[Tonto]

Wayne wrote:

The traps are next.

I think Sonnie has a different plan Wayne. From the looks of it, the traps can wait!

Luman wrote:

if it were your coin

Since you are planning to move, I wouldn't spend any reckless money. I'd put it away & plan on investing in the next place. Just make sure it has a room that will accommodate a HT. My wife & I went through so many houses until we found one that would work...not just in the family room, but for a dedicated space as well. I was surprised at how many homes don't work at all. Open floor plans are everywhere!

 

[willis7469]

Hey Lou. Calculating response. Having a funeral and a birthday party during the same day. Lots going on.


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[Owen Bartley]

Wayne wrote:
Since you are planning to move, I wouldn't spend any reckless money. I'd put it away & plan on investing in the next place.

I'd agree with this. Maybe if there's something you can add that will be easy to use in the next place, you can go ahead with it now, but I'd try to save that budget for when you're ready to go in the new house. It would be frustrating to get there and have more equipment you need to sell to switch out for something else better suited to the new layout.

Plan big for the next space! AT screen and 3 identical L/C/Rs!

 

[Savjac]

Hey there Louie, I see you are in the midst of a conundrum. Having visited your home and senior living room as well as the equipment that's slated to be in their I have a rather slanted thought on how you should proceed in this matter. Last time we spoke it was clear that you do wish to quite possibly sell this house after fixing it up a bit and in that vein I would say spend your money on making the house salable first and use the equipment that you now have two make a modest home theater in your main room. While it is not huge it is definitely larger than one you had and I think could work much better frankly.

Building a room inside of a room or making all sorts of accoutrement to place it here and there will definitely detract from your reconditioning which may allow you to get into a better place. I agree that your mains are not necessarily meant for home theater but they would work pretty well and I would hate to see you rid yourself of those most excellent speakers that you may be able to use in your next home. There is a thing called buyers remorse coupled with the fact that buying another home may preclude you from replacing those fine speakers.
So what am I rambling on about? I think I would move everything into your living room set it up as best as possible by mixing and matching what you have and possibly getting a few additional absorption panels that would help you with any bounce if you do not have enough already. By using the salons for left and right duty and maybe putting a full-sized B&W between them, with all the processing you now possess you might be able to make this work. Further doing it this way would save you a ton of money that you could either put into fixing up what you are now trying to sell or putting in the bank and getting ready for your next abode.

By the way, I'm always here to help if you need someone to move stuff around with you.

 

[Lumen]

Hey Lou. Calculating response. Having a funeral and a birthday party during the same day. Lots going on

An emotional combination. Best wishes and sincerest condolences.


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[Lumen]

...Last time we spoke it was clear that you do wish to quite possibly sell this house after fixing it up a bit and in that vein I would say spend your money on making the house salable first and use the equipment that you now have two make a modest home theater in your main room. While it is not huge it is definitely larger than one you had and I think could work much better frankly...

...I think I would move everything into your living room set it up as best as possible by mixing and matching what you have and possibly getting a few additional absorption panels that would help you with any bounce if you do not have enough already. By using the salons for left and right duty and maybe putting a full-sized B&W between them, with all the processing you now possess you might be able to make this work. Further doing it this way would save you a ton of money that you could either put into fixing up what you are now trying to sell or putting in the bank and getting ready for your next abode.

As you and others who care may have guessed, this project has fizzled. I'm only allowed the most basic of HT setups to keep the big/main room of the house uncluttered for showing. I'm leaning toward keeping the current room, saving boatloads of moving and setup time. Getting rid of the Salons is a lot more painful than dumping the B&W's when considering depreciation and performance. But one or the other sets must go due to space constraints. Do you feel sorry for me yet (lol)?

 

[AudiocRaver]

More than you can imagine.

 

[willis7469]

More than you can imagine.

This...


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[Savjac]

Absolutely Lou !! It will be a sad day indeed.

 

[Lumen]

Hi guys, and thanks for the support! :neener:
Each of you has helped me advance along my HT learning at some point. Now the time has come to exercise some of that knowledge in pursuit of even better sound. Yes, I'm one of those pseudo HT nuts who places audio on a higher pedestal than video (at least until such time as I can afford for the latter's funds to surpass the former's). You will all laugh-out-loud very long and hard to find out that I am running my Salons mismatched to a B&W center channel in that tiny Green room of mine! The Salons are quite the behemoths in that cramped space, and wouldn't fare much better in the marginally larger "Eeek" room. But whether a product of my psychoacoustic imagination or my exceptionally well-honed, speaker setup skillset (hah-hah), the Salons convincingly disappear in outright audiophile fashion when reproducing up-to-snuff program material. So why oh why does dissatisfaction prevail? One Word. MMD! Mushy Movie Dialogue. Maybe it's me, maybe it's the source material, but I can't seem to understand dialogue as easily and recently as a few months ago.

Dirac Live calibrations don't drift the way a capacitors can, so I need to ask myself, "What's changed?" On the other hand, maybe I've slowly acclimated to the Salons! What was initially a dance over superior sound on 2ch music and multichannel concert videos, has become a convulsion over mostly incoherent murmuring. No blown tweets or mids. No changes in speaker position. My plan of attack is to first try a source with a known-good center signal. Then try a recalibration if that fails to turn up anything.

Those who don't know me may wish I'd just go back away rather than try to decipher my ramblings. BUT MY NAME IS LOU, AND i LOVE MY SELF!!
So I stay put. Hah! Or as the Knights Who Say "Nee" would say, I now say to you: "Nee!"

Winding down and back to the point...
My system needs more tweaking. This holiday weekend I plan to revamp the room and speaker setup. The room has become too dead as I've shoehorned in more and more bass traps. Time to back off on the wall panels as well. Then there's the speaker Combo Abomino - time to match the front set again, even if it means reverting back to the B&W's or shelling out some mean green for the Revel center. I've seen some used ones cross eBay recently for close to a song. Just couldn't pull the trigger so soon after Christmas and family Birthdays.


...while this is a rough draft of unfinished work, it's quittin' time on Friday afternoon and I need to head out the door.

 

[ellisr63]

Hi guys, and thanks for the support! :neener:
Each of you has helped me advance along my HT learning at some point. Now the time has come to exercise some of that knowledge in pursuit of even better sound. Yes, I'm one of those pseudo HT nuts who places audio on a higher pedestal than video (at least until such time as I can afford for the latter's funds to surpass the former's). You will all laugh-out-loud very long and hard to find out that I am running my Salons mismatched to a B&W center channel in that tiny Green room of mine! The Salons are quite the behemoths in that cramped space, and wouldn't fare much better in the marginally larger "Eeek" room. But whether a product of my psychoacoustic imagination or my exceptionally well-honed, speaker setup skillset (hah-hah), the Salons convincingly disappear in outright audiophile fashion when reproducing up-to-snuff program material. So why oh why does dissatisfaction prevail? One Word. MMD! Mushy Movie Dialogue. Maybe it's me, maybe it's the source material, but I can't seem to understand dialogue as easily and recently as a few months ago.

Dirac Live calibrations don't drift the way a capacitors can, so I need to ask myself, "What's changed?" On the other hand, maybe I've slowly acclimated to the Salons! What was initially a dance over superior sound on 2ch music and multichannel concert videos, has become a convulsion over mostly incoherent murmuring. No blown tweets or mids. No changes in speaker position. My plan of attack is to first try a source with a known-good center signal. Then try a recalibration if that fails to turn up anything.

Those who don't know me may wish I'd just go back away rather than try to decipher my ramblings. BUT MY NAME IS LOU, AND i LOVE MY SELF!!
So I stay put. Hah! Or as the Knights Who Say "Nee" would say, I now say to you: "Nee!"

Winding down and back to the point...
My system needs more tweaking. This holiday weekend I plan to revamp the room and speaker setup. The room has become too dead as I've shoehorned in more and more bass traps. Time to back off on the wall panels as well. Then there's the speaker Combo Abomino - time to match the front set again, even if it means reverting back to the B&W's or shelling out some mean green for the Revel center. I've seen some used ones cross eBay recently for close to a song. Just couldn't pull the trigger so soon after Christmas and family Birthdays.


...while this is a rough draft of unfinished work, it's quittin' time on Friday afternoon and I need to head out the door.

My room is also on the verge of to dead... I would like to make some diffusion panels like GIK has for placing over my absorption panels. I wish they would offer kits of just the wood with the pattern cutout for DIYers too.

 

[AudiocRaver]

...Yes, I'm one of those pseudo HT nuts who places audio on a higher pedestal than video...

Huh? There is another way of looking at it?

...the Salons convincingly disappear in outright audiophile fashion when reproducing up-to-snuff program material...

Enough said. The Salons stay put.

Dirac Live calibrations don't drift the way a capacitors can, so I need to ask myself, "What's changed?"

You? The atmosphere in your part of the world? Did you cross into a parallel dimension (this can be difficult to determine; PM for details - (joking, of course))?

On the other hand, maybe I've slowly acclimated to the Salons! What was initially a dance over superior sound on 2ch music and multichannel concert videos, has become a convulsion over mostly incoherent murmuring. No blown tweets or mids. No changes in speaker position. My plan of attack is to first try a source with a known-good center signal. Then try a recalibration if that fails to turn up anything.

Good plan!

Or as the Knights Who Say "Nee" would say, I now say to you: "Nee!"

Bring us a shrubbery!

Winding down and back to the point...
My system needs more tweaking. This holiday weekend I plan to revamp the room and speaker setup. The room has become too dead as I've shoehorned in more and more bass traps. Time to back off on the wall panels as well. Then there's the speaker Combo Abomino - time to match the front set again, even if it means reverting back to the B&W's or shelling out some mean green for the Revel center. I've seen some used ones cross eBay recently for close to a song. Just couldn't pull the trigger so soon after Christmas and family Birthdays.

Keep us posted. Life is a series of modifications to one's audio system.

 

[willis7469]

Lou. How your ramblings make me feel....there are others like me. First, I'm jealous of you for having the salons. Second, despite many complaints of movie dialogue intelligibility, I might be suspicious of the B&W in general. Blasphemy? Maybe but my jbl center never has me guessing, and I'm 14' away. I would definitely try to pick up the revel center. I'm a believer in timber matching and the haters might attack but I don't care. I'm pretty sure they're just cheap and lazy. Being matched probably won't become the be all end all for intelligibility in your room but having as seamless a front stage as you can, won't hurt. Try some familiar music in pro logic where the center is put to good use and see how that works. If the B&W is still not clear I might be assured it's the offender. If not, maybe it's the voices.....in my head.


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[Lumen]

Hmm. Thought I strayed off-topic, so your kind words and suppressed laughter are appreciated! Conditions are poor from technical standpoints such as mismatched tweeter height, forced compromises in speaker positioning, etc., etc., etc. I remember now that I edited my house curve about the time MMD reared its ugly head. Sounded good at the time with a limited range of source - not demo - material because I try to tune my curve for average recordings. I think that shows "better" is sometimes just "different" and other times actually worse.

Maybe this discussion does belong in my Green Room thread, but any time taken away from home projects does inject a sense of haste into the room/system recalibration I plan for this weekend. So haste is on topic!

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[bkeeler10]

If you suspect the B&W center is the source of your dialogue troubles, run on into your processor and tell it you don't have a center channel. Then your Salons will phantom-image the stuff intended for the center channel. Take a listen to some of the material you've struggled with and see if things improve. This might be a way to narrow down where the problem really lies. It will only cost you half an hour of your time and would help prove or disprove the choice of center channel being the source of the trouble. Just a thought.

You might also want to use REW and measure your center channel response at your listening seat. Perhaps there's a huge floor or ceiling bounce suckout causing the problem. If that is the case, EQ wouldn't be able to completely take care of it, and neither would another speaker placed in the same location.

Edit: Just saw your new post above. Excessive output in the low frequencies can certainly mask the higher frequencies important for intelligibility. Do you have problems in quiet scenes with just dialogue, or mostly in louder, action-filled scenes?

 

[Savjac]

I would have to most humbly submit that the B&W center will never sound match the Revels as they are two different beasties. Well one set is a beast and the other maybe lives more closely to the moniker of delicate flower. Having been blown away by the Revels and having lived with B&W's I can say with some authority that you either have to pick all B&W in the front stage or all Salon. Now as suggest above, in that green room of love, I would most heartily suggest using phantom mode for the center as the somewhat monolithic Salons will take over the room and spread a sound stage like few others, excepting mine of course. (0)

When traveling through the valley of the downsized, it becomes clear that some sacrifices need to be made. I think you are correct in that there might be a tad too many silences hanging about which may cause some lack of life in your music library but then again, they also keep the outside clatter to a minimum. I am lucky in that my room is somewhat isolated from everything so once I enter the Tranquility Base, and shut the hatch door, I am blissfully unaware of the rest of the world....well until the dog barks and wants to come in and play fetch with a spare interconnect cable....or when the cat wants to be petted and will sit on my head until I give in, but those are mere technicalities of course.

To parse this missive down to less than Dickensian size, I would say, DO NOT get rid of the Salons unless you feel you will never have a proper room again in this life or the next one just to be sure. It would be very difficult to replace them by us mere mortals which it seems you may have become. I say that in a most loving fashion of course. Apparently like many of us you have to temporarily step down from Mount Aurolympus and cleverly mix among the mortals of this time and space. Good Luck ooo Great One !!

 

[bkeeler10]

I certainly agree that the Revel center would be a better match for the Salons, and I would head that way too if I were you. But depending on the source of the problem, your intelligibility may not improve just by moving to the matching Revel center. That's all I'm sayin'

 

[Lumen]

If you suspect the B&W center is the source of your dialogue troubles, run on into your processor and tell it you don't have a center channel. Then your Salons will phantom-image the stuff intended for the center channel. Take a listen to some of the material you've struggled with and see if things improve. This might be a way to narrow down where the problem really lies. It will only cost you half an hour of your time and would help prove or disprove the choice of center channel being the source of the trouble. Just a thought.

You might also want to use REW and measure your center channel response at your listening seat. Perhaps there's a huge floor or ceiling bounce suckout causing the problem. If that is the case, EQ wouldn't be able to completely take care of it, and neither would another speaker placed in the same location.

Edit: Just saw your new post above. Excessive output in the low frequencies can certainly mask the higher frequencies important for intelligibility. Do you have problems in quiet scenes with just dialogue, or mostly in louder, action-filled scenes?

If that's just a thought, I like the way you think! And I'd like to apologize for the lack of any hard science or links. many of you talented folk out there help others transform themselves into REW-literates. I would love a walk-through of some of its advanced (to me) features. For now though I may just need to massage my house curve.



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[Lumen]

If you suspect the B&W center is the source of your dialogue troubles, run on into your processor and tell it you don't have a center channel. Then your Salons will phantom-image the stuff intended for the center channel. Take a listen to some of the material you've struggled with and see if things improve. This might be a way to narrow down where the problem really lies. It will only cost you half an hour of your time and would help prove or disprove the choice of center channel being the source of the trouble. Just a thought.

Try some familiar music in pro logic where the center is put to good use and see how that works. If the B&W is still not clear I might be assured it's the offender. If not, maybe it's the voices.....in my head.

Both of your suggestions are worthy experiments!
And speaking of voices, I was fooled into leaving the LP a few times in stereo mode to make sure certain vocals weren't coming from the center channel. IOW the Mains threw a convincing stage and imaged well, BUT only in the context of that small space. I'm amazed they image at all in there! I'll have to upload a picture later.


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[AudiocRaver]

Hmm. Thought I strayed off-topic, so your kind words and suppressed laughter are appreciated! Conditions are poor from technical standpoints such as mismatched tweeter height, forced compromises in speaker positioning, etc., etc., etc. I remember now that I edited my house curve about the time MMD reared its ugly head. Sounded good at the time with a limited range of source - not demo - material because I try to tune my curve for average recordings. I think that shows "better" is sometimes just "different" and other times actually worse.

Maybe this discussion does belong in my Green Room thread, but any time taken away from home projects does inject a sense of haste into the room/system recalibration I plan for this weekend. So haste is on topic!

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While the others were thinking about timbre-matching (love you guys, yer the BEST!), target curve is where I ended up.

Bryan's phantom center suggestion is excellent. I run that way all the time and love it.

A target curve suggestion: Add a tiny bump, 0.5 dB to 1 dB, between 2 kHz and 3 kHz.

My target curve file includes
1000 hz, 0 db
2000, +1
3000, +1
5000, 0

A lot of speakers have a little "liveliness" lift in that region by design. If 1 dB sounds a little extreme, try 0.5 dB. Speech intelligibility will be greatly improved.