Sam08861
Super Member
Sooo, I got an equalizer to successfully help correct some issues with my room that I'd previously addressed to some degree with curtains and furniture/speaker placement. (22' ceilings, wood floors, open wall, lots of windows, large prints behind glass, glass front TV, and open to upstairs hall)
I've gone as far as I'm willing to go with rearranging furniture, putting down a 14 x 20' rug, heavy curtains, speaker placement, furniture placement, etc.
To further complicate things, I am using a preamp that is known to give a very nearly perfectly flat output and has no tone controls.
As such, I'm not willing to make compromises that will make for an odd layout, or inconvenience me in other annoying ways and so put an equalizer into the equation. EQ haters can keep on hatin', just go do it somewhere else. I'd build a purpose built listening room if I had FU money and the time, but right now, adjusting a few frequencies will do me just fine.
Adding the EQ to flat (measured, not sliders) provided tremendously excellent results and I'm very, very happy with the sound. All components in the chain have 0.005 % or less and S/N ratios of 100+db or more, so no so I'm not experiencing any noticeable sound degradation. Perhaps others can hear noise at this levels, but it's not something I'm able to even detect.
To dial in the sound for CD, I used an App to generate and feed tones (sine waves for each frequency) into the preamp AUX input at the exactly the frequencies that can be adjusted by the EQ, adjusted each frequency to have the same level on the onboard frequency analyzer, and ended up with a curve setting that looks like this. Sorry for the blur, best I could get it with my phone and a quick edit.
This group of settings has given fantastic results. Balanced, musical, crisp.
Do I repeat the same process for the Phono MM and MC inputs? Reason I'm asking, is that I can store multiple curves in the EQ and way back when I had to calibrate TVs, I recall having to do this for each input type (hdmi, component, etc.)
I'm not sure if the phono input path to the amp, having different voltages, impedance, etc. would color the sound or not. Perhaps this varies for preamps, but as I understand this unit has good flat characteristics all around.
The thing that's stopping me is not having a record with either the requisite tones or pink noise covering the spectrum. Perhaps records exist with various tones and pink noise?
Records sound good to me, but I'm wondering if that something that existed I couldn't flatten out the sound as with the other input for the best results from whatever coloration may be resulting from the stylus, cart, table combination. Also, given that my records are so variable in their recording quality, age, genre, etc., it's not so easy as the many well recorded CDs I have to tell if it's dialed in just right, however it's mostly that I have comfort that the setting were made using measurements. Everything sounds pretty decent.
Is my thinking to have to dial in the phono stage with it's own EQ curve overkill? Do I have the tweak itis?
If not, and even if so, perhaps there's a workflow to accomplish this or a way to simulate phono output voltage levels, etc? Maybe running the signal generator (from iPhone output) into a DAC of some sort?
By the way, phono audio path/gear of my mutt system is as follows, in case anyone cares.
Vividline SAS stylus --> Shure V15 Type V Cart --> Luxman PD-291 turntable --> Technics SU-9070 Preamp MM Input --> processor loop out to --> Kenwood GE-7030 equalizer --> back into preamp processor in and then into --> Luxman R-117 Amp 'Main In' input (bypasses, tone controls, input selector, volume, loudness, preamp, etc and goes directly into the amp) --> Altec Lansing Model 14 Speakers/Velodyne Optimun-8 Sub ---> My Ears!
In effect, the Luxman's inputs/preamp/selector/volume/loudness and tone controls have been replaced by the preamp and eq, respectively.
Adjustments to the EQ were made as above, but with the turntable accoutrements being substituted with an iPhone into the AUX input of the preamp. (repeated level check for tape inputs, but didn't have to make any adjustments, as they all measured the same as the aux input)
Any advice (or sanity checks) appreciated!
Cheers,
Sam
I've gone as far as I'm willing to go with rearranging furniture, putting down a 14 x 20' rug, heavy curtains, speaker placement, furniture placement, etc.
To further complicate things, I am using a preamp that is known to give a very nearly perfectly flat output and has no tone controls.
As such, I'm not willing to make compromises that will make for an odd layout, or inconvenience me in other annoying ways and so put an equalizer into the equation. EQ haters can keep on hatin', just go do it somewhere else. I'd build a purpose built listening room if I had FU money and the time, but right now, adjusting a few frequencies will do me just fine.
Adding the EQ to flat (measured, not sliders) provided tremendously excellent results and I'm very, very happy with the sound. All components in the chain have 0.005 % or less and S/N ratios of 100+db or more, so no so I'm not experiencing any noticeable sound degradation. Perhaps others can hear noise at this levels, but it's not something I'm able to even detect.
To dial in the sound for CD, I used an App to generate and feed tones (sine waves for each frequency) into the preamp AUX input at the exactly the frequencies that can be adjusted by the EQ, adjusted each frequency to have the same level on the onboard frequency analyzer, and ended up with a curve setting that looks like this. Sorry for the blur, best I could get it with my phone and a quick edit.
This group of settings has given fantastic results. Balanced, musical, crisp.
Do I repeat the same process for the Phono MM and MC inputs? Reason I'm asking, is that I can store multiple curves in the EQ and way back when I had to calibrate TVs, I recall having to do this for each input type (hdmi, component, etc.)
I'm not sure if the phono input path to the amp, having different voltages, impedance, etc. would color the sound or not. Perhaps this varies for preamps, but as I understand this unit has good flat characteristics all around.
The thing that's stopping me is not having a record with either the requisite tones or pink noise covering the spectrum. Perhaps records exist with various tones and pink noise?
Records sound good to me, but I'm wondering if that something that existed I couldn't flatten out the sound as with the other input for the best results from whatever coloration may be resulting from the stylus, cart, table combination. Also, given that my records are so variable in their recording quality, age, genre, etc., it's not so easy as the many well recorded CDs I have to tell if it's dialed in just right, however it's mostly that I have comfort that the setting were made using measurements. Everything sounds pretty decent.
Is my thinking to have to dial in the phono stage with it's own EQ curve overkill? Do I have the tweak itis?
If not, and even if so, perhaps there's a workflow to accomplish this or a way to simulate phono output voltage levels, etc? Maybe running the signal generator (from iPhone output) into a DAC of some sort?
By the way, phono audio path/gear of my mutt system is as follows, in case anyone cares.
Vividline SAS stylus --> Shure V15 Type V Cart --> Luxman PD-291 turntable --> Technics SU-9070 Preamp MM Input --> processor loop out to --> Kenwood GE-7030 equalizer --> back into preamp processor in and then into --> Luxman R-117 Amp 'Main In' input (bypasses, tone controls, input selector, volume, loudness, preamp, etc and goes directly into the amp) --> Altec Lansing Model 14 Speakers/Velodyne Optimun-8 Sub ---> My Ears!
In effect, the Luxman's inputs/preamp/selector/volume/loudness and tone controls have been replaced by the preamp and eq, respectively.
Adjustments to the EQ were made as above, but with the turntable accoutrements being substituted with an iPhone into the AUX input of the preamp. (repeated level check for tape inputs, but didn't have to make any adjustments, as they all measured the same as the aux input)
Any advice (or sanity checks) appreciated!
Cheers,
Sam
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