Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Jerrys Theater Pictures

Most of us Listen alone!!!!!!! Never, surely?

I love to get an unsuspecting subject in my (ever so Humble) Hot seat.

Its great to see their Jaw drop, and who knows? maybe start one of them on the long road..................

Cheers, Chris

well, Im standing here in my equipment room for quite a while now trying to get MRC to work and having a miserable go of it. For some reason the SN ratio is too low on many channels. Did I move the speakers into nulls?

Go back a few hours... I took some time off today and I set up all the speakers as free- Hooray! We're free!!! Listened to a few minutes of the new Foo Fighters album, as I had listened to it recently in the theater. First impressions are that the sound is not only more cohesive but the bass is more involving and deeper. I can hear that the bass is tripping over itself a little bit at the lower end, if that makes any sense- its just too much- but its not nearly what it used to be and I think moving the speakers out into the room more has been a big help.

Wait a minute- as I am moaning about this I see I am getting SN responses all above 40db! I should have started whining earlier! I was using 80 weight with fast and I decided to give 90 a try- its working!!!! (using 0.5v sensitivity)

So the Foos sounded better and I tried my old MRC profile from the old readings just as a comparison and the result was way too thin sounding.

I then fired up the new Rush album for some good instrumental rock and this was really terrific- the movement of the speakers now makes the soundfield seem more unified which I really appreciate but the bass again was a little too plentiful towards the bottom.

WHOA- the RC worked!!! now its calculating- that will take some time as I am using a 8 or 9 year old Sony laptop which sole purpose is to run MConfig.

Gonna try it out and report more later...

best regards,
Jerry

See the posting in the WIKI if you are new at this. What's in the WIKI is for novices and works sometimes. The Experts use an RTA and blend in the low frequencies by manually creating filters.

Thanks George- Im not new to MRC but I havent really ever played with it- just put it in set it and forget it mode. I think Id be lost with an RTA.

The short version on the sound is: I am in AWE. Ive NEVER heard anything like that. And to think its been years like this and its sounded so good. The big difference is on music- though movies feel more punchy too. More words tomorrow. Now here are my plots- any thoughts/ suggestions? Sorry for the literal pictures of the laptop screen, but I don't know how to do screen captures on windoze and I didn't want to take the time to learn and even if I did, Id have to get them off the computer...

target decay=262ms


filters



Front Left Waterfall


now with filters


Front Left line graph


now with filters



Front Right Waterfall


Front Right with filters


Front Right line graph


with filters
[img]http://homepage.mac.com/z8mania/.Pictures/MRC/RtLFprofile.jpg[/img]


Center Waterfall
[img]http://homepage.mac.com/z8mania/.Pictures/MRC/CenterWFbypass.jpg[/img]

with filters
[img]http://homepage.mac.com/z8mania/.Pictures/MRC/CenterWFprofile.jpg[/img]

Center Line graph
[img]http://homepage.mac.com/z8mania/.Pictures/MRC/CenterLFbypass.jpg[/img]

with filters
[img]http://homepage.mac.com/z8mania/.Pictures/MRC/CenterLFprofile.jpg[/img]

I have them for the surrounds too but I dont want to bog down the thread. Anyone looking at these I am open to thoughts/ suggestions but I would point out to those who are newer to this to make sure to note the scale on the left side sometimes changes when the filters are applied.

best regards,
Jerry

I have no patients for the RTA method, even though I know it would help, maybe some day. But read the WIKI, I think it will help you.

In short, experiment with target decays (don't be afraid to push it lower especially where you have 8000's in the corners set free).
Find music that stresses things (sounds bad, I know that's diffuicult with 8000's but you'll know it when you found it) and compare with it bypassed and different decays. It should get rid of bad bass and keep the good bass, that's the goal.

http://meridianunplugged.com/wiki/index.php/BestMrcProcedure

"Best" is probably over stated, probably simplest is more accurate.

Your waterfalls look pretty good but you definitely need to crank MRC up a bit (lower target decay) to try to clean up some of those low frequencies a little more.

Practice practice practice, read read read, listen listen listen.

Those lumps that are on the lower left of the waterfalls are what you are trying to minimize. Time is towards you. You want them to decay quicker like the higher frequencies do. It won't ever be perfect.

Thanks George- I like your method. Ill give it a whirl when I have some more time. For now I am really impressed with the results.

best regards,
Jerry

Jerry, grab youself a copy of hypersnap or snagit. Great s/w for grabbing screen shots. Will save you having to take photos of your screen.

Cool! Thanks Nick! I think I can swing another two hours this afternoon. I cannot tell you guys the difference overall and especially the music. I honestly felt penetrated by the sound.

best regards,
Jerry

On Windows (any flavor)

Alt+Print-Screen grabs current window to clipboard.
Ctrl+Print-Screen grabs entire screen to clipboard.

Paste in MSPaint and save as jpeg or gif.

The only time I've needed fancy screen grabbers is if I'm trying to catch Popup menus, as they disappear as soon as you hit Alt+Print-Screen.

My immediate thoughts are that you'd want to manually adjust your curves to attenuate those significant bass lumps you can see below 60hz - they have to be colouring the sound and making bass sound flabby...

Mark

Thanks guys- it would appear that I do need to do what Mark is saying because I tried different target decay times from 100ms->the 262ms the MRC suggests and to my ears the 262 sounds the best except with insane bass rap music- I have some of this, not a huge fan but I wanted to hear that big boom boom boom on the system. The 262 is fine but its a little better controlled with 225- but at 225 other bass seems a little too thin. I actually like how it sounds right now but I agree I should give manually controlling this a shot- the question is- how do I do this- I will have to learn- it cant be that difficult right?

Btw- watched the opening scene from star wars as well as the death star scene and WOWOWOWOW-- after staring at my 10" laptop screen for hours the other night and then looking at a big movie screen the impact was even greater. And the sound was fantastic. I then played the Matrix HDDVD and was even more impressed. Music which I used to think sounded a bit flat with a slightly ununified soundstage now sounds unified and punchy. I love it. Thanks guys for helping me attain an even better result. Lets see about messing with those manual controls- Im gonna make a back up copy of my MSF (or whatever they are calling it with this new MConfig software).

best regards,
Jerry

Jerry,

Now it gets interesting

To manually adjust, simply open mconfig room correction tab - open your profile and for each speaker ADD new filters focussing around those bass peaks - you'll probably want two filters each centred on the peaks you can see - you will see a box appear which you can drag to adjust the width and amplitude of the adjustment. You can even make adjustments while displaying the low frequency curves - just open the profile twice - then you can see in real time what your adjustments do to the curves. But note, that the adjustments you see are unlikely to match precisely what you really hear, the only way to be certain is to use a real time analyser such as TruRTA. But for now I'd aim to bring the lumps down to within 5dB of the average curve - a small lump in the bass can actually be a good thing to most ears...

Have fun!

Mark