Pictures of your speaker system

Discussion in 'Speakers' started by Cspirou, Nov 6, 2015.

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  1. Renekton

    Renekton Acquaintance

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    Yo!
    I give lazy picture and lengthy description of my new approach (feel free to skip to the photo!!!).

    I grew tired of obsessively stretching blankets all across the room.
    Back to basics - placement.

    I have been chasing Alex Peychev's home setup holographic imaging (though that only really existed when he fired up his CD player, followed by vynil).

    Stereo imbalance is what has been bothering me for the longest in this hobby - ever since headphone misalignment - lately I'm bugged by tweeter mismatch and room asymmetry. I would often degenerate into compulsive, 6-axis, within-8mm, head adjustment - in search of the perfect image. Sigh!

    Furthermore, I slowly accepted that my ancient, used market speaker's tweeter is doctored - there's a nail where one of the screws should be. Highs are consistently more sizzly, I even suspect phase inversion, long story, but more importantly, the other speaker is simply sublime, accross all of the 80ish to 14k-and-rolloff-ish Hz it does. Very Sennheiser-y cohesion and silky continuum and why can't I stop typing, nor can I stop listening quietly to Jefferson Airplane - surrealistic pillow.

    So, 0Hz (The Whole Universe) brought me here: BOOM, YOU NOOB BITCH, GET NOSCOPED. That's right, above and below cascaded mono (L- into L-, L+ into R+, that's cascaded, right?). Wonky tweeter blocked off - hard shut mechanically, not shown in photo (bottom mono speaker is upside-down).

    Yes??? Wtf? Just, yes, please. Is TrueSensHRTF taken, I want to trademark it? How about RealisticWorldlyContinuous sound?

    I'm back. 15ish years ago we had a cheap 5.1. Now full circle. What a lovely beat frequency, or impulse, thingy - also known as coincidence, or, life.

    F£@#, I ramble. So.

    Center channel big win for me, from near and far field alike. Very enjoyable even as a single channel!

    Moving the ATLs around is very promising (like in the photo - finally some slam and not just boom boom). However I think I am done experimenting for today, as I can't stop quietly listening, late at night, ATL disconnected, and it has been about two hours of me listening without changing the setup...
    listening to...
    TrueSensHRTF + narrowly separated KSC75 tweeters... Ah, neither my poetics, nor my current biochemical energy can express the mentally insane laughing satisfaction that shot through me. Dial the KSC down so that they just barely augment some stereo and crisp highs... Insane. I have not been this proud of a setup (,and this one is still early beta, imagine the possibilities,) since this spring when the living room resembled a 3D child's labyrinth [you had to crawl a lot to get inside and to the listening position, that thing was another type of insane, some other day I will search for a photo, that thing was space, I would invariably get jump-scared. By my own voice - I never learned to recognize it's semi-anechoic timbre. Honestly, "semi" is an understatement... Hmm, even more honestly, only the room was the amazing part then, the speaker setup was just fine or so]... BUT THIS MONO AND KSC... Exilerating on so many tracks, even now at 60-65ish dB SPL.

    NOT recommended. Enjoy your setups. I have the blessing and curse of having so much free time and I often choose to not-too-systematically obsess over one thing, like this here ramble rant. Hmm. On the other hand, if you have the time and energy, moving speakers around is fun, as you all know.

    [​IMG]

    PS look, mom, no wyrd!!! Srsly. Not thinking about, how in the world I would arrange the power strips,... Was refreshing. And it allowed me to focus on developing my room placement fu. And even to listen to music. Wow. I did it. I listened to music today. You sons of dick and pussy.

    Happy holidays!
    I love you all!
     
  2. Renekton

    Renekton Acquaintance

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    [​IMG]

    Ok, I rly go eat and sleep now.
    Amen.
     
  3. RobS

    RobS RobS? More like RobDiarrhea.

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    LOL Koss KSC75 "tweeters" held up by some flip flops? I can't tell if this is serious or not.
     
  4. Superexchanger

    Superexchanger Friend

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    What - and I cannot stress this enough - the f**k.
     
  5. Renekton

    Renekton Acquaintance

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    Right back at you. Assuming you are serious too, I should add that I have shifted away from chasing the extra pure euphoria of hyper detail, also, more importantly, I have discovered the fun of acoustics.hereas

    Last year I was more like, buy HD600, buy extra gear, then, having no more spare money and wanting moar improvement, I slipped into USB nervosa.

    I am so happy to have had immensely different audio experiences this year. And with few purchases.

    Legit. Wait till I get inspired to post old photos. Room setup is a lot more involving, and, to me, more rewarding than headphones - even with inexpensive old speakers and amps.

    KSC75 works great as a tweeter, just remove the foam.

    Slippers are no joke. They work and they even maybe perhaps possibly idk but could add acoustic stuff, it's open headphones after all... Look at the nautilus line. Audio is fun and math, TOGETHER (refer to rainbows and butterflies mental image). Omg I'm not just rambling, I'm ranting now, my bad. Have a great day, all! I go watch Nyanners -Christmas Livestream (on youtube)
     
  6. yotacowboy

    yotacowboy McRibs Kind of Guy

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    Cool!
     
  7. Renekton

    Renekton Acquaintance

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    Back real quick, I do not wish to demean people with expensive gear. On the countrary, I would be happy if I bring fun memories of their audio beginnings.

    This Nyanners livestream, btw, is, well, I challenge you guyz to find something with higher cringe to noise ratio. It's insane. And awesome.
     
  8. Superexchanger

    Superexchanger Friend

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    Please stop this.
     
  9. ufospls2

    ufospls2 Friend

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    dude.....you good?
     
  10. elmoe

    elmoe Friend

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    Well, cant say this hasn't been entertaining... in a "I just finished watching The Joker" kind of way
     
  11. ogodei

    ogodei MOT: Austin AudioWorks

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    1) Best posts all week
    2) I get the slippers, hard rubber on the soles right? Gonna insulate the tweeters from vibrations nicely.
    3) Maybe you should lay off the nyanners.
     
  12. PacoTaco

    PacoTaco Friend

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    why are you using those cheap flip flops? Every knows Crocs sound better.
     
  13. Biodegraded

    Biodegraded Friend

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    No, that's a crock!
     
  14. NationOfLaws

    NationOfLaws Friend

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    lol Crocs, get real. Any true audiophile knows that Louboutins are the only shoes that provide a serious holographic soundstage
     
  15. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    Not at all sure what I've just been reading about. Certainly not the normal let-show-off-our-speakers.

    Hey, I'd like to hear it! :D
     
  16. psuKinger

    psuKinger Facebook Friend

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    2019 was a big year for me. Picture taken a few months ago, closer to original purchase and configurations - held off on this post until I'd lived with them for a few months. Christmas clutter from my kids all over the floor right now, so posting this older picture with my wife's "generic fall" decorations off to the right instead.

    I know this probably qualifies as "extremely mid-fi" for a lot on here, but for me, I patiently saved and waited and budgeted for basically 4+ years until I could afford the two Towers and Subwoofer depicted here. It represents a fairly substantial investment for me, and has been a very welcome upgrade over the equipment it has replaced/relegated to the basement.

    [​IMG]

    Pictured:
    Ascend Acoustics Sierra Tower w/ RAAL Ribbon Tweeter Upgrade
    Rythmik F25 sealed servo subwoofer
    Denon x4400h A/V Receiver
    Ascend Acoustics Sierra 2EX w/ center-oriented Ribbon Tweeter
    OPPO UDP-203 Roon Ready endpoint (and pretty slick 4K UHD disc player too, I might add)
    Google Chromecast Audio for integration with my (8-zone) whole-home audio system.
    Sony 75" x940E FALD LED tv
    NVidia Shield and AppleTV for non-music related home theater duties.
    Trendnet TEG-S24DG 24-port gigabit switch
    HDHomeRun Prime 3-tuner cablecard tuner

    Not pictured:
    Ascend Acoustics HTM-200SE left-right rear speakers, because I ran out of money and couldn't afford more Sierra's for rear speaker duties.
    DIY home-built tower Win10 PC i7-6700 "server" running Roon Core (as well as Plex Media Server and Steam Server)
    QNAP TS-431+ network attached storage storing all of my music, movies, and DVR recordings. And also running the HDHomeRun DVR server software.


    The one "restriction" put on me was how much my wife likes how that particular "home entertainment center" looks in our room, and that I was to do everything in my power to make sure it was retained. As you can see, the 75" screen doesn't "fit in the hole" and spills out over the edges now partially blocking the doors. As a result, their simply was NO ROOM to fit the gigantic Sierra Horizon Center Channel, and as such a Center-Oriented 2EX was a compromise made in the name of WAF.

    It's a dual-purpose system for both 2-channel music and 5-channel home theater. I am not in a position to have a dedicated movie room and "higher end" dedicated-music-listening space, so I have to "make due" with this sort of a "swiss army knife" approach. I probably did not need all that subwoofer, but just in general, I always like to have headroom/more than I need, and this thing did that for me. By default and for music, I leave it set to 14 Hz output, max damping, and rumble filter off. For movies, I flip it up to Min damping and sometimes tune that output knob to 20 Hz or 28 Hz for movies, as well as turning the "rumble filter" on. I used "Line In" rather than "LFE In" during configuration/Audyssey XT32 configuration, per Rythmik configuation guidance directions that indicated the Line In input would allow for a 24 db/octave roll-off above the cross-over point. Admittedly, it does not make a lot of sense to me HOW that works, and how my Receiver is supposed to know which input the sub has been attached to... but I did think, when I made that change, it made a difference/imaging improvement. Could just be placebo, but FWIW I did think I noticed it.

    The towers are everything I'd hoped they'd be. That might have as much to do with what the other (*very* entry-level) gear is I own and have set up around this house for whole-home as it does the actual *quality* of these things, but my key takeaway from all of this is basically that you don't know what you don't know. Because of these, I now am able to hear and identify obvious flaws in my old equipment that, without a proper yardstick to benchmark against, I just wasn't hearing/noticing like I do now. So that's been cool and fund (and expensive), and has me eagerly awaiting for a day (probably 5+ years from now) when I can budget and save and make some other sort of significant investment to put up somewhere in the house and A-B against these with. The dedicated (and isolated) midrange seems to be a big key to what I like about these; rock music just seems to come forward and present with them. The soundstage sounds wider than the speakers actually are (which is about 12' apart; MLP is about 13.5' away and about 0.5' off dead-center, which means I have an *almost* perfect triangle). They seem to have a wide sweet spot. I think it might be because of how the RAAL has a wide horizontal dispersion but narrow vertical one? I know it's cliche, but the common description of them being "effortless" aligns well with my own experience.... they do some things so well that my listening habits have changed as a function of what kind of things they simply excel at. Something like Sara Bareilles playing the piano and singing presents itself very nicely on these.

    I tried to "toe the line" in between music and movies as much as I could, hence going with the giant sub (for movies) but it being sealed (for music), and but when push comes to shove and you have to pick one thing or another thing, my preference is for music, and that's what drove me to go with the RAAL ribbons and the servo sub over something like a ported SVS sub and some Klipsch horns (which I'm sure also sound great; I just don't think I'd like them as much, for music, as I do these). I also bought a UMIK-1 and took a shot at some REW measurements, but I need to get better at the "skill" of taking measurements before I'm ready to share that. I do think XT32 did "better" for me, from a room correction standpoint, than anything I'd ever tried/used before it. That's been a welcome *win* in all of this for me. My next upgrade/move is to send my measurements over to GIK acoustics once I get better ones and see if they recommend something simple (like hopefully pads for on the back wall behind the speakers) I can try to get even better results... this sure is a fun hobby to tinker with! Always trying to do just a little bit better...

    Anyway, these have been a real joy for the 4ish months or so I've owned them, and I thought it time to maybe go ahead and share... if anyone has any thoughts/opinions/questions/criticisms, please feel free to fire away.
     
    Last edited: Jan 4, 2020
  17. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    Can't see your pic, but this is enough for a like all by itself. :)
     
  18. psuKinger

    psuKinger Facebook Friend

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    Apologies (and thank you), I was struggling with how to upload it...
    Do I have to upload to something like Photobucket first and then copy the link? FWIW I see the picture on my phone that I posted with my laptop....
     
  19. uncola

    uncola Friend

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    nothing mid-fi about raal 70-20xr tweeters!
     
  20. NationOfLaws

    NationOfLaws Friend

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    I see the photo. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
     

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