The Hi-Fi Five Episode 23: Guest Norman Varney, AV RoomService

Welcome to The HiFi Five -- a weekly news and roundtable discussion show about all things high-end audio!

Featuring:

Ron Resnick (moderator) - WhatsBestForum; audio reviewer

Our other chairs will feature co-hosts and one-time guests and recurring guests.

This show is a candid, freewheeling, behind-the-scenes look at the high-end audio industry.  We're going to give you insight, opinions and perspectives, while also discussing components, music, system-building and how to get the most out of your audio system.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to the 23rd episode of the Hi-Fi Five. I'm Ron Resnick. Please like this video and subscribe to the channel. I have an update on our regulars. Elliot and Jay withdrew permanently from the show yesterday afternoon. Danny Kay is taking a break from the show. I want to thank Elliot. I want to thank Jay. I want to thank Danny very much for their participation on and contributions to the show for the first 22 episodes. Together, I think we launched a great concept and a great show. And I am very grateful to each of them for all of their hard work on the show. I am looking forward to propelling the show forward myself for the time being, every week with multiple guests and new topics. Joining me tonight is Lise Goggins, a longtime audiophile hobbyist. And recently, Lee became a reviewer for positive feedback. Lee knew Jim Smith very well. Jim Smith was widely known and respected as a setup man extraordinaire. And Lee tonight can channel some of Jim Smith's insights, but we're not going to do it with a Ouija board. Our expert guest tonight is Norman Varney, founder of AV Room Service, a very prominent and well-respected acoustics, electrical, and setup firm. Good evening, gentlemen.

SPEAKER_02 1:14

Good evening.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Good evening, Ron. For someone starting from scratch, in what order should they address acoustic issues? Should they focus first on listener position placement? You know, your listening chair, speaker placement, bass control, or reflections. Norm, when you walk into an empty listening room and you see a chair and speakers and boxes, what's the first thing you do? What's the first thing you set up?

SPEAKER_02 1:37

Okay, so this is an existing uh setup. Then yeah, I would be uh first looking at the the listening position. And then I'd be focusing. I I want to be listening to the low frequency response, the um the room modes and so forth, and identifying where the listener is going to be optimally placed in the room, and then work on the the speakers, and then that will dictate where the first order reflection points are, and that will dictate then what's remaining as far as reverberation times and so forth. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

Lee, when I know that you uh observed Jim Smith setting rooms up multiple times, including your own. What do you recall was the first thing Jim Smith would do?

SPEAKER_00 2:22

He would work on the listening chair position and he would use the Studio 6 digital tool and the RTA tool within that app specifically, and we would run pink noise anywhere from usually under you know one kilohertz. And what we would look at is under 300 hertz, how flat it became as you moved the listening chair forward and behind. Now, before all of this, you had to sort of figure out the center line and center the listening chair on a center line, you know, bifurcating the room. And then once the listening chair was locked in, and I totally agree with Norman, and this is very consistent with how Jim taught me, you you then work on speaker placement, then reflection points, and then addressing other things and refining the speaker placement, such as toe-in, rake angle, things like that.

unknown 3:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

When Jim tried to position the listening chair first to account for a smooth as bass response, would he literally be holding his iPad, you know, as he moved the chair fore and aft?

SPEAKER_00 3:26

Yeah, and here's an interesting uh side observation from this the iPad microphones are actually quite good. I I don't know that they're quite as good as having some sort of elaborate B and K setup, but we actually tested that the microphones, and they actually were relatively accurate enough to do this task. It was Jim's conclusion after playing with several standalone mics. And so we would we would move the chair up, do the RTA, move it backward and forward till we thought like we'd sort of flattened out as best we can, you know, the the base response, and and then we would go on to step two, which was the placement. And he was using pink noise with that, or what was he using as the pink noise with the Studio Six Digital?

SPEAKER_02 4:09

It's designed that software is specifically designed for an iPad or an iPhone microphone. In addition, you can calibrate to that microphone, you know, and in addition to that, you can buy a more expensive microphone, a class one um microphone, and in a and calibrated, and in addition to that, you can buy uh you know a mic pre this uh class one, and so there's a lot of options, but the studio six digital thing is is stellar, it works really well. And then of course the thing you gotta understand is that these are small rooms, and that is a very, very small diaphragm. So um you gotta you gotta use your ears quite a bit, you know, for low frequency um uh evaluations in small rooms with that equipment.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Now the Studio 6 is the program, is the acoustics program?

SPEAKER_02 5:06

Yeah, yeah, it's an app for iPhone and iPads.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

Now go ahead. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Oh, I was just gonna say it's an you can download the app for free. You get some basic tools gratis, but more advanced stuff. Like if you want, say, the digital SPL meter, that's like a few dollars you have to pay from the app. I think it's generally a one-time charge. And you can just add the tools that you need.

SPEAKER_02 5:29

Um that's 45 bucks, and that has uh you know signal generators too, um, which are pretty important to have.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

That's also valuable in terms of listening to your room decays.

SPEAKER_02 5:49

And the one that I love so much with that suite is the impulse response. It's it's awesome. When that came out, and that was probably about 10 years ago, that opened up the possibility of me to go uh instead of on-site TAC data, which you know is still the best, I can have a customer take an impulse response. I can give him the information, you know, for if he's got an iPad or an or an iPhone and buys the$45 app, he can take the impulse response and then send me the WAV file. And then I can dissect it and I can look in the the time, frequency, or um energy domain, any combination I want, and get a a very full character acoustical characterization of his room, and enough that I can then tell him this is what you need to do in a in a hierarchical, a prioritized order.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

A lot of people I thought use uh room EQ Wizard. How do you compare Studio Six to REW and why do you use Studio Six rather than REW?

SPEAKER_02 6:55

Well, I use a lot of different things, but Roo, um Rue's great, it has uh a lot going for it. One, it's free, other than you need to buy at least a$99 microphone. Um, but the impulse response doesn't do it for me at all, so I can't use it for off-site testing and with any, it just doesn't do what I want it to do. But this does, and it does it for 50 bucks or 45.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

Uh I've tried to play with REW myself and I just found it not, I mean, is it just a dopey hobbyist? I found it kind of not intuitive to deal with, and I also got the related UMIC 1 microphone, which gives you the calibration file that you upload to REW. So I I thought I was sort of doing it right, but I found REW kind of difficult to deal with. So then I tried a program called Fuzz Measure, which is a paid program, much easier to deal with, much more intuitive. And then I learned after it was too late that FuzzMasure doesn't have a real-time RTA uh that you can just watch along the way. So the thing was totally useless to me. So I thought rather than that, then I I did a better job learning REW. So now I I can use REW a little bit, but it's interesting uh that you used the Studio 6 rather than the REW. Uh Lee, do you remember what exact program Jim Smith used?

SPEAKER_00 8:18

He he well, um the way that he taught me in in the in the later years, it was mostly uh the RT8 app and the RT60 app, which is I believe is a standalone that's also sold by Studio Six. Those were kind of his go-to's. He had, I think he had some practical issues, I would say, with REW. I don't think he liked that program as best I recall. Um not to dismiss what they've done, but it's just it Jim didn't find that it was particularly valuable in the way that he approached setup.

SPEAKER_02 8:53

Studio 6 Digital, they make one called uh Sound Tools, I think. And it's a a free suite that does have RTA on it, real-time analyzing. Um, but anyway.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

Question number two. Norm, how much of what we hear is a system in the room? Uh is this is the system versus the room?

SPEAKER_02 9:16

Great question. Um, of course, it uh depends on the environment, but I would say the typical audio file, most of it, most of what you're hearing is your room. Um, but yeah, you can, I mean, when you do an analysis of the room, you can definitely call that out. You know, you know, but for example, reverberation times, now that's airborne, but a lot of people don't understand it structure borne. There are arrivals that are happening before the direct sound, during and after structural um resonances and buzzes and rattles uh have a lot of influence on the sound. And people don't realize it unless you have um, and you know, when I design from scratch, then we're gonna be floating floors and isolating walls and suspending ceilings and so forth. But key and still, regardless, is to isolate the source of vibrations, your speakers, especially subwoofers. And you know, a product that we make, EVPs, that's a simple solution and inexpensive and really quick and easy. And it helps everything sound quality, noise control. Um, it it it hits, it's the only sound product that I know of that hits all the attributes.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Yeah, I might add, if if I could, Ron, uh totally agree with what Norman says. Um in my townhome, my reference room has a lot of acoustic treatments now. I've worked out a lot of the major problems, but there's still things to do, such as uh uh the first reflection point on the ceiling. Uh I'm working on that. Um, but I have a friend named Hugh who I think you may know who built a dedicated building, actual steel building, a large one, uh, with uh massive amounts of acoustic treatments. And I will say, just to sort of underscore what Norman said, uh the difference in the quietness and what you can hear at Hughes, um, I think we kind of call it the music barn or something along those lines, is is definitely way superior than a 15 by 20 room, like in my townhome, which was originally built by the builder to be a home theater. You know, you've got you know drywall that's probably moving at some unhelpful uh flex.

SPEAKER_02 11:45

And probably at 70 hertz.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

Yeah, and and so those things need to be addressed, uh, but nothing beats a dedicated building, of course. But most a lot of people can't do that, but I I you know, with that experience of hearing Hughes and a few other nice rooms, such as uh Robert Harley's, you know, which was done by Art Knoxon, uh, it it makes a it makes a huge difference, I think.

SPEAKER_02 12:09

Yeah. HBAC too, that's another one. Um, you know, I mean, there's it there's so much, and and again, it always depends on are we talking new construction or existing? Um, but HBAC, that's a big one, again, that people don't um tend to think about. And when you, you know, it let's say it's existing and you've got HBAC going on, um, you know, a lot of people they'll they don't really realize it's going on until it shuts off. And then you realize, oh my gosh, what a relief, you know. Well, what now is happening is you have a whole lot of low-level resolution that you can hear now that you could not hear before. And so that again, as far as sound quality, as far as dynamics, as far as both macro and microdynamics and and low-level um resolution, getting that noise floor down, you know, our typical residential, you know, not in the city, but um uh, you know, is about a an SPL uh of about 40 dB. That's you know, it seems like that's pretty quiet. It's really not. Um the the rooms that I'm designing from scratch, we're looking for 20 or or less. And when you get that, um your you know, audio files talk about black, you know, backgrounds. It's really black, and you hear so much more information, so much more harmonic content, um, you know, all the all the uh the sound quality uh uh um words descriptors that we use are just amplified because you've taken that noise floor and lowered it. So now you have all this to hear instead of just this to hear.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

I have for my system, I just start with a legacy room. It was not a new custom build, which I wish it could have been, but it wasn't. And I definitely did not for people building their rooms or working on legacy rooms, I definitely did not pay enough attention to quieting the HVAC ducting. So, what I tend to do when I have groups of people over is I freeze the place and then turn the air off and you know let it warm up a little bit over time because if you're doing serious listening, it's really not cool to it's not elevating that noise floor with the air conditioning system and the distraction, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:36

When the HVC turns on and off, it's it pulls you out of whatever you're you're focusing on. Ron, you know, it's not too late, and it's very likely that you could put an inline silencer for about a a thousand bucks, less than probably a pair of patch cords, you know.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

Yeah, the thought of ripping up the ceiling in drywall dust is just too anathema to me.

SPEAKER_02 14:59

I don't know, I don't know if you would have to do that. We'd we'll have to investigate, but it would be totally worth the investigation.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

I agree, I agree. Question number three: how should an audiophile figure out if he or she should put absorption or diffusion or nothing at the first reflection points on the sidewalls in front of the loudspeakers? We often hear that it's important to do something with those very first near reflections. Uh Paul McGowan talks about you absolutely have to do something about those first reflections. What is your philosophy about absorption or diffusion or nothing at those very first uh near reflections on the sidewalls, Norm?

SPEAKER_02 15:39

Okay. Um so yeah, I'm I mean, again, we're typically talking about small rooms. So you've got, you know, speakers, the source of uh um propag, you know, the sound propagating near those boundaries. And so, yeah, if you don't, you're gonna have some constructive and deconstructive anomalies. And so it's gonna sound weird, and it'll that will affect timbre and that will affect spatial cues and and you know, all of those things. So, yes, I tend to, unless it's a very large room andor very directional speakers, um, 99% of the time I'm gonna say, yeah, we need to address those first-order reflection points. And there's six for each speaker, right? So we got 12 first-order reflections that we should be looking at. Yes, you can prioritize them. As far as to answer your question, should it be absorption or diffusion? Well, that's going to depend on many things. And it typically it's a combination of the two, but really the way I will address it is um let's look at the reverberation times and see where we're at. Everybody's reverberation times are are, unless they've got some control going on, are wild. You know, they're unique. You do not want that. You want linear, you want a little bit of a ascending tail in the, you know, between like 125 hertz. But from 125 hertz on, you want it to be in a window between about 0.25 and 0.4 seconds. So you want it to be very linear, and unless you've controlled it, it's not. And and so reverberation is very uh tonal, and that's one reason why it's so obviously uh audible um and and so unique sounding. So you look at the reverberation times. If the reverberation times are already low, what do you do about that first order reflection? You use a diffuser, and so like I say, it's usually it's gonna be some combination of the two. But a diffuser also, when it's a small room, uh adding some diffusion. If you now I will get, you know, we want to get the reverberation times under control as best as we can first, and then after that, you can add some diffusion and make the room sound larger than it is.

SPEAKER_01 18:04

So your view is that it's what you do on those the first near reflection sidewalls is more a function of the overall reverberation time situation, not just an automatic placement of something on those sidewalls for the first reflection.

SPEAKER_02 18:17

Right. Oh, yeah, always yes. So, you know, like I say, everyone's room is different and and so suffering from uh different uh maladies. We need to find out what those are and get them under control. What the whole idea, the whole goal is we want a neutral room, we want it to be like uh, you know, the the the mastering suite where they they mix the album, you know, and they they those for the most part, hopefully, they are under control. And the reason why they are under control is so that they can mix in this studio and it will translate well in this studio, and it will translate well in in in any other studio as well. Well, we can, if we so choose, control our acoustics and get ultimate sound, but Lee, you use in Alexia V speakers.

SPEAKER_01 19:14

What do you do for first reflections?

SPEAKER_00 19:16

Um I'm glad you asked. I've got sort of a more practical, well, I agree with everything Norman says. Um for but maybe a benefit to our audience is just practically what I've done. Um let me just room dimensions are 15 by 20 with 10, 10 and a half foot ceilings. Um, I have used GIK Acoustics Alpha 2 panels, so they're two inch deep. They have a randomized pattern, kind of uh, you know, I don't know, four or six millimeter veneer on on front of fabric, you know, uh cubes that are two two foot by four foot. And so uh they are half reflective, half absorptive. And uh Jim advised me to put those at the first reflection point, so the left and right channels. So I did that, but we also put three continuously together on on the front wall. Um, I'm looking into that a little bit further, but adding those five panels was fairly affordable. I think you could get three two by four panels for something like, you know, I think it's around$300, maybe$400 now. Um, and that very much improved the timbre of the instruments, as Norman suggests. And it it helped with the sound stage with in-depth too. And so it you don't have to, my point being here is I I see a lot of people that have me come in and do setups, they'll either not have enough treatments or they'll have far too many of them be completely dead. And so I think they're both kind of twin evils, uh um, but you don't have to spend a a ton of money. One thing I would say though that I found helpful, although I haven't implemented all the recommendations, is I did send$200 into Vicoustic and they ran their algorithms. And I boy, if you do this, you be prepared to give them a bazillion measurements, which I did, including the depth of my windows and the everything, the molding, the whole shebang. And I got a very detailed 3D model back for$200 of what they would suggest that their own acoustical models did. Now, Norman, I don't know if you have a view on on their process or not, but it seemed pr very professional, but I haven't implemented everything that that was um recommended. But I just wanted to point out you don't you don't have to spend a fortune to start getting great results.

SPEAKER_02 21:43

So did you make uh an impulse response for them? I did not, no. Okay, so here's my view um you can't guess at this stuff, you know. If if you you you can't send me um Now, photos, you know, because of my experience, I can glean a lot. I mean, most anybody can go, oh my gosh, you've got nothing but hard surfaces, so you need some absorption. Right. But still, and until you know what the conditions are, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna, you can't guess. It's like when you go to a doctor with an ailment, they're gonna run a urinalysis, they're gonna take your blood, they're gonna run some tests, right? Before they can give you a prescription. And then they're probably gonna ask you to come back and see how well they hit that mark. Well, I love it when I can do that. Now, at minimum, I mean, I'm I'm if if a customer wants me to guess, I'm gonna pass. I'm not gonna do that.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

Um I believe I said I think I sent the RTA and RT60 graphs to them. So they had a little bit to work with, but okay, it wasn't an impulse response.

SPEAKER_02 22:58

There are several companies out there that just say, give us the room dimensions and and photographs, and we'll send you a kit. And it's man, the ones that I I mean, yeah, they end up uh selling you way more than you need, and not necessarily the right stuff either. Again, we don't want to just, you know, without that detailed information, you don't know where those long uh tails of reverberation are in the frequency band and where they're not. And if you send them the wrong absorption panel, you're you're sucking out too much here and not enough there. And you're just you can easily go from one weird to another weird.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

So it sounds like it it uh so sorry, Ron, just just one real quick. It sounds like what you're suggesting is until you do the in-room testing, you're not accounting for things like different materials on the floor, you know, whether it's a leather sofa or a cloth sofa, you know, things like that.

SPEAKER_02 23:59

Absolutely, you know, yes, uh, like I say, I mean, photographs can help, but only to a small extent to somebody who's got decades maybe of of experience. So, yeah, you know, so what we're doing is we're taking the the actual data, and then we're gonna computer model it with the data of different uh acoustical panels until we have a match, until we have what we want.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

I want to I want to take a question, but before that, just follow up on one thing, Norm. So is your view that you can prepare the room without having any idea what are the actual loudspeakers that are going to be in that room eventually?

SPEAKER_02 24:44

Oh no, I want to know. Um, otherwise, I don't know how how the sound is propagating in the room. So I definitely have to know what kind of speakers are being, and I got to know the layout of the room too.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

Interesting because I think some acousticians have a different philosophy. They do the measurements and they prepare the room agnostic as to what the loudspeakers are eventually going to be. And that, not that I know anything about this, but that just never made sense to me, frankly.

SPEAKER_02 25:13

Right. Yeah. Oh, I mean, for example, um, a planner speaker, I'm gonna put a diffuser behind it. Not I'm not gonna be doing that with uh, you know, with really any other kind of speaker. Uh yeah, you got to know how the sound is gonna propagate into the room.

SPEAKER_01 25:31

We're gonna come to that in a bit. Um people are curious, uh Norm, what is your personal home system? What are the just give me the list of components in your personal home system?

SPEAKER_02 25:41

Okay, well, so it's uh it's a it's a lab really, it's uh a room inside of a room. So it's uh you know, isolated wall, suspended ceiling, um, on on grade. It's got uh dedicated power, um, dedicated HVAC. The system itself is um um, I've got it's a 5.2 setup, and uh they're all aperiodic loaded transmission line speakers. They're all dyne audio drivers made by a company that doesn't exist anymore. The center channel is exactly what the other speakers are, minus the the woofer. And then I'm dual mono byamping. I got a pair of compounded compound loaded subwoofers. Um all the amplifiers are the same, made by Code of Technologies. All the uh uh speaker cables and interconnects are made by MIT and they're all the the same length. Um, I do have you know all all the different sources. Um I'm certainly um an analog guy. Uh I've got over 5,000 LPs. Um, but I'm I'm really enjoying uh digital much more these days than than I used to. It's it's it's come far, and and besides the fact that you know streaming just opens up so many possibilities um uh of music and and box sets and you know things that I I wouldn't have been able to afford or even know about sometimes, you know. Um so yeah, I've got all the all the sources.

SPEAKER_01 27:19

So question number four What is the single most common acoustic mistake audiophiles make in their listening rooms? Um, Lee, did did um Jim ever tell you you wouldn't believe what I walked into this room, you wouldn't believe what the heck I saw this guy had. Do you remember anything like that? What about what was Jim?

SPEAKER_00 27:38

Okay, so so his his his bugaboo and now my bugaboo is equilateral triangle speaker placement. It's and in our view of the world, it's the root of all evil. And I have pro pro-audio folks that swear that hey, we're mastering this, we use an equilateral triangle, so it should be, but that's not in in at least in in Jim's experience and in mine, how things behave. You know, Jim had a uh formula uh uh around of you know, if you take the right ear to the right tweeter and you if you count that as y and the distance between the tweeters is x, x over y should be somewhere around, it varies by room and equipment and whether the type of speaker, but it's generally between 0.82 and 0.84. So when you get that listening share position nailed, I usually try and at least start out at 0.83. And now Wilson will sort of back this up because they have a WASP, also an audio setup procedure, I think is what the acronym is for. And their WASP is the inverse of that ratio, which is 1.2. So basically the same thing in terms of their speakers, but they have a a way of sort of bringing out the speakers into the room to hit what's called a zone of neutrality. So I I have found that when I do that, and and it it works on a lot of things you it shouldn't work on. You know, audio note will show you frequency graphs that when their speakers are in the corner, you get better base response. And it's hard to argue the measurements, but I've set up two audio systems now, and we moved them out in the room, and the client was open-minded about this, and we definitely got an improvement by going to Jim's Arule of 83%. So I think that's that would probably be the thing that Jim would be most uh concerned about. It's more of a placement thing than it is a room acoustics, but so I don't know if that's a fair answer or not, but that's what he he continually talked about.

SPEAKER_01 29:37

Norm, what do you see as the single most common acoustic mistake audiophiles make on their own?

SPEAKER_02 29:42

Not not thinking about the acoustics or not addressing their acoustics. I mean, absolutely. Um, you know, at my my seminars uh for the last uh I don't know, five years or so, my bold statement is 95 more than 95% of audiophiles are experiencing less than 50% of their equipment's potential. And I think that's a conservative statement. So yeah, I totally just acoustics in general. I did recently though, Ron, um just like maybe maybe a month ago, um, uh on my YouTube channel, AV Room Service uh YouTube channel, I have um I don't remember how many, the the top 10 mistakes that audio files make, the five the top five home theater and the top 10 uh studio uh guys. Anyway, there's three of them on there. One of them's for audiophiles. I think it was 10.

SPEAKER_01 30:40

Well, I I agree with you that people enjoy spending money on components and reading reviews, and it's fun to buy boxes, but I agree with you. Yeah, I think who knows what the statistic is, but I believe that many audiophiles do not achieve the sound quality of which their existing components and rooms are capable. Correct.

SPEAKER_00 31:02

I totally agree. I think this is something that Elliot and I were particularly aligned on. I think, you know, when I worked for Next Screen, going around the country and hearing some pretty high-end systems, uh, the the ones that were maybe very modest electronics, you know, fair to midland speakers, but with top quality setup, always beat the pants off the$900,000 speaker that was not properly uh set up. And it's just remarkable. I think uh I I love Hi-Fi. It's a hobbyist industry, it's tiny, it has issues, but maybe the biggest is to get people to have more enjoyment by yeah, creating more knowledge, like and Norm's done an amazing job of getting the word out, but to have these things where we go around and we talk about setups, I did one at the year-ago Florida show, um, and just you know, share best practices for setup, and that would solve a lot of ills, I think. And I yeah, you know, we got to get people off the equipment, merry-go-round. It's good for the industry to move because I don't want to take away revenue from the industry, but it's even better for the industry if people are really satisfied and they get that maximum sound because at least the way it works with me, the the better my system gets downstairs, the more excited I am. What's the next thing? You know, absolutely. I I want to go, I want to get even closer to the music, I want to get even more lifelike sound. What's the next thing? Is it is it grounding? Is it a better power conditioner? Is it is it something simple? Is it you know, fixing the the the uh the ceiling, the front wall connection, you know, like who says I need to do something, you know, things like that. Yeah, it you so I think stuff is a huge thing.

SPEAKER_01 32:50

It's way under you're freezing a little bit. I'm not sure if there's anything you can do about it, but just so you know, you're actually freezing a little bit on the video.

SPEAKER_00 32:56

Okay, it must be a bandwidth issue. Can you hear me okay?

SPEAKER_01 32:59

Yeah, question six. Should audio let me start with Norm. Should audiophiles always put something on the front wall between the speakers, absorption or diffusion? Should there some always be something there? Or once again, it really depends upon what the measurements show about the overall reflection time.

SPEAKER_02 33:19

Well, okay, so you do have uh you've got two first order reflections, one for each speaker on the wall that's in front of you that's behind the speakers, right? So it's not in the middle. Now, if you had a you know a room mode issue, then you're gonna probably want to if you can, if you got the real estate to do it or or whatever, then yeah, you might need something that's in the middle. But as far as first order reflections, they're not gonna be quite in the middle, they're gonna be somewhere in between, and that's a matter of geometry as far as the the the distance between the the speakers and and that front wall and the listener, okay. Um so yeah, I I but whether it's absorption or diffusion is gonna depend on the reverberation times of the the room. But uh yes, I I do say um that you should address those. That may not be the first place or the most important place. Um, in fact, it's probably not the side reflections and that ceiling that Lee's talking about, that's a big one. Those are very uh uh causing a lot of distortion.

SPEAKER_01 34:25

And between dynamic driver box speakers and planar dipole speakers, does that affect the usual need for absorption or diffusion in the middle of the front wall? Or it's or or the need for that diffusion and absorption tends to be uh loudspeaker topology agnostic?

SPEAKER_02 34:43

Yeah, it it is. So, you know, a planar speaker like that is is um is not gonna have those first order reflection points like what we're talking about. You know, it's it's playing, you know, like an electrostatic or something in like a figure eight pattern. So that's where I would say, okay, we if if it's back near uh um the the front wall, we need to do something about that. I don't know what absorption or diffusion, depending on what the the rest of the room tells us. But yeah, you want to you want to address that um somehow.

SPEAKER_01 35:16

Lee, what do you have right now on your front wall? Is there absorption, diffusion, anything?

SPEAKER_00 35:21

GIK Acoustics A2 panels, so it's half reflective, half absorptive. There's uh three two by four panels, so six feet across by four feet high, pretty much dead center of the front wall between the speakers.

SPEAKER_01 35:36

Question seven: are multiple subwoofers the most effective way to get smooth bass in a typical listening room? Lee, I know you have two Wilson Audio Loki subwoofers. Would you actually prefer to have four?

SPEAKER_00 35:51

Um, well, that's an interesting question. I I it would be difficult to place the two in the back just the way my record collection, which is on the sidewalls, is. Um, and uh I I uh hesitate to bring that up because Norman may have views in terms of what record uh collections add in terms of room acoustics. So we learned something here tonight. Uh but uh it there it would be inconvenient for me, but I will tell you that um Jacob Heilbrunn of the Absolute Sound, uh, I've been in his room uh a couple of times now. He's got a fantastic room, wonderful sound. He added two Loki's in the back, even when he had subs up front, and it created an extra sense of realism. So I think if I could figure out a way to do it and more importantly, find the budget to do it, it would probably improve. But I will tell you, um, I'm getting tremendously high-quality textured base from just the two Loki's. And the two Loki's are about four inches on each side of the Alexia V's. And they're dialed in by phase degree, and six degrees turned out to be the magic number. You can use a 40 hertz click track to dial that in. And with David Ellington's help, we we sort of got it nailed, I think.

SPEAKER_01 37:06

With Jacob's new system, with the avant-garde trio G3, he actually uses four Wilson Banesh IGX uh infrasonic subwoofers. So he's using four right now, as a matter of fact, which I guess is consistent with, to some extent, the distributed base array concept. Norman, what do you think of the of the subwoofer swarm concept?

SPEAKER_02 37:26

Uh yeah, I mean it's it's uh usually a simple, especially if it's existing can uh construction. Um it's usually a pretty simple way to uh uh to get linear base response back again. But you know, there are there's you know base is tough. Um, and there's six six ways you can address it if you've got new construction. It's gonna be the room dimensions, so you have good distribution. Um, it's going to be the construction materials and methods so that you don't, as you can imagine, uh uh a concrete bunker is not going to be good because it doesn't move. So if we if we're building um resilient construction, you actually have walls and floors um and ceilings that are allowed to flex. So they now become actual base absorbers. We're talking huge amounts of energy with really long wavelengths. You're not gonna get um, and I don't even like the term base traps, but you know, to put something topographical in the room to address low frequencies is is is uh not really possible. It just takes too much real estate, and then you're talking unless you're talking about diaphragmatic absorbers and and we deal with those too. Um, and then it's a matter of listener and speaker placement, and then you can talk about EQ and um and multi-subarrays. Multi-subarrays is a great way to go, like I say, because it's um it's easy to address. And like Lee said, though, you've got to have means of dialing it in properly. You want to you want it to blend, obviously, with the the main speakers. But if you don't, and I know of so many even expensive high-quality subwoofers that don't have a variable phase control, you and you have to have a variable phase control to get it dialed in. And when you do, you've got not only linear, nice linear bass response, but what's terrific is the um the recording size of the hall gets big.

SPEAKER_00 39:42

Yeah, well one thing I want to add as a side note, which many in the audience may know. Um, Jim's number one rule of thumb for subs is you always want to work in pairs. It's very difficult to use a single sub and achieve results in his experience. And I sort of, you know, that's sort of my view as well. Um I noticed that I actually started with one low-key and added another, and it was tremendously better.

SPEAKER_02 40:08

I've always got to have just one sub, you gotta at least have two, and then if you're trying to, you know, combat, then it's it's usually, yes, done in pairs. But again, every room's different, every room has constraints and and limitations that you all you can do, and and there's no such thing as a perfect room, all you can do is optimize it with those constraints.

SPEAKER_01 40:31

Norm, I like woofage, and I've always said I would add subwoofer to a ham sandwich. Have you ever walked into a room with a client who says, you know, Norm, I want subwoofers. Have you ever walked into a room and said, you know what? The the idiosyncrasies of this room, I don't think we can put subwoofers in this room to any productive use. Have you ever found that? Or do you find that almost always you can figure out something constructive to do with subwoofers?

SPEAKER_02 40:58

Oh yes, yes, I'd say so. And I think the world is is you know discovering that multi-subs work well. Um, there's a a lot of applications for them. Um, yeah, yeah. Uh, you know, it's um I don't know. I mean, we didn't grow up, uh at least you know, our generation with separate subwoofers, right? Most we didn't we didn't run into uh subwoofers, separate subwoofers until later. You know, it just wasn't a thing. Now, with the introduction of the LFE channel, um, it's like, oh wow, you know, this is great. And now, after that experience, we're applying it to two-channel, and we're discovering many applications that are appropriate for two-channel with multi-sub um installations.

SPEAKER_01 41:50

Norm, what's the best way to integrate subs with a full-range main speaker? What's your actual technique? You have the subs in the box, the client has an operating system with full-range main speakers. What do you do? What's your actual specific technique for integrating the subs?

SPEAKER_02 42:06

Well, there's so many different kinds of subs, active and and uh passive, and and you know, so there's a lot of let's talk about uh, you know, um an actively powered a rel.

SPEAKER_01 42:15

Somebody comes in with uh two rel subwoofers. What do you do with them? How do you integrate?

SPEAKER_02 42:20

RHELs are tough, and and and that's in in point. They don't have a a variable phase switch, they just got a zero or one eighty.

SPEAKER_01 42:30

So now whatever your favorite subwoofer is that you recommend for people, two of them appear in the room, and and how do you go about setting up?

SPEAKER_02 42:39

Okay, yeah. Well, so I'm gonna, you know, to get in the ballpark, I'm gonna use an RTA and I'm gonna use uh um an impulse response so I can time align it. That's the that's the general thing. And then you're gonna probably, you know, whatever you've got available on the subwoofer, or maybe it's an outboard DSP or whatever it is to dial it in. But again, that's my point is with the rel now, you don't have that kind of control. And so you're gonna have to physically position it so that it is time aligned with the mains. That phase is so darned important, and there are many applications run. I mean, rels are really popular, so I run into them a lot. Um, where you know, oh my gosh, I don't have the room to put it in the right spot. So you suffer, you're you're it's not going to be time aligned. Nothing you can do about it.

SPEAKER_01 43:29

Even though the rel doesn't have continuous phase adjustment, isn't it good to make it, isn't it good to position them physically so they are physically timed aligned anyway?

SPEAKER_02 43:38

Uh well, yes, of course it is. And you have you have to, but sometimes you're limited with whatever the furnishings or the or the room or whatever. But yes, the you know, the position of that subwoofer is is mighty important. You don't want to put it where um where there's a peak room mode, for example, or put them, you know, where there's a peak room mode. So Yes, and for example, I don't recommend that they be put in the corner where they're going to exasperate all the room modes. They should be symmetrical. Uh, you know, you you want front horizontal symmetry, and you don't want to exasperate whatever room modes are uh exist in your room.

SPEAKER_01 44:20

Uh oh, mine are in the back corners or in the front corners, and maybe got to work on that. Yeah, we got to work on that.

SPEAKER_00 44:26

Uh one thing I would add just real quickly, Ron, is if you've got the phase control, one of the things that's interesting that Wilson has is has found that you you're dialing it into a single degree. And if you have solid state amps with, say, Alexia V's, it's gonna be one setting. If you have vacuum tube amps, it's going to be another setting. So kind of everything matters, but I didn't realize that initially uh that that it mattered to that degree, but it but it does. So it it's it it it's a very precise process you have to go through to dial in the subs.

SPEAKER_02 45:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:05

Question eight. What measurements actually matter most when evaluating a listening room? You talked about this a little bit in the beginning, Norm, but would you just list for us specifically the three or four measurements you focus on most closely? RTA.

SPEAKER_02 45:20

Yeah, uh impulse response, um, reverberation times, um uh yeah, RTA. Um, yeah, as we're just talking about acoustics now, not electrical. Um yeah, and frequency response and phase. Um yeah, those are, I mean, anything to do, you know, the three domains that we're dealing with are frequency, energy, and time. And so I'm going to be wanting to look at those um those parameters in different combinations from different angles, you know, and the whole idea, you know, it ultimately it's what sounds best to you, right? Your your ears. Um, but test instrumentation is is one, it's going to get you in the in the ballpark quick. Secondly, it's going to allow you to sleuth, investigate um problems that you are are hearing and or seeing with the the data that you're collecting. And then third, it's to confirm that you've nailed it. Well, I mean, I use my ears a ton and they are the final say, but I'm going to use instrumentation to uh to do it quickly.

SPEAKER_01 46:35

Bob asks, do you have clients that live in a condo? And are you able to integrate subs without having the neighbor come knocking on the door? Is it possible to do subwoofers and not disturb the neighbors?

SPEAKER_02 46:45

Yeah, yeah. Well, I say yeah. Okay, always depends, you know, but let's say we're talking about uh structural um vibrations. So you get equipment vibe product that we make, the EVPs, they're gonna nail um, and this they're lab-proven, 95 95 of the energy is going to be mitigated from five hertz on up. So when you you know, when you play a subwoofer in a typical residence, you can hear that subwoofer. It gets into the structure, and so everything in North America is hard fastened, so tight hard connections. So the vibration transfers to the other end of the house until it leaves the house. So everyone in the house can hear that subwoofer playing, right? We've all heard that. If you isolate structurally, mechanically isolate that subwoofer with these little isolation feet. Now they don't. So that's why I say not only does it improve articulation and sound quality in for the listener in that room, but it improves it controls noise control for the rest of the house who might be sleeping or studying or annoyed otherwise. So, yeah, that is the like the simplest and least expensive thing we sell.

SPEAKER_01 48:07

Question 10. What is one acoustic improvement that dramatically increases the sense of realism or the sense of being there? Lee, is there one particular thing you've added acoustically that really felt you felt really made a difference to believability?

SPEAKER_00 48:24

The first reflection points were huge in my room. So and the front wall was huge. Um, but I'm tempted to say speaker placement has a lot to do with you know dynamics, presence, and tone. So I think a mix of all of those.

SPEAKER_01 48:38

Norm, what's one thing that you think people can do to improve their system the most acoustically?

SPEAKER_02 48:44

Well, I'm if you're gonna ask what's one thing they can do to improve it, it would be acoustics. But I know that's really general. Um, that it's tough, Ron, because um everyone's got a different scenario. And so it needs to be investigated. It might be reverberation times for one guy, it might be isolation of the speakers for another, it might be uh speaker setup for a third. But the thing about it is, is it is a science, and it can be uh it can be the data can be collected and it can be prioritized, and then and then there's no guesswork, you know. Um, I and I'm not kidding. It's just your acoustics is and your power supply, your power quality, that's your foundation. And if those are not under control, your your equipment, I don't care what it is, state of the art, the most expensive, doesn't have a chance of of performing optimally.

SPEAKER_00 49:41

Yeah, I I I agree a thousand percent. Power and grounding has made such a difference in my system recently. I'm just flat out astonished what what that can do. And if you don't have it, you don't know what you're missing. We talked about acoustic noise floors, you know, with rooms with Norm's amazing, you know, acoustic designs. But the other part of that is the electrical implementation and and grounding and power filtering seem to make a huge improvement or hugely lower the noise floor. And it's one of those things, until you hear the lower noise floor, you may not know what you're missing.

SPEAKER_02 50:19

Yeah, you know, everyone's got a different reference, right? And until you've experienced this reference, you don't know that it exists, you don't know what it's all about. And to your point, Lee, uh grounding, that's another one, kind of like you know, uh the HVAC silencer. You know, to to you know, the according to NEC residential code, your your ground resistance should be 25 ohms or less. That is rarely the case. It could be a hundred, it could be 150. Um, and for and again, everybody's different, but if you do it right and and uh and and do a technical grounding um of the system for a thousand bucks or so and get that uh resistance down to like five ohms or less has a big impact. And again, we're talking about the cost of less than a pair of audio file interconnects, and it has such an impact, a bigger impact. Again, and until you get this stuff under control, you're just gonna go around crazy buying new equipment. Once you have it under control, you're not gonna go crazy. You're gonna be able to identify equipment uh improvements or um, you know, is it different or is it better so quick?

SPEAKER_00 51:40

Yeah, you know, there's so many audio files doing streaming now. We all love COBUS. Uh Norm, I know you've seen this and I've seen it a million times. Uh, routers are one of the most oh one of the greater sources of noise. If you're not power conditioning your router, and ideally I would say suggest grounding, you literally don't know what you're missing in streaming. And I've sort of begun to think that when people talk about my CDs player still beats streaming, maybe it'd be a closer race.

SPEAKER_01 52:08

We're going, I I there are lots of other things you can do. We're going a little off the tracks on uh streaming. I want to ask uh answer a question. Um uh DM asks, so all this talk about subs. What sub is the best out there for a pair with variable phase? Um, I can answer that a little bit because I've researched subs a lot. Um, a lot of the subwoofers have variable phase, continuous variable phase at different price levels. Off the top of my head, uh the von Schweigert audio subwoofers have continuous phase, JL Audio has continuous phase, uh Global Divin Sovereigns have continuous phase. Norm, off the top of your head. Oh, but the uh the Wilson Audio subwoofers, their XO crossover have continuous phase. So a lot of different uh subscriptions phase.

SPEAKER_02 52:52

Yeah, yeah. I I don't know why you I don't know why you'd make a subover without it. Okay I can't, you know, I you you can't, you're never gonna be able to um optimally dial it in.

SPEAKER_01 53:05

Okay. Um, any other thoughts on these topics at the moment? Any questions to take? I've been trying to look along the way.

SPEAKER_02 53:13

I've been talking too much, so no, I I haven't been looking.

SPEAKER_01 53:17

Okay. Um, I believe it or not, have a music segment suggestion. Uh, I I cannot do what Danny can do, uh, but I have come across a track that I just absolutely love. And I'm not a group person, I'm not an album person. I just like a song or a track. If I like that one song on a track, I don't care who does it. You're gonna laugh at me, but I don't want you laughing until after you listen to this track. On Taylor Swift's folklore album, which is two or three years old. There is a track, it's a duet with a group Bon Ever, Bon Ivor, I don't know how to pronounce it. Here it is. It is uh album folklore. It is not a typical Taylor Swift song, it is not bubblegum music, it does not include Billy Eilish style whispering, which annoys the heck out of me. It's a serious song. The recording quality, even is not bad. So I want you to, if you're interested in pop, if you don't care about pop, you're not gonna like it. Don't tell me you didn't like it if you never like pop. But if you ever like pop, check out Taylor Swift's song on folklore. The track is Exile, it's not anything like she's ever done before, it's an amazing song. Final thoughts, gentlemen.

SPEAKER_02 54:30

Um people should be thinking about acoustics first, not last. You know, in the pro audio world, that's the way it is. Um, they think about acoustics before they think about gear. And for some reason, I don't know why, you'd think that the audio files would be following the same suit, but they don't. And they think about gear first. If ever they think about acoustics, yeah, I would quality.

SPEAKER_00 55:01

I I I I would say the same thing, but maybe I would summarize it as this get your setup optimally dialed in before maybe thinking about the the next component or the next set of speakers.

SPEAKER_02 55:14

Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, you know, I mean, uh a boom box, a stereo boom box, unless you got your head in between the speakers, isn't gonna sound, you know, it's not gonna give you any kind of a sound stage. Setup is is uh is so critical. And you know, this is a system, the whole thing is a system, including the room. And back to what Ron asked earlier. For most of us, most of what you're hearing is the room.

SPEAKER_01 55:45

Yeah, I think the room's the most important component. Thank you, gentlemen, very much. Please like this video and subscribe to the channel. Uh, we will be running the high five five every Wednesday at our usual time, 6 p.m. Pacific, 9 p.m. Eastern. See you next week. Bye bye.

SPEAKER_02 56:02

Bye. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 56:03

Bye. Thanks.