Hah, got it. There is actually 4-4.5ft from the wall to the back of the ESL (depending on side due to toe in), though it looks smaller in the pic. Many say Quads can use even more, like 5’, but this is why I have treatments. They are close to the side walls, but quads have a linear dispersion vs come woofers. Even photos of Peter Walker’s living room has shown ESLs near the side walls.
Unfortunately I did have the ESLs in the other room, but it was too big of a room and required them to have a sub. I’m not a fan of separate subs, so I started the second system in the smaller room around them.
While the room looks small, the sound is huge, and if you close your eyes, you’d think it was a much wider and much deeper room. That is the magic of ESL and of good room treatments, right?
I got my left hand and my right hand, and CLAPPED them together around the room. Does the clap fall off the cliff in a dull thud? Does it ring like a bell? Does it SOUND like a real clap without the accentuated ring in a too live room, or the dullness of a too dead room? You may find that your room is just fine. Everything isn’t broken. Don’t over damp! This will suck the life out of your music. Panels everywhere seldom fix the bass and destroy the rooms natural ambience.
You can do the the CLAP almost instantly, and after moving items around to hear the effects. A clap is a nice sharp sound that a room can distort to ill effect if you have real problems. You don’t need to spend a dime on equipment to do the clap analysis and it is as accurate as your hearing! If you can’t hear what a series of claps are doing, all the $$$ spent on room items is bling at that point. You have to actually hear it to use it. Just saying.
Bass issues are tough to tame with anything except active EQ as the frequencies are so LONG that short rooms, less than about 35-40 feet deep, almost always have a mid bass peak around 40-60 Hz and secondary peak @ 80-120 Hz farther up with passive speakers. Pull the speakers into the room as far as you can and away from side walls. This is better almost all the time anyway for proper bass linearity with most, not all, speaker designs.
If bass perfection is in the cards, look at speakers like Vandersteen that allow EQ, and will provide terrific bass.
Yeah - it was an interesting setup and took me a while to get there, this is a bit of a story.
I had the Legacy Focus SE powered by a ModWright KWA 150 SE. I love Modwright and had a whole stack. But I wanted to explore, and got curious with the Cary. The Cary brought SET magic I couldn’t return from, but 50W/ch wasn’t enough to power the woofers. These particular Cary have been upgraded with Solen power caps and V-Cap reference coupling caps, as well as WBT binding posts. It’s a very special unit that opens up the amp a bit more than the lush Cary house sound. I also upgraded tubes to use the Psvane ACME line for both the 845 and 300B. Pure magic.
I heard both the Aeris and the Focus in AXPONA in 2019. I thought the Aeris was amongst the best in show at a fraction of the price, but I couldn’t afford them. I settled for the Focus. After I was missing the bass control with the Cary, I found a pair of Aeris with the Wavelet on the used market at a very good price. Each Aeris has two ICEpower amps to handle the 12” woofers, leaving external amps to power the mids and highs.
I hated the Wavelet, despite what all the reviews say. DSP is not for me, hence why I’m all about the room treatments. I can always hear what it adds and takes away, and it always seems to remove that last bit of flashiness and air, making the sound just a bit more brittle. Why have SET magic if the DSP is going to tame it?
Unfortunately the Aeris doesn’t have a built in crossover for the subs. So I ended up installing two more sets of balanced outs in my Modwright pre, I added another XLR input of into the Aeris, splitting the two internal ICEpower amps, and placed a Marchand XM66 crossover inbetween so I could control the crossover points of both woofers separately while allowing the Cary to go straight to the speaker, where the mids handle from 80hz up via the Aeris’ internal crossover.
It was a ton of work, but I haven’t heard a system quite like it, even at the shows, except the very few that are 5x above its price range.
BTW, so which model are the Cary amps, pre-modding, that is?
TIA,
Scott
PS
The Wavelet is on my list of things to acquire second hand. Want to use it for its room correction and sub management features in a “difficultly” sized and shaped room. But maybe it won’t be to my taste either. Time will tell…
Galen, that’s great practical advice. I had done just that…go around clapping throughout the room. By doing that I found the right channel side of the room to be too live. There is a heater sticking out of the wall plus a couple of windows. The opposite side is pretty natural sounding. There’s more furniture, books, albums etc. over there. As for bass…the room has never felt boomy unless I altered the sound with tone controls.
Another trick is to find the most neutral resonance point in your room and seat yourself there if you can. All rooms have nod/anti-node peaks. Try to just stay out of that area and this also reduces the amount of EQ you need how ever you manage it. Don’t try to EQ “the room” so much as your seated position only.
I use stereo BF212 subs and I use the roll-off EQ curve but turned off the DSP and set it up by ear. To me it is a faster and cleaner sound than with the room DSP programmed setting where I have them. I agree that DSP isn’t to be taken for granted as always better, try both methods.
A very interesting thread.
I listen in a smallish room and have measured using REW and a UMIK-1. This clearly demonstrates a room node at 41Hz which is boosted by 10dB and causes real issues with certain music content. But I have managed to tame it and can now play just about anything on my system without any bass overhang or muddying of the sound stage.
I tried all sorts of room treatment and have come down in favour of GIK acoustics (great product and even better advice). I have the speakers B&W 805 D3 moved out 3 feet from the front wall. GIK tri-traps in the corners of the front wall (floor to ceiling) and more GIK tri-traps, at half room height, in the rear corners. The front wall is also treated with GIK acoustic panels placed directly behind the speakers. The first reflection points are also treated with a combined GIK absorption/diffusion panel. These judiciously placed room treatments tamed some of the worst excess but didn’t solve the whole issue. So I took the plunge and tried adding DSP to augment the room treatment, opting for the McIntosh MEN220.
The MEN220 uses Lyngdorf’s RoomPerfect system. This is different to other DSP systems where filters are applied to achieve a selected target curve , thereby, in my view, masking the characteristics that you chose the speakers for in the first instance. The RoomPerfect system aims to maintain the characteristics of your speaker, whilst taking out the worst room interactions.
I have to say that before I used the MEN 220 I was very sceptical about DSP, as I am sure, are many others. I should also say that I am an analogue man, so the prospect of taking my precious analogue signal putting it through A/D conversion, applying filters before sending it through A/D conversion filled me with dread. I need not have worried. To these ears at least, the characteristics that I love about analogue are still there and what’s more the tyranny of room interactions are banished.
In their set up instruction McIntosh indicate that the MEN220 should be inserted between pre and power amp. I tried this and wasn’t overly impressed with a ground lop hum. As I use a Passive TVC and knowing that transformers can eliminate ground loop hum, I put the MEN220 between my phono stage and pre amp …Eureka. No Hum; no reinforced room node peak and everything in order with a beautiful, wide open soundstage , nuance and texture to all instruments and performers and that intangible analogue sound seemingly unhindered by A-D-A conversion. This seems like a black magic box! In this configuration I see that the amount room correction, indicated in the MEN220 display, is 21% . Time to take out the GIK panels and see what happens? WOW…when I recalibrated the MEN220 without the GIK treatment panels in place the amount of room correction indicated on the front display of the MEN220 is now a massive 43% (!) and to make matters worse the sound is flattened! Back in with the GIK panels another recalibration of the MEN220 and my delight and sanity, was restored. The measurement taken with UMIK-1 and REW now shows the reduction in the 41Hz room node. The MEN220 also seems to leave alone the frequencies above 200Hz, which were already pretty flat before I introduced any treatment any way.
In my current room I now would not be without the combination of GIK room panels and DSP provided by the McIntosh MEN220. I don’t think its a choice of either. More an effort to blend the benefits of both passive and active frequency management to achieve an enjoyable listening environment.
Interesting. Congrats on finding some answers. I didn’t realize DSP could be used with analogue. So it will actually take an analogue signal, correct it, and spit back out into analogue? OK, well then, maybe I’ll go down that path after all.
Keep in mind DSP is Digital Signal Processing. DSP systems working with an analog signal first convert the analog signal to digital, process it, and then turn it back into an analog signal.
However, there are pure analog systems which provide EQ, etc. which work solely in the analog domain and do not digitize the signal at any time.
Elk is correct there are analogue EQ versions McIntosh and others offer limited EQ on some of their preamplifiers. But as I see it the problem of EQ in the analogue domain is that it is very easy to introduce distortion.
I will also say that all DSP is NOT created equally I have tried some and hated it. The MEN220 is the only system I have come across and used that seems to handle the analogue system sympathetically . I should also add that I have a reasonable high end vinyl playback system made up of Avid Acutus/SME IV/Dynavector DRT-XV1S/Whest Audio PS 40RDTSE so I take my vinyl seriously and wouldn’t have implemented this particular DSP solution if I was t personally happy. But the only way to know if it works for you is try it and listen with your own ears
I am in the infancy of my knowledge about DSP’s and REW, so I have a question about REW. Since I have vintage gear and don’t have an HDMI input on my Mac Pre-Amp, can I use an HDMI to RCA cable?
I have use RoomPerfect in Lyngdorf and McIntosh products and don’t see being happy without it. If you have subwoofers there are even more options. My speakers are designed for placement on the from wall. The RoomPerfect certainly corrects the bass issues and allows for amazing imaging and a 3 D soundstage. The added benefit it reduces power needed to hear other frequencies clearly.
The room measurement process will allow one to get poor results. Never point the microphone at speakers and keep mike placement out of or pointing at vertical corners. I Found pointing mike up our toward backwall in the focus position works better thsa straight forward too. However a few room boundary measurements within 8 inches of floor and sidewall and back walls does wonders/ceiling improve results dramatically. Some of McIntosh and early Lyngdorf literature did not adsres these measurements. I use it for Home Theater also with great results. It is must for two channel in difficult rooms that limit symmetrical speaker placement or if you require wall placement for aesthetics.
Do you mean XLR input vs HDMI? The Lyndord and McIntosh products RP-1, DP-1, MEN 220 and earlier versions of there HT processors have both XLR and RCA inputs. HDMI for video and sound are also on there HT processors. I use combinations of all three for inputs of sources and XLR and RCA outputs for HT.
The i2S format is not supported on the HDMI inputs of the HT processors. Later McIntosh and Lyngdorf HT processors are XLR based.
I’m just talking about measuring with REW. One of the required connections is from laptop to receiver/pre-amp via HDMI to HDMI. There is no HDMI input on a pre-amp from 1977, so thinking I could use HDMI to RCA cable.
TBH, all this measuring stuff is so over my head. One step into these youtube tutorials I’ve watched and I’m lost and frankly, uninterested. Think I will treat my room a little, use my ears, and adjust accordingly.
