messy at loud volumes

[Sams]

Hey guys. Before i go into the problem let me list my equipment. I am using a denon 4520ci (http://www.soundandvision.com/content/denon-avr-4520ci-av-receiver-test-bench#76r6bM1CcQFzWHIC.97) connected to a pair of revel f12 loudspeakers (http://www.revelspeakers.com/productdetail/~/product/f12.html) via bjc ten white speaker cables (https://www.bluejeanscable.com/store/speaker/).

When no one is home(rare) i like to enjoy music at spirited levels (70db +). It does not sound good. It sounds messy. I am constantly fiddling with the settings on the remote. Whether I'm using my correctly set 8 point xt32 or pure direct or 320 mp3 or 1411 cd, it does not seem to matter so i have eliminated those variables.

The room is 18x50 (open concept basement). The "living area" where the stereo is setup is 18x18. I assume the first measurement is the correct one since it is an open concept basement. The speakers are toed in towards the listening position and setup in a 11x11x11 equilateral triangle. The speakers are roughly 3-4 feet from the back wall. The rear ports are aimed at the corners of the room however with the speakers being toed in.

Assuming proper placement, subjective reviews suggest the f12s do not need a subwoofer if enough power is given. This is what I was hoping for, unfortunately while low to moderate volumes are enjoyable, spirited is not with these speakers.

Heres where I'm a complete noob, I'm assuming the f12s do not get enough power to go around at high volumes causing the messy sound. Would passive biaming fix this? I understand av receivers have 1 finite power source, but wouldn't 122 watts x4 8ohms (244 watts a speaker(see denon link for bench test)) be better than 173 watts x2 8ohms into the 6ohm nominal f12s? Or has the f12s frequency response (see f12 link) simply been the problem the entire time?-is that determined by placement and room size? Obviously i would prefer to just buy another pair of cables and/or fiddle with placement because its cheaper, but I'm willing to add an external amp or even a subwoofer if its my only hope for enjoyable listening at spirited volume.

I hope this was readable and substantial enough for an answer. Thanks in advance for reading.

Edit: added ohms property to bold text for clarity
Edit: added willing to buy external amp to bold text

Update: thank you all for your comments. As of tonight, tues the 24th I have not had a chance to test the system again since time of my original post. I have a ton of information here and will use that new knowledge when I test the system again. Then I'll be back for my 2nd update to make it easier for you guys to find a solution. Now, to clear up some confusion on the 70db mention, what I mean is that on the 0-98 scale on the denon, 70 and higher;settings audyssey reference/flat(no dynamic vol or eq) or direct/pure direct.

 

[j_garcia]

That they change from "good" to "not good" as the volume increases, I would have to say it is insufficient power to drive them for the levels you are looking for in your room. They are listed as 6 Ohm nominal though, which means they likely don't drop so low that they'd present a serious load. I've run bookshelf speakers off my old Marantz 8300 that was benched for 120W actual output as well and it struggled to fill my room with a pair of 4 Ohm bookshelf speakers with a -3dB of 55Hz. Where does the "muddiness" seem to occur? highs, mids, lows or all?

That said an equilateral triangle may not necessarily be the ideal setup either, and in my experience, usually isn't. I would definitely experiment with some narrower placement with and without toe as well as closer or further seating, just to see what yields the best results. If it is a power issue for sure, this will not solve the problem, but if you have odd room modes or something unexpected, that could be a factor in the odd sound. That it is OK at low listening levels though, suggest it probably isn't placement.

 

[Sams]

That they change from "good" to "not good" as the volume increases, I would have to say it is insufficient power to drive them for the levels you are looking for in your room. They are listed as 6 Ohm nominal though, which means they likely don't drop so low that they'd present a serious load. I've run bookshelf speakers off my old Marantz 8300 that was benched for 120W actual output as well and it struggled to fill my room with a pair of 4 Ohm bookshelf speakers with a -3dB of 55Hz. Where does the "muddiness" seem to occur? highs, mids, lows or all?

That said an equilateral triangle may not necessarily be the ideal setup either, and in my experience, usually isn't. I would definitely experiment with some narrower placement with and without toe as well as closer or further seating, just to see what yields the best results. If it is a power issue for sure, this will not solve the problem, but if you have odd room modes or something unexpected, that could be a factor in the odd sound. That it is OK at low listening levels though, suggest it probably isn't placement.

Thanks j. Here is the review that determined my amp selection: http://www.stereophile.com/content/revel-concerta-f12-loudspeaker-measurements#qAK08OJoZjspKpav.97

From the get go I wanted to buy an AV reciever since the speakers, in addition to music reproduction, would be pulling home theater duties as well. The review I linked led me to believe I would need a flagship reciever since it is my understanding that only flagship recievers are capable of driving 4ohm speakers with authority. I picked the denon 4520ci since my budget was ~1k, it was the only flagship avr that I could find new for ~1k ($999 new @ accessories4less).

Obviously I am now worried I didn't buy enough power. To answer your first question the bass seems to be the issue. Is it your opinion that the passive biamping will not fix the issue?

I believe the speakers are set up correctly because they seems to disappear when being played. But I am willing to set up the stereo again. I have read the speakers being 75% of the distance to the listening position in length apart is another accepted method...example 9 feet apart, 12 feet from listening position. Is this what your suggesting?

 

[highfigh]

Hey guys. Before i go into the problem let me list my equipment. I am using a denon 4520ci (http://www.soundandvision.com/content/denon-avr-4520ci-av-receiver-test-bench#76r6bM1CcQFzWHIC.97) connected to a pair of revel f12 loudspeakers (http://www.revelspeakers.com/productdetail/~/product/f12.html) via bjc ten white speaker cables (https://www.bluejeanscable.com/store/speaker/).

When no one is home(rare) i like to enjoy music at spirited levels (70db +). It does not sound good. It sounds messy. I am constantly fiddling with the settings on the remote. Whether I'm using my correctly set 8 point xt32 or pure direct or 320 mp3 or 1411 cd, it does not seem to matter so i have eliminated those variables.

The room is 18x50 (open concept basement). The "living area" where the stereo is setup is 18x18. I assume the first measurement is the correct one since it is an open concept basement. The speakers are toed in towards the listening position and setup in a 11x11x11 equilateral triangle. The speakers are roughly 3-4 feet from the back wall. The rear ports are aimed at the corners of the room however with the speakers being toed in.

Assuming proper placement, subjective reviews suggest the f12s do not need a subwoofer if enough power is given. This is what I was hoping for, unfortunately while low to moderate volumes are enjoyable, spirited is not with these speakers.

Heres where I'm a complete noob, I'm assuming the f12s do not get enough power to go around at high volumes causing the messy sound. Would passive biaming fix this? I understand av receivers have 1 finite power source, but wouldn't 122 watts x4 8ohms (244 watts a speaker(see denon link for bench test)) be better than 173 watts x2 8ohms into the 6ohm nominal f12s? Or has the f12s frequency response (see f12 link) simply been the problem the entire time?-is that determined by placement and room size? Obviously i would prefer to just buy another pair of cables and/or fiddle with placement because its cheaper, but I'm willing to add an external amp or even a subwoofer if its my only hope for enjoyable listening at spirited volume.

I hope this was readable and substantial enough for an answer. Thanks in advance for reading.

Edit: added ohms property to bold text for clarity
Edit: added willing to buy external amp to bold text

18' x 50' is a large space for one pair of speakers and an AVR. Would it be possible for you to make movable, temporary wall panels to define a smaller space? If so, that's something I would explore. The 50' dimension means that reflections from behind will come in approximately 100ms after the initial sound and that's never a good thing if you want any level of definition.

If you were designing a system for distributed audio and the speaker dispersion was similar to yours, you would need 8 speakers to have uniform SPL at most locations.

What is the height of the basement? If you post that, I can run a program to find favorable dimensions for the length.

 

[j_garcia]

Thanks j. Here is the review that determined my amp selection: http://www.stereophile.com/content/revel-concerta-f12-loudspeaker-measurements#qAK08OJoZjspKpav.97

From the get go I wanted to buy an AV reciever since the speakers, in addition to music reproduction, would be pulling home theater duties as well. The review I linked led me to believe I would need a flagship reciever since it is my understanding that only flagship recievers are capable of driving 4ohm speakers with authority. I picked the denon 4520ci since my budget was ~1k, it was the only flagship avr that I could find new for ~1k ($999 new @ accessories4less).

Obviously I am now worried I didn't buy enough power. To answer your first question the bass seems to be the issue. Is it your opinion that the passive biamping will not fix the issue?

Since it is inexpensive (wire basically) to try, you can experiment there, but it is my opinion it won't solve the issue. In regards to passive bi-amping via external amps, I usually just say it would just be better to have a single channel powerful enough for the whole speaker.

I believe the speakers are set up correctly because they seems to disappear when being played. But I am willing to set up the stereo again. I have read the speakers being 75% of the distance to the listening position in length apart is another accepted method...example 9 feet apart, 12 feet from listening position. Is this what your suggesting?

Since you say it is the low end, that could be placement and seating position. With two sources of bass in that large room, to get great bass you're going to need a lot of power for the towers, but you are going to get more room modes in the lower region IMO. This might be a case where a sub to supplement the bottom end is well served. They may not need it for normal situations and a "typical room", but your room is pretty large. I prefer a large, open room for music too though.

Yes, the 75% - 9 apart/12 away would be something I'd try personally. You can try putting some treatments in the corners as an experiment, like a chair or box with a blanket angled toward the rear of the speaker (large enough to interrupt the reflection) or similar to see if you're getting modes from those front corners.

Your seating position - if you move forward or back a few feet, does bass change noticeably? That's something else that can be used to dial this in, and it tends to be very specific relative to the room acoustics not the speaker setup. People often miss the room part of the equation when encountering an issue like this, though it is pretty much always solved with placement and treatments. While in an ideal situation, an equilateral setup might be the "perfect" way to set it up, the room will modify that and often significantly. My current speakers actually sound better when I sit much further away from them because of the huge stage they throw, but that's not exactly realistic to do.

 

[KEW]

From the review you linked:

The Revel Concerta F12's voltage sensitivity was both to specification and higher than average at 90dB(B)/2.83V/m. Its impedance remained between 4 and 8 ohms over most of the audioband (fig.1), but did drop to 2.9 ohms in the low treble. This, together with the combination of 5.2 ohms and –45° electrical phase angle at 90Hz, means that a good amplifier rated at 4 ohms will be required to drive the F12 to high levels.
Read more at http://www.stereophile.com/content/revel-concerta-f12-loudspeaker-measurements#KYvxqFDF0B6fs9YS.99

So they seem to think it does require power and consider a 4 ohm capable amp required. Certainly the 4250 is no wimp and can generally handle 4 ohms, but at the same time, it does have it's limits and you are trying to fill a larger space.

Looking at the frequency response there is quite a dominant hump in the bass between 50Hz - 200Hz. This has a good chance of making things boomy or muddy in any room.

If you are not using Audyssey, you should because it will help to tame this hump and any room effects associated with it!

Give Highfigh your room height and let him calculate your room modes.

This is how I would address this:
First - Audyssey; you paid for it. It is free and it is often pretty good at addressing what I guess to be your problem.

Second - Bi-amp if you like since it is free. There is some chance that for your AVR and your speakers it may help, just don't bet on it!

Third - After you find out about room modes for your dimensions; consider what high-figh is saying about altering your room dimensions. Depending your personal willingness to have walls set up determines whether this is really 3 or not, but 1 & 2 were essentially free, so they come first!

Fourth - Subwoofer; Find one that will work well up to 250Hz. You may not need to go that high, but with the hump in your bass, I would hedge my bets by being able to off-load the full hump frequencies to the sub. You are doing two things here - removing the hump frequencies from the speakers, and off-loading the low frequencies from your AVR (which has the same effect as getting a more powerful AVR).

Fifth - Amp. I place this as the last option because the rule of thumb is you should double your power to get an appreciable difference, Essentially, you are looking at 300WPC. That is the cost of a good sub, but I think a good sub will do more to help your problem.

PS - you really have not attempted to better describe what you mean by "sounds messy". Read a bit here on the sound of clipping. If this is what you are hearing, you can probably forget everything I said and get more power.
http://www.avsforum.com/forum/89-speakers/1399048-what-does-clipping-sound-like.html

 

[Dennis Murphy]

From the review you linked:


So they seem to think it does require power and consider a 4 ohm capable amp required. Certainly the 4250 is no wimp and can generally handle 4 ohms, but at the same time, it does have it's limits and you are trying to fill a larger space.

Looking at the frequency response there is quite a dominant hump in the bass between 50Hz - 200Hz. This has a good chance of making things boomy or muddy in any room.

l

That bass hump is an artifact of John's measuring technique. He's splicing together near-field measurements of the woofer with 1-meter anechoic measurements above 200 Hz. Any speaker with reasonably flat bass response will show that hump in the Stereophile measurements.

 

[Sams]

18' x 50' is a large space for one pair of speakers and an AVR. Would it be possible for you to make movable, temporary wall panels to define a smaller space? If so, that's something I would explore. The 50' dimension means that reflections from behind will come in approximately 100ms after the initial sound and that's never a good thing if you want any level of definition.

If you were designing a system for distributed audio and the speaker dispersion was similar to yours, you would need 8 speakers to have uniform SPL at most locations.

What is the height of the basement? If you post that, I can run a program to find favorable dimensions for the length.

Thanks hifi, unfortunately the way everything is set up down their something like panels would not be possible. I checked the floor plan, the room is 18x55, 9 feet ceilings.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I agree with KEW. It's a massive space.
Pair of subs with reasonably flat to mid hundreds response should be able to take care of most noticable issues of bass room modes and take load of main speakers - bass need lots of powah - please correct me if i'm wrong here
Adding cheaply sub to my cheaply speakers made world of difference in terms of clearer audio.
I recommend a pair of hsu uls-15 mk2 located on opposite walls

 

[Sams]

Since it is inexpensive (wire basically) to try, you can experiment there, but it is my opinion it won't solve the issue. In regards to passive bi-amping via external amps, I usually just say it would just be better to have a single channel powerful enough for the whole speaker.



Since you say it is the low end, that could be placement and seating position. With two sources of bass in that large room, to get great bass you're going to need a lot of power for the towers, but you are going to get more room modes in the lower region IMO. This might be a case where a sub to supplement the bottom end is well served. They may not need it for normal situations and a "typical room", but your room is pretty large. I prefer a large, open room for music too though.

Yes, the 75% - 9 apart/12 away would be something I'd try personally. You can try putting some treatments in the corners as an experiment, like a chair or box with a blanket angled toward the rear of the speaker (large enough to interrupt the reflection) or similar to see if you're getting modes from those front corners.

Your seating position - if you move forward or back a few feet, does bass change noticeably? That's something else that can be used to dial this in, and it tends to be very specific relative to the room acoustics not the speaker setup. People often miss the room part of the equation when encountering an issue like this, though it is pretty much always solved with placement and treatments. While in an ideal situation, an equilateral setup might be the "perfect" way to set it up, the room will modify that and often significantly. My current speakers actually sound better when I sit much further away from them because of the huge stage they throw, but that's not exactly realistic to do.

Thanks j, it sounds like I need to educate myself on what I'm hearing "wrong" from the speakers first, making sure it is indeed just the bass response and not clipping-if i determine its just the bass response, trying to solve it the best I can with placement/setup.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Thanks j, it sounds like I need to educate myself on what I'm hearing "wrong" from the speakers first, making sure it is indeed just the bass response and not clipping-if i determine its just the bass response, trying to solve it the best I can with placement/setup.

http://harmanhowtolisten.blogspot.com/

 

[Sams]

From the review you linked:


So they seem to think it does require power and consider a 4 ohm capable amp required. Certainly the 4250 is no wimp and can generally handle 4 ohms, but at the same time, it does have it's limits and you are trying to fill a larger space.

Looking at the frequency response there is quite a dominant hump in the bass between 50Hz - 200Hz. This has a good chance of making things boomy or muddy in any room.

If you are not using Audyssey, you should because it will help to tame this hump and any room effects associated with it!

Give Highfigh your room height and let him calculate your room modes.

This is how I would address this:
First - Audyssey; you paid for it. It is free and it is often pretty good at addressing what I guess to be your problem.

Second - Bi-amp if you like since it is free. There is some chance that for your AVR and your speakers it may help, just don't bet on it!

Third - After you find out about room modes for your dimensions; consider what high-figh is saying about altering your room dimensions. Depending your personal willingness to have walls set up determines whether this is really 3 or not, but 1 & 2 were essentially free, so they come first!

Fourth - Subwoofer; Find one that will work well up to 250Hz. You may not need to go that high, but with the hump in your bass, I would hedge my bets by being able to off-load the full hump frequencies to the sub. You are doing two things here - removing the hump frequencies from the speakers, and off-loading the low frequencies from your AVR (which has the same effect as getting a more powerful AVR).

Fifth - Amp. I place this as the last option because the rule of thumb is you should double your power to get an appreciable difference, Essentially, you are looking at 300WPC. That is the cost of a good sub, but I think a good sub will do more to help your problem.

PS - you really have not attempted to better describe what you mean by "sounds messy". Read a bit here on the sound of clipping. If this is what you are hearing, you can probably forget everything I said and get more power.
http://www.avsforum.com/forum/89-speakers/1399048-what-does-clipping-sound-like.html

Thanks kew, this was all very clear. In regards to the ps, I just responded to j admitting I need to educate myself on what I'm actually hearing "wrong". I'll try to give my system another test asap.

 

[Sams]

http://harmanhowtolisten.blogspot.com/

This is very neat, thanks.

 

[Beave]

Is the bass sounding muddied and/or compressed?

Any harshness in the midrange and/or highs?

What kind of content (what movie or music) are you playing? Does it have really deep bass content?

While playing that content that sounds bad, do the following:

On your Denon, go into the menus and set the speakers to "small." Then go to the crossover menus and raise the crossover setting.

Start with 40Hz? Is the sound still bad? You've just removed the deepest bass from going to the speakers.
Go to 60Hz. Still bad? You've removed most of the low bass.
Go to 80Hz. Still bad? You've removed most of the low bass and some midbass.
Go to 100Hz. You'll be losing quite a bit of bass now, but is it cleaner sounding?
Go to 120Hz. Now you'll really start to lose bass output, but it should be sounding cleaner.
Go to 150Hz. Now you'll have very little bass, but it should sound really clean.

If that fixes it, you either need subwoofers or a more powerful amp, or a smaller room.

 

[highfigh]

You have excessive reverberation and that's caused by the fact that bass frequencies don't just die out as easily as higher frequencies. They're harder to absorb and when this happens with music or speech, it muddles everything.

Sit in your normal listening position and clap your hands- if you hear a succession of echos, you need something to absorb the sound.

I use a tone generator app on my iPhone called Tone Generator Ultra and it can be used as a single tone or it can sweep from 20Hz to above 20KHz. Set it to sweep from 20Hz-300Hz over about 30 seconds and you'll hear some notes seem to come from nowhere without the volume set high while some seem to disappear. While it's playing, turn it off and listen to the sound to continue- if you hear it continue at all, it's too long. That's great for Gregorian Chants and pipe organ music, but terrible fro percussion and most music.

 

[fmw]

Time to buy a subwoofer.

 

[PENG]

Thanks kew, this was all very clear. In regards to the ps, I just responded to j admitting I need to educate myself on what I'm actually hearing "wrong". I'll try to give my system another test asap.

I think highfigh's post#15 is right on. How's the basement finished, is it covered with rug, some sort of hard wood floor, vinyl floor, dry wall etc?

Those speakers are not particularly hard to drive. Stereophile will always recommend a power amp if you see any impedance dip below 4 ohms and some higher than average phase angles. If you sit only 10 to 12 feet from the speakers, even the 4520 alone should do fine.

Regardless, I would say you definitely need a couple of subwoofers if you enjoy listening really loud.

One more thing, if the 4520 is a refurbished or used one, you should do a processor rest right away. Then run Audyssey, then listening to Audyssey, and pure direct to find out which one you prefer. If you listen with volume set to below say 75, or -10 (just roughly, and depend of which scale), you should engage DEQ. Also, turn off Dynamic volume and LFC.

 

[ski2xblack]

Agree with most of the others: you need a sub or three and off-load the deep bass from your revels. This should clean things up slightly and allow a bit more dynamic range before the revels run out of steam.

That's a huge room, and the revels will only go so loud before you run into thermal compression, drivers reaching maximum excursion, or whatever else happens when you try to get speakers to go louder than they inherently can. Off loading the deep bass will definitely help, but if you want concert/club type ear splitting volumes, you likely need speakers capable of higher output.

When you listen at more moderate volumes, you probably hear more direct sound and less of your local acoustics. When you crank it, you'll hear more of the room's influence, which may be compounding the issue and contributing to the less than stellar results when cranked.

 

[highfigh]

I think highfigh's post#15 is right on. How's the basement finished, is it covered with rug, some sort of hard wood floor, vinyl floor, dry wall etc?

Those speakers are not particularly hard to drive. Stereophile will always recommend a power amp if you see any impedance dip below 4 ohms and some higher than average phase angles. If you sit only 10 to 12 feet from the speakers, even the 4520 alone should do fine.

Regardless, I would say you definitely need a couple of subwoofers if you enjoy listening really loud.

One more thing, if the 4520 is a refurbished or used one, you should do a processor rest right away. Then run Audyssey, then listening to Audyssey, and pure direct to find out which one you prefer. If you listen with volume set to below say 75, or -10 (just roughly, and depend of which scale), you should engage DEQ. Also, turn off Dynamic volume and LFC.

If my post is "right on", why did you give me a dislike?

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

If my post is "right on", why did you give me a dislike?

Peng needs new set of glasses