CR Treatment and Tuning---The home stretch!!

Thanks for the praise! The acknowledgement means a lot to me.... The sound quality that we've achieved here, by far exceeded my expectations. When I started treating this room, I was not optimistic. It sounded horrible and the odds seemed to be against us with the room dimensions being what they are. Of course I'll have to see how my mixes translate in the real world, but I'm very confidant that I'll be able to measure up to a very high bar. In this case, digital tuning was critical. The room definitely can't stand on its own in the +/-5 db domain, due to the its size and dimensions. Its all about making conditions suitable for digital tuning by addressing time alignment(phase and decay) as well as reflection issues(impulse response). I'm paraphrasing Stuart here a bit, but I certainly share his views now. The clarity and the balance are quite remarkable.

Thanks for the comment, Jakob! As soon as Frank's place is completed, yours is next on the schedule! :) Your place has it's own unique challenges, but I'm confident the final outcome can be very similar to Frank's place. And I'm really glad that Frank agreed to try the digital tuning process! As everyone can see, it is fundamental to getting the overall response tightly under control. However, as Frank mentioned, this can ONLY be done in a room that has been treated as completely as possible acoustically: It CANNOT be done in an empty untreated room, or even a badly treated room, despite the feverish hype spewed excitedly by the manufacturers of so-called "room tuning" hardware and software. I think Frank was a bit skeptical when I first told him about that ("room correction doesn't work: only digital tuning does"), before we started on the digital tuning path, but I'm pretty sure he is now totally convinced, since he has seen how the process actually works in reality. No algorithm can tune the response like this, because algorithms do not have a pair of ears and a brain! Algorithms do not actually understand what "sound" means: they only understand amplitude and frequency, but they have no concept of "musicality", or "tightness" or "clarity" or "harshness" or "timbre" or "warmth". Those are subjective terms that only actual human beings can appreciate, and cannot be programmed into a software algorithm or piece of hardware. This is why I am not in the least a fan of "room correction" gear, and why I don't even use the term myself: firstly, you cannot "correct" the room with hardware or software, and secondly, even if you could, it would still fail. I prefer the term "digital tuning", because that's what we are actually doing here: applying digital tuning to compensate for some issues in the signal chain. That's all. We are not attempting to "correct the room"! If we did, we would fail. The ONLY way to actually "correct" a room, is with extensive acoustic treatment. You cannot correct it with "room correction" software or hardware. And when it has been corrected as well as possible with acoustic treatment, only then can digital tuning be applied, as the "cherry on top of the cake". You can't put the cherry on top of the cake when you didn't even bake the cake yet, and all you have is raw ingredients sitting in a bowl! :) OK, [RANT-MODE = OFF]! And for those who are following the thread: Yesterday Frank and I managed to prove, conclusively, that the issue we are seeing with the sub is NOT related to the PRM1 mic (which is a great acoustic test mic), nor is it related to anything else in the signal chain. We can control the low-end levels from other places in the signal chain, and the results are as expected. It's only the "input gain" control on the sub itself that does not work as expected. So we'll wait for word from the distributor and manufacturer on that. It's a great sub! Not in question. And if the manufacturer can't fix it, I'd still suggest to Frank that we keep it anyway, simply because it is awesome: I can work around that defect in other ways. OK, now I better shut up and get back to working on the final treatment devices for Frank's Live Room, or he'll start thinking that I'm wasting time! :) :roll: :D - Stuart -

Always up to no good, that Stuart!! Chatting it up on the internet!!! Oh, and I will definitely be keeping that sub!

Looks good !!

Yikes !!! Sorry man, I thought that I sent a PM to Stuart and didn't realize I was posting this on your thread !!! :oops: BTW, I wasn't bitching at all. Stuart is AWESOME and I definitely have no complaints ! I was just trying to copy some quotes from your thread and send them in a PM to him, but somehow what I intended as a PM got posted as a reply here. My mistake. And 4+ years for building an entire studio from the ground up (including BOTH a CR and a live room) is not too bad IMO.

No Worries. Somebody did it awhile back and it just lit me up....I'm sure you could imagine how you'd feel if someone did that on your thread, so thanks for the apology...

sage691 wrote:

And 4+ years for building an entire studio from the ground up (including BOTH a CR and a live room) is not too bad IMO.

Probably not an opinion you need to share under the circumstances.... :finger:

Hope your not too upset with me Stuart.... Happy to get back on a lighter note... :mrgreen: To all who are following this thread, conflicts do arise sometimes. Stuart's talents are becoming more and more in demand as you can see. Really not much more to it... Nothing more to see here... :cop:

thanks to the unexpected error with the Sorbothane calculator, but we figured it out in the end, and everything is floating very nicely now.

Sorry to hijack the build thread guys! But Stuart, are you able to share the correction with the Sorbothane calculator since it is nowhere on the internet? This could help zillions of people. Yes, zillions ;-) Sorry again, and thank you! Greg

innocent enough I suppose.... :cop: no worries. :thu: To all following my thread. Stuart is still tuning and designing my LR tweaks. I'll start building again here by next week hopefully. Happy New Year otherwise... :jammin:

Gregwor wrote:

Stuart, are you able to share the correction with the Sorbothane calculator since it is nowhere on the internet? This could help zillions of people. Yes, zillions ;-)

Greg never exaggerates, of course! Hyperbole is not in his dictionary.... :) :lol: 8) I don't recall exactly, but it was something like 93%. If you search back around that post you quoted from, the numbers I gave there were pretty close to what I ended up with. I do have it on file,... some place! I'm just rather busy right now to go looking for it (Frank understands, I'm sure... ). When I have a chance, I'll try to dig it out again, but I do recall that the numbers I gave back then were well in the ball park. However: Caveat emptor! I did not test all Sorbothan products, or all shape factors... It was only tested for what we were doing for Frank's speakers, so I don't make any claims about it being valid for all situations. Now, if you can just persuade each of your zillions of friends to send me a dollar or two, in a show of gratitude and appreciation, that would make me a very happy man! :) ( In fact, I'd settle for just a few cents from each of them!!! I'm not greedy.... :mrgreen: ) - Stuart -

Thank you! I'll use 93% then! Of course, whenever you have a few min to dig that stuff up, please post it. I'll send a message to the zillion people and see what's up regarding the money. Greg

I'll send a message to the zillion people and see what's up regarding the money.

Cool! :thu: And if they don't come through, then I guess it's your responsibility to make good on that ! :) :lol: :lol: :lol: 8) - Stuart -

Hey Frank, I just wanted to note that we missed your birthday! Well, not for you, but for the thread.... You started it on January 3 last year, and it's now January 5.... So Happy Birthday! :) :yahoo: Let's hope that your place is long finished before the next birthday rolls around.... 8) :lol: - Stuart -

Ha ha indeed!!! :poke:

Just a quick update for all who are following the thread: We took a break over the year-end, of course, and there's been a few glitches to iron out, but the final tuning is nearly complete, and going well. Here's where we are at: That's the spectrogram for the entire low end and low mids, covering the range from 12 Hz to 500 Hz. Yes, you did read that correctly: it really does go down to 12 Hz, pretty much clean and clear. That's about as flat as flat can be I think. That Neuman KH805 is a very cool sub, and those Focal Trios are a pretty neat set of mains. The room is working nicely too! And yes, that is UNSMOOTHED data. No smoothing applied there at all. Just pure raw data. So, I'm pretty happy with that. I think Frank is too. We should be done with the tuning soon, then we'll show some more results from REW. Stay tuned! (EDITED: to replace the image with the CORRECT one: I had an incorrect setting in REW that was making it look even better than it actually is, so in the interest of honesty, I have now posted the correct image) - Stuart -

That is one pretty and flat spectrogram! Great work guys! I hope to some day have something half as decent as this build! Cheers and Happy ThreadDay Frank! 8)

Thanks man. It definitely doesn't come easy.... almost done with the tuning I'm happy to say. Struggling to get some traction with the live room...

Hi Stuart, checking in to see if we're still moving forward.....

Yup... slowly recovering from surgery, but working on your LR, and ready to start up again on the CR! I have an appointment with the doc coming up shortly, but later in the afternoon I should be able to so some stuff... - Stuart -

We should probably communicate about what your doing with the LR because the placement in the video example was not what I was expecting....Would be best to avoid a nasty surprise at the end....Or maybe try to come up with some options.... :shot:

Hi Stuart, now that we're past the initial shock and awe :ahh: ....I'd like to get back on the same page. Let me know if my current wishes for the LR are unclear. We keep the guitar wall and go from there. Can lights in the soffits will prohibit any hanging features there, but the ceiling is open minus the lights of course...I'm guessing we can get back to the CR tuning either way. Ready to move on and put this pain behind me....

Could we get some tuning done then?

Yup! Just sent you some stuff to try... - Stuart -

Well, It looks like Stuart is out of commission until further notice...Sorry, I don't have any information to share about why...