My Constant State of Change System...

[Puffin]

Not sure why but this thread has passed me by! Some lovely pics of a great set up and some great gear. Having a dedicated room is the way to go. I built one over 10 years ago and it is the only way to go.

[cube-tube]

Not sure why but this thread has passed me by! Some lovely pics of a great set up and some great gear. Having a dedicated room is the way to go. I built one over 10 years ago and it is the only way to go.

Why thank you, sir. I appreciate that! And yes, a dedicated room certainly makes a difference. Eventually, I'll start on doing some acoustic treatments.

[cube-tube]

A few more new pics with better lighting...

[Puffin]

Why thank you, sir. I appreciate that! And yes, a dedicated room certainly makes a difference. Eventually, I'll start on doing some acoustic treatments.

I did this more recently after doing the "clap" test (clapping at various points areound the room). There are differences of opinion as to which end of the room should be treated, but my understanding is that the speaker end is where it should be. I added two large "batts" to each side wall adjacent to the speakers and one hanging from the ceiling between the speakers and this was well worth doing in my room.

[cube-tube]

I did this more recently after doing the "clap" test (clapping at various points areound the room). There are differences of opinion as to which end of the room should be treated, but my understanding is that the speaker end is where it should be. I added two large "batts" to each side wall adjacent to the speakers and one hanging from the ceiling between the speakers and this was well worth doing in my room.

And I've heard different, that you should do diffusion on the front wall and absorption panels on the back wall. Especially when it comes to dipoles / electrostats / open baffle loudspeakers. You don't want to absorb the back wave of the speaker on the front wall, but defuse it.

[cube-tube]

I did a thing...

I've been wanting to put some gear on the side wall (if not all of it at some point minus the amp and TV). When we first moved in to the new house, I tried this setup but kept getting a bunch of buzzing coming through the speakers clearly heard at the listening seat even though I'm running fully balanced, using two pairs of pro-grade Pig Hog 30 ft XLR cables. Not being able to solve the issue, I just put everything on the front wall using standard 1 meter Nordost and Wireworld XLRS. Even then, when getting up close to the tweeters, you could still a very slight buzzing coming through.

Well yesterday, I tried moving things around again and stripped the system down to only the preamp, amps and speakers. Again, I had the buzz. I tried different wall outlets, and even lifted the ground on one end or both ends with no effect.

I swapped the Schiit Freya+ for my Topping A90 headphone amp which is also fully balanced and can be switched over to preamp only mode. Tried that and I still had the buzz coming through the system, so moved the Freya+ back into the system. As a last ditch effort, I pulled the NuPrime STA-9 amps and put my Emotiva XPA-2 Gen 2 amp into the mix. The result?... Pure silence! I mean pure silence as in I had to double check to make sure I actually had the speakers connected to the amp! No buzz, no hum, no hiss, no nothing! And that's with my ears right up against the tweeters practically!

I connected the Bifrost 2 DAC with another pair of Pig Hog 30 ft XLR's, still no noise. Connected the Sony Blu-ray, the Raspberry Pi4, the Roku Ultra, the TV, powered everything up... Still completely silent!

So it seems that either the balanced inputs on the NuPrime amps aren't wired correctly, or they are not differential inputs, OR they are not true balanced inputs at all. Either way, they are out of the system, the Emotiva is back in the system. And being able to hear both amps in the same room and system configuration, surprisingly the Emotiva has more and tighter bass (had to turn the gains down a touch on the subs), a more refined top end while remaining airy and spacious, and an ever so slightly fuller midrange. Imaging seems to be about the same, though stage depth and width is a little better. BTW, the Emotiva amp does in fact utilize true balanced differential inputs.

Who knew that Emotiva was able to create an amplifier (a massive 75 pound amplifier I might add) that is capable of exceeding the performance of a pair of amplifiers at double to price (two amps). The NuPrime STA-9's were $900 each new, the Emotiva XPA-2 Gen 2 was also $900 new.

Anywho, on with some pics...

[cube-tube]

A few more pics from this morning...

[cube-tube]

Don't mind the mess. We had family over last night. On that note, the Christmas Tree does in fact good ole' fashion bubble lights on it!

[cube-tube]

Made a "pair" of upgrades in the way of a couple SVS PB-1000 Pro subs. Haven't really had any time to dial them in yet. Just plopped them in, made preliminary adjustments, and let them go. I'll really dig into the settings and DSP tomorrow hopefully.

[cube-tube]

Obviously, this has become a one sided conversation thread... Anyway...

I moved some of my gear further down the side wall, as in all the way to the back of the wall. The dust hasn't settled yet and the speakers/subs may end up moving some more (maybe moving the subs inboard to see how that deals with room modes and such). Now that the front of the room is a lot more symmetrical, there's a definite improvement in stage width and imaging which I knew would happen. It's just that when we moved in, I just kind of threw things in the room and went with it for a while.

However, now that the front of the room is sorted so to speak, there's a lot more flexibility in playing with speaker/sub placement to get things really dialed in. Not to mention that this also prepares the room better for some room acoustic treatments a little later down the road.

I have to say, SVS has come a long, long, LONG way in the musicality department since the days of my old PB12-ISD/2 and PB12-Plus/2 subs. They were great for movies, but for music?... Forget it. Slow, sluggish, heavy sounding with music. Definitely not so with these new PB-1000 Pro's. Tight, agile, crisp!

Anywho, on with a few pics. And yes, that one of the audio rack and timer, that's 4:50am! Sucks when you can't sleep half the time.