New speakers - what changes are required or advised?

[Paulssurround]

You are welcome to your opinions, and going by earwitness reports your novel approach to "Space Optimisation" has indeed yielded benefits for some users. However, the incontravenable physical underpinning of room acoustics sits firmly on my side in this disagreement (indeed, we have become rather firm friends over the last 5 or so years, despite his monotone, booming laughter often masking my beautiful music). 

Of course, the bottom line is that we all hope @DutchWillem is able to obtain a SO (v1 or v2) profile which brings his new system to life!

Thanks for your reply Pete,  

‘I have followed your progress with great interest, and wish you nothing but great success.

Space optimisation v1 has come a long way since it was released a number of years ago, The evolution of Space Optimisation v1, over time has been a stunning series of improvements that has taken my Linn system to unimaginable heights.

The original algorithms used to calculate room modes in the early stages were based on acoustic science theory and current thinking at the time, on dealing with room modes? In most cases, even the original algorithms were able to get much much better results than not using SO for people that set it up properly.

I have a number of friends that are also audiophiles , and find myself frequenting shops with them, that sell very high end HiFi systems from competitors. I am constantly comparing Linn systems to what I hear in the market place.

SO v1 is fully capable of getting results that are far beyond most of what I have heard with competitors stereo systems. What Linn has accomplished with SOv1 is nothing short of astonishing, but you have to know how to set it up well, and have a good ear.

I recognized that the vast majority of Linn owners did not adopt SO, did not know how to successfully set it up, and many gave up, often getting results that were less than satisfactory. Sadly, I witnessed so many badly setup SO setups in my travels, that I embarked on a journey to see if I could find a more simple method to setting up SOv1 to get wider adoption, and to get great results.

Using a unique application of custom filters, which developed serendipitously over time,  I have found applications of custom filters and fine tuning calculated room modes which I find produce highly acceptable results. This approach has generally found wide acceptance of the resulting sound quality improvements by the vast majority of the more than 100 Linn owners I have visited and done SO. 

As I travelled more widely, I continued to learn new things and apply new custom filters and other tweaks to improve sound quality. I wish I could revisit everyone that I met, to redo their SO, as the application developed. Then it would be a more fair comparison of SOv1 done a few years ago, to the latest versions of SOv2.

As I have a fully Exakted Linn Surround system, I don’t currently have an ability to implement SOv2 in my system, to do a direct comparison. The results I am currently getting would be a very high bar indeed for SOv2  to beat, so You have your work cut out for you. 

I believe you were hired by Linn to develop a version of SO that could simplify the process of setting up SOv2  by Linn owners and dealers and get great results.

I would love to revisit Linn headquarters and spend a week or two, working with you to see if we can collectively move the development of SO V2 forward.

Having met so many Linn owners , most of which are dedicated audiophiles, I am concerned that when SOv2 is released for Exakt systems that Linn owners are going  to be satisfied with adjusting slider bars to get optimal results? 

I strongly believe that the future of SOv2 should have an ability for dedicated audiophiles to have access to custom filters, beyond the slider bars. I am also very aware that they would like an ability to see a graphical representation of the calculated room modes as well as the custom filters to take the sound quality to even higher levels than slider bars alone  will permit.

As far as I know, SOv2 does not account for the sound quality effects of furniture, carpets, windows coverings, integrated wall cabinets and so on, which all influences sound quality, whereas SOv1 has an ability to fine tune parameters that yield positive results.

I have heard SOv2 in a few Linn systems, and the last time was a Linn demo in early March, with a Selekt DSM. 

According to some of my friends that have tried SOv2, it has continuously improved since March, with some great results. However, I but am not about to trade in SOv1 yet.  

I do hope DutchWillem gets great results with his new Akubarik system.

Cheers Pete

LLAP

 

[Paulssurround]

Yes indeed we changed our living room quite a bit.

We wanted a larger living room - originally it was 4 x 7 meters and we felt that was too small. We had a kitchen room of 5 x 6 meters adjacent to the living, so we broke away the wall between these rooms, thus creating a new larger living room in the shape of an L. We divided our garage that was 4 x 10 meters and really close to the house into two separate  rooms, then made a connection between the house and the garage, and made the part of the garage sitting closest to the house into our kitchen room. It turned out quite nice, if I do say so myself  

The stereo is now firing across the length of one leg of the L which is some 4 x 7 meters. So the 242's have moved from firing across the width to firing across the length and that sounds way better See the attached diagrams from SO v2.

When Paul visited us last year in april, he adjusted SO v1 for the original room. It did sound quite nice, way better than it sounded before Paul's visit. After the reconstruction I have started using SO v2. I am open to comparing v1 against v2 with the new Akubariks but I don't think that would be an honest comparison, with both the room dimensions and the speakers changed. Still, it will be fun to do so I'll probably give it a go.

Paul, thanks for your kind offer to assist in creating a new SO v1 but I don't think that doing this remote will be a succes. I'll probably just change the speaker info in SO v2 and start using that. I think I will need some time to get used to the new sounds but maybe later on there may arise a need to make adjustments.

Willem

View attachment targets.zip

Great stuff Willem

I hope you get great results with your new renovations and new speakers.    

 

[DutchWillem]

I installed the Akubariks a week ago and they have been playing since then. The dealer advised me to start with driving them single-wired and with SO off and I have followed his advise. Great guy, bytheway. Very open, friendly, knowledgeable and pragmatic. Thanks again, Ian!

I bought some new K200 to replace my K400 that I had been using as a bi-wired cable (with one Neutrik speakon per cable). I needed to wait on some new Neutrik speakons.

All in all, the sound is quite different.There definitively is more bass, which I like - this was my main reason for listening to Akubariks in the first place. Music seems more open in the middle regions. Instrument placing isn't quite there yet - I suppose the new combination of speakers and cables will take sometime to settle. Ian suggested that this may take a few weeks.

I have placed the speakers at approximately the same spot as the 242’s and haven’t experimented with position adjustments yet. I will do that at a later stage.

The Akubariks in walnut are beautiful to look at bytheway. My wife is very pleased with them, as am I, so we are two happy campers here  ;-)  

Willem

 

[DavidHB]

@DutchWillem

Interesting setup, which it would be fascinating to compare with my Exakted Akubariks, with a KEDSM at the front end.

Extrapolating from what Paul did with my system and his reports of his experience with his own Akubariks, instrument placement might benefit from a small amount of toe-in; Paul's advice is that the outer corner of the speaker should be no more than 3cm further away from the front wall than the inner corner. From your SO v2 diagram, I assume that the photo is taken more or less from the listening position.

I think that you were wise to follow your dealer's advice and take things slowly. But once you are happy with the speaker positioning, I think that it would be worthwhile to give SO v2 another try. In theory at least, it ought to improve both instrument placement and soundstage presentation ("depth"). On a detailed point and as a matter of interest, how did you deal with the stepped ceiling when you created your SO v2 profile? It doesn't look like a very deep step in the photo, so I suspect that you could get away with averaging the two ceiling heights.

David

 

[HansBertil]

@DutchWillem

Very nice setup. Really a top range non-Exakt system. I believe that speaker positioning is key to get instrument placing right. The previous speaker positions are likely a good starting point but not optimal. So my advice is to take the bull by its horns and start the tedious positioning work. While doing that SO is better switched off. Try to ignore bass boominess - to be coped with later on with SO.

 

[DutchWillem]

On a detailed point and as a matter of interest, how did you deal with the stepped ceiling when you created your SO v2 profile? It doesn't look like a very deep step in the photo, so I suspect that you could get away with averaging the two ceiling heights.

David,

truth is, I haven’t dealt with the height difference at all... I’m not sure which height I have in my SO v2 profile - I’ll look into that in a couple of weeks once the speakers and cables are settled in. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

Willem

 

[DavidHB]

truth is, I haven’t dealt with the height difference at all... I’m not sure which height I have in my SO v2 profile - I’ll look into that in a couple of weeks once the speakers and cables are settled in. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

But, whatever you are doing now, if it works, don't try to fix it  .

David