It is now several weeks since I have given an update. I have to say the decommissioning of the studio at Benedict and the rebuild in the new home has been a monumental amount of work. This has been in addition to building out the in wall system and the family room system. In addition the complexity of the build of this home meant that I was pretty much continually on site during most of the build. The artisans really had difficulty sorting out a lot of the advanced infrastructure, so I had to spend a lot of time sorting and guiding the more complex installations. In addition the build out of the workshop and the outside kitchen/barbecue was down to me. I had expert assistance from my son in law. Who did a fantastic job of bricking out the barbecue.
We had 15 family members sit down for Thanksgiving dinner. The Turkey and ham were cooked outside. As you can see we are already snowed in. If fact the snow was flying before we moved in on October 14. So this project started and ended in the snow!
Thanksgiving Turkey and ham cooking.
The second system finished was the family room system, which is basically the first floor system from Benedict.
So I still have a nice space to spin vinyl by the fire during these Minnesota winters.
This room sounds better than ever. The space at Benedict had quite and echo, but still gave a good account of itself. This room sounds to me pretty much ideal. I do plan to separate the two subs. However bass seems pretty even.
The new studio AV room has been running but not complete for almost a month now. The space is now trimmed out and all equipment in place. All the digital sections are up and running. The analog tape equipment and the turntable case are yet to come on line. Hopefully this will be complete by the end of the week and the audio calibration fully completed.
These are the current pictures.
View of the rear of the studio.
Front views
I will start threads on each of the three systems, when I have all data to hand.
However suffice to say this room sounds better than the old one. The bass is very uniform and there do not appear to be hot or dead spots. I was concerned that the four 10" drivers would not fill the space. The bass is however deep and accurate, in fact I don't have to push the bass as hard as in the old space. I think this has to do with structural integrity. In the old space it really shook the floor and walls. Three of the four walls are now concrete. I really beefed up the front wall and the floor. In addition the speakers are now far enough apart not to interfere with each other.
The system really makes this space sound huge. The walls really open up. The biggest surprise has been the new upmixers.
I have done a some listening. Today I was really impressed. I streamed the excellent AV stream of the annual Christmas concert from St Olaf's college at the Sogland auditorium Northfield Minnesota. This has been a major annual event for over 100 years now. There is an orchestra of over 100 superb players and massed choirs of around 400. The audience of 3000 joining in from time to time.
Now bear in mind this is a stereo stream. How this upmixer manages to sort this out I don't know. Anyhow as the choirs process in an out around the whole auditorium the effect is totally realistic. Front back and side imaging is astonishing. With the older upmixers frontal imaging I always felt was somewhat compromised. With the new system frontal imaging is if anything enhanced over straight two channel. With the 7 former speakers and now the additional 4 ceiling speakers the ambiance from all four walls and roof is very convincing. The roof ambiance is particularly impressive and realistic. The young lady at the large organ held nothing back today and nor did the young man who played the final recessional. The reproduction of the bass pedal was totally convincing in accuracy and quantity. In fact I have bottom end power to spare. I did have a back up plan for a sub, but this will definitely not be necessary.
This room sounds best with the midlines, center and rear backs crossed at 40 Hz, the surrounds at 60 Hz and the ceiling speakers at 120 Hz.
Due to the design of the speakers this makes for a perfect composite fourth order LR crossovers for all speakers.
The concert I played this afternoon, seemed to require considerable power to all speakers at the same time. I'm certain no receiver could have coped with this.
I was particularly surprised at how much power the ceiling speakers seemed to take. They are the most sensitive of the bunch with their massive magnets and very light cones. Yet the Quad 405-2 seemed to have been worked pretty hard, given how warm those amps got. In fact all the amps got fairly warm at the end of this massive concert. Air is continually extracted from the top of the power amp case.
Now I don't want to suggest that what I can experience here would be easily duplicated. All speakers are very capable and accurate and driven with more than adequate power, and no speaker is limited in any way by power going to any other speakers. The JW 4" speakers in the ceiling I know take significant power if the bass is removed. In their small sealed enclosures, F3 is 120 Hz in any case. The best thing about them is that they are very accurate speakers, and blend seamlessly with the other speakers. I'm pretty certain there are no other ceiling speakers that could achieve the accuracy of these. I think this is important as if the ambiance, especially that from the roof must mirror the front set of speakers closely. So I doubt this is a set up easily duplicated. Certainly I have been totally surprised by this experience, and it was certainly not what I anticipated. In fact if it had not been for strong pressure and persuasion by Aron Caryl owner of Westco, I would not have bothered with those four ceiling speakers. He was twisting my arm hard out of his own curiosity.
As time permits I will give complete details on all of the three systems here and devote individual threads to each system.
