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The 4 Hour Transformation Of A Linn System

akamatsu

Michael
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It was the bit afterwards "It factors in the effect of the speakers to the correction made" that concerns me, although it could just be down to grammar.  I read it as the speakers having an effect on the correction that has been made, which would not be correct.  Did you intend to mean that the correction calculations take into effect a limited number of characteristics of the speakers? If so, then that would be correct.
I am not an expert. I do have more confidence in my grammar skills than my SO skills. So any correction from those more knowledgeable is very welcome. You may also correct my grammar.

I have been trying to wrap my brain around how this works. The only thing I can figure is something like if bass needs to be reduced at a certain frequency, then SO+ knowing the characteristics of a certain driver, can more accurately make that correction. Of course this is just what I've come up. I thought my assertion was general enough to be accepted and the conversation could move forward.

 
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Pennypacker

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As far as I understand SO, the listing position is needed to calculate where the mode is perceived or not. The soundwaves are send from the speakers, that’s the position from where the wave roles out and it is from this point where the distance or better the length of the wave is calculated from, since it’s there where it originates. 

If for instance a wavelength reflects from the wall behind the listing position before it’s halfway it’s (sinus) length it returns on itself and causes a mode. If you are unlucky the mode peaks at your listening position. If you move your listening position further away or closer the reflective wall you can “miss” the mode. The mode is in a certain spot not throughout the room, maybe some in a really small room.

Long story short; SO needs your listening position. Or SOv2 as it’s act so together that it calculates a flat response through out the complete room. The speaker profile is there because height of drivers can differ in between models and last but not least ported speakers act differently. 
 

I’m no math or grammer wizard by any means though. If the above doesn’t make sense I will claim it’s al lost in translation 🥳

 
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Craigas

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As far as I understand SO, the listing position is needed to calculate where the mode is perceived or not. The soundwaves are send from the speakers, that’s the position from where the wave roles out and it is from this point where the distance or better the length of the wave is calculated from, since it’s there where it originates. 

If for instance a wavelength reflects from the wall behind the listing position before it’s halfway it’s (sinus) length it returns on itself and causes a mode. If you are unlucky the mode peaks at your listening position. If you move your listening position further away or closer the reflective wall you can “miss” the mode. The mode is in a certain spot not throughout the room, maybe some in a really small room.

Long story short; SO needs your listening position. Or SOv2 as it’s act so together that it calculates a flat response through out the complete room. The speaker profile is there because height of drivers can differ in between models and last but not least ported speakers act differently. 
 

I’m no math or grammer wizard by any means though. If the above doesn’t make sense I will claim it’s al lost in translation 🥳
Sorry, just be clear, after SO is applied, room modes, peaks and cancellations, are the same throughout the room or just at listening position. How can it possibly anything other than at listening position only, they are waves.

 

Pennypacker

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SOv1 works better then nothing and I certainly won’t call it medieval. SOv2 works better without a doubt, practically and because of the GUI. I really don’t grasp the bickering on SO from time to time.
Claims about the musicality being sucked are most likely due to people hearing their speakers for the first time without the bass boom covering the actual character or up the bad set up 
 

Oh yeah one more thing. I ❤️ SO. Got to have it.

 

Pennypacker

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Sorry, just be clear, after SO is applied, room modes, peaks and cancellations, are the same throughout the room or just at listening position. How can it possibly anything other than at listening position only, they are waves.
They are not the same across the room, a certain wavelength can have lost its energy after reflection after a certain length. Or it lost its energy because it just not long enough to reflect after its first cycle or your room is just big enough. This very’s per wavelength and room.

 

akamatsu

Michael
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Yes, and remember room modes are only calculated for one position in the room.
Sorry if I was unclear. SO is calculated for the given listening position, modes will of course vary widely across the room. If you remember, in SO1 changing listening position by just a little gave big changes in the response. This is of course true for all such calculations. 
Giving you the benefit of the doubt leaves me scratching my head on this one. Being an engineer, when I hear calculation, I think of a formula. The formula for room modes doesn't care about listening position. I'm thinking you may have meant that SO takes into account the locations of room modes and will avoid having them occur at the listening position? If this is what you are thinking and saying, I have to say that I once thought the same. By once, I mean a few days ago. I don't see anything anywhere documenting this. Also, what happened a few days ago with my system. I'm now thinking that SO just eliminates the room modes. Then there would be no need to avoid having a mode occur in a specific location in the room. As I'm typing and thinking about this. I really can't see a way that it would even be possible without changing the geometry of the room.

Jeez man, of course the modes stay the same but your position relative to these modes and hence the perceived power response will change and Space will take this into account. And yes, I did take a few courses at a fairly well regarded west coast uni in acoustics and I did work for Paul S. Veneklasen in Santa Monica.  
Again. I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. At this point you are saying that SO takes the listener's position into account and does what? This is where I get lost.

I think listening position is there just for "time of flight" calculations.

 

Elad Repooc

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An attempt to clarify a few things:

 - SOv1 did not calculate the cubic air volume (affected by temperature and humidity I might add) of the room and how sound at all frequencies is energizing the space in the room. It only calculated length, width, and height modes and offered suggested cuts for frequencies below 200Hz based on the position of the given speaker in the given room dimensions - which were explicitly something that still needed to be further adjusted and verified by ear. Not every SOv1 calculation could or would be very accurate, as admitted by Linn back then.

- In addition to calculating the cubic air volume of the space based on the provided input, and in general performing a much more advanced calculation of the given room dimensions, materials coefficients, etc. (which is why it moved to the cloud - SOV1 could be done on standard computing hardware we all use whereas the maths happening with SOV2 are being done using GPU-based processing in the cloud on much more powerful machines so that you don't have to sit there and wait for hours - just that should tell you something about the sophistication of V2 vs V1) SOV2 uses a more advanced modeling system with respect to the speaker being used in order to determine the shape/dimension of the speaker, how it is interacting with the room surroundings, and what affect that has on both the speakers low frequency output and it's time-of-flight (AKA group delay) for all frequencies. This is audible with most speakers (even passive) once a proper TuneDem has been completed, by just ensuring the proper speaker has been selected in Konfig, without applying SO. The profile(s) that Linn have for the speakers in their database specifically take into account where the center point of the midrange driver is on the loudspeaker, the cabinet dimensions, and the resonant frequency of the port/radiator system used (if any). So @akamatsu is correct about the fact that SOv2, is indeed based on the characteristics of the speaker being used and it's assumed/presumed response and interaction within the given environment.

- Linn are (or at least have been in the past) very adamant that NONE of the above is a "magic bullet" and that SOV2, just like V1, would only give proper results when the speakers are TuneDem'd properly into the room. The idea is, you need to get the speaker as free of the room influences as possible before you do anything further in software. Otherwise you're just chasing your tail, and likely making things sound worse than they should. It has been my experience that this is the "Achille's heel" for getting results with SO, and as I've mentioned elsewhere, I've not personally met very many folks who are competent with this process. Again, speaking from a NA/US perspective (I think things are a bit different in the UK/EU, etc.) there are plenty of audio "gurus" and speaker setup "masters" who would not have the first clue as to how to properly TuneDem a pair of speakers, let alone know what to do with something like SOv2. I know because many of them have flat out told me to my face that the speaker setup process that Linn uses is wrong, and is an incorrect way to go about tuning a speaker into a room. So my assumption is, whenever I read or hear something to the effect of "we tried it and the customer didn't like it" or "I like the sound with it off better than with it on", that the individuals involved in the setup don't really know what they're doing.

 

Pennypacker

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IMHO one does not have to tune dem to perfection to have good results with SO. A basic set up in an average room should benefit from SO. Especially with speakers reaching under 80Hz.

 
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Craigas

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They are not the same across the room, a certain wavelength can have lost its energy after reflection after a certain length. Or it lost its energy because it just not long enough to reflect after its first cycle or your room is just big enough. This very’s per wavelength and room.
Just realized my post had a typo, and its tone was unintentionally harsh, I meant to say, Sorry, just *to* be clear.

Anyways with that said, would it be valid to say, room modes, peaks and cancellations, would be the best they can be at primary-input listening position, but also that, as a result of the correction for primary, other positions would also likely benefit from the correction (in addition to the normal energy decay that affects other listening positions in the room).

Further, that some other listening positions could sound worse but on average they should sound better?

My brain hurts.

 

Elad Repooc

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IMHO one does not have to tune dem to perfection to have good results with SO.
I would agree, however it's familiarity with the overall process which is key. The process itself is limited by other factors including your room placement and aesthetics, etc.

For example, there may actually be a more "ideal" position in your room further out from where you plan to put your speakers, but your speaker cable won't reach, or you can only move the speakers laterally so much because of an entertainment cabinet or such. To me this is part of the process - work within the given limitations to get the best results (and if you want to obsess over minutiae perhaps you can, but really it shouldn't take too long), then apply SO from there.

And, there is some preference involved, not everything is 100 percent objective when it comes to this stuff.

 

Pennypacker

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Just realized my post had a typo, and its tone was unintentionally harsh, I meant to say, Sorry, just *to* be clear.

Anyways with that said, would it be valid to say, room modes, peaks and cancellations, would be the best they can be at primary-input listening position, but also that, as a result of the correction for primary, other positions would also likely benefit from the correction (in addition to the normal energy decay that affects other listening positions in the room).

Further, that some other listening positions could sound worse but on average they should sound better?

My brain hurts.
Yes and yes (IMO) after my first SOv1 my boom was gone on my sweet spot, but other parts of the room still had it, but I could not be bothered by it when in the sweet spot.

 

Craigas

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Yes and yes (IMO) after my first SOv1 my boom was gone on my sweet spot, but other parts of the room still had it, but I could not be bothered by it when in the sweet spot.
Well thats excellent, we can all agree then as nobody would dare disagree with Kramer.

 

andrew s

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I realise this is heresy but I would love to seen some measurement taken at the listening position during a "tunedem" and during SO adjustment. 😱

My hypothesis would be the tunedem seeks out a place where room modes are least excited and SO further reduces them and or "voices" the sound to the users liking.

Regards Andrew 

 
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Pennypacker

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I realise this is heresy but I would love to seen some measurement taken at the listening position during a "tunedem" and during SO adjustment. 😱

My hypothesis would be the tunedem seeks out a place where room modes are least excited and SO further reduces them and or "voices" the sound to the users liking.

Regards Andrew 
It voices it to Linns liking in either above cases.

Tunedem in regard of a typical speaker seeks out the best position where one should here the voicing of that typical speaker. But any positioning method aims for the same give or take, SO gives that principle an uplift.

However the Linn housesound is somewhat lighter in the bass, SO could manipulate that to some extent (from 1 to 200Hz). But nothing above the 200Hz so one should here the speaker in question. 

 
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akamatsu

Michael
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- SOv1 did not calculate the cubic air volume (affected by temperature and humidity I might add) of the room and how sound at all frequencies is energizing the space in the room. It only calculated length, width, and height modes and offered suggested cuts for frequencies below 200Hz based on the position of the given speaker in the given room dimensions
On the matter of speaker position in the room, the formula used by SOV1 only uses the length, width, and height of the room, and the speed of sound to determine the frequencies. This was discovered by this forum community a couple of years ago when I was doing a virtual tunedem. The frequency, gain, and bandwidth of the modes in SOV1 did not change at all to the nth decimal place when speaker location was changed.

- Linn are (or at least have been in the past) very adamant that NONE of the above is a "magic bullet" and that SOV2, just like V1, would only give proper results when the speakers are TuneDem'd properly into the room. The idea is, you need to get the speaker as free of the room influences as possible before you do anything further in software.
I've read this a few times and just read the setup guide. Linn actually say that tunedem is needed "to get the full potential of your music system and Space Optimisation." I can see this as determining if your speakers are in their ideal position, or a practical position is being used and the boundary condition correction can be used to simulate the ideal would be "getting the full potential."

Perhaps @Pennypacker is also correct in stating that good results can be had without the full on anal retentive tunedem application. I'm paraphrasing.

MHO one does not have to tune dem to perfection to have good results with SO. A basic set up in an average room should benefit from SO.
I agree that Space Optimisation is not a panacea. I will only do what it is designed to do. It does only three things; room mode correction, boundary condition correction, and time of flight correction. SO's impact on these three things is finite, and limited. It will do some really good things to the sound quality. What I have gained in this conversation is a deeper understanding as to how all this works. Understanding how it works also provides insight into SO's limitations.

I now have much more confidence in my SO setup than I did when I woke up this morning. Your replies, coupled with Linn's setup guide have helped tremendously.

 
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akamatsu

Michael
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Another Aha! moment. Why is factoring in "boundary condition" correction important to get the full potential of SO? I'm thinking because if bass is reinforced at the boundaries, but is unaccounted for, this would undermine the room mode correction. It could still sound good, just not to it's "full potential."

 

Elad Repooc

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The frequency, gain, and bandwidth of the modes in SOV1 did not change at all to the nth decimal place when speaker location was changed.
I'm going off of memory here, but my experience with a number of different speakers in different rooms and SOv1 is that the optimisation/calculations could, and sometimes did change based on where the speaker was in the room as it had been mapped out/input into the software. It was also dependent on knowing the speaker profile, or you could get generic results by using a generic point source profile if the speaker was not in the database.

So perhaps in your room the placement of your speaker didn't change any of the modes/calculations, but that is contrary to my experience with a number of different speakers in a number of different room types with SOv1.

 
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sunbeamgls

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Yes, but if SO addressed a room mode NOT at the listening position, it will make the sound at the listening position sound "wrong".

If SO addressed a mode at the back of the room which was not present at the listening position, to make the response flat at the back of the room, it would create a dip in the frequency response at the listening position.

Take a look here: https://amcoustics.com/tools/amroc?l=500&w=600&h=250&r60=0.6

Click on some of the frequencies in the upper diagram and you get a map of where / how they affect different parts of the room.  Fixing a mode issue away from the listening position will create a problem in the FR at the listening position.
Seems there are quite a few who didn't bother looking at the 3D diagrams at the link.

Its really worth it, it will help many of you not to type so many words and questions.

 
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akamatsu

Michael
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I'm going off of memory here, but my experience with a number of different speakers in different rooms and SOv1 is that the optimisation/calculations could, and sometimes did change based on where the speaker was in the room as it had been mapped out/input into the software. It was also dependent on knowing the speaker profile, or you could get generic results by using a generic point source profile if the speaker was not in the database.

So perhaps in your room the placement of your speaker didn't change any of the modes/calculations, but that is contrary to my experience with a number of different speakers in a number of different room types with SOv1.
My findings were verified by others here. It really was a light bulb moment for many of us. It all stands to reason as the formula for room modes is agnostic to speaker position.

Go into SOV1 and create a room with speakers. Calculate room modes. Then change the speaker positions. The mode will not change at all.

Before you do all that, let me look for the thread where this was all discussed. I was the OP and it had "Virtual Tunedem" in the title.

 
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Elad Repooc

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Why is factoring in "boundary condition" correction important
Because one of the first things the sound wave will do from the closest boundary is bounce off of the cabinet of the speaker and cause unwanted resonances and distortion. Hence the tapered cabinets and efforts to eliminate and/or control diffraction (nautilus tweeters, 3K arrays with Skoop, etc.) that many loudspeaker manufacturers employ in design. If you can model the boundaries and their relationship to the speaker, you can compensate in the source (DSM) and attempt to remove/alleviate unwanted distortions caused by the boundaries.

 
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