Wow, talk about covering a lot of ground. Look out, audio geeks at work / play!
Setting up some new speakers for review and decided to move my sub to dead center between the mains, so I am re-running calibrations for nanoAVR-DL for my 5.1 setup and also for the "review speaker" 5.1 setup. Also calibrating Dirac Live full version (upcoming review) on my media server for my 5.1 setup. Might get all that done tonight, so hope to have some data to throw into the mix.
Did one nanoAVR-DL calibration that came out sounding weird, but I'm pretty sure what the problem was, will re-do and report on it later.
One thing I have done, starting with the nanoAVR-DL review awhile back, for the LP measurement(s), to eliminate chair back reflections from that oh-so-critical first measurement, I have a 1 x 8 board about 4 ft long standing up about where my spinal column would be situated but spaced forward 6 inches with a blanket wadded behind it, slanted back slightly, the mic hangs straight down JUST touching the board at the LP height and distance from speakers. The resulting measurement is very flat and very clean of chair reflections. It is like saying, "Dirac, don't worry about my chair reflections on this first measurement, just take care of the room, please." The board is removed for the non-LP measurements, which are all significantly further from the chair back. The one time I did an A-B trial with this technique for first 3 measurements vs no board, I could easily tell the imaging was significantly tighter from the trial WITH board. It was a difference between very good vs very VERY good. But it is a bit of trouble for the gain, so might not be worth it to you, just mentioning it since there is so much experimentation going on. I know Flavio will want to have me flayed, drawn, quartered, and skinned alive for suggesting it, but there you go.
Real mixed feelings about taking measurements while seated, as I reported in the sticky on mic patterns. I got so much variation it seemed pretty fruitless, but ya'll might come up with a solution to that. The board was my closest solution, simulating mic next to ear (board = skull minus all the messy ear flesh), and centered & facing front of room and all, kind of a mono cyclopse Van Gogh approach (MCVG method???).