steelie

This i a great question. I'm in the process of doing a complete remodel in one of my rooms to accommodate a 2-channel rig. HT will be part of the deal but it's not my primary concern. Regardless, I've spoken with a few different acoustical consultants and all have suggested going with hard wood floors. I think the idea is that hard wood floors can be controlled with area rugs and that there are better ways to provide a room with acoustical treatments than simply laying down carpet.

Hi all, I'm trying to integrate a sub in my 2-channel bookshelf system and I want to avoid using the sub's speaker outputs but I don't have the option of using the RCA jack. Right now, I've got cables running from my amp to the sub's inputs. Then I'm running cables from the outputs to my bookshelves. This seems to deaden the high end a lot. I'd like to go directly from the amp to the bookshelves but still need to integrate the sub somehow. Any quick suggestions? Thanks

About 7 or 8 months ago I was having a hard time balancing the bookshelf speaker I use for my right rear surround. First off, the speaker just sounded totally different from the rest of my set up. Second, my SPL meter kept telling me the speaker was in balance with the rest of the system despite the fact that my ears kept telling me it wasn't. For about a week, I attributed the discrepancies to the acoustics of the room, faulty ears and maybe some bad measurements. So, I kept testing and testing. Finally, I started using both pink noise and white noise and found that while one test showed me the speaker was in balance, the other told me the speaker was about 4db lower than the rest of the speakers. (Can't remember which was which) I took the speaker down, checked my connections and discovered the plate that acts as a biwire jumper between the binding posts had come loose and was disconnected. I was missing a whole segment of sound. At the time, I found it strange that white noise and pink noise would produce such different measurements. After all, one was able to identify the fact that a whole segment of frequencies was missing while the other went on as if there were no problems. Curious.

---------------- On 5/21/2005 11:42:12 PM Audio Flynn wrote: Sounds like you guys just like to pound people for expressing their opinions. +++++++++++++++++++ No just make people accountable for their logic or abscence thereof. Why ask a question if your mind is made up? ---------------- hmmm ... got a kick out this rhetorical question. ha, you're mind's not made up yet?

Sounds like you went to visit the McIntosh dealer in Chandler, Ariz. Am I right? The guy' got some hot stuff in there. I try to avoid it when I can, unless I'm the mood to torture myself. Last time I was there he was still setting stuff up but it was clear the gear was great. At the time, I believe he had a pair of DALI Euphonia MS5s that I really enjoyed listening to.

I'm looking at a McIntosh C2200, which has an HT pass through for the front channels, and the McIntosh C46, which doesn't have the pass through. Both options have their good points. The C2200 is a tube pre that allows me to hook up my receiver for HT. The C46 is a solid state pre that may be a better fit for my system sometime down the road when I finally am able to get a second set of speakers and separate my stereo from my HT. It's all about managing the gear for the future. The HT pass through feature is great for right now. It's not something I hope I'll need in the future, though. Thanks for your input and suggestions. Any more information on where to look for an A/B switch?

I'm torn right now between going with a 2-channel pre-amp that has an HT pass-through and one that doesn't. I know that for now I'll need to use my same front speakers for HT and music so if I go with a stereo pre-amp that doesn't have a pass-through, what are my options for merging my systems without playing the cable game? I don't want to have to connect and disconnect everything each time I want to watch a movie or listen to music through the stereo pre. Any suggestions? Thanks for the input.

When I got my RF7s I also got a pair of RB35s for surround duty. My reasoning was that surround wasn't as important to me as getting the best 2-channel system I could afford at the time. After I finally found an appropriate place to put the RB35s, I was pleasently surprised to hear how well they performed with movies. I use set them up as small speakers and cut the low frequencies to the sub. I don't feel like I'm mising out on anything at all when I watch movies. Keep in mind that balancing the system will mean that you have to either bump up the RB35s or lower the RF7s, but once you do that - and find the right spot for the surrounds - you should be good to go. Again, though, surrounds weren't my priority and I figured the RB35s would do just fine for reproducing bullets or other effects. I was happy with the match, I saved a little money and I was thrilled with the RF7s.

Thanks TBrennan. I don't have any listening experience with this sort of rig and I'm trying to understand the impact that the difference in output power will have. Is there any sort of balancing that you have to do or is that what you mean by compensating for the crossover that get removed?

Hi all. I'm currently driving my RF7s with a McIntosh MC202 and I'm pretty happy with the sound that I'm getting but I'd still like to try to round it out a little more on the top end. I've recently been thinking about biamping the 7s and powering the horns with an MC275, with its 75 watts of tube power. I'd still want the MC 202 and its 200 watts of SS power to drive the woofers to give me the kciking bass I love. Is anyone doing anything similar and if so, what kind of results are you getting? Also, will the disparity in wattage create any issues I need to be aware of and if so, how can I address them? Finally, would it be worth doing this if I only passively biamped the 7s or do I need to go full bore and get an external crossover to make this work? Thanks for all the help.

Wow! I don't know what to say, really. I'm amazed. That's pretty intricate considering the small detail you were working with. Thanks for working that out for me. One thing I've been wondering in terms of analyzing the room response. When I walk around the room with my SPL meter, I'm looking for hot spots on the walls, right? I can easily find variations in the open room but the purpose is to look for spots that can be treated, so really only the walls and ceiling, right? Also, the room is surrounded with wood paneling from the floor to a chair guard. The remainder of the wall is drywall, covered with art, etc. I get no rattling or any such issues from the paneling but how does it differ from just clean drywall. Does it create a harsher sound or does it tame the peaks? The paneling isn't something I can easily change so I have no frame of reference here. Thanks again for that great detail. It's much appreciated. Edit: The area centered directly behind the speakers is treated with a diffusor of sorts, right? We mentioned a bookshelf or masonite panels earlier in the post.

Thanks for the offer, I appreciate it. That's just what the Rives Audio CD allows me to do, along with a spreadsheet. Would creating my own test tones allow me to do something else? When my setup was on the long wall, the ceiling sloped down left to right and right to left, with the peak in the middle. Now, on the short wall, the ceiling slopes up from the speakers, reaches its peak, and slopes back down to 8 feet on the other end of the room. To me, this setup gave the sound more detail. It was real muddy the other way around. Thanks again. I really appreaciate the help.

At what frequencies are the mids dropping out? Also, how did you setup your test? Were you using test tones and radio shack meter, or pink noise with an RTA? There are correction values for the RS meter which is why I ask. Also, the use of test tones isn't the best approach to measuring system response...If that's how you measured, then I'll get back to you on the problems with it and some ways around it. The 10dB drops that you're recording are not flaws in the RF-7. -- My newest frequency chart shows the biggest drop occurring at 160 Hz. It's about -12 db compared to the rest and then immediately goes back to normal at 200 Hz. It drops to -5db at 250 Hz and then back up to 0 at 315 Hz. The other significant drop is -5 db at 800 Hz. The variance is minimal until I get to 2500 Hz, where it drops to -12 db. I tried unsuccesefully to download free test tones from the Internet so I ended up buying the Rives Audio CD, which includes test tones corrected for the RS meter. BTW, what is the basic layout of your room? is it a dedicated room? where is all the furniture and do you have your speakers on the long or short wall? How many "main listening" positions are there? ---------------- --The room is not dedicated to music/HT, although my SO might argue with me considering that it takes up a large part of the room. There are openings to other rooms that I've had to live with. I have the system set up on the short wall b/c the long wall provided horrible sound when I tried it. I think ... just a guess here ... that the way the ceiling slopes up affected the sound of the system when it was on the long wall. I'm not sure how to answer the main listenig position question. I always just considered the spot creating an equidistant triangle from the two front speakers as the main listening position and everything else is just to the left or right of that.I suppose there are three, although we have room behind us for a few more if we ever expanded. (Highly unlikely in this room)

Thanks to both for your help. Room treatment is just the next evolution in improving the sound in my room, which is large by my standards: 18 by 30 with a ceiling that slopes from 8 to 14 feet in the middle. I'm satisfied with the amount of deep low bass we get but I'm not happy with the mids. Running a frequency scan showed that with my sub, I'm at plus or minus 5 db from 20 to 200 hz. There is a gap in certain frequencies above 200 hz, though, which occasionally drops about 10 db - sometimes more although I'm not sure what this depends on. The highs are fine. I suppose this could just be the RF7s being RF7s or perhaps it's the source components, I really don't know. Mostly I'm happy with the setup. Imaging and soundstage is good. I'm just thinking about the next step to try to improve the system. Thanks again.

When people talk about treating the primary reflection points in their rooms are they referring to the spots directly behind the speakers or in front? Sorry if this is an obvious question. My RF-7s are three feet out from the rear wall and if I stand behind them and directly in the middle I hear an extroardinary amount of built up bass. Obviously, I don't typically stand behind my speakers to listen to them but should this be treated? Can I use a low-lying bookcase to break up the sound or do I need some sort of panels for this job? Also, the RF-7s are toed in to point toward the sweet spot and about two feet away from side walls. Since they have a 90 degree dispersion pattern out of the horn, should I use that angle to figure out where the reflections are off the adjacemt side wall? Do you have to treat the entire vertical length of the wall or is it enough to treat the area around the horn's height? Thanks for any help.