Giant Wafer Control Room Re-Model

[TornadoTed]

You are more than welcome to come by Alex.

So an update of progress...

The Hypex amps took longer than expected to build, lots of metal worrk and problems with ribbon cables but they are nearly done, will be finished and tested on Monday. I have built the new side rack, made and fitted bass traps and poly diffusor at the front of the room. I have done a load of soldering and have most of the one rack filled and wired.

I have also done loads of 'unseen' work, routing cables, making power leads shorted so they are neater, replaced the cloth on the ceiling as the old one had water marks from a leak in the roof.

I shall get some more pics on here tomorrow.

[dbjp]

Ooooo. Now I'm a little worried about building Hypex amps!
Was it something you couldn't have done with a tech?
BTW which Crookwood model did you get?
I've been interested in them for a while, if only for the 4 monitor outs on one of their models as opposed to 3 on my Avocet.
One thing I'm worried about with them is their support, particularly as I'm half way around the world (as good as their support is, it's apparently a little slow. Understandable for a small operation but others like Cranesong do have worldwide dealers ).

[TornadoTed]

It was all about making a generic case fit the modules, it took a lot of cutting, drilling and filing. The problem with the wiring was an incorrect ribbon cable. It is a tricky build because there are 2 power supplies, one feeding the bass and mid amps and the other feeding the treble amp. This means we had to butcher all the cables and convert them to 'Y' leads. If you were building a monoblock like most it is very straight forward.

I got the Crookwood C3-2AS which has a main input, a alt input and outputs for main, nearfiled and mini monitors, pretty simple really. I didn't find them slow at all, maybe answering emails but Crispin was always there if I rang up.

[TornadoTed]

Right, first up the Hypex amps are all built, tested, fully functional.

[TornadoTed]

The new side desk is almost finished, just an oak trim to go around the top.

[TornadoTed]

All the acoustic treatment has been finished and installed as well as all of the equipment. I still have a load of trims and finishing touches to do yet but as of now the studio is fully functional again :o)

[TornadoTed]

I had the first session with Larry Owens last night setting up the Deqx system and I am really happy so far. We made a simple mock up of the old crossover and saved it to a memory location and then went about measuring the drivers (150mm). After they were all measured we built the filters and there was a significant improvement but something wasn't quite right with the intergration of the woofer.

The next step was to measure the drivers further away (300mm) Larry felt that maybe 150mm was too close for measuring the woofer. We proceeded and took more measurments and made another set of filters from the data. There was a slight improvement in the top end but the bass was way better. When flicking between the two the bass seemed to move backwards and seem less focused and more distant compared to the revised filters that made it more focused and up front. It still seemed to struggle to integrate the woofer totally though even with the new measuments.

The sesssion came to an end and we have the 2nd tweaking session booked for a week today. We are going to try setting it up as a 2 way system and a sub. For this close measurments are taken off the mid and tweeter and a measurment for the woofer from the listening position. Larry feels that this approach could work better and solve the problems the system has had getting the woofer integrated correctly.

[dbjp]

WOW. Your control room looks a million times better. Well done!! Gorgeous.
Interesting results from your deqx session. I've a feeling you'll end up tweaking the thing for a few more months on your own where you'll end up getting your absolute best result. Good luck anyway.
I'm currently looking into getting some icepower amps for my own build. I'll most likely work on it with a tech.

[Syncamorea]

Seriously asskickin' job to get all this work done so fast. Beautiful!

[dbjp]

Actually having just thought about it, how can your setup work as a 2.1 way?
Wouldn't your mids have to go down pretty low for it to really work?
Problem being that the atc mids can only reallisticly be crossed over above 300hz. So your 'sub woofer' would have to be pumping out the lower mids along with the lows.
I've only got limited knowledge so it might be something that would work well bet it just sounds a little weird to me.

[TornadoTed]

It is only how you do the measurements, they would still crossover around 300Hz, we actually found 275Hz the best point.

The idea is that the mid and tweeter are not affected by the room that much while the woofers response is dependant on how it behaves in the room. By measuring it as a 2 way + sub you can measure the mid and tweeter up close to get accurate measurments and then measure the woofer at the listening position where you will get a true reading of how it is interacting with the room.

[dbjp]

Originally Posted by TornadoTed

It is only how you do the measurements, they would still crossover around 300Hz, we actually found 275Hz the best point.

The idea is that the mid and tweeter are not affected by the room that much while the woofers response is dependant on how it behaves in the room. By measuring it as a 2 way + sub you can measure the mid and tweeter up close to get accurate measurments and then measure the woofer at the listening position where you will get a true reading of how it is interacting with the room.

I think I get it. Keep us posted!!

[nomatic]

Really great work!

I have hung out with Larry at his house in Colorado and He is quite a Jedi...
I will be doing distance room tweaks with him on my DEQX as well soon.
Cool to see someone DIY at a high level!

[TornadoTed]

Originally Posted by nomatic

Really great work!

I have hung out with Larry at his house in Colorado and He is quite a Jedi...
I will be doing distance room tweaks with him on my DEQX as well soon.
Cool to see someone DIY at a high level!

Yeah Larry is a really nice guy and I am really happy with how he has tuned the monitors. I could have done a lot of it myself with some time learning but he came in with at least half a dozen suggestions which would only come with a lot of experience and I would have never discovered on my own. It is such a great feeling to finally have them finished and sounding how I had hoped all those years ago when I started out with monitors.

I still have a load of finishing touches, wood trims mainly but it everything is operational. The session I have in is on the 3rd day and apart from a few teething troubles all is good, I haven't had a 'technical support' call since the first afternoon!

I feel really lost now though! I had a lazy day yesterday, my fist day off for a couple of months and I hated it!!!

[Syncamorea]

Originally Posted by TornadoTed

I feel really lost now though! I had a lazy day yesterday, my fist day off for a couple of months and I hated it!!!

Cold weather is a few months off. There's plenty of time to sit by the fire when ol' man winter is upon us.

Congrats on getting happy with the monitors. That's huge.

[dbjp]

Originally Posted by TornadoTed

Yeah Larry is a really nice guy and I am really happy with how he has tuned the monitors. I could have done a lot of it myself with some time learning but he came in with at least half a dozen suggestions which would only come with a lot of experience and I would have never discovered on my own. It is such a great feeling to finally have them finished and sounding how I had hoped all those years ago when I started out with monitors.

I still have a load of finishing touches, wood trims mainly but it everything is operational. The session I have in is on the 3rd day and apart from a few teething troubles all is good, I haven't had a 'technical support' call since the first afternoon!

I feel really lost now though! I had a lazy day yesterday, my fist day off for a couple of months and I hated it!!!

So, was it a night and day difference between this and your previous setup?
Well worth the amp + active crossover investment?
I'd love to know some details about your end result! Did tuning in the 2.1 manner that Larry suggested turn out to be the best way for you?

[TornadoTed]

Yes pretty night and day. We set up a 'recreation' of the old crossover and saved it a memory slot. After we had done measurments and set up the Deqx I flicked back to that it sounded horrible, all thin and harsh in the upper mids. Of course the 'recreation' was with the the Deqx not the Behringer and the Hypex amps instead of the cheap Thomann T-Bone PA amps. I would have the hoped the 'recreation' was superior to the original setup but it wasn't possible to compare. The old system used 3 stereo amps in one location where the new system uses a pair of 3 way amps close to each speaker so it wasn't possible to do the old system with the new cabling.

The problem with treating it as a 3 way system was that we were too close to the bass driver to get accurate measurements. It had far less trouble when treating it as a 2 way + sub with a measurement of 30cm for the mid and tweeter and the woofer measured from the listening position which was about 2.75m if I remember rightly.

We experimented a lot with crossover points as there was a cancellation happening at around 310Hz and we tried above and below until we finally settled on 375Hz well above the problem area which cured the problem. We also tried different slopes and linear phase filters but they sounded horrible in this scenario.

The room correction was interesting and that was an area where Larry's knowledge was invaluable. He suggested 40% of the EQ needed to create a totally flat response and sure enough it sounded great. I asked to hear what it would sound like with full correction and it was harsh and almost sounded out of phase. It was a worthwhile excercise because I then knew what to listen out for. We then set up 3 EQ's at 30%, 40% and 50% for me to experiment with. It is a pretty subtle difference between the 3 settings but I can just hear the 100% artifacts starting to creep in at 50%. There is very little difference between the 30% and 40% settings but the 40% is just a hair fuller and I can't detect any of the artificats when set at 100% so I left it on that.

I have had an EP come and go over the weekend and he was very happy with the monitors. He said that he could never trust them before especially in the harsh upper mids but was quite happy to leave them on most of the time while flicking to the NS10's on occassion. I haven't had chance to listen to them for a week because of that session but had a quick listen to a few tracks last night and I was very impressed. The music really floats in space now and when I shut my eyes it is impossible to pinpoint the position of the speakers, it is a beautiful quality. I can see me just listening to a lot of music on this system where as before I could barely bring myself to even switch to them from the nearfields!