|   Buying even world class gear won't help most of you!!!! | lonecrazy
May 7, 2002 5:58 AM | | Hello to all.
I'm posting this topic, to adress some issues that need to be looked at(and listened to), and to keep in the back of ALL OF OUR minds, when trying to put together any audio/video system endevore in a domestic home!
Let me start by saying that I am a vastly experienced exotic custom home theater designer and engineer by trade(and hobby), as well as avid audio/videophile and tweek. I've been around hi-end audio and video for going on 20 years now(in one way or other), and have worked in 4 hi-end AV salons,as well as a major electronics chain store, not to mention working for myself in the custom installation biz for years. I love this stuff with a passion, and I know of what I speak.
I just wanted to pass on some factual food for thought to people who strive for the best possible perfomance from their systems, that you SHOULD NOT rely on the thinking, that just because you lay down good money for the best equipment money can buy, and read all your magazines, doesn't mean your going to end up with great to world class results! Infact my vast experience suggests just the opposite!!!
You can read all the reviews(not always accurate or unbiased), go listen to all the gear in different stores, end up buying the highest rated equipment(audio, video or related) at any price, and still likly only end up with mediocre to poor sound and visual!
First, virtually all of the audio novices and newbies out there, and quite an exorbitent amount of seasoned "audio/videophiles" out there as well, really have no clue when it comes to setting up a system in their homes...not a clue! And 99% of the time, when most people do finally figure out what equipment they do want, they simply get it home and stick it where they think it should go, and think they're getting the best!...not so unfortunately...it's just not that easy. I can't tell you how many hundreds of times I've gone to peoples houses, to fix or install something, and their systems sound and look horrible!...with even mondo expensive equipment! It's sadely that way time and time again. So, don't think you can simply read up on some gear, or go hear someone's system in THEIR show room, and go buy it cheap on the net, and think your going to stick hook it all up real nice in your home and think your going to get reference quality, studio dubbing sound and pic...it's just not likely going to happen, sorry.
On the audio side of things, most don't have any idea how to properly set up even ONE speaker in a given room, let a lone many! On the video side, of all the video displays I've seen, people surely don't know what a proper top caliber picture is supposed to be adjusted to...and EVERYONES settings are way way different from each other(Like audio gear..."no two people getting the same results!"). When you find yourself innevitably dissapointed with what you got, don't go thinking some there piece of newer/better gear is going to be your savior either! I bet most of you know that pattern all too well, ey?
Between acoustical considerations,relative speaker/seating/equipment setup in a given room, system matching experience, problem solving, tips, tweeks, valuable pertinent considerations, etc., it's simply too overwhelming to hit on good finished results for most.
Overall, most everone who ventures into this stuff on their own, and does their own setup's, aren't even getting 1/3 of what they could be getting in performance or results!...simply because of lack of knowledge, experience and skill!(no offense to anyone..just the way it is).
There is simply way way WAY too much going on with any given room/system interaction, for most people to expect otherwise, without some long term experience and knowledge with all of this stuff!
What I'm saying is that, really, at the outset, too much emphesis is placed in peoples minds on strictly finding the right gear for your needs, and not nearly enough attention is paid |
| Agreed, but.... | Old_lane
May 7, 2002 6:18 AM | | I agree that one must take into account room acoustics as it is very important in getting good sound and one must calibrate their tv with a calibration disc (at the very least if not ISF calibration) but have you been around this forum very long? I only ask cause you seem to think that this is knowledge that only a select few posses but almost all the regulars here know this. Terrence, Richard Greene, and many others have been hammering this point home to us on countless occasions except in their posts they give us usable information (like what should go where and why).
I think that your post would better serve the average consumer of this stuff, but again don't think that we are the "average consumer" here on this board. We are here cause we, like you, love this stuff and enjoy learning about it and most of us know a whole lot more about these things than many salespeople, and certainley more than the average consumer.
I agree with your point but would like to add that both are important. Crappy gear in the best acoustically treated rooms will still sound like crap since at higher freq the speaker dominates performance rather than the room and if your amps are terrible then the sound will be terrible. and I agree that the best of gear in an acoustic mess of a room will sound like crap.
You seem to come in here like you are "setting us straight" when most of us understand this. it'd be helpful if you gave us some tips from your experiences. |
| Well said. | Spott
May 7, 2002 6:47 AM | | I can't really add anything either, because I can't find anything nice to say. |
| Your name wouldn't happen to be | Bryan
May 7, 2002 6:21 AM | | James Davenport-Briggs IV would it? (Or something similar.) For your post sure sounds like him. |
| "Musical Bass" is easy to obtain and not expensive | Richard Greene
May 7, 2002 8:04 AM | | The sound quality of subwoofers depends more on the listening room, placement of the subwoofer within that room, and placement of your ears ... than the brand & model of subwoofer you purchase.
A "review" of a subwoofer is really a review of the listening room and the subwoofer.
A "comparison" of two subwoofers that were not auditioned in the same listening room (using the same location for the subwoofer and your ears) is not a useful comparison.
It's a rare listening room that will have a subwoofer frequency response better than +/- 10dB measured from the listening position using a slow sine wave frequency sweep.
That frequency response will include one or more frequency response peaks (+5 to +10dB is typical) and one or more frequency response troughs (-5 to -10dB is typical) heard/measured at the listening position.
Although these frequency response peaks and troughs are typically only 5 to 10Hz. wide, they prevent the reproduction of "musical bass" no matter what unequalized subwoofer you use.
In most rooms (I'd estimate at least 90%) the use of parametric equalization and a few bass traps to reduce bass frequency response deviations by 50% or more, will provide better quality bass than an unequalized subwoofer.
How much better?
In most rooms the bass quality from an
equalized subwoofer costing less than $1000,
using a few bass traps in available room corners,
will be better than any unequalized subwoofer
AT ANY PRICE.
This is certainly true in my own listening room
where a room boom from 40 to 55Hz. makes
ANY subwoofer sound so bad that if I could NOT use
a parametric equalizer, THERE WOULD BE NO SUBWOOFER
IN MY ROOM. And I like bass.
My room is a typical listening room, measuring
+/- 9dB without equalization versus +/- 4.5dB
after just one band of parametric equalization
(measured from my listening position using 1/6
octave sine wave tones.
If you want musical bass, the answer for most
listening rooms is a few bass traps (DIY are very cheap)
and parametric equalization (starting at $130)
-- the brand and model of subwoofer is less
important if you are more interested in
bass QUALITY than bass QUANTITY. |
| "Melodic Salmon" goes for $4/lb or can catch em for free!! | Kam
May 7, 2002 9:20 AM | | I'm sorry... truly I am... but I just can't help it... it's an affliction... |
| Kam you ham, your making me hungry dude!!! | Terrible Terrence
May 7, 2002 1:19 PM | | Kam,
Its bad enough that my boss is talking about musical fish all of the time, but a fish that carries the melody is just too much. If fish are this talented, I feel just a little guilty eating them. Perhaps I should hire them to do a memorex commercial. Is it live fish, or is it memorex?????
Dude, get your affliction checked out. Your posts are leaving me scaly.
Terrence |
| lol, you shoulda seen what i spawned in the general forum.. | Kam
May 7, 2002 2:06 PM | | T,
few days ago had another post under one of Doc's bass posts and a few others swam away with it... oh god... it's getting worse.
and i don't even like fish all that much!!!
peace
K2 |
| I've got one of those singing trouts at home | Richard Greene
May 7, 2002 5:15 PM | | My nephew gave me that trout -- it sings Do Wah Ditty Ditty
(Mmanfred Mann song) -- pretty loud with really low fidelity.
We set it up by the front door when we had a big party last year and it drove the neighbors crazy as we had over 50 people come over and Do Wah Ditty Ditty played again and again and again. |
| When you're right, you're right. | bigwally
May 7, 2002 9:33 AM | | I've been trying to avoid it but I finally broke down and picked up an Behringer FD Pro for $129. I'll get back to you in a couple of weeks as I figure that's how long it will take me to get through the manual. There's a guy on HTF who wrote a user's guide for the purpose of using these to EQ subs, but it's not much less complicated! |
| Forget the BFD manual - just post questions for me to help | Richard Greene
May 7, 2002 11:24 AM | | If you post 1/6 octave or finer sine wave measurements I can guess what settings will work for you.
I never read the Behringer manual -- it's aimed at pro use as a feedback destroyer (strangely most pros think it's a lousy feedback destroyer but most subwoofer owners think it's a great paramentric equalizer!).
It took me longer to read the set-up guide on the web than it did to set the equalizer ... which took about 15 minutes for the the one band of parametric EQ I needed, 15 minutes for a second EQ band that didn't do that much, 15 minutes to figure out how to shut off all the bright LEDS for the 10 EQ bands I wasn't using and about 15 minutes to solve a strange problem that required me to reset the switches on the rear panel to the pro setting of +4dB rather than the home setting of -10dB. In one hour my frequency response went from +/-9dB unequalized to +/- 4.5dB equalized
(compared with +/- 5.5dB with my Alesis 30 band EQ that required at least a dozen tweaks over several years to reach +/-5.5dB) |
| Forget the BFD manual - just post questions for me to help | bigwally
May 7, 2002 11:30 AM | | Thanks Rich, I was overdramatizing a bit but if I get stuck I'll check in with you. |
| Are you saying with all things being equal...... | nick4433
May 7, 2002 8:45 AM | | Or not being equal? No matter how and why and which way your setup is, crap gear will sound just that, CRAP! In a given listening environment, a poorly setup crappy gear and a poorly setup high end gear will end up sounding different IMHO, i.e. the high end equipment will end up sounding better even if not properly setup. It would be like MJ coming back and dropping 40 on some hapless team even when MJs game is not in top form.
True, a lot of us need a lesson or two in speaker placement, calibration, SW placement, etc. but you need to make a better arguement for that alone. Let's say you have a Denon 2802 and 3802 in same room and both are poorly setup. Well, since there isn't much difference between the 2 to begin with, they both will sound horrible. But when you begin properly tweaking the units and pay proper attention to speaker placement etc., the 3802 will do better than the 2802 at least in HT IMHO.
I may have simply missed your point and i apologize in advance but my point would be to buy the most you can afford. There is a reason why the 3802 is priced more than the 2802 and the 898 more than the 797. Same could be said of AMPs, pre-amps, etc.
Lastly, what is "horrible" since sound is so relative and subjective to one's own taste? Some people feel that "crisp" music is one that is trebble heavy and their definition of "good bass" is a lot of boominess in the bass. At one time I offered this friend of mine to tweak his system and after 3 hours of speaker placement and other experimenting, I thought I got it. But guess what, he made me change everything to the way it was originally set.
You quoted:
"just because you lay down good money for the best equipment money can buy, and read all your magazines, doesn't mean your going to end up with great to world class results!"
Agreed partly because at some point, there really is a fine line in differentiating sound quality between a $10K amp/prepro and a $20K amp/prepro in similar situations with both of them highly calibrated. It then enters the "Snob Zone".
But like I earlier said, there definitely is a difference in crap gear and better gear even when both are improperly set. The better gear has some inherent qualities that in itself would tend to seperate them from the crap of this world. |
| re: Buying even world class gear won't help most of you!!!! | bigwally
May 7, 2002 10:03 AM | | JDB, how is your helicopter running? You certainly do have your load on again but alas, your tome speaks truth upon truth as can be evidenced by the pictures many post of their systems here and elsewhere. Me, I'd rather listen to a set of Rat Shack speakers placed in the ITU recommended configuration over a full Aerial array where the mains are jammed up next to and directly abeam a TV and the center channel speaker is crammed into an entertainment center 4" behind the screen. (Or worse yet, below the screen on the floor two feet forward of the mains.) Speakers right next to walls, subs used as end tables, hell I saw one HT where the owner had his CC speaker tilted upward toward the ceiling.
Whatever time and effort it takes to solve the mysteries of placement, it's well worth the research considering the cost of the gear. If WAF is the problem, move down to the basement! |
| |
