they have taken quite a while to ‘get right’. Notwithstanding this last statement, I was still not 100% happy, so quite prepared to fiddle.
Anyway, the bottom line is that whilst I did not do anything like a complete ground up master set ‘procedure’, I did leave one speaker at its existing position and moved the other as discussed here and heard all the effects that Steve has described. Bear in mind that I have always (in the past) moved speakers as a pair and generally symmetrically so this was a bit novel for me. In the end, the single ‘moving’ speaker ended up less than 50mm away from where it started and both ended up with a far greater toe in than before but what was profound was how big a difference a final few mm could make. These are now my new marked positions by the way.
Even after Hugh left, I made one more arbitrarily large change (about 10cm) to see if there was any effect on sound stage width. There was, sort of, and it sounded OK from a central seat but an immediate move to my left or right had the female vocal moving from central to the left or right speaker accordingly. 10cm back and the vocalist was again in a locked and steady almost 3D central position regardless of where in the room I moved to. So, this thread has helped me overcome my previous mindset and allowed me to embrace the concept of moving of one speaker independently of the other - and accepting where it ended up. So thanks Steve. :thumb:
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Lynn, that's great. Experienced audiophiles quite often end up not real far from their setting developed over a long period of time. My moves were larger than yours because I'd been sacrificing bass in order to get smooth mids and highs, my highest priority. Move in increments and maybe do a one-session every week or so to see if you can improve where you now are, since as a DIYer you don't have an experienced hand to vault you to the end result. I'd suggest starting from scratch now that you've seen part of the potential. See if you can find a more ideal spot for that left anchor speaker and then build the set around that. I sounds like you've already gained a lot.
Dave
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Hi All,
I heard the "set up" VSonic speakers at Hugh's today. My first impression was a conciderable increase in the width and depth of the sound stage and imaging virtually from one wall to the other of the room. In summary, there is an overall improvement in presentation. But Hugh & I noticed that the bass was much more powerfull and had a fuller sound within "the triangle" than any other listening position in the room.
When I returned home I turned on my VSonics without the woofer. I listened for a while while slowly moving the right speaker by very small increments along with the toe in of both speakers. Now I feel the resultant sound is possibly as good as it gets from the now much wider listening area. However, I have noticed that the bass is diminished within the triangle and conversely to Hugh's set up the bass is better outside the triangle. I don't know what is exactly going on here but obviously the room and content placement has a large influence.
I later turned on the woofer (which is balanced to suit the VSonics) and of course introduced extra punch and slam to the music to about live performance levels. I noticed that although the wooferr is positioned to the left of centre between the main speakers there was a decided improvement in imaging of the bass. Now with a good recording of a double bass playing the imaging is such that you can actually place the string that had been plucked not only the impact of a note but the decay too.
I have been playing around with speakers longer than I can remember but the Master Set procedure of speaker alignment is a revelation.
Yep, I'm glad that this thread is going Steve.
Laurie
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Hi All,
I heard the "set up" VSonic speakers at Hugh's today. My first impression was a conciderable increase in the width and depth of the sound stage and imaging virtually from one wall to the other of the room. In summary, there is an overall improvement in presentation. But Hugh & I noticed that the bass was much more powerfull and had a fuller sound within "the triangle" than any other listening position in the room.
When I returned home I turned on my VSonics without the woofer. I listened for a while while slowly moving the right speaker by very small increments along with the toe in of both speakers. Now I feel the resultant sound is possibly as good as it gets from the now much wider listening area. However, I have noticed that the bass is diminished within the triangle and conversely to Hugh's set up the bass is better outside the triangle. I don't know what is exactly going on here but obviously the room and content placement has a large influence.
I later turned on the woofer (which is balanced to suit the VSonics) and of course introduced extra punch and slam to the music to about live performance levels. I noticed that although the wooferr is positioned to the left of centre between the main speakers there was a decided improvement in imaging of the bass. Now with a good recording of a double bass playing the imaging is such that you can actually place the string that had been plucked not only the impact of a note but the decay too.
I have been playing around with speakers longer than I can remember but the Master Set procedure of speaker alignment is a revelation.
Yep, I'm glad that this thread is going Steve.
Laurie
Hi Laurie,
Nice to read your post. Your observations tell me that Hugh's set needs some tweaking. My experience with doing this is that close is pretty good, but
when you get everything right, it is much better.
Steve
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Drats ... just checked my copy of Famous Blue Rain Coat .. no BOTRH!
I wonder ... once the procedure is almost complete and you tweak the toe-in, does toe-out (by the same number of degrees) provide the same benefits ...
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Drats ... just checked my copy of Famous Blue Rain Coat .. no BOTRH!
I wonder ... once the procedure is almost complete and you tweak the toe-in, does toe-out (by the same number of degrees) provide the same benefits ...
Darren, you need the "25th Anniversary Edition" released in 2008. It's on 45rpm vinyl ... I presume they also issued a CD? :? Which of course won't sound anywhere near as good as the 45rpm LP!! :thumb:
Regards,
Andy
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Interesting info on speaker positioning:
http://www.genelec-ht.com/learning-center/faq/acoustical/bass/
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Interesting info on speaker positioning:
http://www.genelec-ht.com/learning-center/faq/acoustical/bass/
Yes, interesting article ... but I wonder if the "facts" presented are in fact correct? :?
Certainly there will be a dip in the response at the listening chair ... whose frequency depends on how far the acoustic centre of the bass driver is away from the front wall.
However, let's look at the green line on the frequency graph (which is supposedly the speaker's response in an anechoic chamber - ie. without room effects). This shows a flat line down to 40hz ... where it starts to tail off.
Trouble is ... as far as I know (and, yes, I could certainly be misinformed! :D ) bass drivers don't behave like that! :o There is always a resonance peak at some low frequency ... this is the intrinsic driver LF resonant point. I have used a dB meter to measure the frequency response of my bass drivers (I run a 3-way active system, so I can turn off the amps powering the other drivers) and the Maggie bass panels have a pronounced peak at about 58hz (which is 6dB or so above the average level).
So the green line for the Genelec speakers will not be flat to 40hz ... it should show the resonance peak of the Genelec bass driver. :o
If we assume the bass driver resonance peak is at, say 60hz, then - given we are stuck with 1/4 wavelength cancellation at some frequency - it makes sense to position the acoustic centre of the bass driver at the distance which generates a null at the resonant frequency.
IE. for a bass driver which has a resonant frequency of 60hz ... this is 4.7 ft (1.43m).
Regards,
Andy
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I think I got the 1st speaker finished. It is in the spot where there is minimum difference between the volume of the bass notes. Actually there is one note that still stands out a little, and moving the speaker allowed the others to come up louder, not so much reducing the ringer. There were a couple spots along the way where the midrange really came to life, including the final spot.
Now working on the other speaker. dcstep says it will be close to same distance out from front wall, but I am going in 2mm steps like steve said because I love this so much I never want it to end... :roll: I had to give up twice yesterday from frustration, too tied to concentrate or too hungry. Get a good night sleep and a full belly before you start this. Shut off the AC and Fridge to get total silence, if possible.
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You guys amaze and encourage me. I can't imagine doing this without having seen it done a couple of times by someone else. The persistence required is immense, even for the experienced. Keep after it... 8)
Dave
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I agree, Dave, this takes real FAITH, almost the religious kind!
Cheers,
Hugh
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Hi All,
Today, after about a 24 hour period of musical celibacy to allow the ears to settle down after days of rooting around with the system, I fired it up with the intention to have a pleasent session. I was nearly blown out of the room as I had set the volume to the usual position. Now after setting the speakers I have to use about 15-20% less volume for a relaxing session. :scratch: When the volume is up a bit, nearly to the "old" volume setting the system now produces much more punch/dynamics than before "Master Setting".
rough notes made by my uncle on the subject of speaker placement dated 15-10-59.
It would appear that there is very little difference between his notes and Master Set principles. There is one very interesting comment that could give some light on why is it so.
" From experimenting with speaker box placement (stereo) there appears to be a correlation between speaker cone angle allowing the music 5to be opened up filling the room more or less evenly. The listener, if in an central listening position, observes the inside of a speaker cone, with the side to the centre of the room is on more or less perpendicular plane to the listener. I deduce that if the listener in the central position with the focal point of the speakers set 1-2 yards in front of the listener is subject to a wider dis bursion of sound waves rather than if the speakers were facing directly at the listener. This creates the illusion of a wide musical area similar to listening to a orchestra on a stage, IE, wall to wall sound in front of the listener without a dedicated focal point. It must be the angle of the speaker cone in relation to the listener that provides a detailed but wide listening area."
All very interesting. Another discussion point on speaker placement?
Cheers,
Laurie.
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Hi All,
Today, after about a 24 hour period of musical celibacy to allow the ears to settle down after days of rooting around with the system, I fired it up with the intention to have a pleasent session. I was nearly blown out of the room as I had set the volume to the usual position. Now after setting the speakers I have to use about 15-20% less volume for a relaxing session. :scratch: When the volume is up a bit, nearly to the "old" volume setting the system now produces much more punch/dynamics than before "Master Setting".
rough notes made by my uncle on the subject of speaker placement dated 15-10-59.
It would appear that there is very little difference between his notes and Master Set principles. There is one very interesting comment that could give some light on why is it so.
" From experimenting with speaker box placement (stereo) there appears to be a correlation between speaker cone angle allowing the music 5to be opened up filling the room more or less evenly. The listener, if in an central listening position, observes the inside of a speaker cone, with the side to the centre of the room is on more or less perpendicular plane to the listener. I deduce that if the listener in the central position with the focal point of the speakers set 1-2 yards in front of the listener is subject to a wider dis bursion of sound waves rather than if the speakers were facing directly at the listener. This creates the illusion of a wide musical area similar to listening to a orchestra on a stage, IE, wall to wall sound in front of the listener without a dedicated focal point. It must be the angle of the speaker cone in relation to the listener that provides a detailed but wide listening area."
All very interesting. Another discussion point on speaker placement?
Cheers,
Laurie.
Laurie-
I'll bet if you had taken before and after measurements of your speakers, you'd find that "Master Setting," IE- moving the speakers closer to the back wall, has elevated the bass response from 50hz to 200hz, just like you can see in Dave Stephens' measurements: http://cgim.audiogon.com/i/vs/i/f/1211754811.jpg.
Elevating the response in this region will create the feeling of "much more punch/dynamics."
I agree with your uncle that the amount of toe-in, helps create the illusion of a wide musical stage. IMO, speakers with
tweeters that have good off axis response and smaller diameter midrange drivers need less toe-in and will create a wide detailed listening area.
Two way stand mounted speakers excel at this.
I heard a pair of Magico Mini IIs yesterday. Listening to Van Morrison's new Astral Weeks Live CD, they produced a hugh detailed soundstage with deep tight bass, positioned five feet off the back wall of a 16'w x 20'l x 10'h listening room.
Dan
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Hello Again Everyone,
Interesting reading here, as I've been gone the past few days. It seems that I have let the Genie out of the bottle.
Dave Stephens is the one who, without knowing it, gave the clue last December that allowed me to get a perfect Master Set done. This so imbued me with confidence that I wrote up things as I did with the feeling that anyone can do this if I describe it perfectly.
But I see now that I have to "tweak" some things up.
First, I have a distinct advantage in that I have heard Master Set that was set by a real pro, and so I always knew where the journey should end up. And after numerous trials, I indeed knew when I "got it". This is a HUGE advantage over blindly going thru the Master Set steps and hoping for something magical to happen. The difference between "getting it" and being close is tricky. And if that wasn't enough, there is, or can be, great difficulty in hearing "that which is to be heard" while doing the Master Set steps.
So, I'll try to revisit a few things.
I like the binoculars adjustment comparison so I'll correlate to that.
Step 1, adjusting the two lenses to one head to get a single image.
This is the beginning step of having the speakers against the wall spead apart. You want the speakers as far apart as reasonable, maintain a solid centered mono image, and still have them 3 feet or more from a side wall. This all depends on room dimensions and such. While this hasn't come up in any discussion, I didn't really go over this in my writing. Keep the speakers out from the sidewall(s) at all costs. Listening to a mono recording here can help, if you have difficulty.
Step 2, adjusting the fixed lens.
This is setting the "anchor". One thing that I haven't gotten into is "The Dead Zone", that the anchor speaker is set in. This is the area where the sound all seems to come from the one speaker with both speakers playing. My descriptions just go to finding the beginning of this area, and then to the smoothest bass spot. But it might be a good idea to move the speaker out a few inches and find where the sound recouples with the speaker against the wall and moves to the center. This is the outer limit of "The Dead Zone". This area is only a few inches, 5 or 6 or so. The most crucial part of setting the anchor speaker is that it be in this dead zone where the anchor is decoupled from the wall and the speaker up close to it. I wish I knew the physics of the dead zone, rather than this one effect, but I tend to think that this may be a very crucial part in why MS works so well.
In the Dead Zone, there are supposed to be 5 or 6 bass nodes, and these are what you are trying to find in order to smooth out the bass as best as possible. I found it plenty hard to find just one spot, let alone search for more. I think that's for more "advanced" times. But it all happens in the Dead Zone. It's easy to find the limits, and hard to find the spot(s). Oh, and I must add here, that only when the anchor speaker is in the Dead Zone, can the other speaker be disconnected.
BTW, I've mentioned making very small movements. When you focus binoculars you are adjusting with a constant turning adjusting lever. You can't really do that with moving a speaker, and every movement doesn't produce a difference. But it is important to keep movement small, though that does add a bit of tedium to the process. I learned the hard way about making large movements, and have mentioned that.
Also, I might note that most conventional setup methods have the speakers out into the room farther than the Dead Zone. And one of my very first thoughts at seeing a Master Set setup was that the speakers, VA Mahlers which are quite large, were quite close to the wall, and very close to the WAF flower pot zone.
Step 3, adjusting the adjustable lens.
This is getting the second speaker out from the wall to it's final setting.
Dave was good to note that in most rooms this second speaker will be out from the wall fairly close to the distance that the anchor speaker is. It's only in the irregular rooms that I seem to have that there is really much difference. For the most part, people tend to have the speakers somewhat symetrically set in the room, giving things a "centered" look. Thus each speaker is going to be pressurizing a fairly similar amount of space, and it all may end up looking nearly indistinguishable from a previous set, although likely a bit closer in to the wall than before perhaps.
I think I have previously described the difficulties in finding the matching spot for this speaker. Listen ONLY to the bass line, as the vocal line will just follow along.
Further points:
I have described MS as being good because it eliminates the sweet spot, and makes the sound virtually the same throughout the room. Being able to equally pressurize the room so that the sound is virtually the same everywhere is one way to check if you have the matching speaker in the proper place. If the sound moves when you move, there is NOT equal sound pressure everywhere in the room.
I can understand that this may not be seen as just a novelty and not anything to get excited about to a number of folks. If you only listen by yourself most of the time, and sit in the same seat, and adjust for good sound in that one spot, other listening spots don't really matter. Yup, all true.
However, equal sound throughout the room is generally a good thing at a concert venue, and there is no reason for it not to be so in your personal concert venue listening room.
Also, I have described MS as being good because it removes the interspeaker distortions and phase cancellations, in other words, better sound. Ya well, anyone who's played with moving their speakers just so, already has "better sound". And as everyone knows, it's all a bit on the subjective side. Yup, all true.
All I can sum up with is that when Master Set has been done well, it's a very satisfying way to listen to music, and to me, the best way.
One more thing to add is that when you have a well done Master Set that eliminates the distortions between the speakers you are also able to listen louder, listen longer, and never have listener fatigue.
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aa Well I figure I’ve finished my fiddling with speaker positioning for now. A bit like Laurie, I took a few days respite and thinking about what Dave (dcstep) suggested, started with my LH speaker first this time and found I was very happy with the base response at a point only about a few cm closer to the rear wall and laterally, pretty much the same as before. Then I repeated the exercise of moving the RH speaker as discussed throughout this thread and finally played quite a bit with the toe in though again ending up again much where I started. Again, less than a couple of cm total change for the RHS side but well worth the effort.
What worked best for me for final minor positioning and finding the best toe in, came from focussing on a vocalist – ideally central and close miked. When the speakers were just about spot on, the central image seemed to suddenly lock in and wherever I went in the room, the vocalist stayed imaged perfectly in the centre and perhaps even a foot or so forward of previously. It was Hugh that first noticed and pointed this out to me and the last sessions have been me refining this. A cm or two out in positioning and the sound that may be quite nicely imaged when in the sweet spot, came much more from the speaker I was in front of when I moved laterally. Whilst I have now ended up with what seems to be a very slightly narrower soundstage, it is far more tightly focussed and hence realistic and 3D (deeper) than before and I’ve eliminated what I had perceived previously as a slightly thin and recessed midrange response.
I had always read of needing fine adjustments to get speaker positioning just right but never knew how to take that final step. Just so its clear to all, I have not been able to fully perform all the MS procedures as documented. I am quite constrained in my available range of speaker positions for example and the speakers are almost certainly closer together than ideal under MS principles. However, I've followed them as closely as possible and I’m much, much happier with my room set up now from using them as best I can so thanks again to Steve and everyone who has contributed this thread. :thumb:
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aa Well I figure I’ve finished my fiddling with speaker positioning for now. A bit like Laurie, I took a few days respite and thinking about what Dave (dcstep) suggested, started with my LH speaker first this time and found I was very happy with the base response at a point only about a few cm closer to the rear wall and laterally, pretty much the same as before. Then I repeated the exercise of moving the RH speaker as discussed throughout this thread and finally played quite a bit with the toe in though again ending up again much where I started. Again, less than a couple of cm total change for the RHS side but well worth the effort.
What worked best for me for final minor positioning and finding the best toe in, came from focussing on a vocalist – ideally central and close miked. When the speakers were just about spot on, the central image seemed to suddenly lock in and wherever I went in the room, the vocalist stayed imaged perfectly in the centre and perhaps even a foot or so forward of previously. It was Hugh that first noticed and pointed this out to me and the last sessions have been me refining this. A cm or two out in positioning and the sound that may be quite nicely imaged when in the sweet spot, came much more from the speaker I was in front of when I moved laterally. Whilst I have now ended up with what seems to be a very slightly narrower soundstage, it is far more tightly focussed and hence realistic and 3D (deeper) than before and I’ve eliminated what I had perceived previously as a slightly thin and recessed midrange response.
I had always read of needing fine adjustments to get speaker positioning just right but never knew how to take that final step. Just so its clear to all, I have not been able to fully perform all the MS procedures as documented. I am quite constrained in my available range of speaker positions for example and the speakers are almost certainly closer together than ideal under MS principles. However, I've followed them as closely as possible and I’m much, much happier with my room set up now from using them as best I can so thanks again to Steve and everyone who has contributed this thread. :thumb:
Lyn,
Good that you have been able to improve things a bit. Afterall, that's what it's all ultimately about.
Steve
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Steve,
Thank you very much for your thorough explanation of Master Set. I am most grateful!
See you on 27th......
Cheers,
Hugh
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Steve,
Thank you very much for your thorough explanation of Master Set. I am most grateful!
See you on 27th......
Cheers,
Hugh
Hugh,
My wishes for the best this week, and see you Friday.
Steve
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I learned a couple things but still not perfect yet.
In setting the anchor speaker, I was able to even out the bass in all but one frequency, the 4th of the key of the song, or "fa" on the scale. This note is tricky because the musicians emphasize this note so I can't listen for SPL difference, I must listen for clarity, lack of room resonance. This takes a bit to get used to. But No matter in the dead zone where I put the speaker It would not lose this resonance on that one note. I was tuning the anchor position the whole time with other speaker turned on. I was relieved to reread the directions said get it "as good as possible," not "get it perfect..."
I got the anchor speaker set, then found that I could not hear any difference in the 2nd speaker when I moved it through a 4 inch range 2mm at a time. 2" in front and 2" inches behind the anchor's distance from the front wall. It never "clicked" like it should, or maybe it was "clicked" through that whole range? I could not hear any change in the bass clarity or resonance. It was excellent claruty except for the one note on the scale, which happens a few times per chorus.
Next day I thought I would try listening to each speaker separately for kicks. I found that the resonant note was coming only from the 2nd speaker, not the anchor, which sounded smooth bass throughout. I had the thought that the one resonant bass note remaining in the 2nd speaker was caused by reflections between left and right walls, and the distances between that speaker and the left and right walls didn't change any distances when I moved the speaker parallel with those walls so moving in that axis would not fix the last resonance. I wanted to try movng the speakers to the left and right a little to see what happens. It took about 4cm of lateral movement of the 2nd speaker before the resonance finally disappeared and all bass notes were smooth, but then the speakers weren't centered in the room, no biggie.
At that point my friend who was here helping and who is not familiar with Master Set instructions thought to start moving things around to improve the toe, and soon the Set was history. But I did mark the spots on masking tape so returning to the original spots should be doable.
Before my friend arrived I had the anchor stil in place and the 2nd was place by tape measure at same distance out from front wall. Since I couldn't hear any difference with position change of 2nd, I figured that was good enough for me to listen for now. While maybe not perfect, I was still getting many of the benfits Steve has described. Much more intense detail and clarity. Better center image, better soundstaging, images within a couple inches of the tweeter would not stick to it. Walking around the room allowed the stage to remain whole, like walking along the back row of the concert hall. I even sat down on the floor 6 feet in front of the anchor speaker and the image remained. The toe setting was not perfect, so there is more work to do. When my friend was here he rotated the speaker through 30 degrees while I was listening and I could not believe the variance of the tone. I never thought toe would have that huge of an effect. My midrange drivers are 4" and go up to 3.5kHz, so there is some beaming that will make toe adjustment somewhat sensitive.
I am using the short wall in my weird L shaped room, it is actually 16 feet wide, so I still have 10 foot separation with 3 feet each side outside the speakers. But the reflections from the sidewalls definitely have an effect on the Set. I think using a longer wall would make the Set easier as Steve has suggested. I think my last surviving resonant note would not have been there on long wall set. Eventually I will try the long wall. But since the room is an L, setting on the long wall means the speakers will fire into 42 foot long open area with all hard surfaces. The reflections back there are very distracting, so the short wall seems to be better overall.
One great thing that I noticed with my 1st attempt Master set was the sound of the room space had vanished. In such a large listening space, I have become hyper aware of room noise, like comb filtering, midrange echo, etc. The sound of a sheetrock large room is always there. But with Master Set, the room sound around me was greatly reduced. I had to really listen for it, which I don't do when listening to music. It no longer intruded into the music. I was also sitting about 3 feet closer to the front wall than normal with the Master Set.
Also interesting, even though the speakers were 2 feet closer to the front wall than my previous setup, the soundstage depth did not diminish very much. I think most of the soundstage depth I had before was actually room reflection ringing distortion, which made the depth seem deeper than it really is on the recording. It took some getting used to, but I liked it better. In master Set the depth seemed less echoish and more precise. Locating instruments in the back of the orchestra was much easier. The soundstage depth with master set seems about the same as a real concert when you are seated about 10 rows back. The illusion of depth is stronger and clearer, even though the perceived depth distance is not as deep, or should I say not as exagerated. These are subtle things, but orchestral recording have that info, it's nice to be able to optimize it just like tone and detail.
I am interested to know if you guys have ever moved the speakers left right during master set to kill a persistently 'plonky' note? My reasoning for the left/right movement is that if I were to have started the procedure with the speakers 4 inches closer to each other along the front wall then that mode would not have appeared, because moving them 4 inches closer removed the mode (but ruined the other benefits of the set.) Maybe moving speakers along the front wall in the first step to optimize bass quality in that axis would be worthwhile, as well as optimizing mono imaging. I didn't do either on my first attempt, because my previous setup was even closer to the side walls, so I just figured moving them a little closer together to get 3 feet on each side would be an improvement in center image due to closer placement. Next attempt I will listen for the solid mono center, and also for bass anomolies.
Thanks for clarifying yet again the Master Set procedure Steve and everyone else too. Each time you write more, I learn something new and can understand a little better.
One more thing, My speakers are 300 pounds each, so moving them around while squatting down on the floor exercised muscles that I don't use often enough. I was a little sore the next day. Furniture sliders really helped even compared to the large flat bottom of the speakers. Expect a little soreness from all that shoving and pulling if you have heavy speakers.
I forgot to turn the fridge back on too. And I got busted!
Rich
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Hi Rich,
Well, you are getting there!
Are you using Ballad of a Runaway Horse to do your Sets?
Some of my experiences with the second speaker have mirrored yours in that it can be hard to find a matching point. I have also tried some lateral movement of this speaker during a set. I'm no expert, but my experience has been that lateral movements need to be done at the very beginning, not during, a set. But that may not be so. You had some success with this, so.......
You've got a large room. You might try moving the speakers a little closer together, like a foot, and still use the short wall. You can never be too far away from a side wall. It's just that with a short wall set, the rear part of the room is bound to have reflections to muddy things up if you sit there.
I'm having difficulty picturing your L shaped room other than the dimensions of the "L" being 21 and 16. I take it that if you set up along the long wall, there is great irregularity in the relative sizes of the two parts from the center of the speakers. Sounds like my first room for MS.
I've not written anything on "soundstage" per se. With a good Master Set, all the sound will be between the two speakers. There really isn't any reflected sound to enlarge the sound into the usual full width of the room sound that you get when the speakers are way out in the room. Lately I have been noticing that the sound all seems to be in the Dead Zone, very 3-D, but never really seeming to touch the wall behind the speakers. My guess is that this is part of the Dead Zone magic in that if the speakers are close in to the wall from the Dead Zone, the sound becomes very 2-D as the sound couples to the wall, and if the speakers are out beyond the Dead Zone, then the sound just reflects all around, including off the wall behind the speakers.
Your description of the sound seems to mirror mine pretty well.
Toe In, seems like everyone wants to play with toe in. I don't play with toe in with my sets. I never heard Rod mention toe in much, other than tweaking the second speaker with 1/16th inch movements of toe out from directly at the listener. When setting the anchor speaker I keep the speaker toed in directly at me while moving it. With the second speaker I also keep the speaker toed in directly to me at the listening position. I've noticed that the speakers I've seen in the professional MS's are toed in quite a lot. I can't argue with the results.
Rich said,
"One great thing that I noticed with my 1st attempt Master set was the sound of the room space had vanished. In such a large listening space, I have become hyper aware of room noise, like comb filtering, midrange echo, etc. The sound of a sheetrock large room is always there. But with Master Set, the room sound around me was greatly reduced. I had to really listen for it, which I don't do when listening to music. It no longer intruded into the music. I was also sitting about 3 feet closer to the front wall than normal with the Master Set."
Yes, the above is one of the real benefits of a Master Set, and why the need for room treatment is greatly reduced.
Rich, as you found, persistence helps, and is near paramount for any kind of success. Now you just need to listen for awhile. Listening time will tell you if things are good, or need some tweaking.
Steve
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Thanks Mucho Steven! I can tell you really love this stuff!
Here's a floorplan (http://www.audiocircle.com/gallery/albums/userpics/50160/floorplan-small.gif) of my listening area. This old drawing pictures speakers against the 22' long wall, pointing into the kitchen echo chamber. I moved the speakers to the fireplace wall recently, which sounds better with typical tape measure setup. Eventually I will try Master Set on the long wall again, but mght as well see what this wall can yield, as it suits the lifestyle concerns better.
I did use the Cowgirl song.
Maybe the soundstage depth parameter is a good reason to explore the potential spots further out into the dead zone, giving a few more inches of depth. But I took the first spot and I liked the depth. It just isn't artificially deep sounding as it was before when baffles were 6 feet into the room.
I started with no toe, I enjoyed it OK, but a little brighter than what I'm used to. But you're right the toe for Master Set seems to be different than regular setup when you can tweak the soundstage with the toe. Speakers' specs are usually measured headon, so that should be the flattest unless speaker designer says toe it out. The midrange midbass was seriously intense. Fun but takes some getting used to. The whole impression of the 1st Master Set was intense. A 1932 recording of Schnabel Beethoven Sonata was riveting, easy to ignore the terrible recording noise.
You said, "I've noticed that the speakers I've seen in the professional MS's are toed in quite a lot. I can't argue with the results."
Do you mean pointing directly at the listener, or toed in even more (crossing in front of listener?)
Thanks
Rich
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Rich- Mahalo for posting the floorplan of your listening room, it makes these discussions of Master Set speaker placement a lot easier to understand.
Steve- how about posting a floorplan of your listening room with your Master Set placement and equipment?
Hugh- what happen to the picture of your listening room?
Dan
My Current set-up: Duetta w/U-byte cable->Aberdeen Tact RCS 2.2XP->Aberdeen Tact S2150->Volent VL-2s. Other digital sources: Theta Jade and AppleTV via an upgrade Genesis Digital Lens.
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Thanks Mucho Steven! I can tell you really love this stuff!
Here's a floorplan (http://www.audiocircle.com/gallery/albums/userpics/50160/floorplan-small.gif) of my listening area. This old drawing pictures speakers against the 22' long wall, pointing into the kitchen echo chamber. I moved the speakers to the fireplace wall recently, which sounds better with typical tape measure setup. Eventually I will try Master Set on the long wall again, but mght as well see what this wall can yield, as it suits the lifestyle concerns better.
I did use the Cowgirl song.
Maybe the soundstage depth parameter is a good reason to explore the potential spots further out into the dead zone, giving a few more inches of depth. But I took the first spot and I liked the depth. It just isn't artificially deep sounding as it was before when baffles were 6 feet into the room.
I started with no toe, I enjoyed it OK, but a little brighter than what I'm used to. But you're right the toe for Master Set seems to be different than regular setup when you can tweak the soundstage with the toe. Speakers' specs are usually measured headon, so that should be the flattest unless speaker designer says toe it out. The midrange midbass was seriously intense. Fun but takes some getting used to. The whole impression of the 1st Master Set was intense. A 1932 recording of Schnabel Beethoven Sonata was riveting, easy to ignore the terrible recording noise.
You said, "I've noticed that the speakers I've seen in the professional MS's are toed in quite a lot. I can't argue with the results."
Do you mean pointing directly at the listener, or toed in even more (crossing in front of listener?)
Thanks
Rich
Rich,
The floor plan drawing was good. I tend to think you'll get better results with audio gear placed as in the drawing and not where the fireplace is located. But for now, just listen to how it all is.
One suggestion that could help you a lot: And that is to try and hear a professionally set up Master Set. Your best bet would be at a Sumiko dealer somewhere within a day's drive, hopefully closer, to where you live. Hopefully they will have a MS setup in the store. It really helps to have some kind of reference, and you just have to hear a good Master Set done perfectly. The sound is different from any other way of putting speakers in the room.
Toe In: My toe in is directly at the listener from the original setup with the speakers against the wall. I sit in that same seat throughout the setup. The anchor speaker is directly at me. The other speaker is slightly different as it is a couple inches closer to the wall. I think I can see the inner side of the speaker. Toe in is not ever adjusted in the anchor speaker. You can toe out the other speaker slightly, but not much. This works best.
In conventional setups, people play with toe in a lot. I know I did. But in Master Set you don't do it.
The Dead Zone is pretty small. I don't think a different spot in it will affect 3-D very much. Although I have to admit that I have had this same thought, and dismissed it. I also thought about moving the speakers slightly farther apart to spread things a little more, and then got sensible and realized that a few inches wasn't going to make any real difference.
Steve
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Rich- Mahalo for posting the floorplan of your listening room, it makes these discussions of Master Set speaker placement a lot easier to understand.
Steve- how about posting a floorplan of your listening room with your Master Set placement and equipment?
Hugh- what happen to the picture of your listening room?
Dan
My Current set-up: Duetta w/U-byte cable->Aberdeen Tact RCS 2.2XP->Aberdeen Tact S2150->Volent VL-2s. Other digital sources: Theta Jade and AppleTV via an upgrade Genesis Digital Lens.
Dan,
In lieu of a drawing or pics at the moment, I'll give a simple description.
Room is 14' X 13' X 10' tall. There is a large bay window along one of the 13' walls. There is a fireplace sticking out into the room along one of the 14' walls. Everything is along the clear 14' wall. Speakers are 7' apart about 3 1/2' out from sidewall to center of woofer.
It's a small room for sure, and in conventional set has terrible sound with lots of reflections to muddy things up.
With MS, great sound with no reflections.
Steve
PS. I'll try to get some pics eventually posted.
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Rich- Mahalo for posting the floorplan of your listening room, it makes these discussions of Master Set speaker placement a lot easier to understand.
Steve- how about posting a floorplan of your listening room with your Master Set placement and equipment?
Hugh- what happen to the picture of your listening room?
Dan
My Current set-up: Duetta w/U-byte cable->Aberdeen Tact RCS 2.2XP->Aberdeen Tact S2150->Volent VL-2s. Other digital sources: Theta Jade and AppleTV via an upgrade Genesis Digital Lens.
Dan,
In lieu of a drawing or pics at the moment, I'll give a simple description.
Room is 14' X 13' X 10' tall. There is a large bay window along one of the 13' walls. There is a fireplace sticking out into the room along one of the 14' walls. Everything is along the clear 14' wall. Speakers are 7' apart about 3 1/2' out from sidewall to center of woofer.
It's a small room for sure, and in conventional set has terrible sound with lots of reflections to muddy things up.
With MS, great sound with no reflections.
Steve
PS. I'll try to get some pics eventually posted.
Steve-
What speakers are you using and how far out are they from "the clear 14' wall," and how far off the back wall is your listening position?
Dan
PS- I'd still like to see a Master Set measurement that looks better than Dave Stephens': http://cgim.audiogon.com/i/vs/i/f/1211754811.jpg.
-20db at 40hz doesn't make me want to move my speakers closer to the back wall. 8)
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Thanks Mucho Steven! I can tell you really love this stuff!
Here's a floorplan (http://www.audiocircle.com/gallery/albums/userpics/50160/floorplan-small.gif) of my listening area. This old drawing pictures speakers against the 22' long wall, pointing into the kitchen echo chamber. I moved the speakers to the fireplace wall recently, which sounds better with typical tape measure setup. Eventually I will try Master Set on the long wall again, but mght as well see what this wall can yield, as it suits the lifestyle concerns better.
Thanks
Rich
Rich,
I've had another look at your drawing now, and I have a different opinion than my short one earlier. Basically this is that setting up on the fireplace wall is about the worst place to set up. While you are clearly getting some of the benefits of the speakers being in the Dead Zone, you have such an irregular area of space to fill from that position that I can see why you never really got much of a matching position with the second speaker. But you obviously did okay.
I think you'll have a much better Master Set if you set up along the 22' wall. I think there is less irregularity of space to fill there. This is not too dissimilar to the situation I have in my other Master Set situations.
For now, just listen awhile. When you get the energy to do it all over again, I might actually have a tip or two to help you out a bit.
Steve
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Dan,
I don't mean to speak for Dave, but he has a rather compromised situation for the setup at his place. He's posted pics on audiogon of his setup, which I would think you have seen. He would have far better measurements if he were set up along a long solid wall. And I'm sure he'd tell you that himself. I wouldn't put too much stock in the measurements.
My speakers here are Osborn Titan References. The center of the woofer is approximately a couple feet out from the rear wall. The anchor speaker is well in to the Dead Zone. The other speaker is barely into the Dead Zone.
I'm now going to add a little to this post, after some listening and thinking. I did measure the anchor speaker, and it is just as I wrote above, just for the record.
I'm thinking that this idea of "The Dead Zone", and I'm not sure where I read that but I think it was in an audiogon post, is kind of a novel concept, but I think it is the secret to why MS sounds so good. It's easy to find from the starting set, as you just move one speaker out until all sound is heard only from that speaker. This is where that speaker decouples from the wall behind it, which the other speaker is coupled to by being up against it. I read in a post, audiogon again I think, that one of the Sumiko experiments and seminars was about speakers close to room boundaries, and they found that a speaker close to, not necessarily up against, a wall essentially was coupled to that wall with the wall acting as a speaker baffle. Obviously you need to get the speaker out and away from that. And that's fairly universal.
But when you move the speaker out too far, it then recouples with the other speaker, thru room effects (reflections?) I would guess. This is also easy to find by just moving the one speaker out farther into the room from where it seems isolated.
As I mentioned earlier, I don't know the physics of it, but it seems that when a speaker is in this Dead Zone that neither the wall nor the room really affect things much. When Rich mentioned that the room space seemed to disappear, that made me listen a little differently, and to think a little.
Dan, this might all just sound like gobbledegoop to you, but something is definitely going on in this small area of the room. It would be different with every room/speaker combination, not really a set dimension, though in a fairly similar area in every room.
This is also why I think you need to go here speakers set up in MS. Listening to an MS set is what got me going in the first place, not some words in a thread on a forum. Hopefully there is a Sumiko dealer somewhere within a day's drive of your location. A simple listen will do a whole lot more than any amount of words I might write.
Steve
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Thanks for the ideas. I will try the longer wall soon. Thanks for giving it some thought.
IMO, the frequency response curve of dcstep's room is too smoothed for accurate analysis of the bass frequencies. Those minor dips could be hiding powerful high Q modes which are easily audible. It's OK to average out the midrange comb-filtering, but not bass modes which need fixin. Actually, a +/- 10dB response, full range, without smoothing would actually be a quite excellent response for a home listening room. Most wives would disapprove of the appearance of a room with such a good frequency response. My wife calls it "the recording studio look." But she likes the speakers new position, back in "flower pot" territory :lol:
Steven, somewhere in this thread or one of the other AC threads about Master Set, somebody mentioned that Wilson Audio Specialties uses a variation of the Master Set. I don't know if that's true because I've never seen a Wilson setup done. I have read that the Wilson technique involves listening to one's own singing while moving the head around to find a good spot, then fine tuning the speaker with music. In any case, I have heard Wilson WP7 setup according to their rules at the local Wilson/Audio research dealer. That session is still (2 years later) my peak audio experience to date. The system played everything perfectly. I never knew stereo could do that, or make me feel that way. It was a very wide setup along the long wall maybe 14 feet apart, very close to the front wall, very clear soundstaging and clarity. Musically very engaging, and emotional on everything from Elvis to Beethoven. The room was covered in 1" thick FG panel, with mild bass treatment, but it was the setup that made the difference. How do I know? Because I brought my wife back a week later to show her what all this money we were spending on my new hifi hobby was supposed to be able to do. I was also very excited to hear that incredible sound again. We arrived and the right speaker was out of place. The night before they moved it out of the way so B&W speakers on the right wall could be demoed. The guy picked up the WP and placed it down on the tape marks, but the magic was gone. Whatever small difference happened let all the air out of the setup. When I asked the salesman why it doesn't sound the same as last week, he said, "I don't know nothing has changed." I thought to myself, "nothing except the right speaker position." But back then I didn't know that such a small variance could make such a huge difference. Anyway, it was a life changing experience that really dug my roots into this hobby. So I have been seeking that same sound in my own house, hopefully without paying $120k for all that superbrand gear. Speaker placement seems to be more of an ingredient in that magic that I previously thought. I will try to find a Sumiko dealer who does MS around here.
I did also try some warble tones to test the low bass response. It does not seem to have changed much in the deepest bass warbles, which just mush into one rumble, but that is function of the loose wooden construction of the home and suspended joist floor, not so much the speaker placement. Low notes at 20-30Hz are not as important as 50-100Hz where all the bass satisfaction is. Maybe with a proper Master Set lowest notes would improve further.
I have the speakers aimed directly toward my listening spot now, it is very intense and satisfying, which is why I bought these speakers, to increase textural detail. But yesterday my 10yo son remarked from within the kitchen area when a well recorded baroque string recording came on the radio that it "really sounds good!" as if that were out of the ordinary. I laughed and took it as a compliment anyway, and give credit to the setup which is the only thing that has changed. So the midrange intensity travels around the whole space.
Rich
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Hi Rich,
I do not know anything about Wilson's method of setting speakers. And it's been quite awhile since I've heard any of them at all, since I seldom ever venture into an audio store anymore. Rod Tomsen has been to Dave Wilson's house and said the sound it was pretty good.
At this point I think you would helped immensely if you were able to hear a proper Master Set. It would give you a reference to aim at as you do things. I'd have to say that that really did help me a lot, such that I really knew when I had found "IT".
Anyway, it sounds like you've got some good sound now, so just enjoy it a bit. Moving things around takes a bit of energy to get going.
Steve
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somewhere in this thread or one of the other AC threads about Master Set, somebody mentioned that Wilson Audio Specialties uses a variation of the Master Set. I don't know if that's true because I've never seen a Wilson setup done. I have read that the Wilson technique involves listening to one's own singing while moving the head around to find a good spot, then fine tuning the speaker with music.
Rich
Rich-
Thought you might enjoy this thread which covers the installation of Wilson X-2s at TAS Editor Robert Harley's home:
http://www.avguide.com/forums/wilson-x-2-installation-rhs-house
The front of the X-2s are 43" off the back wall of RH's 14.5'w x 21'l x 9'h listening room.
The Wilson method involves listening and the use of a spectrum analyzer.
RH says:
"The bass of this system is the best I've heard, and not just in deep extension as one would expect from a large system. The articulation, dynamics, and definition are astounding. The integration with the room is the best I've heard."
Dan
PS- BTW, I don't put too much stock in dcstep's room measurements, but they're only Master Set measurements I've seen posted anywhere.
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Thanks for the link Dan, interesting! Good to know there is a systematic setup procedure they use, not just by ear. I'll try to find out more about it.
My Wilson dealer is also Sumiko dealer.
EDIT: Found these old articles about Wilson Audio Setup Procedure (wasp). No mention of RTA 10 years ago.
http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/477/index6.html
http://www.tnt-audio.com/casse/waspe.html
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Thanks for the link Dan, interesting! Good to know there is a systematic setup procedure they use, not just by ear. I'll try to find out more about it.
My Wilson dealer is also Sumiko dealer.
EDIT: Found these old articles about Wilson Audio Setup Procedure (wasp). No mention of RTA 10 years ago.
http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/477/index6.html
http://www.tnt-audio.com/casse/waspe.html
A proper Master Set will give much better sound!
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Thanks for the link Dan, interesting! Good to know there is a systematic setup procedure they use, not just by ear. I'll try to find out more about it.
My Wilson dealer is also Sumiko dealer.
EDIT: Found these old articles about Wilson Audio Setup Procedure (wasp). No mention of RTA 10 years ago.
http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/477/index6.html
http://www.tnt-audio.com/casse/waspe.html
A proper Master Set will give much better sound!
Steve-
"A proper Master Set will give much better sound!"
How do you know? Have you compared them?
Have you taken measurements to confirm that your Master Set has really smoothed your bass response and it's not just a pleasant Fletcher-Munson Curve enhancement?
I've heard the Wilson Maxx 2s at a dealer who was trained by Wilson.
The SQ of this Wilson set-up was outstanding.
Dan
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Thanks for the link Dan, interesting! Good to know there is a systematic setup procedure they use, not just by ear. I'll try to find out more about it.
My Wilson dealer is also Sumiko dealer.
EDIT: Found these old articles about Wilson Audio Setup Procedure (wasp). No mention of RTA 10 years ago.
http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/477/index6.html
http://www.tnt-audio.com/casse/waspe.html
A proper Master Set will give much better sound!
Steve-
"A proper Master Set will give much better sound!"
How do you know? Have you compared them?
Have you taken measurements to confirm that your Master Set has really smoothed your bass response and it's not just a pleasant Fletcher-Munson Curve enhancement?
I've heard the Wilson Maxx 2s at a dealer who was trained by Wilson.
The SQ of this Wilson set-up was outstanding.
Dan
Dan,
I'm pleased at your satisfaction with the Wilson method.
All the Best,
Steve
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Sorry for the off topic.... I only intended to illustrate how important setup is based on my previous experience. The Sonus dealer doesn't have anything setup with Master Set. :(
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Sorry for the off topic.... I only intended to illustrate how important setup is based on my previous experience. The Sonus dealer doesn't have anything setup with Master Set. :(
Rich,
I've just edited my post.
There's nothing wrong with discussion.
I'm not real sure how integrated the Sumiko dealers are with Master Set. I think it varies. Rod at Soundings is the one who has really run with it I think. I've obviously been quite impressed with his results.
Eventually there is to be a DVD come out about doing Master Set. It should be quite helpful, I would think. Maybe next RMAF, I dunno.
Steve
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Gang,
Just spent the past 2 hours with the Master Set procedure. Other than being suicidal if I ever hear "Ballad of a Runaway Horse" again, I am very pleased :thumb:. Tremendous improvement in the sound of my system and it cost nothing. I'm particularly impressed how with the stability of the sound as I walk around the room. Thanks to everyone on this thread :D!
Mark
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Gang,
Just spent the past 2 hours with the Master Set procedure. Other than being suicidal if I ever hear "Ballad of a Runaway Horse" again, I am very pleased :thumb:. Tremendous improvement in the sound of my system and it cost nothing. I'm particularly impressed how with the stability of the sound as I walk around the room. Thanks to everyone on this thread :D!
Mark
Mark,
Wow, what great news.
It's good to know that all the writing here has helped make something happen, and maybe will inspire other attempts to do this.
Steve
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So nice to read Mark's comments above.
Yesterday I had to do some tweaking with my Set, for a variety of reasons, and played around with some things that I had not previously done.
Rich had brought up the subject of lateral movement in setting the second speaker. I played a little with this as I needed to reset the second speaker. I found that I couldn't move it laterally very much without shifting the sound too much either to or away from that speaker. Lateral movement though can be very important in the intial setup if the room is highly imbalanced in dimension and the centered image is off to one side or the other from dead center.
Another thing I did in resetting the second speaker was to move it out equal distance from rear wall as the anchor speaker. This put the centered sound off to the side of the anchor speaker, even when I sat in the centered position. Of course I already knew that the left side of the room is much larger than the right side and that the left speaker needed to be louder, thus closer to the rear wall, than the anchor, but this can be a good measurer of which way the second speaker needs to go. If the sound is pretty centered in this even distance set, then the second speaker likely won't have to be moved much, likely +- an inch. If the sound is well off to one side, then the corrective action is easier to decide.
I also played a bit with toe in. I have a really small room, and toe in, or out, makes a big change. I found the best sound with the speakers toed directly in at me when I sat at the triangle point of the initial set up. If I would toe out the second speaker very much, it just shifted a lot of sound to that speaker, especially when I sat off to that side.
And remember, and as Mark stated above, the evenness of sound and frequency distribution within the room is what helps Master Set sound so good.
In the end, I ended up getting the speaker back in the previous position, within 1 mm or so. I compared measurements before and after. The matching point for the second speaker is indeed a small point.
Steve
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Thanks Mark and Steve for the feedback and new ideas. I like that idea about centering the image with the 2nd speaker / room size. I have moved the speakers to the long wall and will do the Master set again this week. The right speaker is now 5 feet from the side wall, and the other is very far.
"Say a prayer for the Master Set boy." :roll:
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Thanks Mark and Steve for the feedback and new ideas. I like that idea about centering the image with the 2nd speaker / room size. I have moved the speakers to the long wall and will do the Master set again this week. The right speaker is now 5 feet from the side wall, and the other is very far.
"Say a prayer for the Master Set boy." :roll:
Rich,
Wow, you're a glutton for this. I used to wait a week between set.
I think you'll have better luck along the long wall.
With your "unbalanced room", i.e. not a good rectangle, take some time in the initial setup to get a good centered mono image. A mono recording or just a solo acoustic guitar recording will do. I did not put this in my writeups as most rooms are not as "unbalanced", as one of my rooms. And beware, this might take you a long time to get right, but it can be done. I think in the end I had to have the speakers a bit closer together than I originally thought.
But every room and speaker interface is different.
Steve
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Yes, I did give it a week or two, ready for more torture. I forgot the words so I need to hear it again... haha
I like the room this way better anyway, the soundstage is huge with far away sidewalls. So I hope it can be tamed by MS. I told my wife I would be playing "that song" again, she was glad she would not be home tomorrow.
To clarify, the first step is basically to get the speakers as far apart as possible while still maintaining a solid mono center image, and 3+ft distance from sidewalls? This is done with speakers perpendicular to, and close against the front wall. Do I have that right? Thanks
Two great "mono" recordings that I love are Miles Davis 'Kind of Blue' which I have listened to since my father gave me the LP in 1977. so I know it very well. It seems like stereo, but actually it is a 3 track recording, Center, left and right, as is Sketches of Spain. They are both recorded live with plenty of spill into all the mics, so it sounds like a coherent stereophonic soundfield, but the images in the center are actually true mono, without panning effects. Miles' image on the center track is like granite and is great for setting width. It was state of the art for Columbia Records in 1956. The other is a true mono recording of Clifford Brown / Max Roach Quintet, Clifford playing 'I Don't stand a Ghost of a chance with You,' a great recording from Capital studio B in Hollywood from 1954, with the whole band dead center.
Rich
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Hi Hugh.
All you need to do is add a TASS system :D .How you been good I hope .
Cheers
Mal
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Hi Malcolm,
Ah, yes, how could we forget Surya? I will never forget that night of technical description, with Jamie lighting his cigarettes as he chain smoked his way through the Melbourne Audio Club presentation at his shop. It felt like the set of Alice in Wonderland......
All well, more designs coming onstream soon, love to see you here for a visit!
Cheers,
Hugh
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Yes, I did give it a week or two, ready for more torture. I forgot the words so I need to hear it again... haha
I like the room this way better anyway, the soundstage is huge with far away sidewalls. So I hope it can be tamed by MS. I told my wife I would be playing "that song" again, she was glad she would not be home tomorrow.
To clarify, the first step is basically to get the speakers as far apart as possible while still maintaining a solid mono center image, and 3+ft distance from sidewalls? This is done with speakers perpendicular to, and close against the front wall. Do I have that right? Thanks
Two great "mono" recordings that I love are Miles Davis 'Kind of Blue' which I have listened to since my father gave me the LP in 1977. so I know it very well. It seems like stereo, but actually it is a 3 track recording, Center, left and right, as is Sketches of Spain. They are both recorded live with plenty of spill into all the mics, so it sounds like a coherent stereophonic soundfield, but the images in the center are actually true mono, without panning effects. Miles' image on the center track is like granite and is great for setting width. It was state of the art for Columbia Records in 1956. The other is a true mono recording of Clifford Brown / Max Roach Quintet, Clifford playing 'I Don't stand a Ghost of a chance with You,' a great recording from Capital studio B in Hollywood from 1954, with the whole band dead center.
Rich
Hi Rich,
Yes you have the first step right. When you have a big long wall as you do, try not to get the speakers TOO far apart, as I used to do. Try to still maintain the initial triangle point for the listening. With a mono jazz piece it's tempting to pull things a little too far apart, as it tends to sound better, but MS will work the very best if you can start with a good solid center image. I think it's a little easier maybe with a solo guitar, but it's whatever works.
Hm, as many times as I've listened to the song, I never get tired of it. Maybe it's because I only listen to the first couple verses and then hit repeat, and rarely go more than a minute or two into the song.
Steve
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Thanks Steven, that makes sense. I understand that the listening chair is placed to make equilateral triangle when speakers are against the wall at step one. Then you just leave it in same place throughout the master set procedure, even though the speakers move out from the wall making isosceles triangle. When finished you can move the listening seat farther back to restore equilateral triangle? Or should the Master set procedure be done using the final listening position from the beginning, even if it is farther away than an equal triangle? In this setup my listening chair is 13 feet back from speakers at the start and about 11 feet after it is done. Speakers are about 10feet apart so I have some flexibility. I can put the chair anywhere, so what is ideal? Thanks
And Thanks to Hugh for allowing this thread to continue, even though it's not not directly related to Aspen products. My friend Carlman wants me to try AKSA now that I am starting to build DIY amps. He introduced me to you at RMAF07.
Rich
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Thanks Steven, that makes sense. I understand that the listening chair is placed to make equilateral triangle when speakers are against the wall at step one. Then you just leave it in same place throughout the master set procedure, even though the speakers move out from the wall making isosceles triangle. When finished you can move the listening seat farther back to restore equilateral triangle? Or should the Master set procedure be done using the final listening position from the beginning, even if it is farther away than an equal triangle? In this setup my listening chair is 13 feet back from speakers at the start and about 11 feet after it is done. Speakers are about 10feet apart so I have some flexibility. I can put the chair anywhere, so what is ideal? Thanks
And Thanks to Hugh for allowing this thread to continue, even though it's not not directly related to Aspen products. My friend Carlman wants me to try AKSA now that I am starting to build DIY amps. He introduced me to you at RMAF07.
Rich
Rich,
I usually don't move the listening chair during the setup procedure, but you can if you wish to do so. I found that if I didn't move the chair that it was slightly easier to hear things as it puts you a little closer. Just be sure to keep yourself centered until you get to the final stages, where you need to move around a bit to hear if things are even throughout the room. Is the 10 foot spread the max that you can maintain the centered mono image? You know what's best as you are the one there and listening.
Steve
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Steve-
FYI- Your Master Set instructions were discussed on TAS Reviewer - Robert E. Greene's forum.
See:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/regsaudioforum/message/27225
Dan
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Master Set gave me nice bass on the long wall, but not much help for the massive echo at the rear of the room, it colors midrange too much. The other shorter wall is better in my case. Thanks.
Listening for the image panning especially in bass notes helped to lock in the 2nd speaker's position, good idea.
Rich
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Steve-
FYI- Your Master Set instructions were discussed on TAS Reviewer - Robert E. Greene's forum.
See:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/regsaudioforum/message/27225
Dan
Interesting read, kinda sorta. This was referenced from my write up last October, rather than anything more recently. It was quite clear from the couple of posts that nobody had much of an idea about what Master Set is about. Maybe my write up was no good.
BTW, I think REG is one of the best of the audio writers.
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Master Set gave me nice bass on the long wall, but not much help for the massive echo at the rear of the room, it colors midrange too much. The other shorter wall is better in my case. Thanks.
Listening for the image panning especially in bass notes helped to lock in the 2nd speaker's position, good idea.
Rich
Hi Rich,
I would have thought the long wall would have worked better. Echo at the rear of the room is generally why the short wall doesn't work well. But you've got an odd shape there, and if the fireplace wall works best, you have to go with it for sure.
Steve
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Hello,
I have posted a link to my gallery showing my Master Set.
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?action=gallery;area=browse;album=1827
As can be seen from the photos, the room is small and listening positions would be considered as nearfield.
The photo from the right is taken from just behind my listening seat and is essentially on axis with right speaker. Distance to each speaker from listening seat is as follows, 11 feet to left speaker and 7 feet to right speaker. Sound is perfectly centered between the two speakers.
The left photo is taken from where I now sit and type, and rarely used for listening. Distance to each speaker is as follows, 7 feet to left speaker and 12 feet to right speaker. Sound is well centered between the two speakers, although by sitting to left of left speaker I do hear the left speaker slightly more than the right speaker.
I can't really sit in the center as there is a fireplace that sticks out into the room from the wall. Before I got Master Set "perfected", I would normally sit on a moveable chair in front of the fireplace, for a real front row seat, but the sweet spot was fairly small.
Hope this helps.
Steve
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So close to the wall! Nice system Steven. Thanks
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So close to the wall! Nice system Steven. Thanks
Rich,
Yes, Master Set is pretty close to the wall in relation to "conventional" setup. Remember, the magic in Master Set is in having the speakers in the zone where they are decoupled from the wall behind and also the room. This occurs fairly close to the wall.
steve
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So how far from speakers do you sit?Toe in seems pretty extreme.
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So how far from speakers do you sit?Toe in seems pretty extreme.
I sit about 7 feet from the right speaker in the photos. I don't sit in the center. Master Set has a rather extreme toe in, compared to the way most people set their speakers. I remember the first time I saw this, with the Vienna Acoustics Mahler's, and it looked a bit odd to me. Then I heard the music, and it was the best I had ever heard. Don't get all hung up on the toe in.
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(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=19101)
"Taken from just behind the listening area seat"
Simply incredible that you'd place your chair this far off center axis to obtain a wide deep soundstage. :scratch: Guess this is something that needs to be experienced in order to really understand what's taking place here. Thanks for sharing your pictures as it really helps understand what's really being accomplished here with this "Master Set", even if I don't completely understand how to accomplish it myself. :thumb:
Cheers,
Robin
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(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=19101)
"Taken from just behind the listening area seat"
Simply incredible that you'd place your chair this far off center axis to obtain a wide deep soundstage. :scratch: Guess this is something that needs to be experienced in order to really understand what's taking place here. Thanks for sharing your pictures as it really helps understand what's really being accomplished here with this "Master Set", even if I don't completely understand how to accomplish it myself. :thumb:
Cheers,
Robin
I believe I wrote that I did not sit in the center as the fireplace is in the way. I prefer sitting as I do as that's where the chair is placed in the room. The sound is the same, whether I sit in the middle of the room or comfortably as I do. I never mentioned anything about sitting to the right to obtain a wide deep soundstage. The "soundstage" is between the speakers no matter where in the room that I sit.
Tip of the Day: I have come to realize that Master Set is quite hard for most people to understand, let along accomplish. However, if you have some time to kill, here is an easier way to get much of the advantage of Master Set.
Move the "to be" anchor speaker out from the wall until all sound is heard only from this speaker. This is easy to hear and doesn't require the 2mm movements as you can go 1/2" at a move. Mark the spot on the floor somehow when the sound decouples from the other speaker. Then move the speaker out 5 or 6 inches until the sound recouples with the other speaker, and mark that spot. Forget the step about finding the best bass, as that's really hard to hear. Just put the speaker in the middle of the two marks. Then move the other speaker out into the room this same amount, and listen. You can adjust the second speaker to get the most centered sound in the vocal by moving the speaker either in or out in previously described small amounts, until you are happy with the sound. You might try a track from a solo instrument recording, if you have one.
You won't have a "locked in" Master Set, or the best bass MS, but you'll have a fair part of the Master Set magic. And it shouldn't take you more than a half hour or so.
If you find yourself pleased with this, you can do a more full Master Set at a later time
I have a fairly small room.
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I believe I wrote that I did not sit in the center as the fireplace is in the way. I prefer sitting as I do as that's where the chair is placed in the room. The sound is the same, whether I sit in the middle of the room or comfortably as I do. I never mentioned anything about sitting to the right to obtain a wide deep soundstage. The "soundstage" is between the speakers no matter where in the room that I sit.
Yes you did in fact mention about the fireplace, I wasn't questioning anything about why or where your seating is placed. I was simply taking for granted that you were experiencing a wide deep sound stage from where you sit. Was I wrong to assume this? If as you say the sound stage is between the loudspeakers no matter where you sit in the room, then there is no "sweet spot", right? If you wouldn't catagorize your sound stage as being wide or deep, how would you describe it? Is the imaging also the same no matter where you're sitting in the room? Sorry for all these questions but your above statements have me totally lost as what's actually being accomplished here as far as the type of sound stage that I'm accustomed to and the type of sound stage presense you're actually experiencing. Thanks.
Cheers,
Robin
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I believe I wrote that I did not sit in the center as the fireplace is in the way. I prefer sitting as I do as that's where the chair is placed in the room. The sound is the same, whether I sit in the middle of the room or comfortably as I do. I never mentioned anything about sitting to the right to obtain a wide deep soundstage. The "soundstage" is between the speakers no matter where in the room that I sit.
Yes you did in fact mention about the fireplace, I wasn't questioning anything about why or where your seating is placed. I was simply taking for granted that you were experiencing a wide deep sound stage from where you sit. Was I wrong to assume this? If as you say the sound stage is between the loudspeakers no matter where you sit in the room, then there is no "sweet spot", right? If you wouldn't catagorize your sound stage as being wide or deep, how would you describe it? Is the imaging also the same no matter where you're sitting in the room? Sorry for all these questions but your above statements have me totally lost as what's actually being accomplished here as far as the type of sound stage that I'm accustomed to and the type of sound stage presense you're actually experiencing. Thanks.
Cheers,
Robin
Robin,
I'll do my best to answer your questions about "soundstaging".
There is essentially NO sweet spot with properly done Master Set. The musical images are firmly set in a near perfect stereo image between the two speakers that does not change with one's seating in the room. The seating in the listening room is much like seating at a venue, in that you just move your own perspective to the musicians, but the musicians don't move with you as you move. Over in my far left seat, the music stays between the speakers, but I do have a different perspective to the sound as I am so far to the left. I don't listen here much at all. In a venue, I generally prefer to sit in the middle, and if the fireplace was not in the way, I would do so here. Indeed, until I got Master Set done well, I used to sit on a moveable chair in front of the fireplace to listen.
It may have been lost in the reading about Master Set long ago, but when the two speakers equally pressurize the room, you hear them equally from most anywhere in the room. When they are unequal, you generally hear the one that is loudest from your seating position.
I kind of think you are asking me about "3-D soundstaging" that I might be experiencing here. Afterall, when you put the speakers well out into the room, you get that big 3-D effect from all the reflections. Well, with MS you don't get the big 3-D effect because there really aren't any reflections to muddy and diffuse things.
I've found the "3-D soundstaging" with MS to be rather interesting. I've very conscious of it as I am sitting up close, nearly like being in the first few rows at symphony hall, or the like. The sound is seems to just float in space. The sound seems to float back to the wall without touching it, and almost making the wall invisible. And, as always, the sound never really comes forward from the front baffles of the speakers.
All I can add is that when I listen, the sound seems perfectly proportioned and quite like that of a performance.
Hope this helps and didn't muddy things up too much.
Steve
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Robin,
I'll do my best to answer your questions about soundstaging.
Anything you can offer would be appreciated. :thumb:
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... There is essentially NO sweet spot with properly done Master Set. The musical images are firmly set in a near perfect stereo image between the two speakers that does not change with one's seating in the room. The seating in the listening room is much like seating at a venue, in that you just move your own perspective to the musicians, but the musicians don't move with you as you move. Over in my far left seat, the music stays between the speakers, but I do have a different perspective to the sound as I am so far to the left. I don't listen here much at all. In a venue, I generally prefer to sit in the middle, and if the fireplace was not in the way, I would do so here. Indeed, until I got Master Set done well, I used to sit on a moveable chair in front of the fireplace to listen.
It may have been lost in the reading about Master Set long ago, but when the two speakers equally pressurize the room, you hear them equally from most anywhere in the room. When they are unequal, you generally hear the one that is loudest from your seating position.
I kind of think you are asking me about "3-D soundstaging" that I might be experiencing here. Afterall, when you put the speakers well out into the room, you get that big 3-D effect from all the reflections. Well, with MS you don't get the big 3-D effect because there really aren't any reflections to muddy and diffuse things.
I've found the "3-D soundstaging" with MS to be rather interesting. I've very conscious of it as I am sitting up close, nearly like being in the first few rows at symphony hall, or the like. The sound is seems to just float in space. The sound seems to float back to the wall without touching it, and almost making the wall invisible. And, as always, the sound never really comes forward from the front baffles of the speakers.
All I can add is that when I listen, the sound seems perfectly proportioned and quite like that of a performance....
As one who has not (yet) tried the Master Set, I'd be very interested in the "hows" and "whys" of how this system works given that it seems (to me) to contradict a number of things that I have held to be true for so long.
For example, you mention that in an MS setup the vocalist does not move left/right as the listener does. The key difference is that, at the live performance, the vocalist is a single point source and does not move as the listener does, but in a hifi setup the vocalist's position is created by the varying amplitudes of 2 speakers (ie. stereo). As you say, in traditional speaker setup methods, the vocalist is dragged toward the nearest speaker (unless the speakers are crossed in front of the listener so that the nearest speaker is more off-axis and this eliminates the effect of the increased amplitude from the nearest speaker). An earlier post seemed to indicate an aggressive toe-in so perhaps this is what is going on here. If not, then what is the reason for MS being able to seemingly defy the laws of stereo?
If we assume a decent listening room (primary reflections are treated so as not to send a strong, coherent reflection to the listener), then the room mostly affects the sub 200Hz frequencies. I can certainly understand that a symmetrical setup (equilateral triangle) may not be "symmetrical" in the sense of the overall room if one half of the room has an extra nook or opening or different shape or .... and can thus accept that an irregular speaker setup may better balance the "pressurisation" of the room under 200Hz as the room may be having a greater affect on the sub 200Hz frequencies of one speaker than the other when in a mathematically symmetrical setup, causing peaks and nulls. I can see how the MS will cause each speaker to end up in the location where it produces the greatest and most even sub 200Hz output without cancelling any of the output of the other speaker. This may reduce the need to turn up the volume as high to energise the room, thus causing the amp(s) to have an easier time and perhaps reducing the situation whereby bass in the room sounds weak but bass outside that room sounds strong. However, the irregular setup in regards to the traditional listening seat (half way between the speakers) will mean that one speaker baffle is closer to the listener than the other and (if not overcome by toe-in crossed in front of the listener) will cause the nearest speaker to be higher in amplitude (above 200Hz) and thus be more dominant than the other. This will usually drag say a female vocalist to the dominant side. If not the toe-in, how is this being overcome?
Over the years I have done a great deal of listening and measurement tests to achieve optimal speaker positioning in various rooms. Given this, and the thought of a spending a whole day listening to The Ballad Of The Runaway Horse while doing 2mm speaker locations changes, I have not eagerly jumped out of my seat and tried MS. Before ever hearing this track, I wondered if I would be able to readily hear the differences in bass notes intensity in order to properly try the MS method. Recently, I heard this track played on a very nice system and readily heard a couple of reticent notes and a couple of strong ones. Others in the room heard the same thing so I gained a little confidence there and managed to obtain the CD. This week, I played it several times with subwoofer off and several times with subwoofer on. All the bass notes sounded very even to me, with and without the sub. My current speaker locations were done using ears and measurements and the system measures +/-3dB from 20Hz to 4kHz using third octave pink noise. So, my thoughts are that perhaps I have more or less arrived at the optimal setup by ears/measurements but the MS method would be ideal for enthusiasts without the measurement facility? I do get wonderful imaging and soundstage width, depth, height and on decent recordings the walls just melt away. The setup is symmetrical to the room and the listener, speakers are currently angled directly at the sweetspot. Listening from outside the sweetspot still sounds pretty good and doesn't seem to drag the vocalist to the nearest speaker as much as most systems.
However, I don't discount the possibility that MS may produce an equally well measuring (sub 200Hz) setup that is superior in terms of efficiency. However, aside from lack of time (and laziness :lol:), the thing that dampens my eagerness to go to the time and effort of trying MS is that I don't understand how an asymmetrical setup could match let alone surpass the performance I have now above 200Hz. Also, I read the earlier comments that the soundstage depth does not seem to be as good when the MS setup places speakers closer to the wall behind. I wonder whether it would be worth trying something to overcome this ... when you achieve the final MS setup, with speakers close to wall behind, using the MS positioning as your new "starting" position, repeat the process. This way, you may achieve another optimal MS setup that is further off the wall behind and may improve depth of soundstage aa
Yes, I do know the only to find out for sure is to try it for myself and I'm sure that when I have the time I will do just that. Given that bass notes in BOTRH are already very even, I guess I would be looking for speaker locations that equal this but provide greater room "pressurisation" at the same volume level on the dial. If this is possible then presumably dynamics would be even better as a result.
Again Steve, not trying to shoot anything down here, and not sure you have the answers to the questions ... just wrestling with all this in my own mind :scratch: If it works that's all that matters, though it would be nice to understand why. Several people whose opinions I respect (including yours Steve :thumb:) are now singing emphatic praises of MS and it is this that will no doubt eventually drag me off my butt to try it for myself. I hope to visit Hugh again soon, so perhaps a listen to his system (that I know very well) will be the final shove that overcomes the inertia. It's all good. Steve, thanks for your efforts to nudge us all into trying something that may improve our systems at zero $cost.
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I have a very symmetrical room: approximately 24' x 14.5' x 16' (high). There is no back wall, per se, because the listening/living room is one end of a 24' x 45' x 16' (high) space; the long front wall of the listening/living room is therefore, the end of the larger space. My speakers were already located on the long front wall approximately 10-11' apart and almost equidistant from the two side walls (actually, one is 10" closer to the side wall than the other).
When I began to attempt the MS speaker alignment procedure, it was easy to find the point where the anchor speaker began to decouple from the other speaker. But (to my ears, anyway), it never fully decoupled from the other speaker, and there was no place when the two recoupled - no matter how far I moved the anchor speaker out from the front wall. So, I merely picked the point closest to the front wall where the two "first" decoupled and began to look for the bass nodes. Again, no matter how much (or little) I moved the anchor speaker, there seemed to be little change in bass resonance. So, I finally repositioned the anchor speaker where it "first" decoupled from the other speaker and then moved the other speaker out from the front wall to mirror the position (10" from the front wall) and toe-in (45°) of the anchor speaker. Similar to "MS Light" that Steve described yesterday. I am curious why I could not find a point where the speakers recoupled. I am also curious why I could not find the nodes where bass resonance evened out. Is it the very symmetrical nature of the listening room? Or the fact that the speakers pressurize such a large space?
Nevertheless, I would agree with Steve, the presentation is much closer to what I hear at a concert compared to the typical idealized audiophile image. (I checked again Saturday night when I attended a performance of Brahms' German Requiem and then played a recording of the same piece when I returned home.) I may need to tweak the speaker position a little to better center the image when sitting far off axis, but this is a very enjoyable way to listen to music. The sound is much more enveloping; the soundstage is still wide (wider than the speakers, in my opinion), but not very deep; and the members of the orchestra and chorus and the soloists occupy different places in the image, but without holographic precision. Again, similar to a concert performance.
Gary
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I have a very symmetrical room: approximately 24' x 14.5' x 16' (high). There is no back wall, per se, because the listening/living room is one end of a 24' x 45' x 16' (high) space; the long front wall of the listening/living room is therefore, the end of the larger space. My speakers were already located on the long front wall approximately 10-11' apart and almost equidistant from the two side walls (actually, one is 10" closer to the side wall than the other).
When I began to attempt the MS speaker alignment procedure, it was easy to find the point where the anchor speaker began to decouple from the other speaker. But (to my ears, anyway), it never fully decoupled from the other speaker, and there was no place when the two recoupled - no matter how far I moved the anchor speaker out from the front wall. So, I merely picked the point closest to the front wall where the two "first" decoupled and began to look for the bass nodes. Again, no matter how much (or little) I moved the anchor speaker, there seemed to be little change in bass resonance. So, I finally repositioned the anchor speaker where it "first" decoupled from the other speaker and then moved the other speaker out from the front wall to mirror the position (10" from the front wall) and toe-in (45°) of the anchor speaker. Similar to "MS Light" that Steve described yesterday. I am curious why I could not find a point where the speakers recoupled. I am also curious why I could not find the nodes where bass resonance evened out. Is it the very symmetrical nature of the listening room? Or the fact that the speakers pressurize such a large space?
Nevertheless, I would agree with Steve, the presentation is much closer to what I hear at a concert compared to the typical idealized audiophile image. (I checked again Saturday night when I attended a performance of Brahms' German Requiem and then played a recording of the same piece when I returned home.) I may need to tweak the speaker position a little to better center the image when sitting far off axis, but this is a very enjoyable way to listen to music. The sound is much more enveloping; the soundstage is still wide (wider than the speakers, in my opinion), but not very deep; and the members of the orchestra and chorus and the soloists occupy different places in the image, but without holographic precision. Again, similar to a concert performance.
Gary
Gary,
Thanks for your post.
I'm not sure I can really help much with your situation. Given that you didn't get a firm decoupling from the wall placed speaker, I can only suggest that you swap things around and make the wall speaker the anchor, and the anchor the wall speaker. I've had to do that. But the room where this was done was quite different to yours, so it may make no difference.
All I can add about bass nodes is that they are really hard to hear. They are also in a very small space, and it's easy to move over them, which is how I came to the 2mm movements. However, bass smoothing is not the most important factor in setting MS, it just provides a good matching point for the second speaker.
You've probably done about as good as you can get with what I've read here. If you can get the anchor speaker mostly decoupled then just set it an inch or so out from that point, and try to match this with the second speaker. One thing to keep in mind is not the symmetry of the room but where the two speakers sit in the room and how the center of this "divides" the room. Invariably one speaker will be just a wee tiny bit louder than the other one. That's why you make just small adjustments in or out from the wall to find the most evenly balanced and firmest center image. Some times you just have to listen to things for a week and make a small tweaking adjustment, and just continue on with that until you feel satisfied.
One thing I've found about MS is that close is still pretty good, as long as the speakers sit in the decoupled zone.
Steve
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For example, you mention that in an MS setup the vocalist does not move left/right as the listener does. The key difference is that, at the live performance, the vocalist is a single point source and does not move as the listener does,
but in a hifi setup the vocalist's position is created by the varying amplitudes of 2 speakers (ie. stereo).
Darren,
Thanks for your long and considered post.
For the most part we are talking 2 different languages here. I have kept the above quote as it sums everything up quite well.
With Master Set we are creating a single sound source into the room from the two speakers with the procedures that I have described in my various writings and postings. Creating a single sound source is what Master Set is all about. This can only be done when the 2 speakers are in the decoupled zone, decoupled from the wall behind the speaker and the room, and each speaker providing exactly equal sound pressure into the room.
When the two speakers sit outside this decoupled zone, you will ALWAYS get the two speakers acting in the way(s) that you have described.
I'm just going to leave it at that.
Steve
PS. I might like to add that at a live performance in a venue, most all vocalists/musicians play into the venue sound system, and that's what is heard. Only at an unamplified classical concert, which most all are, do you actually hear the vocalists/instruments as single sound sources, usually multiple single sound sources.
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Thanks for the effort Steve. :thumb: Hopefully down the road I'll have an opportunity to hear a properly setup Master Set system so I can better witness this decoupling sound stage for myself. Some things are just better exerienced than explained.
Cheers,
Robin
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Thanks for the effort Steve. :thumb: Hopefully down the road I'll have an opportunity to hear a properly setup Master Set system so I can better witness this decoupling sound stage for myself. Some things are just better exerienced than explained.
Cheers,
Robin
Robin,
I agree!!! It's best to hear it. Describing in words is too inadequate.
I think my effort yesterday may have made it sound like the sound is a bit small and 2-D, but that is not the case at all. It's quite 3-D and nearly dimensionless. But you really have to hear it.
I might like to go back to the very first time I ever heard speakers set up in MS. It was at RMAF 2007. And I only went into the room to say hello to an old friend I hadn't seen in 2-3 years. I saw the Vienna Acoustics Mahlers set up close to the wall with this extreme toe in, and it looked like the weirdest thing I had ever seen. That and I don't particularly like these speakers as I find them to have a colored midrange. I only listened to things as a way to say hello and all that. I had never heard of something called Master Set, and as this was at an audio show, well, a lot of folks are hawking some new thing. So I paid little to no attention, just said hellos, listened a few minutes, and then was off to another room.
But the sound in the next room didn't sound too good in comparison to the last room, so I went back for another listen. I stayed long enough to move seats a couple times, and noticed that the sound didn't change. I then began to notice a realness to the sound of vocalists and instruments, that was a real cut above the "standard good quality audio sound" of most any high quality audio system. I then began to listen to some of the talk about Master Set. And the more I listened, the more I wanted to "get that sound". And I went on from there..............
But it was from listening to a good Master Set that made it all happen. The fact that anyone would read my writings and want to do this on their own is simply amazing to me. What audio thing has not been graced with words as the best thing to happen since sliced bread?
I just hope my writing can help a bit and not get things too confused. Master Set is not easy to do and get perfect. If it was easy it would be available in a handy little write up sheet that anyone could do in a few minutes. The MS guru, Rod Tomsen, would just give customers a little sheet of instructions with speaker delivery, rather than do it all himself, and charge for it no less, as it can take up to 3 hours to do. My little MS Lite tip can likely be done in half/three quarters of an hour, and only hints at what can be achieved. But even as I've read this morning, not all situations lend themselves to a definitive decoupled zone in the room.
I got a bit lucky in my room in the picture and got a good MS back a few months ago, and wanted to share that experience with others in the hope that my experience could be duplicated by others. It's all a process, and every situation is it's own unique situation. But I do feel quite strongly that speakers set up in MS is the best 2 channel listening experience going.
Steve
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...Darren,
Thanks for your long and considered post.
For the most part we are talking 2 different languages here...
AGREED.
With Master Set we are creating a single sound source into the room from the two speakers with the procedures that I have described in my various writings and postings. Creating a single sound source is what Master Set is all about. This can only be done when the 2 speakers are in the decoupled zone, decoupled from the wall behind the speaker and the room, and each speaker providing exactly equal sound pressure into the room.
MY POINT IS THAT (I BELIEVE) THE "COUPLING" EFFECT ONLY REFERS TO SUB 200HZ FREQUENCIES WHERE THE EQUALISATION BETWEEN SPEAKERS IS A GOOD THING TO OVERCOME ROOM EFFECT, BUT WOULD (SEEMINGLY) UNEQUALISE FREQUENCIES ABOVE 200HZ DUE TO DIFFERENT DISTANCES FROM LISTENER AND NO ROOM EFFECT (REFLECTIONS ASIDE) TO OVERCOME. AGAIN, I CAN SEE HOW TOE-IN (POINTED AT THE USUAL LISTENING POSITION OR CROSSED IN FRONT OF THIS) COULD HELP OVERCOME THIS BUT I'M NOT SURE WHETHER YOU AGREE WITH THIS.
I'm just going to leave it at that.
ME TOO (I'M NOT DOING A VERY GOOD JOB OF MAKING MYSELF UNDERSTOOD IN WRITTEN FORM). WOULD BE GREAT TO CATCH UP WITH YOU AND DISCUSS AT HUGH's ONE DAY.
PS. I might like to add that at a live performance in a venue, most all vocalists/musicians play into the venue sound system, and that's what is heard. Only at an unamplified classical concert, which most all are, do you actually hear the vocalists/instruments as single sound sources, usually multiple single sound sources.
AGREED.
PS. WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THE IDEA OF REPEATING THE MS PROCESS USING THE FINAL MS SETUP AS THE STARTING POINT (IN ORDER TO FIND A SECOND MS SETUP THAT WORKS IN IDENTICAL FASHION BUT HAS THE SPEAKERS FURTHER OUT INTO THE ROOM)?
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...Darren,
Thanks for your long and considered post.
For the most part we are talking 2 different languages here...
AGREED.
With Master Set we are creating a single sound source into the room from the two speakers with the procedures that I have described in my various writings and postings. Creating a single sound source is what Master Set is all about. This can only be done when the 2 speakers are in the decoupled zone, decoupled from the wall behind the speaker and the room, and each speaker providing exactly equal sound pressure into the room.
MY POINT IS THAT (I BELIEVE) THE "COUPLING" EFFECT ONLY REFERS TO SUB 200HZ FREQUENCIES WHERE THE EQUALISATION BETWEEN SPEAKERS IS A GOOD THING TO OVERCOME ROOM EFFECT, BUT WOULD (SEEMINGLY) UNEQUALISE FREQUENCIES ABOVE 200HZ DUE TO DIFFERENT DISTANCES FROM LISTENER AND NO ROOM EFFECT (REFLECTIONS ASIDE) TO OVERCOME. AGAIN, I CAN SEE HOW TOE-IN (POINTED AT THE USUAL LISTENING POSITION OR CROSSED IN FRONT OF THIS) COULD HELP OVERCOME THIS BUT I'M NOT SURE WHETHER YOU AGREE WITH THIS.
I'm just going to leave it at that.
ME TOO (I'M NOT DOING A VERY GOOD JOB OF MAKING MYSELF UNDERSTOOD IN WRITTEN FORM). WOULD BE GREAT TO CATCH UP WITH YOU AND DISCUSS AT HUGH's ONE DAY.
PS. I might like to add that at a live performance in a venue, most all vocalists/musicians play into the venue sound system, and that's what is heard. Only at an unamplified classical concert, which most all are, do you actually hear the vocalists/instruments as single sound sources, usually multiple single sound sources.
AGREED.
PS. WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THE IDEA OF REPEATING THE MS PROCESS USING THE FINAL MS SETUP AS THE STARTING POINT (IN ORDER TO FIND A SECOND MS SETUP THAT WORKS IN IDENTICAL FASHION BUT HAS THE SPEAKERS FURTHER OUT INTO THE ROOM)?
Hi Darren,
There are only two relevant principles involved in setting speakers in Master Set.
The most important thing in Master Set is the relationship of where each speaker is positioned in regards the other one so as to make them equally sound pressurize the room in accordance with the power of the amplifier and the design of the speaker.
The other is that the speakers must be in the decoupled zone.
There is nothing more!!!!!!
When these two principles are followed and perfected, in accordance with the outlined steps, all the concerns you have stated, in regard to equalization of frequency distribution and distance of listener to/from the speaker, become mitigated and irrelevant. You obviously do not understand why this works as it does. But it does work, and it works very well. And I cannot really write any more without just repeating myself.
In regards your point above in the PS. You cannot do Master Set OUT of the decoupled zone farther out into the room. Remember, once you pass the anchor speaker out farther into the room the 2 speakers recouple and the sound you hear is the combined sound in the center of the two speakers. Remember, the idea behind setting the anchor speaker is to independently set one speaker at a reference point in order to have something for the other speaker to match. THAT is what Master Set is!
Sure you can set the speakers anywhere you want and try to match and center the sound, but it won't be a Master Set and it won't give you the same results.
Catching up at Hugh's is always nice. Perhaps we can work something out in the month before I return to the States. The MS I've done at Hugh's is not as good as what I have here in my small room. I tweaked it up a bit about 10 days ago, but it's still not quite right, and I'm not sure why. I've obtained a single source of sound with the speakers such that the sound doesn't move with the listener, so it's close. There are just some other unresolved issues.
I'm not privy to the Sumiko seminars, and thus my knowledge is severely limited, and it also may not be completely correct. I am pretty much self taught in Master Set and I think there is a bit, or maybe a lot, more to it than I now know.
Steve
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...
When these two principles are followed and perfected, in accordance with the outlined steps, all the concerns you have stated, in regard to equalization of frequency distribution and distance of listener to/from the speaker, become mitigated and irrelevant.
:lol: You can't just say that the laws of acoustics (at least as are generally accepted currently) are "mitigated and irrelevant" without explaining why.
...
You obviously do not understand why this works as it does.
I have freely admitted this. But, I have raised some reasonable questions that you have not responded to and it seems that you understand the procedure but not how it works either. That is fine, but just say so and I will stop asking questions.
...And I cannot really write any more without just repeating myself.
I do not need you to repeat anything. I have carefully read and considered your posts. What I have been trying to do is get you to fill in the blanks about how MS overcomes commonly held acoustic principles rather than just say "it works .... you don't understand".
...In regards your point above in the PS. You cannot do Master Set OUT of the decoupled zone farther out into the room. Remember, once you pass the anchor speaker out farther into the room the 2 speakers recouple and the sound you hear is the combined sound in the center of the two speakers. Remember, the idea behind setting the anchor speaker is to independently set one speaker at a reference point in order to have something for the other speaker to match. THAT is what Master Set is!
Steve, again you have dismissed a query out of hand without thinking about what I have said.
I completely agree that there will be speaker locations where the speaker doesn't have particular bass frequencies emphasized (peaks) or cancelled (nulls)... "decoupled" as you put it. However, these are not confined to one single location that is the nearest one to the wall. Yes, as you bring it forward further it will re-couple with the other speaker, but as you continue to move it further forward there (presumably) will be additional points where it again decouples from the other speaker. You then bring the other speaker forward again until it couples again and provides the same thing as the first MS did, but at a point further forward from the wall. Will it sound any better? I don't know. But it IS still MS as you are using exactly the same principles and procedure but doing it twice.
Steve, I have no problem with you disagreeing with ideas or beliefs I throw up. What I do have a problem with is you dismissing them without reading them properly, without valid reasons or counter arguments (other than "it works"). Again, if you don't understand what is happening (but enjoy the result) that is fine. Just say so and I'll stop assuming that you do and will stop trying to coax this information from you. From your responses it appears that you don't have a very strong grasp of room acoustics and perhaps that is why you have been unable or unwilling to respond to any of my questions and resort to simply repeating the procedure. This is meant as an observation rather than a criticism.
Unfortunately, written arguments can sound "heated" when they are not and asking a bunch of questions can be thought to mean that I disagree with you when I don't. My single motivation was to see if you could help fill in the blanks for me so I can better understand the concept and acoustic principles being deployed and how MS apparently overcomes the principles of acoustics and stereo that I do understand. It seems perseverence will not achieve that and will only serve to wrongly appear as though I'm trying to poopoo the MS concept or have another agenda, so unfortunately it seems best that I stop :deadhorse: until we can hopefully discuss it in person at some point. I have no horse in this race, just the pursuit of knowledge.
I will still try MS when I get the chance and will be happy to attain the same improvements you have, BUT I will still want to know WHY and HOW.
Cheers Steve.
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Steve
Thanks for your reply. Does moving a speaker closer to the back wall predictably make it louder (or softer)? Or does it vary from room to room?
Gary
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Steve
Thanks for your reply. Does moving a speaker closer to the back wall predictably make it louder (or softer)? Or does it vary from room to room?
Gary
Gary,
The principal of room gain is well known and accepted. The closer you move a speaker to the wall behind it, the room gain is increased, and vice versa. This applies to any room. Remember, we are talking millimeters here, so moving a speaker a couple millimeters or so makes for a VERY small change.
Steve
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I will still try MS when I get the chance and will be happy to attain the same improvements you have, BUT I will still want to know WHY and HOW.
Darren,
I am merely trying to help anyone who wants to set up their speakers with the Master Set principles, as I know them and have applied them to my own situations. I am not here to discuss the finer points of room acoustics etc., and how Master Set applies there. You can take that up with John Hunter.
Master Set works! I don't really care about the hows and whys!
I cannot tell you why there is a small zone in the room where the sound decouples from the wall behind it as it clearly does. Until I did the step, as described, I never knew you could play both speakers and only hear sound from one. I'm not concerned with the physics of this, I just know that it happens. I know the placing the speakers in this small zone is what MS is all about. That is enough for me.
The idea of the relative placement of the two speakers so as to equally pressurize the room is a new concept. Given that I know the results, I accept this idea without question. It works, and works quite well.
All I can further tell you is that if you go to a Master Set presentation and ask all the questions that you have put forward here, you will be summarily told, "You have to forget about all that stuff. What's important is..................." Essentially that's why I wrote much of what I wrote. I have seen the blank look on faces when told that. I have seen the looks of disbelief on faces that you can just set the speakers in a certain way, without any kind of box or cable or computer software, and overcome most all the commonly held acoustic beliefs and obstacles to good electronic playback sound.
Darren, I think you've set yourself a big obstacle with the why and how stuff. IF you are serious about doing MS, just do it, and then judge the results. You can work out the why's and how's later. However, I must caution that without hearing a really good MS it can be a bit hard to know if you achieve the proper result. You do get the stable sound that doesn't move when you move, and you do get increased clarity and a lack of distortion and listening fatigue over and above what you now achieve. If you already have quite good sound, and I'm sure you do, the improvement may only be small. AND you have to follow the steps exactly as described, no "what if I do this or that or change this or that".
And remember, this is not SERIOUS stuff, it's listening to music.
Steve
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"I cannot tell you why there is a small zone in the room where the sound decouples from the wall behind it as it clearly does. Until I did the step, as described, I never knew you could play both speakers and only hear sound from one."
This reflects my experience with it. I've tried bringing them further into the room, but haven't found a second point of decoupling (as suggested in an earlier post on this thread). No dog in this particular hunt; just had a good experience with using this method to place my speakers (Gallo 3.1's) in my room. Cordially,
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Cheers Steve.
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"I cannot tell you why there is a small zone in the room where the sound decouples from the wall behind it as it clearly does. Until I did the step, as described, I never knew you could play both speakers and only hear sound from one."
This reflects my experience with it. I've tried bringing them further into the room, but haven't found a second point of decoupling (as suggested in an earlier post on this thread). No dog in this particular hunt; just had a good experience with using this method to place my speakers (Gallo 3.1's) in my room. Cordially,
Glad to hear you've had some success with this.
Let me clarify something. The first point of decoupling, out from the wall, is where it all begins. It's not the setup point. Once you are in this decoupled zone you search for the bass nodes and smoothest and best bass. There's supposed to be 5 or so nodes. These are all hard to hear, and it is easy to move over them if you make movements that are too large. It takes a lot of experience and very critical ear to hear things in this particular step.
My room is small. I just anchored the speaker at the first bass node and didn't go any further. I actually should probably try to find another node farther out, as my matched speaker has a fair bit of offset and is closer to the wall. But it's okay for now.
How far out did you move the speaker in trying to find the recoupling point? My experience has been that there's only about 5 or 6 inches of decoupled zone. Just as an experiment, in another set, I moved the anchor to be speaker out about a foot from somewhere in the decoupling zone just to hear what happens, and the sound recoupled with the speaker against the wall and was very centered.
Steve
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"How far out did you move the speaker in trying to find the recoupling point?"
The "de-coupled" zone, in my room, was ~4-5". No speaker movement forward past the re-coupling point, up to ~ 2' in front of me (where I stopped experimenting) resulted in a second de-coupling. I listen ~ 7' in front of the speaker plane.
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Hi Steven,
Given "jaywills' " comment that the "decoupled zone" - which I believe you said was the start of the MS movements - was only 4-5" off the front wall and, as you're moving in 1-2mm increments, the final position will shirley not be more than 600mm forward of this ... I'd be interested to know how deep a soundstage you hear, as a result of the Master Set?
Certainly, smooth bass is an important sonic goal but a deep sound-stage (when the source has this! :D ) is another, IMO. However, an all-encompassing "sweet spot" is not as important (as I sit on the couch, by myself, at the point of the isosceles triangle! :D ).
Yes, I know the amplifier influences sound-stage depth but we're all using AKSA amps here ... so I would've thought that any difference in sound-stage depth must be due to speaker positioning and room treatments?
Regards,
Andy
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"Given "jaywills' " comment that the "decoupled zone" - which I believe you said was the start of the MS movements - was only 4-5" off the front"
Good morning, Andy, I'm sorry, but it appears that my apparently ambiguous post has misled you somewhat. The 4-5" zone to which I was referring was the zone itself in which the speaker remained decoupled. That zone began ~14-15" out from my front wall and ended ~18-20" out from the front wall. Sorry for the ambiguity in my earlier post. Cordially,
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"Given "jaywills' " comment that the "decoupled zone" - which I believe you said was the start of the MS movements - was only 4-5" off the front"
Good morning, Andy, I'm sorry, but it appears that my apparently ambiguous post has misled you somewhat. The 4-5" zone to which I was referring was the zone itself in which the speaker remained decoupled. That zone began ~14-15" out from my front wall and ended ~18-20" out from the front wall. Sorry for the ambiguity in my earlier post. Cordially,
Good, it seems now that you have found the "de-coupled" zone. The important thing about setting the speakers in this zone is when you set the "anchor" the sound of this speaker stays fixed, and does not change when you move the other speaker into position. This is how you can match the sound pressure levels as you have a fixed point of reference in the anchor speaker.
Steve
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Hi Steven,
Given "jaywills' " comment that the "decoupled zone" - which I believe you said was the start of the MS movements - was only 4-5" off the front wall and, as you're moving in 1-2mm increments, the final position will shirley not be more than 600mm forward of this ... I'd be interested to know how deep a soundstage you hear, as a result of the Master Set?
Certainly, smooth bass is an important sonic goal but a deep sound-stage (when the source has this! :D ) is another, IMO. However, an all-encompassing "sweet spot" is not as important (as I sit on the couch, by myself, at the point of the isosceles triangle! :D ).
Yes, I know the amplifier influences sound-stage depth but we're all using AKSA amps here ... so I would've thought that any difference in sound-stage depth must be due to speaker positioning and room treatments?
Regards,
Andy
Andy,
I kinda sorta wrote on this a few days ago, in reply to someone's post, but can easily do it again as I always seem to write a little differently.
Given that the speakers in MS are not all that far out into the room, a couple feet or so depending on the depth of the speaker cabinet, traditional logic suggests that the sound is going to be rather 2-D, as depth of sound is generally effected by how far out into the room the speakers sit, hence, the popular 5 feet out into the room sets. And certainly my first impression of MS with the VA Mahlers, very large speakers about 20" deep, sitting close to the wall, rear of speaker seemed about a foot from the wall, made me take a real double look.
All I can say is that in my room here in Ballarat, which you've now seen in a picture with the speakers, the sound is just dimensionless. The front baffle of the speakers are ~2 feet into the room from the wall behind, not all that far. Yet, the sound seems to make the wall invisible, and also seems to project a bit forward from the baffles with no real defined boundary.
In my old 5 feet out into the room sets I sometimes found myself behind the speakers, walking to the bathroom or something, and I would find myself a bit amazed that the sound, as heard from behind, seemed to be mostly just in a narrow plane between the two speakers. Yet when sitting in front of the speakers it seemed to go back 5 feet to the wall.
A lot of people may disagree with me here, but I don't think there are many recordings with much "depth of soundstage", as the phrase goes. Most recordings of any genre are multimiked to some degree. So it's all about the microphone level(s) the recording engineer sets, and how the mastering engineer puts it all together, and balancing mostly left-right rather than front-back.
At a venue, the drum kit is usually behind the band, mostly for reasons of space. But the drum sound gets fed into the mixing board and heard from the venue speakers that are left and right of the band. You can see the drummer behind the band, but he doesn't really sound farther away than the people in front.
In an orchestra the louder instruments are at the back of the orchestra, but you just hear the loudness level of them when they play depending if 1, 2, 3, or 4 brass instruments play. You don't necessarily hear them as faraway, just how loud and from the location in general, if that makes any sense.
However, I must admit that the bass drum always sounds like it's behind everyone else, whether live or in recording. So,............
I dunno, being that the speakers sit out in the small zone where they are decoupled from the room boundary behind them (wall) I get the feeling from listening that the sound is not bouncing off the wall as one would think it would being so close as it just seems "not quite touch" the wall, almost stopping before it reaches the wall. I know that sounds kind of "out there" but every MS I've heard has been that way.
Hope this helps and didn't confuse anything too much.
Steve
PS. Been a long long time since I've heard planars or electrostats, but I do know that they do radiate sound out a bit differently than a box does. So, I truly do not know how much of what I write here really applies to your situation.
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Darren,
I really think you should hear what Steve has done to my listening room. Could you come listen this Saturday morning, perhaps, around 9:30? Andy Redwood will be here too, we can start with an exquisite coffee on a cold autumn morning!
I'd love to show it off to you - do bring your favourite CD, though I've got the Duet all connected up, thanks to Jeremy Howard.
Cheers,
Hugh
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Andy,
A lot of people may disagree with me here, but I don't think there are many recordings with much "depth of soundstage", as the phrase goes.
Steve
PS. Been a long long time since I've heard planars or electrostats, but I do know that they do radiate sound out a bit differently than a box does. So, I truly do not know how much of what I write here really applies to your situation.
Hi Steve,
A good recording IMO which displays a really deep sound stage is the live recording of the Eagles "Hell Freezes Over" tour. I listen mostly to "Hotel California" and the track before that (side 2 of my double LP! :D ) and the audience clapping disappears into the distance. Though I'd think that all the clapping on the album should be similar.
If you have it, perhaps you need to listen to it and then come round and hear how my Maggies present it. :thumb: Then you'll be in a position to say whether the relatively-close-to-front-wall positioning generated by the Master Set procedure reduces soundstage depth or not. :D
DSK has pointed out that my "mathematical" positioning does not provide the same smooth bass response you seem to get with your MS positioning (as he could hear some 'light' and 'heavy' bass notes on "BotRH", when he was round my place a coupla weeks ago). So it would seem there's certainly room for improvement in my speaker positioning, as far as bass nodes are concerned. :D But I would hate to conquer that and then suffer from lack of soundstage depth! :o
Regards,
Andy
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Hello,
Well, at the risk of just adding to the confusion, I would like to try and address some concerns about Master Set that have come up. I would like to begin by mentioning that Master Set is the result of over 10 years of research and experimentation by John Hunter and others at Sumiko Importers in California. This is also still an ongoing happening. Sumiko has occassional seminars for Sumiko dealers about speaker positioning that are limited to Sumiko dealers, and nothing is published about this.
I merely am trying here to present what I have observed and performed in the performance of setting up my speakers with Master Set protocols.
A number of queries have been raised such as why not try this or that instead of what you are doing. Well, MS is pretty well developed as it is. I am not interested in experimentation with it. Some of the aspects presented may seem to fall outside some established norm, and people want to redirect things to that norm. Well, no. Just do MS as best you can and judge the results. It's free, and it's obviously reversible if you don't like it. It only requires time and a desire.
I've written lots about the "decoupled zone". It's easy and verifiable to find a spot where all sound seems to come from one speaker out in the room with another one against the wall. And moving this same speaker a few more inches out into the room there is another spot where the sound reconnects with the speaker against the wall and all sound heard is in the middle of the two. Who knew that such an area existed? I don't know the physics of this, why is occurs, etc. But it occurs and is not some illusion or trickery. Anyone can verify that this exists by simply doing it.
Master Set protocol has the "anchor speaker" anchored in this zone. I have been queried about setting up outside this "decoupled zone". Well, if you are out in the room from the "decoupling zone" you are coupled to the room, and subject to everything in the standard mantra. If you are in towards the wall from the "decoupled zone" you are coupled to the wall, and this is usually not desireable.
I believe that since one of the tenets of Master Set is to set the speakers in this "decoupled zone" it is what separates MS from more standard methods of speaker positioning. There is something different happening in that small area of the room.
Master Set protocol uses the term "equal sound pressure into the room from each speaker". Ever hear that one before? I think it's safe to say that most everyone thinks the speakers are playing equally loud into the room, unless there is some irregularity in the electronics. Master Set protocol says that each speaker pressurizes it's own half of the room. Ever hear that one before? This requires that one accepts the assumption that each speaker essentially only pressurizes the half, or part, of the room in which it sits with an invisible divide inbetween the two speakers. When you hear how well MS works, it's a lot easier to accept this, rather than just accepting something new and previously unknown/unheard of.
With this assumption is it quite easy to understand that each speaker is filling a different area with sound. And the same sound level into different sized areas results in slightly different overall sound levels in each area. The result then is two slightly different sounds in the same space where only one sound should be hear.
Master Set protocol equalizes this imbalance with small movements of a speaker using room gain to adjust one speaker up or down in relation to the other one in order to make the overall sound level in each half, or part, of the room equal and result in the only one sound in the room. This is why the speaker are at a slight offset to each other in relation to a measured distance out into the room. The offset may be small, like a half inch or so, but it's usually going to be there. Equal distance out into the room would require absolute perfect equality in size of each half of the room.
Rooms with one side being very different from the other side, like mine all seem to be, make it all quite hard as the size imbalance is quite large. But the room can still be equalized.
I've been queried about equal frequency distribution in the room. Well, that not the above paragraph. However, equal frequency distribution should occur once the protocol in the above paragraph has been set, assuming that each speaker is identical in it's filter networks.
I've had a few queries about planars and dipoles. The Master Set mantra is "any speaker in any room". I have no experience with either dipoles or planars. However, since MS is based on finding the decoupled zone, if you can follow the protocol and find a decoupled zone with a dipole or planar, then MS can be set. With a box speaker this zone seems to be somewhat close to the wall. With a dipole or planar the zone may be somewhat farther out into the room.
Master Set is generally done TOTALLY by ear, without any linear measurement of any kind. It's all about listening for the sound you hear. I have used a tape measure only as a guide to making sure I make movements that are small. When I didn't use a tape, my small movements were generally too large and I just skipped over the spots I was looking to find.
The topic of soundstage depth has come up, in the previous message in fact. All I can say is that MS gives you whatever is in the recording. It sounds natural and not exaggerated in any way.
Remember my analogy of focusing binoculars to setting the speakers with MS? Ever hear anything like that before? It does require some acceptance of new ideas that may seem quite odd and in total violation of the accepted norm. But it works perfectly as described. Master Set works because if you follow the protocols you are able to make a single sound out of two, like any naturally occurring sound.
Anyway, that's enough for now.
Steve
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Hi Andy,
No, I don't have Hell Freezes Over.
I think I tried to answer some of your concerns in the longish post I just wrote. I think if you can find a "decoupled zone" with your speakers you can do MS. It's likely farther out into the room that that of a box speaker. You'd just have to try it by experimentation if you really wanted to know, and I realize that that might not be the most practical thing to do because to the size of the speakers.
Steve
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From my position on the sidelines (I'm on a 9-month assignment 300 miles from home, so I haven't tried MS yet), I'm coming to the view that MS may be strong evidence that our current views of how "audio works in living spaces and in people's heads" might be in need of major revision.
MS is reported to dramatically improve the audio experience in a way that is unexpected and unpredicted based on the current paradigm.
The MS effect has been reproduced by a number of independent people, many with very high credibility.
Given the surprising claims that have been reproduced by numerous credible people in a variety of listening rooms with a variety of equipment, it won't do to keep arguing based on the old paradigm. The old paradigm must be at least partially wrong since it apparently can't predict the MS effect.
When this happens in a scientific discipline, things get very exciting. I'm going to give MS a good workout when I return home in the fall.
Take care,
Peter
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...Given the surprising claims that have been reproduced by numerous credible people in a variety of listening rooms with a variety of equipment, it won't do to keep arguing based on the old paradigm. The old paradigm must be at least partially wrong since it apparently can't predict the MS effect.......
Actually, having now viewed and listened to Hugh's "Master Set" setup, I don't think that is the case.
Hugh's setup now looks like this ...
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=19233)
You can see that the right speaker is set slightly closer to the front wall than the left. This is where Steve and Hugh observed the most even bass response in the room during the MS procedure. I had not noticed any bass problems on my previous visits but that doesn't mean much and I'm not implying that there weren't any or that the bass isn't more even now than it was before. In my previous posts I stated that I could envisage how the MS setup could indeed lead to more even bass throughout a room, especially an asymmetrical one. For this reason alone I will still try MS in my room at some point.
However, the key point of my earlier posts was that the room's capacity/dimensions/materials/etc will only have a "pressurisation" effect on frequencies below approx 200Hz (causing peaks and nulls in this range), not those above it. However, room boundary "reflections" will have an affect on this higher frequency range. The longer paths to our ears off the walls (than the direct path from the speakers) causes "time smear" and is a form of distortion of the playback. This is why we use absorption and diffusion to treat the primary reflection areas and minimise the coherent reflections.
As the amplitude of one speaker rises in relation to the other, it starts to dominate the other speaker and this is why the vocalist/instrument sounds like it is coming from the loudest speaker (this was the reason for balance controls). When both speakers play a vocalist at the same amplitude, that vocalist will appear to be standing in the middle between the speakers (assuming that is where they stood during the recorded performance). This is one of the basics of how "stereo" works. When both speakers play the vocalist at the same amplitude, but one speaker is closer to you, the nearest speaker will have less energy loss due to the shorter path to your ears, and will thus sound louder. This causes the vocalist to move toward the nearest/loudest speaker. The only way I know of to offset this effect is to toe-in the speakers such that they cross in front of the listener. This means that as the listener moves toward the right speaker (thus hearing lower amplitude from the left speaker due to losses over the greater distance) he becomes more off-axis from the right speaker and more on-axis from the left speaker. You may have experimented with toe-in and found some speakers to sound too "hot" in the high frequencies when on-axis (ie. pointed at the listener) and needed to toe them out a little to reduce the energy. This is the same thing. We are moving more off-axis but to the other side of the axis. Therefore, the drop in energy from the nearest speaker (more off-axis) compensates for the higher amplitude caused by that speaker being closer to the listener. The end result is that the vocalist remains in the centre off the soundstage. This is why I was asking Steve whether he felt that this might be the reason that MS did not upset the imaging.
Crossing speakers in front of the listener has an additional benefit. The side walls become much more off-axis from the speakers and thus side wall reflections are greatly reduced in energy. This reduces the time smear distortive effect mentioned earlier and provides a sense of calmness or purity to the presentation. It helps focus the imaging and can enhance low level detail. Initially, this loss of energy from the side walls can be perceived as a lessening of the envelopment effect from the speakers, but as you listen further you become used to it and notice the benefits. For simplicity, I'm just talking about dynamic cone speakers here as dipolars and other speaker types have different radiation patterns etc. Bear in mind that although MS may require crossing the speakers, crossing the speakers does not require MS. Many people, including myself have had their speakers crossed in a standard symmetrical setup and observed the benefits I just described.
As soon as I walked into Hugh's room and saw the speakers crossed in front of the listener, I could see that I was right about how MS overcomes the amplitude/imaging problems caused by unequal distances from the listener to each speaker. This is what I was trying to coax from Steve. When I listened from the single chair (point A in the diagram) I immediately noticed the reduced sidewall reflections and the same improvements I have heard previously from crossing speakers. The imaging (at this seat) stayed fairly well central as a result, despite the seat being closer to the right speaker. Moving to listening position C, the lead vocal did tend to move toward the left speaker (just as it does in a typical non-crossed symmetrical speaker setup) though perhaps to a lesser degree. I did not listen from point B although Hugh indicated that he heard the vocalist closer to the centre than I did from point C.
To clarify, I agree with Steve that MS can help even out the bass around the room by avoiding positions where particular bass frequencies (under 200Hz) suffer peaks or nulls as a result of interaction with the room. However, the improved mids and highs are a result of crossing the speakers in front of the listening position rather than the actual speaker locations, and crossing the speakers is necessary to overcome the problems that would otherwise occur from an MS setup due to the speakers being at different distances from the listener.
So, if you acknowledge crossing the speakers as an MS concept (rather than something that can be done independently), then yes, I agree that MS can provide benefits in the bass, mids and highs!
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Steve,
or anyone else for that matter.
Can MS be done using a single tone? If so what bass tone frequency do you suggest is best.
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Steve,
or anyone else for that matter.
Can MS be done using a single tone? If so what bass tone frequency do you suggest is best.
Geraldo,
At present, I don't know of a way to properly use a single tone to do MS.
In smoothing the bass, every speaker/room interface acts differently. While the bass line in Ballad of a Runaway Horse doesn't include all that many bass notes you do seem to get a different emphasis with each room/speaker interface, and all you are trying to do is smooth this out as best as possible. Afterall it's the speaker sound in YOUR room that matters.
I've often thought that a single tone for matching sound pressure levels would work. However there would have to be a way to have this single tone inserted into the equipment.
Remember, MS is a way to do things without having to buy ANYTHING, other than a song.
Steve
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Thanks Steve,
I was thinking about my situation where I do not have the song(got the old album which does not include the Ballad of the Runnaway Horse, and the new release I have not seen in stalls) but I do have an easy way to get what ever tone I want into my system. I suspect the way the whole thing is set up and the fact that it works without a scientific explanation how it does so, that there may be an advantage in having an instrument note rather than a pure tone?
T
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Thanks Steve,
I was thinking about my situation where I do not have the song(got the old album which does not include the Ballad of the Runnaway Horse, and the new release I have not seen in stalls) but I do have an easy way to get what ever tone I want into my system. I suspect the way the whole thing is set up and the fact that it works without a scientific explanation how it does so, that there may be an advantage in having an instrument note rather than a pure tone?
T
Understand about not having the song. In my first try at MS, in 2007, I didn't have the song. I used a jazz cut that had the player playing nearly a full scale and repeating it. I just set the player on repeat for these 20 seconds. In my later attempts I also tried this same cut. I found BotRH song to be easier to do MS with. Although, with the jazz cut it was easy to hear the sound all move to one speaker.
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...Given the surprising claims that have been reproduced by numerous credible people in a variety of listening rooms with a variety of equipment, it won't do to keep arguing based on the old paradigm. The old paradigm must be at least partially wrong since it apparently can't predict the MS effect.......
Actually, having now viewed and listened to Hugh's "Master Set" setup, I don't think that is the case.
Hugh's setup now looks like this ...
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=19233)
You can see that the right speaker is set slightly closer to the front wall than the left. This is where Steve and Hugh observed the most even bass response in the room during the MS procedure. I had not noticed any bass problems on my previous visits but that doesn't mean much and I'm not implying that there weren't any or that the bass isn't more even now than it was before. In my previous posts I stated that I could envisage how the MS setup could indeed lead to more even bass throughout a room, especially an asymmetrical one. For this reason alone I will still try MS in my room at some point.
However, the key point of my earlier posts was that the room's capacity/dimensions/materials/etc will only have a "pressurisation" effect on frequencies below approx 200Hz (causing peaks and nulls in this range), not those above it. However, room boundary "reflections" will have an affect on this higher frequency range. The longer paths to our ears off the walls (than the direct path from the speakers) causes "time smear" and is a form of distortion of the playback. This is why we use absorption and diffusion to treat the primary reflection areas and minimise the coherent reflections.
As the amplitude of one speaker rises in relation to the other, it starts to dominate the other speaker and this is why the vocalist/instrument sounds like it is coming from the loudest speaker (this was the reason for balance controls). When both speakers play a vocalist at the same amplitude, that vocalist will appear to be standing in the middle between the speakers (assuming that is where they stood during the recorded performance). This is one of the basics of how "stereo" works. When both speakers play the vocalist at the same amplitude, but one speaker is closer to you, the nearest speaker will have less energy loss due to the shorter path to your ears, and will thus sound louder. This causes the vocalist to move toward the nearest/loudest speaker. The only way I know of to offset this effect is to toe-in the speakers such that they cross in front of the listener. This means that as the listener moves toward the right speaker (thus hearing lower amplitude from the left speaker due to losses over the greater distance) he becomes more off-axis from the right speaker and more on-axis from the left speaker. You may have experimented with toe-in and found some speakers to sound too "hot" in the high frequencies when on-axis (ie. pointed at the listener) and needed to toe them out a little to reduce the energy. This is the same thing. We are moving more off-axis but to the other side of the axis. Therefore, the drop in energy from the nearest speaker (more off-axis) compensates for the higher amplitude caused by that speaker being closer to the listener. The end result is that the vocalist remains in the centre off the soundstage. This is why I was asking Steve whether he felt that this might be the reason that MS did not upset the imaging.
Crossing speakers in front of the listener has an additional benefit. The side walls become much more off-axis from the speakers and thus side wall reflections are greatly reduced in energy. This reduces the time smear distortive effect mentioned earlier and provides a sense of calmness or purity to the presentation. It helps focus the imaging and can enhance low level detail. Initially, this loss of energy from the side walls can be perceived as a lessening of the envelopment effect from the speakers, but as you listen further you become used to it and notice the benefits. For simplicity, I'm just talking about dynamic cone speakers here as dipolars and other speaker types have different radiation patterns etc. Bear in mind that although MS may require crossing the speakers, crossing the speakers does not require MS. Many people, including myself have had their speakers crossed in a standard symmetrical setup and observed the benefits I just described.
As soon as I walked into Hugh's room and saw the speakers crossed in front of the listener, I could see that I was right about how MS overcomes the amplitude/imaging problems caused by unequal distances from the listener to each speaker. This is what I was trying to coax from Steve. When I listened from the single chair (point A in the diagram) I immediately noticed the reduced sidewall reflections and the same improvements I have heard previously from crossing speakers. The imaging (at this seat) stayed fairly well central as a result, despite the seat being closer to the right speaker. Moving to listening position C, the lead vocal did tend to move toward the left speaker (just as it does in a typical non-crossed symmetrical speaker setup) though perhaps to a lesser degree. I did not listen from point B although Hugh indicated that he heard the vocalist closer to the centre than I did from point C.
To clarify, I agree with Steve that MS can help even out the bass around the room by avoiding positions where particular bass frequencies (under 200Hz) suffer peaks or nulls as a result of interaction with the room. However, the improved mids and highs are a result of crossing the speakers in front of the listening position rather than the actual speaker locations, and crossing the speakers is necessary to overcome the problems that would otherwise occur from an MS setup due to the speakers being at different distances from the listener.
So, if you acknowledge crossing the speakers as an MS concept (rather than something that can be done independently), then yes, I agree that MS can provide benefits in the bass, mids and highs!
Hello,
Just a few points here. It's nice to have some feedback from another listener on how things sound. It is very valuable to me as I try to tweak Hugh's setup. With an unfamiliar system and room, it's hard to get it right the first time, especially after an afternoon room cleanup on a hot sweaty day. My MS experience is limited, for sure, and will likely always remain so.
First off, the above drawing is incorrect in the placement of the speakers! The right speaker is about 5 inches farther out into the room than the left speaker. The right speaker was the "anchor" speaker, and the left speaker was moved out only until it matched the sound pressure of the right speaker. There is a huge imbalance in Hugh's room with the half wall separating the office space from the main room. This makes the left side of the room much much larger than the right side, and makes the left speaker input a lot more sound pressure to fill the office space. In short, it's a lot more difficult.
The drawing does have the listening spots about as I remember them, although I remember the single chair as being in the middle of the two speakers, not off to the side as in the drawing. The spot over to the left, the B spot, is next to the half wall of the office. I've never sat there to listen. I think this is a crummy spot as the sound will bounce off that wall into the ear quite noticeably. It's preferable to sit a couple feet away from any wall or reflecting surface.
I think the relative spacing of the speakers and the set up spot is correct as I think that's about how I had things when I did the setup. Both speakers are about 3 feet in from sidewalls of the room.
The set up is done along the short wall in Hugh's room. However the short wall is not much shorter than the long wall, so I thought it would be quite doable. The long wall would have been better, but was not possible. Short walls make things more difficult as you can get some reflections off the sidewalls that can muck things up a bit.
Lastly, NO, "crossing" the speakers is not an explicit MS concept. The MS concepts are to set the speakers in the small "decoupled" zone, and equal sound pressure into the room from each speaker. However, in order to do the procedure, the speakers are toed in a lot during the listening process, and then left that way. If you wish to consider this as part of the concept, okay. But, you can't just do an extreme toe-in and think you've done part of Master Set.
Steve
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No you can't use a single tone. You need to play all the bass tones so you can dial the speaker position to avoid exciting room modes. I think that the Cowgirl track doesn't have enough bass tones, but the recording is so good that it is still very useful. I want to make a recording of sampled acoustic bass specifically for the purpose of tuning the speaker position, with precisely matched dynamics and a chromatic scale from 40-200Hz, plus tonal patterns and some two note chords. In time....
Most common bass instruments only play down to 40Hz. Top of bass range is considered to be 300Hz, but rare for serious modes to occur above 200Hz. Acoustic bass recording has a lot of texture that helps to hear the quality of the tone, not just the boominess. Only the first two choruses of the song are useful, after that the background vocals start singing in stereo so the illusion of music coming from one speaker is lessened. The bass playing is very steady and flat dynamically. You will hear loud notes that sound like he is accenting a note, but he is not, it is your room interpreting the music incorrectly for you. It is a useful track, but annoying after 300 times.
I found a used copy of the song on Amazon.com for a few bucks. It arrived scratched to hell and would not rip to my hard drive without dropouts. I found that I can play it in my CDP with minimal glitches. It is on a CD by Rob Wasserman called Duets (http://www.amazon.com/Duets-Rob-Wasserman/dp/B000008CIY).
(http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/26/70/05e24310fca04d12a5319010.L._AA240_.jpg)
I am moving my speakers back to the short wall tomorrow. Will do the MS again during the week. I also hope to measure the room response.
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But, you can't just do an extreme toe-in and think you've done part of Master Set.
Steve
But can you do Master Set and without having the speakers toed in further than the baffles being perpendicular to your ears? From being at Hugh's place Saturday morning, the toe-in Hugh has, relative to his chair(s) would IMO make MS unsuitable for my Maggies.
Regards,
Andy
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Hi Andy,
From what I gather if I understand various comments there is no prescribed position that MS dictates, its where the speakers end up sounding best and decoupled to the room after using the procedure of MS.
If your speakers do not sound good toed in I suspect you will not end up in that position if the set up of MS is followed. There is no pre determined position or angling, its where it ends up sounds best IF you want to use this set up method.
I know in Hughs room it sounds better when I also heard it, maybe the top end gets a little compromised but nothing is going to be perfect.
Do the more experienced ones think this sounds right?
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Hi Andy,
From what I gather if I understand various comments there is no prescribed position that MS dictates, its where the speakers end up sounding best and decoupled to the room after using the procedure of MS.
If your speakers do not sound good toed in I suspect you will not end up in that position if the set up of MS is followed. There is no pre determined position or angling, its where it ends up sounds best IF you want to use this set up method.
I know in Hughs room it sounds better when I also heard it, maybe the top end gets a little compromised but nothing is going to be perfect.
Do the more experienced ones think this sounds right?
Yes, pretty much.
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No you can't use a single tone. You need to play all the bass tones so you can dial the speaker position to avoid exciting room modes. I think that the Cowgirl track doesn't have enough bass tones, but the recording is so good that it is still very useful. I want to make a recording of sampled acoustic bass specifically for the purpose of tuning the speaker position, with precisely matched dynamics and a chromatic scale from 40-200Hz, plus tonal patterns and some two note chords. In time....
Most common bass instruments only play down to 40Hz. Top of bass range is considered to be 300Hz, but rare for serious modes to occur above 200Hz. Acoustic bass recording has a lot of texture that helps to hear the quality of the tone, not just the boominess. Only the first two choruses of the song are useful, after that the background vocals start singing in stereo so the illusion of music coming from one speaker is lessened. The bass playing is very steady and flat dynamically. You will hear loud notes that sound like he is accenting a note, but he is not, it is your room interpreting the music incorrectly for you. It is a useful track, but annoying after 300 times.
I found a used copy of the song on Amazon.com for a few bucks. It arrived scratched to hell and would not rip to my hard drive without dropouts. I found that I can play it in my CDP with minimal glitches. It is on a CD by Rob Wasserman called Duets (http://www.amazon.com/Duets-Rob-Wasserman/dp/B000008CIY).
(http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/26/70/05e24310fca04d12a5319010.L._AA240_.jpg)
I am moving my speakers back to the short wall tomorrow. Will do the MS again during the week. I also hope to measure the room response.
Rich,
You sure are ambitious!!!! Your comments on the bass line in Ballad are correct. I found it easiest to hear the bass line in the first two verses, and then it got harder so I just either set the player on repeat or just go back to the start. After listening to this short bit of music you can get tone deaf after awhile and you just have to stop.
The Duets cd is the other disc besides Famous Blue Raincoat 20th Anniversary to have Ballad of a Runaway Horse. The disc Trios does not, although it has been said incorrectly that it does.
Good luck with your next Master Set. Actually by doing it so many times you do get a bit more familiar with what you need to listen to/for. It's hard to pick up a couple years of experience by doing something once, and not really knowing if you got it right.
Steve
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But, you can't just do an extreme toe-in and think you've done part of Master Set.
Steve
But can you do Master Set and without having the speakers toed in further than the baffles being perpendicular to your ears? From being at Hugh's place Saturday morning, the toe-in Hugh has, relative to his chair(s) would IMO make MS unsuitable for my Maggies.
Regards,
Andy
Hi Andy,
You can do MS if you can find the de-coupled zone, and thus with both speakers playing only hear the sound of one speaker. I don't know if there is a minimum/mazimum toe in needed to do this. I do not know if Master Set has ever been attempted with Magneplanars.
Next chance I have to speak with Rod Tomsen I will ask him about this. But that will be awhile.
Steve
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... the above drawing is incorrect in the placement of the speakers! The right speaker is about 5 inches farther out into the room than the left speaker.
Sorry Steve, when I got home I couldn't remember which speaker was the one further forward ... 50/50 odds and I still got it wrong, good thing I'm not a gambler. :D
...
The drawing does have the listening spots about as I remember them, although I remember the single chair as being in the middle of the two speakers, not off to the side as in the drawing....
From memory, the left arm of the chair was central between the speakers, placing the listener's head a little to the right of centre.
...
Lastly, NO, "crossing" the speakers is not an explicit MS concept.... However, in order to do the procedure, the speakers are toed in a lot during the listening process, and then left that way.....
Yep, if the listener leaves the listening seat at the apex of the triangle where the speakers were toed in to point at during setup, then the speakers will be pointed at the listener rather than crossed in front of the listener. In Hugh's case, the listening seat is further back than this which causes the speakers to be crossed in front of him, thus producing a more off-axis setup with even less side wall reflections etc etc.
... But, you can't just do an extreme toe-in and think you've done part of Master Set.
Exactly! My room is an example of this. The speakers are toed-in to point directly at the listener, and therefore I get the benefits of reduced sidewall reflections, etc etc. But, I have not done MS yet and doing so may potentially improve bass response in the room due to the MS derived speaker locations.
In a nutshell:
MS speaker locations => more even and efficient loading of bass in the room.
Aggressive toe-in => reduced sidewall reflections (less time smear distortion, better focus and inner detail etc etc)
This is why I keep highlighting the fact that MS can improve response below 200Hz ONLY as these are the only frequencies that are affected by a rooms dimensions. It is the aggressive toe-in that has the potential to improve mids and highs, and this is the reason that I said that "MS can improve bass, mids and highs IF you assume aggressive toe-in to be an integrated component of MS (rather than a separate procedure)".
Note that the toe-in benefits will be largely room and speaker dependent.
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Steve, Darren,
Do you consider that with some sound absorbent material on the walls - such as heavy curtains, or a large woven rug - we could then less aggressively toe in the speakers for the same benefits?
It seems to me that the principle drawback with most listening rooms is the flat, highly reflective wall left and right......
Cheers,
Hugh
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Steve, Darren,
Do you consider that with some sound absorbent material on the walls - such as heavy curtains, or a large woven rug - we could then less aggressively toe in the speakers for the same benefits?
It seems to me that the principle drawback with most listening rooms is the flat, highly reflective wall left and right......
Cheers,
Hugh
If you contemplate my room, Hugh, you'll recall that, although I have solid masonry walls, I have a large-dimension 1" thick cork "sculpture" on one long wall and some wall hangings on the other. These removed the "flutter echo" that I experienced previously but they also damp the "first reflection points" on the side walls. :thumb:
IMO, this is all you need to do - ie. you may not have to cover the whole of each side wall. :D
Then again, having attended my first concert at the spectacular Melbourne Recital Centre on Sunday evening (with its amazing sculpted plywood surfaces), maybe "bagged" masonry walls is in fact a good wall material, sonic-wise ... as it is not smooth like plasterboard? :o
Regards,
Andy
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Steve, Darren,
Do you consider that with some sound absorbent material on the walls - such as heavy curtains, or a large woven rug - we could then less aggressively toe in the speakers for the same benefits?
It seems to me that the principle drawback with most listening rooms is the flat, highly reflective wall left and right......
Cheers,
Hugh
Hugh,
I don't think you have any sidewall reflection issues. The speakers are 3 feet from the nearest sidewall. The office wall is a half wall with a couch in front of most of it. The other wall has a cabinet and 2 doors in it, then there is just stuff stacked against the clothes cabinet. If you think you have a sidewall issue just open one or both doors (the ones that open into the bedrooms) and listen for any difference. You will always get some bounce back off the wall when sitting on the couch unless the couch is moved out from the wall. You won't notice this unless you move your head while listening. And if you have music on and the door to your office open, it will bounce the sound quite a bit, so serious listening needs that door closed.
Darren's description of what sidewall reflections do to the sound image is correct. In a decent MS, which you now have, you shouldn't hear any of that. And I've not heard anything to make me think you have any sidewall issues.
But one reason MS is best when set up on the long wall is that it is easier to get away from sidewall reflections. Even when they exist they arrive at the ear too late for the brain to recognize them. This is much more of an issue if speakers are on short wall and listener sits faraway. In fact there is no way to not have them affect sound without serious treatments on those walls. But it's a tricky issue as absorptive materials usually just suck out the upper frequencies as the bass wavelengths are just too long to be affected. The result is the "dead room" syndrome.
Hugh, in your room the area of most reflection is the bare wood floor where the speakers sit.
Darren,
I figured you just couldn't quite remember which speaker was more out into the room.
Perhaps the easy chair has been slightly moved to allow for side by side listening in the metal chair. Doesn't matter.
It was a nice drawing.
Break
Oh, and just one more thing. The area of brain recognition of reflected sounds is interesting. Earlier I referred to the AES 1984 study about sounds arriving 5 ms after the initial sound being recognized as direct sounds by the brain. I am not aware of any study that has been made about how long a time delay the brain will recognize a reflected sound while listening to music. Master Set is designed to minimize as much sidewall reflections as possible.
Steve
PS. I just read the post Andy wrote while I wrote. Well, you can't really cover the bedroom doors unless you put on some hanging thing, which might not be a bad idea. And there isn't all that much area above the couch.
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Hugh,
Andy has pretty well summed it up in the post above (I believe that it is generally considered that a reflection delayed by 20ms+ is considered by the brain to be an echo whereas those under 20ms are interpreted as part of the same sound but spread over time...ie. the time smear I referred to in posts above).
The speakers are crossed so far in front of the listener that the side walls are significantly off-axis from the speaker and any reflections will be much weaker as a result. Typically, we are concerned with reflections from the right speaker off the right wall and from the left speaker off the left wall. However, in your setup, the aggressive toe-in actually reverses this and you may hear reflections off each wall from the opposing speaker. The couch doesn't extend as high as your ears when seated so it will not be doing too much to absorb the primary reflection. For this reason it may be worth experimenting with something absorptive at ear height on each side wall. Rest a mirror panel against the side wall, or have someone move it along the side wall until you see the speaker in the mirror (when seated in your listening seat). This is the primary side wall reflection point that you need to treat. As a temporary test you could use a heavy rug draped over your office counter top that covers the wall between the counter top and the couch. On the other side, if the bedroom door happens to be where the first reflection point is, simply open the door as Steve suggested to remove this reflection. You may then get a delayed reflection that has bounced around the bedrrom walls before coming back out but this will be reduced in strength as a result and will be delayed beyond the 20ms and simply add to the reverberant field rather than smear the direct signal from the speaker.
The speakers were sounding nicely focussed so I don't think I would play around with the toe-in after treating the side wall reflections.
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Duplicate post deleted
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Interesting tool:
http://www.hunecke.de/en/calculators/loudspeakers.html
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Interesting tool:
http://www.hunecke.de/en/calculators/loudspeakers.html
This is about as far away from Master Set as it gets.
BTW, there are also internet calculators for speaker crossover networks. Would you want a speaker designed with one?
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Interesting tool:
http://www.hunecke.de/en/calculators/loudspeakers.html
This is about as far away from Master Set as it gets.
BTW, there are also internet calculators for speaker crossover networks. Would you want a speaker designed with one?
The tool allows you to enter your room dimensions and quickly see how bass response changes by moving the speakers.
Did you try it with your room dimensions?
My in room measurements confirm the tool's results.
Many speaker designers use computer crossover design tools as a starting point, and then fine tune the design.
IMO, until you produce some measurements verifying that your Master Set has smoothed out/optimized bass response below 300Hz,
your results may just be a subjective reaction to a pleasant frequency response coloration. 8)
PS- I see you joined REG's forum. Did you look at his Harbeth M40 set-up? It's about as far away from Master Set as it gets.
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Interesting tool:
http://www.hunecke.de/en/calculators/loudspeakers.html
This is about as far away from Master Set as it gets.
BTW, there are also internet calculators for speaker crossover networks. Would you want a speaker designed with one?
The tool allows you to enter your room dimensions and quickly see how bass response changes by moving the speakers.
Did you try it with your room dimensions?
My in room measurements confirm the tool's results.
Many speaker designers use computer crossover design tools as a starting point, and then fine tune the design.
IMO, until you produce some measurements verifying that your Master Set has smoothed out/optimized bass response below 300Hz,
your results may just be a subjective reaction to a pleasant frequency response coloration. 8)
PS- I see you joined REG's forum. Did you look at his Harbeth M40 set-up? It's about as far away from Master Set as it gets.
Ya, I joined REG's forum in case someone wanted to ask about Master Set. Not much activity, which isn't surprising.
REG has been a big Harbeth supporter for a long time. I used Harbeth's exlusively in the 80's and 90's and always liked them.
I've also read some of his articles and they are good.
I think you may have misunderstood my comments on MS and bass, or else I did not explain well enough. One is moving the one speaker within a small window of a few inches trying to find a point or two of smoothest bass. It's subjective as it is done by ear. One is not changing anything really, just finding to find a small point of improvement that can hopefully be matched in the other speaker.
You will likely have a long wait for any measurement data. The idea is to just do it all by ear and keep it simple. This doesn't appeal to a lot of folks.
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Attention Melbourne area Aksafiles:
I have tweaked and reset Hugh's Master Set, and I think it's quite a bit better than previous. I think it's now much closer to the professional Master Sets that I have heard at RMAF. There's likely still room for small improvements, but we were down to pretty small adjustments the other evening, and I think we are within the big millimeter for now!
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It's DAMN good, folks. :drool:
Steve did a great job bringing US knowhow to Oz, and I salute his efforts! :thankyou:
Laurie, Darren, Theo, Russ, you guys gotta hear this! :bounce:
Marty has given it the thumbs up, loves it, but is limited by his own domestic setting, all too often a factor.
I'll have Todd Johnson from Canada here in a few days, too.
Cheers,
Hugh
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Now that things have somewhat died down here, time for some catch up.
DIY Master Set is limited and difficult. This is not Professional Master Set, as done by those folks certified from Sumiko and the Sumiko seminars. As such, DIY Master Set is muchly limited. A visit to a store or person with a professional MS set is highly valuable, and I cannot emphasize this enough.
I've mentioned numerous tips, etc. during the course of this thread, but they are all scattered out. Based on my experiences in the past week, I can do a quick summary of little tips.
If you have difficulty finding a bass smoothing point, just set the anchor speaker somewhere is the "decoupled-isolated" zone. Matching with the second speaker will be difficult as there is now no bass smoothing point to find. But, you can get something of a match by trying to find the point where the sound stays stable in the middle when you move around the room. Or you can just sit off to the right, maybe even in line with the right speaker and try to set the second speaker so the voice in the BoaRH song is centered. Just remember that when you move in the room and the voice moves with you, you DON'T have matched speakers. A good point to start on this is to bring the second speaker out even with the anchor speaker, as in a conventional set, listen, look at the room, and move in small increments one way for an inch or two and listen for changes. If nothing works then move speaker in opposite direction from the beginning point. IF your room is fairly symettrical, you should find something within that range. You can fine adjust a "matching point" here with some very small toe adjustments or lateral movements, 1 or 2 mm only at a time. BE patient and diligent.
Now on to some questions and things that came up recently that I may/may not have answered well.
Toe in and lateral movements: I previously did not do them in the matching speaker set, but now I do, especially toe adjustments.
Rake angle: This is the MS term for tipping up the front of the speaker. This will spread the distribution of sound out more evenly into the room and lessen any beaming effect that is stronger at the on-axis intersection point. This is a final adjustment after everything else is done. Keep it to no more than 5 degrees up, less is a little better. It really can only be done if you have adjustable spikes under the speaker or stand.
Some terms: Evenness of frequency distribution came up. This was new to me. I had considered this more of a function of the speaker off axis response curves more than anything. BUT, if you get a real good Master Set with a good stable stereo image, there certainly is an evenness of frequency distribution. It's kind of a result of the set.
Distance of listener to speaker as a determining factor: This is a primary consideration in conventional setups. However, since there are two speakers and two ears, there is never equidistant measurement here. The best that can be done is two equal pairs, and that exists at only one single point. Any slight movement from that point, and there are 4 different distances from listener to speakers. However, in general, if you just sit exactly in the middle of the two speakers the stereo image does center up pretty well, but off this axis the sound moves when you move.
With MS you match the two speakers to each other in the room and the distance of listener to the speaker becomes inconsequential. But only when they are matched, otherwise it is like everyone knows, a big factor.
Some other things: The question came up about having the speakers farther out into the room and trying to match them ala MS. I experimented with this last week, and I couldn't do it. I'll just leave it at that as otherwise I just go into the MS mumbo-jumbo.
Sidewall reflection: MS is a close to the rear wall with extreme toe in set. Simple geometry will tell you about sidewall reflection points in the room. Setting up along the long wall of the room and well away from the side wall(s) of the room tends to keep sidewall reflections to a minimum. Sure they still may be there. But the sound may arrive too late to be of much consequence.
Small movements: I've written lots on keeping it small. Last week all my final adjustments were of the 1mm kind. Little movement can make big differences, but not all movements make changes. This all requires a lot of patience. Other setup methods do not emphasize these smallish movements.
Lastly, I have found Master Set to be the best musical playback sound that I have experienced. This is what has driven me to learn, as best I can, how to do it. If you think MS is just all mumbo jumbo nonsense, well, nothing says you have to pursue it, even as an adventure. It does only require just your time and interest, and patience. Other than that it's all free, but you do have to have all three.
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Hello Steve,
Your entire presentation of MS makes complete sense to me; besides, measurement equipment and the like always have their own drawbacks and all try to work in tandem to satisfy your ears. So why not let the ear be the judge in the first place.
Regardless, I have read more than I can absorb, and it's possible this may have been asked, but I will give it a shot. I did not notice any mention of running a mono signal, perhaps the preamp (if available) can be switched to mono, will this help?
Also, I have an older Stereo Review CD that has bass tones from I think 200hz to 15hz with the announcer actually announcing the different increments every 10 or 20 hz, can this be used?
One last question; did you and Hugh change listening positions up and down in addition to the obvious side to side movement of your listening position?
Thank you,
Haron
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Steve
I have followed this thread closely. One thing that you have not mentioned in a lot of detail is the distance between speakers. How do you select the optimum spread? (Or is there an optimum spread?) How do you know when the speakers are too widely spaced or not far enough apart?
Thanks
Gary
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Hello Steve,
Your entire presentation of MS makes complete sense to me; besides, measurement equipment and the like always have their own drawbacks and all try to work in tandem to satisfy your ears. So why not let the ear be the judge in the first place.
Regardless, I have read more than I can absorb, and it's possible this may have been asked, but I will give it a shot. I did not notice any mention of running a mono signal, perhaps the preamp (if available) can be switched to mono, will this help?
Also, I have an older Stereo Review CD that has bass tones from I think 200hz to 15hz with the announcer actually announcing the different increments every 10 or 20 hz, can this be used?
One last question; did you and Hugh change listening positions up and down in addition to the obvious side to side movement of your listening position?
Thank you,
Haron
Haron,
The bass line on BoaRH is sufficient for doing what needs doing with MS. While there are not that many bass notes, per se, there is a variety in how they come out to where you can get a small amount of smoothing in most cases if you are persistent.
Well, Hugh and I did not really do any up and down changes in positioning, per se. However, Hugh is a fair bit taller than me, so we listened at different heights. In fact, after doing the set, I did happen to notice that the sound while one stood up was much like that while being seated.
I think Hugh's set could be a bit better if we could find a way to tip up the speaker. The tweeter level of the speaker is a bit low, as the speaker is only 36 inches tall. But there's really no way to accomplish this at the moment.
Steve
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Steve
I have followed this thread closely. One thing that you have not mentioned in a lot of detail is the distance between speakers. How do you select the optimum spread? (Or is there an optimum spread?) How do you know when the speakers are too widely spaced or not far enough apart?
Thanks
Gary
Gary,
When you start, the idea is to spread the speakers as far apart as reasonable in the room, and have a very solid mono center image, like adjusting the lenses of binoculars to your head. The farther apart you can have the speakers and still keep the voice centered will give the widest stereo image. It's mostly determined by the room dimensions. Keep in mind that it's critical to keep the speakers well away from the sidewalls.
You just adjust and adapt the spacing as the room allows.
Steve
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Steve
Thanks. Your posts have been most helpful. FYI. . . My room is 14.5'x24'. Given the length of the long wall, it is easy to keep them far apart (approx 12') and 6' away from the side walls.
Gary
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Steve
Thanks. Your posts have been most helpful. FYI. . . My room is 14.5'x24'. Given the length of the long wall, it is easy to keep them far apart (approx 12') and 6' away from the side walls.
Gary
Gary,
That's a nicely dimensioned room. You should be able to set up in a 12 foot triangle. Should be fabulous.
Steve
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Hi Steve,
I really appreciate your MS efforts. Since I have applied the MS approach of speaker alignment the sound from my VSonics is about as good as it gets in my room. If the room was cleared of the unusually large number of furniture pieces the bass would be much more dynamic. But the bass absorbing properties of the room room is more than overcome by the woofer. Recently, Hugh and I tested my VSonics alongside his in his room and there was nothing much between them if anything at all. The bass produced by both pairs of speakers was identical, much more than in my room.
When designing the VSonics the height of the tweeter was set after measuring the height of the ears from the floor of the average listener between 5' to 6' (1.5 meters to 1.85 meters tall) seated in/on the average couch etc while still retaining the vital internal dimensions. In the case of my wife who is a shorty, the tweeters fire over her head unless she sits on a stack of phone books. And I ain't gonna chop a few inches off the speakers to suit her! The VSonics can be raised by adding an additional plynth/s or standing them on spikes if desired. Now dealing with one who is constantly living in the rarefied atmosphere of great altitude it is suggested that the VSonics could be placed on a Greek column. There is usually a solution to suit every situation. It's all in the fine tuning to suit a particular situation!
Laurie
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ahhh, but when it comes to Greek columns , Doric, Ionic or Corinthian?
:shh:
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Theo,
I was thinking Jeffersonian? :thumb: See below for features :lol:
Palladian design e.g. central core, symmetrical wings
Main floor slightly elevated above ground level
Red brick construction
White painted columns and trim
Octagons and octagonal forms
Chinese railings
Columns using Greek orders e.g. Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian
Classical moldings
Hugh
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Hugh,
real nice ..... :scratch: if you are planning living all alone that is :nono:
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Don't like the way this thread is going. It will be too hard if not impossible for software to calculate all the possibilities of the sonic properties of Greek columns. And I don't like the idea of tuning a column by hand, chipping a bit off here and there to tune the things to the room. Moving them around with speakers on top to get the MS positioning correct, nah! Must be a better idea than using Greek columns.
Laurie.
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Steve,
Thank you for your prompt reply, this has been fun experimenting, hope to hit the sweet spot one of these days as I have so much to learn.
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Laurie, Theo,
We may need to move away from Greek columns.
Geek columns, anyone? :tempted:
Hugh
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Laurie, Theo,
I can see the design compromises here. Hmmm. We may need to move away from Greek columns.
Geek columns, anyone? :tempted:
Hugh
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Maybe a couple of these will help with easy adjustment as well
but its probably overshooting the mark
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2009/04/trojan_xbox1.jpg
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ooh,
I recon you could hide a woofer or two in one of those, no worries!
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Im stopping now
this thread is in danger of derailing to silliness :lol:
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Hi Steve,
I really appreciate your MS efforts. Since I have applied the MS approach of speaker alignment the sound from my VSonics is about as good as it gets in my room. If the room was cleared of the unusually large number of furniture pieces the bass would be much more dynamic. But the bass absorbing properties of the room room is more than overcome by the woofer. Recently, Hugh and I tested my VSonics alongside his in his room and there was nothing much between them if anything at all. The bass produced by both pairs of speakers was identical, much more than in my room.
When designing the VSonics the height of the tweeter was set after measuring the height of the ears from the floor of the average listener between 5' to 6' (1.5 meters to 1.85 meters tall) seated in/on the average couch etc while still retaining the vital internal dimensions. In the case of my wife who is a shorty, the tweeters fire over her head unless she sits on a stack of phone books. And I ain't gonna chop a few inches off the speakers to suit her! The VSonics can be raised by adding an additional plynth/s or standing them on spikes if desired. Now dealing with one who is constantly living in the rarefied atmosphere of great altitude it is suggested that the VSonics could be placed on a Greek column. There is usually a solution to suit every situation. It's all in the fine tuning to suit a particular situation!
Laurie
Laurie,
You should be quite surprised and pleased when you next visit Hugh. It's quite a bit better than before. You should notice the bass improvement immediately, and then there is everything else too.
I'll stay away from the Greek columns!!!!!!
Steve
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Steve,
I hope to hear the speaker placement at Hugh's very soon. I'm really looking forward to the experience.
Yesterday I caught the MS bug again and had a go at the speaker placement. The bass is much better than before, cleaner overall and the slam of a kick drum really punches. It's the double bass that really shines now. Particularly the natural resonance sound of the instrument is more apparent along with note decay which hangs on seemingly for ever 'till damped by the muso. With pipe organ notes under about 80hz (woofer off) the sound (resonance??) of the pipe apart from the actual note can be heard as well as the note. I would say that the listener is now receiving the notes without (or reduced) much timing delay which used not to be the case. Room reflections appear to be less of an influencing factor, hence a cleaner and more detailed sound overall. Yesterday evening with the window drapes closed the sound changed being even more detailed and precise. It goes to show just how much reflections (from 3 glass windows down one side wall and two more or less behind the speakers) influence the imaging. I suppose all the aligning took less than an hour.
For all you instrument reliant buffs a friend will be coming over in a few weeks with his latest and greatest room analysis gear to see what really goes on whith the Master Set alignment process. I'll report the findings.
Laurie
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Laurie,
I am very much looking forward to your friends findings, I find this whole thing to be very interesting. I played around with my speakers and tried to follow some of the instructions, but did not go about it as Steve has prescribed. Regardless, I ended up with a very good compromise, but saving the Master Set for when I have the time and of course able to live with speakers almost in the middle of the living room.
Haron
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Laurie,
I am very much looking forward to your friends findings, I find this whole thing to be very interesting. I played around with my speakers and tried to follow some of the instructions, but did not go about it as Steve has prescribed. Regardless, I ended up with a very good compromise, but saving the Master Set for when I have the time and of course able to live with speakers almost in the middle of the living room.
Haron
You really have to go about it step by step as described. I have described a couple of shortcuts that can be done during the process, but I think it best to go through things the long way when you first attempt to do MS. It's all a learning process as you go about doing it.
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Steve,
I hope to hear the speaker placement at Hugh's very soon. I'm really looking forward to the experience.
Yesterday I caught the MS bug again and had a go at the speaker placement. The bass is much better than before, cleaner overall and the slam of a kick drum really punches. It's the double bass that really shines now. Particularly the natural resonance sound of the instrument is more apparent along with note decay which hangs on seemingly for ever 'till damped by the muso. With pipe organ notes under about 80hz (woofer off) the sound (resonance??) of the pipe apart from the actual note can be heard as well as the note. I would say that the listener is now receiving the notes without (or reduced) much timing delay which used not to be the case. Room reflections appear to be less of an influencing factor, hence a cleaner and more detailed sound overall. Yesterday evening with the window drapes closed the sound changed being even more detailed and precise. It goes to show just how much reflections (from 3 glass windows down one side wall and two more or less behind the speakers) influence the imaging. I suppose all the aligning took less than an hour.
For all you instrument reliant buffs a friend will be coming over in a few weeks with his latest and greatest room analysis gear to see what really goes on whith the Master Set alignment process. I'll report the findings.
Laurie
Laurie,
Are you getting an even sound when you move around your room? When you have a matched setting, you have real eveness of sound in the room.
Glass windows like drapes for music!!!
One thing that I noticed when I heard MS for the very first time at RMAF 2007 was the very clean low bass from the VA Mozart speakers. These just have a pair of 5 inch poly drivers for bass. The bass was nearly as good as that from the VA Mahlers that have a pair of Eton 11 inch woofers for bass. There was also a REL subwoofer in the room. But the bass never really changed when the sub would get turned off. Everyone always wanted to compare bass with the sub on and off, as no one thought the 5 inch drivers could make such good low bass.
Anyway, with a MS the speakers are quite close in to rear wall, and that always does help the bass.
Steve
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Steve,
Yes, the sound has about the same intensity anywhere in the room now, unless one is very close to the speakers, not the usual listening position. I played an old mono vinyl to check for even sound.
I have experienced over the years the effects of hard reflective and soft damped surfaces particularly side and end walls have on reproduced music. But I have found that when the speakers are aligned using MS any influence on the sound appears to become more apparent. And when an anomaly is identified it can in most cases be dealt with by one means or another. ie:- covering a reflective surface or removing some covering etc. I have also found that by trying to balance the reflective properties (left and right sides of a room) will assist in make the MS process easier. After all the MS speaker alignment process is a balancing act in a room full of many variables.
I have found that the bass never really changes with the woofer off, the intensity just diminishes. But having said that, in my situation with all the stuff in the room the bass is absorbed and the woofer just makes more bass. However, a considering the laws of physics a 12" driver will push more air than a 8" driver. In my case the woofer is tuned as a bass extender to the VSonics to round out the bottom end sound. A worked over 400W @ 8 ohms woofer amps provides the variable grunt. So I suppose that I can overcome limited bass dynamics on some CD's as well as a dead room.
As a result of the MS process the speakers are as close to the wall as possible, nearly hard against a pair of built in 35 YO KEF transmissionlines which are nearly the size of a small fridge.
Laurie
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here's another way:
http://www.higherfi.com/speaker_position.htm
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Anyway, with a MS the speakers are quite close to the front wall ...
Steve
Aah, thanks for telling us that, Steve. :D I had surmised that was the case from seeing Hugh's MS setup but no previous MS post from anyone had actually come out and said that! :D
In which case, MS is not for dipoles - which like quite a lot of distance from the front wall, because of the back-wave reflection. This is certainly the case for Maggies and electrostats ... and I would think for cone-based dipoles like Orions/NaOs also.
Regards,
Andy
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here's another way:
http://www.higherfi.com/speaker_position.htm
Like a lot of ways of putting speakers in a room, this one will get you a "sweet spot" of sound, emphasis on spot. Just be sure to sit perfectly still, as the sound is not evenly distributed in the room.
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here's another way:
http://www.higherfi.com/speaker_position.htm
Like a lot of ways of putting speakers in a room, this one will get you a "sweet spot" of sound, emphasis on spot. Just be sure to sit perfectly still, as the sound is not evenly distributed in the room.
It's amazing how you can comment on methods you haven't tried.
The "sweet spot" size will depend on the speakers being used. Better off axis response, the larger the sweet spot.
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here's another way:
http://www.higherfi.com/speaker_position.htm
Like a lot of ways of putting speakers in a room, this one will get you a "sweet spot" of sound, emphasis on spot. Just be sure to sit perfectly still, as the sound is not evenly distributed in the room.
It's amazing how you can comment on methods you haven't tried.
The "sweet spot" size will depend on the speakers being used. Better off axis response, the larger the sweet spot.
Then perhaps you should restrict your comments to Master Set, as that is the topic of this thread.
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Anyway, with a MS the speakers are quite close to the front wall ...
Steve
Aah, thanks for telling us that, Steve. :D I had surmised that was the case from seeing Hugh's MS setup but no previous MS post from anyone had actually come out and said that! :D
In which case, MS is not for dipoles - which like quite a lot of distance from the front wall, because of the back-wave reflection. This is certainly the case for Maggies and electrostats ... and I would think for cone-based dipoles like Orions/NaOs also.
Regards,
Andy
Just surmising, but I think MS would work fairly well with and Orion. Planars and electrostats are a different matter entirely. Given that most Master Sets are done by a few Sumiko dealers, and Sumiko doesn't carry anything other than standard box speakers............................... ..
The MS steps are easily written, but difficult to carry out. This is certainly proved so in my own experiences. I just try to get as close as I can. Having heard a professional MS, MS gives the most realistic electronic playback 2 channel experience I have heard.
Steve
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i read this thread like almost all threads here under Aspen with interest My OB speakers are however big and very heavy on top of a not so glide-able carpet over a marble floor.
to do the master alignment sounds cumber some
But ( does coincidence really exists? I met this thread about Teflon feet: http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=69497.0
(http://herbiesaudiolab.home.att.net/littlgl2.jpg)
Except that Herbies applications do work, they wil make adjusting the speakers sooo much easier.
I still must do it, but now i have hope of accomplishment
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Kyrill,
VERY good idea!!
The ideal solution is to be able to move the speaker around AS YOU ARE SEATED, LISTENING. Audio memory is so transitory that immediate reinforcement is needed here; pulling a few strings would give you that.
It should not take too much imagination to rig up three pulleys and four strings to attach to the speaker pucks, and if they are teflon coated, then they will be almost as easy to move around on carpet as they are on timber, teflon is so slippery.
If the carpet is too deep, then place the speaker on a platform of cardboard sheet, and move it around with minimal friction.
The only tricky bit is the pulleys; but if you attach them to heavy furniture legs it should be OK.
Cheers,
Hugh
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Some light reading on the topic of speaker placement, rooms etc.
http://www.audioperfectionist.com/PDF%20files/journal2rh.pdf
The author is mainly talking about HTX Systems but some valuable hints.
Cheers,
Ian
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Hi, I've been reading and planning to try this for a short while now. My setup makes moving speakers a bit tedious as the amps are in the basement and the speaker cables come up through the floor. But with some temporary re-arranging I'd spend an afternoon or month for better sound anytime. :thumb: Just wondering if I'll be able to hear Master Set speakers at RMAF this October? :drool: If so I'll get lots of pix and ask too many questions aa If anyone else is going to be there we could pool resources and maybe get even more insite. 8)
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It's kinda like learning to ride a bike. You get better at it with time and practice. You will learn so much about the importance of speaker placement, about your room, speakers, what's important to you. Your ears will improve by listening for the bass lumps, and by hearing how good your speakers can sound. I ended up not using it "by the book," but what I learned did improve my placement a lot. The textbook Master Set position was very fun and exciting. Sometimes I wish I could switch between two spots with the remote control button. :icon_lol:
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Hi, I've been reading and planning to try this for a short while now. My setup makes moving speakers a bit tedious as the amps are in the basement and the speaker cables come up through the floor. But with some temporary re-arranging I'd spend an afternoon or month for better sound anytime. :thumb: Just wondering if I'll be able to hear Master Set speakers at RMAF this October? :drool: If so I'll get lots of pix and ask too many questions aa If anyone else is going to be there we could pool resources and maybe get even more insite. 8)
Soundings is not listed as an exhibitor at RMAF in the exhibitor listings. However, the store is only a couple blocks east of the Marriott, and may be a better place to hear a Master Set.
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Are there any guidelines for speaker separation when performing Master Set? Hoe do I know if I have them too far apart or too close together?
Thanks
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Made a couple calls today. First to Sumiko. They were cordial but firm about needing to have or purchase on of their line to have MS done and would take my info if any dealers decides to take on outside work. I then asked abour RMAF and was told Soundings was not far away which I already knew from this thread. Next I spoke to Chris at Soundings. He said they are 3 blocks from the Marriott and decided to keep things where they are and have us show up there. I guess I'll be arriving home about the same time as the Sonus Fabors I'll be sucked into :o :nono: neeeding before I leave the mile-high city. :lol:
I'm feeling light headed already! :inlove:
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Are there any guidelines for speaker separation when performing Master Set? Hoe do I know if I have them too far apart or too close together?
Thanks
The first step in Master Set is to do the above. You move the speakers together or apart, as need be, to get the most solid mono image. You can do this either with the voice on BOARH or any mono recording. A lot depends on the room dimensions and the size of the equilateral triangle positioning that you start with. I've found it best to have the speakers closer together rather than farther apart if it's difficult to determine the best spacing.
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My speakers are currently not toed-in toward the listening position. I actually just straightened them from crossing in front my nose about a month ago. I am always set in an equalateral triangle. Currently they are 30" to the center from the side wall and 100" apart. When straight the image well and project a wider stage. I plan on bringing them in to 96" apart before toe-in during MS, which will lead to more side offset. Check my site for a better picture of what I'm up against/talking about. The room is 13.5' x 22'.
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Is MS a type of set up that tries to approximate near field listening,while done i n a considerably bigger sized room.
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Is MS a type of set up that tries to approximate near field listening,while done i n a considerably bigger sized room.
Not really, however the speakers will at first look that way. You can sit anywhere you like if it's perfectly done.
You can read up on it here: http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=64321.0
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My speakers are currently not toed-in toward the listening position. I actually just straightened them from crossing in front my nose about a month ago. I am always set in an equalateral triangle. Currently they are 30" to the center from the side wall and 100" apart. When straight the image well and project a wider stage. I plan on bringing them in to 96" apart before toe-in during MS, which will lead to more side offset. Check my site for a better picture of what I'm up against/talking about. The room is 13.5' x 22'.
I think it's best if you just visit Soundings when you go to Denver and have a look/listen.
Once you have a listen, you'll just want to have your speakers set up the same way.
Btw, nice work on the phones.
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Thanks Steve that's my plan. As for the phones, I'll be bringing my Grado HF-1's to RMAF for Can Jam :thumb:
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Hello,
Last weekend I attended the 6th Annual RMAF in Denver. I made the rounds at the Show and spent a considerable amount of time at Soundings. Rod had open house in the evenings, and it was a nice place to have a show break on Saturday afternoon. The store was not affected by the power outage that shut down the show for awhile, though the lights did flicker.
It was good to finally hear a professional Master Set in a nice listening room. The speakers were the Vienna Acoustics Die Musik's that Rod had at the show last year. These speakers have quite a few adjusting screws to get the fine tuning down perfect. After all the show sound and getting somewhat tone deaf by noon, it was really nice to hear distortion free music and relax.
I picked up Rod's latest "blurb" on Master Set, and there are some things I'd like to share here on this thread.
Master Set is an extension of the work done by Sumiko that they developed into MASTERS, an acronym for Modal Acoustic Simplified Training Electronic Retail Specialist.
Master Set works with the understanding that we hear sound based on a pressure change on our eardrums and NOT the distance we are from the speakers. The idea is to place both speakers so that each one pressurizes each of your ears with the exact same volume at the exact same time. When this is done, you have a single source of sound to the ears and the elimination of the small phase distortions from the two speakers being set so that the sound from each pressurizes each ear at slightly different times and volumes.
I also learned that I have been using the WRONG set up disc for the past year. The version of Ballad of a Runaway Horse on the Famous Blue Raincoat reissue is not the correct version of the song to use for Master Set. You want the version from Rob Wasserman's DUETS. I have just this morning re-done my Master Set with the correct set up disc and can confirm that it is much easier to hear the needed sounds, especially in the bass line. And when you move the second speaker out to match the anchor, the voice line really centers up well.
There is only one new addition I found in the setup steps, and that is at the very first, while setting the anchor speaker just turn the other speaker, the one against the wall, about 45 degrees away.
Oh, just one more thing. I have often been asked about Master Set with dipoles, electrostats, and the like. So I specifically asked Rod if he had done a Master Set on any of these types of speakers. And his answer was the his Third Master Set was on a pair of Martin-Logan electrostats. So, yes, Master Set does work with speakers other than forward firing cone speakers in a box.
Enjoy Your Master Set
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I also learned that I have been using the WRONG set up disc for the past year.
:duh:
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Gratuitous, cheap shot, JHM.
It was the same music, same artist, just a different recording.
Hugh
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Hi Steve,
I just scoured Amazon and did not find a Rob Wasserman disc titled "Duos". I did find one titled "Duets" and it has "Ballad of the Runaway Horse" on it. ASIN: B000025MUM.
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=22671)
Is this the disc you mean, or is there another?
Thanks,
Jake
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Hi Steve,
I just scoured Amazon and did not find a Rob Wasserman disc titled "Duos". I did find one titled "Duets" and it has "Ballad of the Runaway Horse" on it. ASIN: B000025MUM.
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=22671)
Is this the disc you mean, or is there another?
Thanks,
Jake
Yes, that's the one.
I've corrected my post.
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I also learned that I have been using the WRONG set up disc for the past year.
:duh:
So, what's your problem?????
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His head hurts from continually banging his hand on it.
(Disclaimer: feeble attempt at humor.)
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I also learned that I have been using the WRONG set up disc for the past year.
:duh:
So, what's your problem?????
(http://)
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I also learned that I have been using the WRONG set up disc for the past year.
:duh:
So, what's your problem?????
(http://)
Are you referring to me or to Master Set?
The Wasserman version of the song makes it easier to do the setup than the Famous Blue Raincoat version. "Wrong" was maybe an ill considered choice of a word.
If you are referring to Master Set, then it is YOU who is WRONG.
But this thread is not about arguing over the plausibility of Master Set, you can contact Sumiko directly or Soundings in Denver for that.
This thread is only for giving assistance to those who attempt to try to do it on their own.
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Hi Steve,
by "...turn the other speaker, the one against the wall, about 45 degrees away." do you mean "toed out" 45 degrees ?
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Hi Steve,
by "...turn the other speaker, the one against the wall, about 45 degrees away." do you mean "toed out" 45 degrees ?
Yes
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I spent a few hours over the Christmas holiday exploring the benefits of Master Set in my system and I think I came away more confused than convinced. But, as many have said, it takes a lot of patience and time to get it right. Don't think I'm there yet, but haven't given up yet either.
I do have one question... if striving to maintain an equilateral triangle, then why would you not move the first speaker toward you along the triangle angle rather than moving it out perpendicular to the long wall? Is it easier to hear the changes in the bass when moving perpendicular rather than directly toward the listening position? :scratch:
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I spent a few hours over the Christmas holiday exploring the benefits of Master Set in my system and I think I came away more confused than convinced. But, as many have said, it takes a lot of patience and time to get it right. Don't think I'm there yet, but haven't given up yet either.
I do have one question... if striving to maintain an equilateral triangle, then why would you not move the first speaker toward you along the triangle angle rather than moving it out perpendicular to the long wall? Is it easier to hear the changes in the bass when moving perpendicular rather than directly toward the listening position? :scratch:
Move the speaker out perpendicular to the wall in a straight line. Forget the triangle, that's just a starting position. The sound should all go the to moved out speaker when the rear of the speaker is out about a foot. If you move the right speaker, the bass will move first, but eventually the voice will move too. If you are having trouble with this, you can toe the speaker against the wall to 45 degrees away, but keep it playing.
In some circumstance with weird room shape, the music will not go to the moved out speaker. In this case, start over and move the other speaker. However, you will likely have a hard time getting the sound to balance in this situation.
Also, if speakers are on short wall, there is real difficulty in getting the sound to go to the moved out speaker as there are too many reflections.
FWIW, I have recently done some tweaking to my room here in Ballarat, and I have pretty good balance sound now in a very difficult room situation. So, it CAN be done.
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I would not mind giving this method a try, but my speakers weigh 115 lbs each. Anyone ever try this method with heavier speakers?
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I would not mind giving this method a try, but my speakers weigh 115 lbs each. Anyone ever try this method with heavier speakers?
My speakers and stands weigh 80-85 lbs. each. I use furniture sliders under the spikes, and this works fine.
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Hi Steve,
How goes it? Expect an email later today, sorry for delays.
Kieran (AI),
A good way round this problem is to use a stout piece of cardboard trimmed to fit under each speaker with a lip at one end to permit moving the cardboard and the speaker together on carpet. This way you can move it around without too much trouble. When you have it exactly right, mark the carpet with erasable marker, lift the speaker while your helper slips out the cardboard, and you're done.
I have used Master Set with Steve right here in Oz, and can vouch for it. It works. It's a tiresome process, but it delivers superior imaging.
Cheers,
Hugh
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Hi Afterimage,
Yes, my Genesis 5s weigh almost 140lbs so I attached casters to the bottom by drilling four holes and screwing in threaded inserts. If you don't want to do that then I can highly recommend furniture gliders available at any hardware store. I have hard floors but if you have carpet then the gliders will work very well.
I have been meaning to post about my experience and include some pictures but right now my bed is in the middle of my living room due to having just gone through open heart surgery. My bedroom is in the basement and I can't climb the stairs for a few weeks so my friends moved my bed upstairs for the interim. I will get it done as soon as I get the bed moved back down stairs.
I do want to say that I am glad I tried it and am very happy with the results. I did get a bunch of coaching from Jon Finnegan, a friend of member timztunz, and I feel his help reduced the trial and error period by at least a couple of weeks.
Well Steve beat me to it with shorter post. I also got sidetracked by a phone call but the long and short of it is you should give it a try.
JakeJ
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Great. Thanks for the tips guys. Okay, one of the days that I feel ambitious I will give a try, with some help of course.
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I've started to work on Master Set with the Orions (these are not really heavy though) and--although I have only had time to do a "pretty good" job setting the first speaker and the second speaker was set even more approximately--the results are really quite good (much more clarity and sparkle, more and better defined bass).
The original location was set in agreement with SL's recommendation that the Orions be at least 4' away from the rear wall and positions were fine-tuned using the out-of-phase tracks on the XLO-Reference Recordings CD and following their directions. I was happy with that set.
Following Master Set through once (with Steve's counsel and advice), and then going back to tweak it a bit (total time maybe 90 minutes), my speakers are now ~ 15 inches closer to the rear wall (and to my eyes, too damn far into the corner and way too close to the lovely "entertainment center" that the love of my life wanted to buy a few years ago). So how do they sound? In total disregard for The Teachings of The Great Audiophiles they sound much, much better and I would be willing to bet that more work will lead to even better results.
I did a little arithmetic: In Master Set you move the speakers 2-3 mm at a time. It's interesting that the wavelength of 12kHz sound is ~ 2.7mm (and 20kHz is around 1.7mm). Further, folks say that when you get Master Set exactly right, the sound comes together in an incredibly satisfying way (I have not yet reached that wonderful state). Briefly, I'm starting to think that it might be possible using Master Set to get speakers set in a room so that they that are effectively aligned within one wavelength at 12kHz (in a way that takes room interactions into account, all this without instruments!).
If you consider the Left and Right sound fields from conventionally located speakers, there will be a central zone (where high intensity L and R sound fields "mix" and interact strongly) with phase cancellations and reinforcements that were not present in the original performance and--to the degree that they are audible--would contribute a degree of distortion. If, e.g., using Master Set, it is possible to get the L&R speakers aligned so that their phases are optimally correct (i.e., as good as one can do with given speakers in a given room) then in the central region where L & R sound fields mix, we might expect a lot less artifactual phase cancellation and reinforcement) and this setup might sound really, really good.
I realize that this may be a controversial idea and that I am not a qualified accoustic engineer (although I do think a lot about wave mechanics for work, it's in a different field). This suggestion is certainly "too simple" and I have almost certainly offended whole swaths of the enlightened, but I would hope that no one get too excited and spend too much time writing long rebuttals. I do have time to read short rebuttals, and might even respond. For the most part though, I will spend my time working on Master Set, listening to music, and tweaking my GK-1. I hope that in taking the time to lay out this idea, I might encourage a few more folks to follow Steve's lead and try Master Set.
Good luck, and may there be the most awesome music in your house,
Peter
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Hi Afterimage,
Yes, my Genesis 5s weigh almost 140lbs so I attached casters to the bottom by drilling four holes and screwing in threaded inserts. If you don't want to do that then I can highly recommend furniture gliders available at any hardware store. I have hard floors but if you have carpet then the gliders will work very well.
I have been meaning to post about my experience and include some pictures but right now my bed is in the middle of my living room due to having just gone through open heart surgery. My bedroom is in the basement and I can't climb the stairs for a few weeks so my friends moved my bed upstairs for the interim. I will get it done as soon as I get the bed moved back down stairs.
I do want to say that I am glad I tried it and am very happy with the results. I did get a bunch of coaching from Jon Finnegan, a friend of member timztunz, and I feel his help reduced the trial and error period by at least a couple of weeks.
Well Steve beat me to it with shorter post. I also got sidetracked by a phone call but the long and short of it is you should give it a try.
JakeJ
Hey JakeJ,
Good to see you at the keyboard. Been worried about you.
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Thanks Steve for posting all that info about Master Set! I used your info to help me do a Master Set last week and it has been fantastic listening to my speakers! They have never sounded better. The image I get is incredible.
Bob
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=31724)
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Hey Bob it looks like your left speaker is straight facing and your right is slightly toed in. Is this how you ended up with equal room loading being so close to the right corner/g-father clock?
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Hey Bob it looks like your left speaker is straight facing and your right is slightly toed in. Is this how you ended up with equal room loading being so close to the right corner/g-father clock?
Yes I notice it after I posted. There are two chairs in behind where I took the pictures. I was standing in front of the right one when I took the picture but when I listen to the speakers I am in the left chair. i.e. From my listening chair they are equally toed in. Good catch!
Bob
PS I have my speakers toed in to point to a point about 4 feet in back of my chair.
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This is a picture taken from behind my primary listening chair. There is a good image all they way around the room though.
(http://www.audiocircle.com/image.php?id=32123)
Bob
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After this years RMAF I am going to read this thread again & begin my "winter project" then.
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Bob,
Thanks for the kind words.
In looking at your posted picture, and one in your gallery, I noticed a couple things. One is that I see that there is not much toe in in your set. Um, any MS done speaker set that I've seen, or done, has a fair bit of toe in - not really a direct triangle, but close. Without the toe-in, I've found that when you move from side to side, the speaker on the side you move to will dominate.
Also, I noticed a large couch 2-3 feet away from the left speaker, slightly off the side. I once tried to set up speakers with something similar and I couldn't get it. We had to move the couch out of the way.
Nevertheless, it's what you hear that counts, and as long as you are satisfied, that's what's most important.
If my writings helped you out, I'm pleased to have contributed.
Steve
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That is an interesting point about toe in. I didn’t try playing with toe in with master set. I just used the toe in that I found works well in previous experiments. Your comment makes sense to me. Just thinking out loud, I would think the amount of toe in would be a function of the lateral dispersion of the speaker. I would think that a speaker with great side dispersion would not need as much toe in. I have a good image until I get less than 3 feet directly in front of the left speaker. I even have a good image lying on the couch with my feet pointed to the left speaker. I will try playing with toe in and the couch a few weeks as I am afraid to move the speakers right now as they have such a great sound. I am not sure my heart could handle any more sound improvement right now anyway! :lol:
You have given me even more things to play with and specific things to look for. Thanks a lot! :thumb:
Bob
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Hi, just want to check something with this setup - it mentions to switch off the sub at the start. A few sites mention having amp set to small speakers and set sub for direct, so bass isn't really going to the mains. Does this mean I should be reconfiguring amp to pass bass to the mains, until placement is at it's best, then turn it back off?
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Hi, just want to check something with this setup - it mentions to switch off the sub at the start. A few sites mention having amp set to small speakers and set sub for direct, so bass isn't really going to the mains. Does this mean I should be reconfiguring amp to pass bass to the mains, until placement is at it's best, then turn it back off?
You are trying to get the best/smoothest bass out of the main speakers. The subwoofer does not contribute to this and should not be on.
BTW, you might want to use the directions in the following link rather than those in my write ups:
http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/m.mpl?forum=speakers&n=215930&highlight=Master+Set&r=