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Treat your room. Best investment.
Ideally, you should be using room design build (which isn't possible unless you're building from the ground up) and room treatment (which is possible) to address acoustical problems.Even the mastering guys with Trinnov, which is one of the best room correction software and hardware out there, prefer to use room treatment as much as possible. They will only use the Trinnov to address subtle problems in the bass region. If you use room correction to fix the response across the frequency response, you might not like the results.Finished products can get expensive and still not fully solve things. If you can DIY and/or get some help, that'd be the most economical.Use something like 3-4 layers of Roxul Safe N Sound (9"-12"). That will actually get deep into the bass and remain flat without all kinds of peaks and nulls.The worst thing with room treatment you can do is stick those 2-3" panels across the rooms. They barely reach the low mids and don't have any absorption in the bass region. What that creates is a lifeless sound. You want your room sounding smooth top to bottom.All my speakers, especially the Amphions, just go to another level with proper treatment. Your brain than has to do less processing as well. It's more enjoyable.
I have some treatments in my room. My room correction software ends up doing almost nothing.I have RoomPerfect and it says it's doing 6% correction. I measured my room with REW and aligned my subs etc. Then I told REW to give me the PEQ settings to use. It gave me 3 PEQ filters. So, for me, room treatments means I don't need all that fancy AVR stuff.If I were you I'd take the money and buy subs, lots of subs P.S. My treatments are all DIY Roxul SafeNSound based. If you like, you could even make them movie poster or other attractive art.
Interesting, thank you. How did you decide where to place your treatments?
I use a Marantz 1605 in a 3.0 set up driving Revel in-wall. I had an Onkyo in the same set up prior to the Marantz, in my opinion the Marantz sounded much better. The Onkyo sounded like a receiver where the Marantz has a more natural sound quality, more tonally rich. In my set up I don't notice it being rolled off on the top.In my main room, not the one above, I have acoustic panels made from Corning 703, it definitely makes a difference, giving the sound stage better focus and overall frequency response. I forget the price, Anthem does now have a stereo preamp, I believe sub-out, with their ARC room correction built in. The ARC is said to be one of the best room EQ softwares, it does require use of a laptop and downloading the free software to run it though.If only using this for music, and "poor", I'd look used and try to get a receiver with more true power. Some of those AVR's give power ratings with one channel driven and other not so ethical ratings. The Marantz at 50 watts is fairly true, and you are using a sub, I just like having reserve for headroom. My Marantz has bottomed on Blu-ray LFE when the Dynamic Range thing was on. Of course, adding a sub would cure this as well. Buying used and not needing leading edge surround decoding etc. you could maybe get one of the more top end receivers a few years old.
Your current 2.3 system concept should be nearly ideal for audio use. What do you mean by "the DSPeaker doesn't 'see' the subs"? Didn't you set up using the microphone? What subs are you running? What exactly are you 'needing' to improve?
Hi again. It's been approximately some years. Currently running a 2.3 system with KEF Q100 and three distributed subs, a DSPeaker Dual Core as DAC/Pre (and room correction), with TAD Hibachi monos as power amps in a medium sized space. I'm wondering if something with Audessy, HDMI I/O, sub outs with bass management, and lots of flexibility wouldn't be easier and better in all than what I have going. I could sell the DSPeaker unit to fund something like a Marantz NR-1508 http://echohifi.com/details/11462/Marantz_NR-1508 ... My question is: What would I be giving up? So many features and options with the AVR route! I know it's the less 'cool' route, but, f*#k it, I'm all about value at this point; I'm kinda broke, but I still want to improve my audio life if I can, you know? Isn't something with Audessy, crazy I/O, decent D/A conversion, and multichannel potential a better way to go in the end for the $$? As cool as the DSpeaker is, it doesn't *see* my subs and provide proper crossover, timing, etc, the way something like a good AVR can. In-room bass excellence is very important to me. I want want impact AND precision, without sacrificing the quality and power in the upper registers. Am I missing something? Love to know your thoughts. Cheers.
Yeah, I've heard good things about Anthem and ARC. I don't own a Windows laptop however, so that would add to the cost of that idea. Thought of it though.
My treatments are all DIY Roxul SafeNSound based. If you like, you could even make them movie poster or other attractive art.
