1) Klipschorn w/Audyssey processing. 2) For bass shy recordings: outrageous boost

[garyrc]

Thanks to everyone who helped me post this graph!

The curves below address two different issues.

People have asked what a Klipschorn curve would look like after being Audyssey corrected. In my room, I get the bottom curve below (dark blue) with Audyssey MultiEQxt, with my left Khorn. The right one is almost identical. Apparently, there is some kind of room bump that Audyssey doesn't fix at about 44 HZ. The sound is very smooth and pure sounding.

The other issue (a pet peeve) is how to get good, deep bass from bass shy recordings (particularly old movies, especially those made in the '50s, '60s. and '70 with great magnetic soundtracks, but which lack bass when they are transfered to DVD or Blu-ray, and recordings that had their bass shaved to accomodate the lack of space on Lps). The tone controls on current preamps tend to make a puny difference. Adding a sub (Klipsch RSW15) and turning it up about 16 or 18 dB seems to do the trick! The sub + the Khorn result is shown in the top curve (green where you can see the color, overlayed everywhere else). The "sub only" curve (purple) shows that at the point the sub takes a dive (above 100 Hz), the Khorn + sub curve add together to provide a little more bass energy between about 100 Hz and 180 Hz (green). This synergy is not what I would have predicted by just adding the curves together mentally. After much experimentation, I set the Khorns for LARGE (instead of SMALL as recommended by Audyssey) because it sounds better that way, IMO.

I see that the extreme right side of the graph doesn't show. Taking 1K as the place for the 0 line, 15 K is down 0.3 dB and 17 K Hz is down 1.7 dB. I use Audyssey Flat, rather than the other Audyssey curve (Audyssey Reference on some pre-pros), which droops the frequency by 2 dB at 10K and slopes a little farther down from there. To me, Audyssey Flat sounds better on most program material.

[Quiet_Hollow]

Photo doesn't want to load.

[garyrc]

Photo doesn't want to load.

It was there a few minutes after I posted it (I went back into the forum and checked), but now it has disappeared.

It has been so long since I have posted a picture on the forum I apparently have forgotten how. Can anyone tell me how to insert this graph into a forum post? The original is in a Room EQ Wizard file on my desktop.

[pzannucci]

Photo doesn't want to load.

It was there a few minutes after I posted it (I went back into the forum and checked), but now it has disappeared.

It has been so long since I have posted a picture on the forum I apparently have forgotten how. Can anyone tell me how to insert this graph into a forum post? The original is in a Room EQ Wizard file on my desktop.

Right, it looks like you are posting a pointer into your mail. Since you automatically log in (from the looks of it), you can see it. We can't.

[Daddy Dee]

Garyrc

to post a pic: compose your post and click the "options" tab. It will give you an option to add/delete a file. click on that and it will give you a box to browse for computer directory for the file name. then click save. it should upload and diaplay the file in your post.

[garyrc]

Garyrc

to post a pic: compose your post and click the "options" tab. It will give you an option to add/delete a file. click on that and it will give you a box to browse for computer directory for the file name. then click save. it should upload and diaplay the file in your post.

Thanks to all who helped!

The graph should now be visible in my original post at the beginning of this thread. I just posted the graph, inserting it into my original post by using "Edit" to start, instead of "Write a new post." I hope that worked ... I can see it ... please let me know if you can't.

[Marvel]

The graph is visible... []

How about using a multiband expander, set to trigger levels below a certain level on the lower frequencies.

Bruce

[garyrc]

How about using a multiband expander, set to trigger levels below a certain level on the lower frequencies.

Bruce

Sounds like it would work. What brand &/or model might be good? Is DBX still around?

I think Audyssey has a new(er) product that adds bass somehow. About 15 years ago, there were devices that would simulate and add bass 1 octave lower than the lowest robust bass signals on the recording.

Good old fashioned Bass Controls, like I had on my late lamented Luxman (three turnover points and up to about 20 dB boost or cut), McIntosh C28 (I think about 18 dB boost or cut) or even my old Dyna preamp (again +/- 20) seemed to work quite well with bass shy recordings.

It seems to me that the electronics manufacturers are assuming that recordings will be made "right" -- with natural bass to midrange/treble
balance. This is sometimes not the case with both old and new
recordings.

Older movies constitute a special case. I suspect that what happens with those movie soundtracks of the '50s and '60s that happened to be 4 or 6 channel magnetic and had tons of bass and good dynamics is that the people who transfer them to disk use the original musical elements (on the grounds that they are first generation), but, in some cases, the first generation of music was not yet EQd for dramatic and aesthetic purposes by the filmmakers. Those decisions were made later, in one of the mixdowns, particularly in those days when they didn't want to risk accidental over-recording and many re-takes with 100 musicians sitting there being paid. Today's recording media have much more headroom. Yet, in the old days, they were able to get thunderous dynamic range and mighty bass onto the final versions by transferring the dialog at a rather low level, and painstaking using volume riding and EQ when mixing down. Back in 1959/60 the concrete floor in the Coronet theater in San Francisco shook and the speakers were moving so much air that audience could feel a breeze during the crucifixion scene in the 70 mm 6 track version of Ben-Hur. To get the equivalent effect out of the Blu-ray, one has to turn up the bass with a wide-range pot, boost the sub or turn up the volume. Yet Blu-ray is perfectly capable of dynamics and bass like that and we sometimes hear it in transfers of new movies. The newly released Blu of Lawrence of Arabia lacks authority and power in the drums, so bass boost is called for, IMO.

[Quiet_Hollow]

Good old fashioned Bass Controls, like I had on my late lamented Luxman (three turnover points and up to about 20 dB boost or cut), McIntosh C28 (I think about 18 dB boost or cut) or even my old Dyna preamp (again +/- 20) seemed to work quite well with bass shy recordings.

It seems to me that the electronics manufacturers are assuming that recordings will be made "right" -- with natural bass to midrange/treble
balance. This is sometimes not the case with both old and new
recordings.

Older movies constitute a special case. I suspect that what happens with those movie soundtracks of the '50s and '60s that happened to be 4 or 6 channel magnetic and had tons of bass and good dynamics is that the people who transfer them to disk use the original musical elements (on the grounds that they are first generation), but, in some cases, the first generation of music was not yet EQd for dramatic and aesthetic purposes by the filmmakers. Those decisions were made later, in one of the mixdowns, particularly in those days when they didn't want to risk accidental over-recording and many re-takes with 100 musicians sitting there being paid. Today's recording media have much more headroom. Yet, in the old days, they were able to get thunderous dynamic range and mighty bass onto the final versions by transferring the dialog at a rather low level, and painstaking using volume riding and EQ when mixing down. Back in 1959/60 the concrete floor in the Coronet theater in San Francisco shook and the speakers were moving so much air that audience could feel a breeze during the crucifixion scene in the 70 mm 6 track version of Ben-Hur. To get the equivalent effect out of the Blu-ray, one has to turn up the bass with a wide-range pot, boost the sub or turn up the volume. Yet Blu-ray is perfectly capable of dynamics and bass like that and we sometimes hear it in transfers of new movies. The newly released Blu of Lawrence of Arabia lacks authority and power in the drums, so bass boost is called for, IMO.

Suffice to say if a Blu-ray doesn't have "the sound" it's because someone left it out....whether on purpose, or by mistake.

Today's electronics still have tone controls. They're usually found on the remote or in a menu now, instead of a knob on the front panel.

[garyrc]

Suffice to say if a Blu-ray doesn't have "the sound" it's because someone left it out....whether on purpose, or by mistake.

Today's electronics still have tone controls. They're usually found on the remote or in a menu now, instead of a knob on the front panel.

My Marantz AV7005 preamp/tuner/processor has tone controls in a menu, as you say, but they have a range of only +/- 6 dB, rather than the +/- 18 dB or so that was typical in the past. Before getting the Marantz, I had a NAD T163 which had 10 dB bass boost, which was barely adequate with a few disks. In the '60s/'70s/'80s my friends and I found that most lengthy classical Lps could be improved by just under Bass +2 which would amount to about 7 dB boost. We were told that this was because the manufacturers shaved the bass of long works because bass took up too much space on the record. Speakerlab encouraged people to experiment with this amount of bass boost when playing most records. Some Lps benefited from much more boost, however, up to a max of about B + 4 (out of 5), or something like 14 dB boost. I never had to use boost on live recordings I made on my Crown reel to reel, but I almost never used the bass rolloff switch on my U47fet microphones, and didn't apply any post hock shaving. When the CD era came, nothing seemed to change, except that some CDs seemed "harder" and harsher sounding than the equivalent Lps played with an Ortofon moving coil cartridge. A little bass boost seemed to soften that hardness.