[zybar]

I have played around with placement to try and improve soundstage depth and imaging while maintaining/improving the bottom end.

As such, the 40's are moved back into the room and I am using a 4th order highpass  crossover at 75Hz on the 40's and a 10th order 140Hz lowpass crossover on the Larger subs.  This upcoming week  I plan on playing with various crossover points for both speakers and subs.





Overall I am extremely happy with the way the Tact has improved the system and allowed me to realize even further the qualities of the VMPS products.

George

[Brian Cheney]

Your corrected inroom response is indeed admirably flat and shows you know how to use the TACT properly.  Congratulations.

[ekovalsky]

Your response curves are looking better.  Keep it up!

Mine will be arriving on Wednesday.  I suspect I'll be geeking out all weekend.  This has to be the ultimate toy for those who are both audiophiles and computer nerds!

I'm going to usurp my wife's computer temporarily, but before long I am going to order a Sager 9860 laptop to run the TacT and maybe try as a source with a USB>SPDIF converter...

[John Casler]

Very Cool George,

Any basic/general perceptions on the improvement?

[zybar]

Very Cool George,

Any basic/general perceptions on the improvement?

LOADS more detail!!

I thought I was hearing a lot of the recording before, but now it is so easy to hear things that I missing or had to strain to hear.

Correcting the bass will yield not only better impact and speed, but it changed the tonality of the music for the better.  

Imaging is razor sharp and the soundstage got deeper and wider.

As you can see from the graph (the green is the target), I went for a slight boost on the low end and a roll off on the high end.  So far, this is more musical and enjoyable for me.  When I had the top flatter, it got a little too bright and slightly etched.

George

[zybar]

The above graph shows the actual measurements, crossovers (in purple) and the correction curve (green).  The Tact takes the measurements and adjusts that to reach the target curve.  You can make the target curve whatever you like.  

That being said, you generally don't want to bring up the dips very much, instead you want to bring the peaks down.  There is a screen that tells you how much of a correction (positive or negative) in db's has been applied.  It is recommended to not exceed 0db's by much or for a wide range.

As you can see from the graph below, I only have one spot I go above 0db's (max of 2.6db's) and it is for a very small range (green/blue is the RM 40's and reddish the subs).



George

[ted_b]

George,
A couple of questions:
1) how many measurements did you take before you felt you had a good reading of the system?
2)  what does the bottom graph mean?  Is this your corrected room response?
Ted_B

[zybar]

George,
A couple of questions:
1) how many measurements did you take before you felt you had a good reading of the system?
2)  what does the bottom graph mean?  Is this your corrected room response?
Ted_B

Lots and lots and lots....    

The good news is that you can hear what sounds right before you actually take the measurement (the measurement almost becomes a sanity check in some ways).

The second picture shows the corrections being made to all speakers/subs.  

George

[Jose R.]

Mine will be arriving on Wednesday.  I suspect I'll be geeking out all weekend.  This has to be the ultimate toy for those who are both audiophiles and computer nerds!

I'm going to usurp my wife's computer temporarily, but before long I am going to order a Sager 9860 laptop to run the TacT and maybe try as a source with a USB>SPDIF converter...

Some suggestions:

You will need at least 3-4 USB ports on your laptop for convenience.  For the Tact you will also need a serial to USB cable - they work fine.
For computerr audio, try the ESI Waveterminal U24 - it sounds great and once you have copied you music on to a hard drive, the transport begins to gather dust
Get yourself a nice big external HD (250G) and use Apple iTunes to copy and play - I use WinXP and this combination works very well.

Good luck

Jose

[ted_b]

Some suggestions:

You will need at least 3-4 USB ports on your laptop for convenience.  For the Tact you will also need a serial to USB cable - they work fine.
For computerr audio, try the ESI Waveterminal U24 - it sounds great and once you have copied you music on to a hard drive, the transport begins to gather dust
Get yourself a nice big external HD (250G) and use Apple iTunes to copy and play - I use WinXP and this combination works very well.

Good luck

Jose

I agreed until the "use Apple iTunes to copy and play" comment.  Wholeheartedly disagree, unless your cd's are brand spankin new.  EAC and Foobar are better for those two tasks respectively.  EAC is a secure ripper that takes great care in a perfect rip, regardless of cd quality (assuming it can complete the read), and Foobar has plug-ins, etc that allow for bit-perfect playback and/or the ability to playback outside of Windows noisy kmixer.  Sorry to hijack.  I agree with everything else Jose said.  

The prospect of bit-perfect hd-playback through a speaker-and-room corrected environment is pretty kewl!  

Ted_B

[JoshK]

I can understand your concern over the 1khz peak, but your conclusions about its cause are jumping the gun.  I do believe that George did all of his measurements at the listening position, therefore it is impossible to know what part of those measurements are the room and what parts are the system.  More measurements in a semianechoic style or gated measurements would need to be taken to disaggregate the two.  I think that is a fairly obvious point, and one you seemed to omit quite easily leading me to think you have an axe to grind.

[woodsyi]

I am using a 4th order highpass crossover at 75Hz on the 40's and a 10th order 140Hz lowpass crossover on the Larger subs.

George,

If you disable the passive 1st order coil on the woofers in RM40's, you get to play with another set of woofers on your DACT.  The midbass woofer on top plays up to 600 Hz.  Brian rolls off the Mega woofer around 100 Hz but there is lot of play in the midbass woofer.  Having played with different low pass frequencies for the RM40 woofers from 200 Hz to 700Hz, all with 4th order slope, I can appreciate what Brian does with his modified 1st order filter.  On operatic records 400 Hz really fills out the bottom end of the chorus and adds a certain je ne sais quoi to Norah Jones that makes her "sultry".  On instrumental jazz recordings 400 Hz Lowpass is an overkill and acoustic bass gets bloated.  At 225Hz, it's just right.  I think 1st order slope is a best all around x-over for the woofers.  With the right electronic it may be the best setting, but with my amps I prefer the sound of multiamping which allows me to get just the sound that I want.  If Dact will allow you to have different programs for different types of music, but that would be really usefull.  
By the way, how would you use DACT with anolog source?

[Turk]

For what it is worth, when Wayne at Bolder Cable took an RTA measurement of the RM40s I own that are identical to Georges, they exhibited no such dramatic peak @ 1kh.  Must be room related as mentioned above.  Check the DAM site for the graph.

[ekovalsky]

Some suggestions:

You will need at least 3-4 USB ports on your laptop for convenience.  For the Tact you will also need a serial to USB cable - they work fine.
For computerr audio, try the ESI Waveterminal U24 - it sounds great and once you have copied you music on to a hard drive, the transport begins to gather dust
Get yourself a nice big external HD (250G) and use Apple iTunes to copy and play - I use WinXP and this combination works very well.

Good luck

Jose

Thanks for the advice, particularly on the ESI external USB sound device.  Who knows, I may end up with a nice laptop serving as a transport...

Being able to play Doom3, Half Life 2, etc on a giant 1920x1080 display with high end audio is pretty appealing too  

The Laptop I want to buy (Sager 9860) surprisingly has a serial port, so I won't need the USB>RS232 converter.

[zybar]

For what it is worth, when Wayne at Bolder Cable took an RTA measurement of the RM40s I own that are identical to Georges, they exhibited no such dramatic peak @ 1kh.  Must be room related as mentioned above.  Check the DAM site for the graph.

I am confident it is room, user, or mic error.

It is not the speakers....

George

[Jose R.]

I agreed until the "use Apple iTunes to copy and play" comment.  Wholeheartedly disagree, unless your cd's are brand spankin new.  EAC and Foobar are better for those two tasks respectively.  EAC is a secure ripper that takes great care in a perfect rip, regardless of cd quality (assuming it can complete the read), and Foobar has plug-ins, etc that allow for bit-perfect playback and/or the ability to playback outside of Windows noisy kmixer.  Sorry to hijack.  I agree with everything else Jose said.  

Hi Ted

I used to use EAC but have no experience with Foobar.  I compared iTunes (no compression) with error correction to EAC and could not detect any difference.  A number of other Tact users have found the same and this was extensively discussed in that forum but YMMV.  The main reason I suggested iTunes was its ease of use but accept that there may well be better rippers to use.

Regards

Jose

[Brian Cheney]

Our trolling poster sys1 has been tracked down.  His name is Dan Evert and he lives in Hawaii.  He also uses the moniker Kana813.

From his tone and language I would say Dan is about 12 years old.  

His account has been temporarily suspended by the Moderators.  I will leave it to a vote of you, the VMPS Forum posters, whether Dan should be banned or not.  If he causes no further trouble I am inclined to let him stay.  

Let's hear what you think.

[zybar]

George,

If you disable the passive 1st order coil on the woofers in RM40's, you get to play with another set of woofers on your DACT.  The midbass woofer on top plays up to 600 Hz.  Brian rolls off the Mega woofer around 100 Hz but there is lot of play in the midbass woofer.  Having played with different low pass frequencies for the RM40 woofers from 200 Hz to 700Hz, all with 4th order slope, I can appreciate what Brian does with his modified 1st order filter.  On operatic records 400 Hz really fills out ...

Woodsyi,

I am still using the passive crossover in the 40's.  The Tact 2.2x allows me one set of crossovers for bass duty.  I currently use these for the two Larger subs and not for the woofers in the 40's.  If I decide to use one of the Tact amps, it has crossover capabilities.

George

[jimmyp58]

I would agree with you Brian....as long as he behaves, he is welcome.  If not, then it's time for him to troll elsewhere.

Jim

[tkp]

Our trolling poster sys1 has been tracked down.  His name is Dan Evert and he lives in Hawaii.  He also uses the moniker Kana813.

From his tone and language I would say Dan is about 12 years old.  

His account has been temporarily suspended by the Moderators.  I will leave it to a vote of you, the VMPS Forum posters, whether Dan should be banned or not.  If he causes no further trouble I am inclined to let him stay.  

Let's hear what you think.

I don't know if I am qualified as VMPS Forum poster but I am a VMPS speaker owner.  I am disturbed with the trend at AC lately.  The first incident was with AzRyan.  Personally, I don't like AzRyan posting style nor his some what immature attitude at times.  However, I value free speech which is one of the freedom that my native country does not have.  

I read sys1 question earlier about the peak at 1K from Zybar graph and did not feel the question was unreasonable.  Sys1 and BC might have crossed path in the past and some where else but I did not think his question was qualified as "Troll".  Within just a day, his posts in this thread was removed so no one can see what took place and his account has been temporary suspended by moderators.  If this is the way we treat people who happen to disagree with our opinion or question our data then I am truly sad.  

Like Harmonic Discord, AC has a special place in my heart where audio enthusiast can get together to exchange knowlege without the fear of being stepped on.  I hope we are not heading toward "dictatorship".  IMHO, banning people from posting at AC should be excersised with great care and only at the last resort and not as a tool to silent some one we don't like or disagree with.