Wongaburra - El Tel's Listening Space

[El Tel]

So having been in residence on SNA for over a year now, I figured I ought to do one of these. I've been impressed with quite a few member setups on here; our various altars to incinerating cash. I'm equally impressed with carefully curated systems that have been guided by thrift and sensibility. I have felt the pangs of nostalgia at some of the vintage gear too.

 

Like many, my system and its constituent parts are a mixture of desire, compromise and good fortune. I would love to change out my entertainment shelving unit, for example. It causes me to compromise on locating equipment in less than perfect positions relative to other kit, or doesn't afford enough damping from the environment. Whatever I do, I need to take into account the long-suffering Mrs Tel and remember this is a shared space too. There are some minor room treatments added that are multi-purpose. I put heavy fabric Roman blinds on the windows behind the listening position that remain at least halfway down at all times (also the same blinds on the panoramic rear window to the left of the first picture - they are down when serious listening occurs, but otherwise not so we can enjoy the view of Mount Macedon through the trees on clear days). There is also a carpet rug of 3m x 2.5m in between the speakers and the listening position to stop acoustic reflections. Not perfect, but better than allowing unfettered reflections all over the place; again, it's compromise due to being common space. 

 

Here is the whole she-bang. I will concentrate on the audio side of things rather than the AV in this post. For the sake of acknowledging the AV side though, there is an Oppo-105D, PS4 and Foxtel box feeding the Onkyo NR3030 which drives the B&W CM2S2 centre and B&W CM5S2 rears. The Onkyo front pre-outs feed the McIntosh amp for HT pass-through to utilise the Tannoys. The TV is a Samsung 4K 75" (UA75JU7000WXXY).

 

So here is the centre-piece of the music setup; my much loved McIntosh MA352:

 

I've rolled NOS tubes in place of the JJ OEMs that came with the amp. The 12AT7 pair are Mullard NOS from 1953 and the 12AX7 pair are GE Ken-Rad long Charcoal pewter plate from circa 1948.

 

Here is the vinyl setup. A Mobile Fidelity Ultradeck that I swapped the MoFi Mastertracker MM cartridge out and put a Hana ML MC cartridge in about 100 hours ago. It has a Pro-ject cork mat on top of the Delrin platter and an AudioTechnica record weight. The pre is a Graham Slee Accession MC with the PSU upgrade and is fed with low capacitance Rega RCAs from the TT. In turn, the pre fixed outputs feed the McIntosh with my newly acquired Aurealis R1 Dragon Litz RCAs:

 

And now the digital sources.

 

A recently acquired McIntosh MCD301 SACD/CD player which is feeding the McIntosh via a pair of Audioquest Red River XLRs (I intend to swap these out in time, but I acquired the MCD301 after I had already placed my order with Geoff for my Litz interconnects recently).

 

The wonderful Lumin T2 sits atop the MCD301 (placement is less than ideal, but such are the compromises I am forced into with the wooden unit that houses everything). The Lumin is fed by Roon which acts as a collection point for both Qobuz and a few thousand PCM tracks on my Synology NAS installed in my study along with a NUC with ROCK installed on it as my core. The Lumin feeds the McIntosh via a pair of Aurealis R1 Dragon Litz XLRs.

 

Just at the bottom of shot you get a glimpse of the power management supplying everything: An Isotek Sigmas.

 

Last, but certainly not least, the floor standers; a beautiful pair of Tannoy DC10T speakers sitting on Isoacoustic Gaia 2 feet. These are fed from the MA352 by Aurealis Litz 400 cables. They give a really spacious presentation and with well mastered music provide a wonderful soundstage that exists beyond their footprint in all directions.

 

I suspect this is not the final form of the system at Wongaburra as its current state is one of evolution which shows no signs of abating. Updates may follow as and when changes occur.

[El Tel]

I also have some occasional, mobile acoustic treatments to help with absorption. They seem to be present on colder days, oddly.

[peterpan]

1 hour ago, El Tel said:

our various altars to incinerating cash

best description yet lol 

great system btw

[El Tel]

Whelp... the next piece of evolution is already rolling. Thanks to @BugPowderDust for coming round last week and doing some initial measurements and spit-balling a few ideas. He pushed up the output on my sub a bit to help the bottom-end and then trialled a convolution filter in Roon which made a staggering difference even though it was not developed for my specific circumstances.

 

I've now decided to engage Christian Corsini to do some analysis and come up with some recommendations.

 

Watch this space (and my wallet emptying again).

[Marc]

On 27/08/2022 at 11:52 AM, El Tel said:

Thanks to @BugPowderDust for coming round last week and doing some initial measurements and spit-balling a few ideas.

 

Think we need a Hume/Macedon Ranges Members GTG soon?

[Assisi]

27 minutes ago, Marc said:

 

Think we need a Hume/Macedon Ranges Members GTG soon?

Definitely> I will be in that.

John

[El Tel]

1 hour ago, Marc said:

 

Think we need a Hume/Macedon Ranges Members GTG soon?

 

We should rope-in @SoundHash too, he's just round the corner.

[El Tel]

An interesting day here at Wongaburra. Christian from Corsini visited today and did some great work for me. Intention was to look at the room for the purpose of applying some light treatments and to do a multi-subwoofer optimisation assessment too. My room is not conventional in terms of layout so it was an immediately obvious area to investigate as I cannot change the orientation of my system to align with the long axis of the family room (nobody disagrees with Mrs Tel's "suggestions").

 

I learned a lot, which is always a plus, however, it was tough to keep up at times in a discipline I have zero prior experience with. Christian does not hang around in getting to the heart of the matter.

 

Setting up:

 

Measuring:

 

This is about to get expensive, right? *Cue impish grin from Christian*

Second batch of measurements after changing speaker placement and toe-in:

 

Christian positioned the speakers wider and further back towards the wall - this is where there were more consistent responses across more of the frequency range. Then by mucking around with the manual controls on the sub, he was able to stop it fighting so much with the speakers.

Then he experimented with a second sub in various locations. This time running my sub and his unit through a MiniDSP appliance. The optimal spot was leaving my sub in its corner and having a separate sub behind my listening spot around the back of the sofa in line with the centre of the repositioned fronts. Then he dialled in some further DSP-config to fine-tune and it was impressive I have to say.

 

Now he has left and there is no DSP in place, but with speakers in their new position and my single sub, it's even better imaging than I was able to manage on my own previously. Going wide made all of the difference and this alone was worth the investment for his time.

 

He took some 3D scans of the room and will be working on some unobtrusive treatment designs and the associated detailed reports from various acoustic measurements taken.

 

Here is the final placement of my lovely Tannoys. You can see from the tape markings where the original positions were in-board and further into the room from their new location:

 

[awayward]

12 minutes ago, El Tel said:

An interesting day here at Wongaburra. Christian from Corsini visited today and did some great work for me. Intention was to look at the room for the purpose of applying some light treatments and to do a multi-subwoofer optimisation assessment too. My room is not conventional in terms of layout so it was an immediately obvious area to investigate as I cannot change the orientation of my system to align with the long axis of the family room (nobody disagrees with Mrs Tel's "suggestions").

 

I learned a lot, which is always a plus, however, it was tough to keep up at times in a discipline I have zero prior experience with. Christian does not hang around in getting to the heart of the matter.

 

Setting up:

 

Measuring:

 

This is about to get expensive, right? *Cue impish grin from Christian*

Second batch of measurements after changing speaker placement and toe-in:

 

Christian positioned the speakers wider and further back towards the wall - this is where there were more consistent responses across more of the frequency range. Then by mucking around with the manual controls on the sub, he was able to stop it fighting so much with the speakers.

Then he experimented with a second sub in various locations. This time running my sub and his unit through a MiniDSP appliance. The optimal spot was leaving my sub in its corner and having a separate sub behind my listening spot around the back of the sofa in line with the centre of the repositioned fronts. Then he dialled in some further DSP-config to fine-tune and it was impressive I have to say.

 

Now he has left and there is no DSP in place, but with speakers in their new position and my single sub, it's even better imaging than I was able to manage on my own previously. Going wide made all of the difference and this alone was worth the investment for his time.

 

He took some 3D scans of the room and will be working on some unobtrusive treatment designs and the associated detailed reports from various acoustic measurements taken.

 

Here is the final placement of my lovely Tannoys. You can see from the tape markings where the original positions were in-board and further into the room from their new location:

 

Looks like a very interesting and beneficial day, out of curiosity could you provide the distance between the tweeters and the distance from tweeter to the listening position.

[El Tel]

20 minutes ago, awayward said:

Looks like a very interesting and beneficial day, out of curiosity could you provide the distance between the tweeters and the distance from tweeter to the listening position.

Between tweeters is 3500mm, tweeter to listening position is 4350mm.

[awayward]

7 minutes ago, El Tel said:

Between tweeters is 3500mm, tweeter to listening position is 4350mm.

Thank you, I can see why the speakers were moved apart when move back also. Was the day strictly about in room measurements, or was the the human element of listening incorporated into the final results?

[El Tel]

1 hour ago, awayward said:

Thank you, I can see why the speakers were moved apart when move back also. Was the day strictly about in room measurements, or was the the human element of listening incorporated into the final results?

 

I listened to a few of my reference tracks once everything was dialled-in with both subs. I think it is always important to reach for music that you know intimately otherwise smaller, subtle changes may go by the way unnoticed.

 

Once we reversed-out the MiniDSP changes and the second sub and went back to my new placements and slightly fettled subwoofer settings, I repeated the exercise to gauge the loss of the second sub and DSP versus where we started the day. Whilst a little presence and body was missed, I have to say that placement alone delivered maybe 80% of the lift in the overall experience versus the starting point. I'm looking forward to what comes next.

[El Tel]

A quick follow-up. I'm falling in love with the results so much more today. Just getting the phasing and levels right on the sub through measurement and subsequent repositioning the floor standers wider apart and further back has made such a difference.

 

It's very stark this morning; often I'm impressed on the day but the next day those changes are not as obvious as they were in the zeitgeist of a day of experimentation or new kit installation. I'm very aware of my own expectation/cognitive bias, so I was half expecting to have to fess-up on this thread that it wasn't a revolution in the cold-light of day. Not so.

 

It feels like I've spent $10k+ on something big... I'm feeling genuinely moved by my tunes today.

Edited August 30, 2022 by El Tel

[Dr.Funk]

Hi,

Try throwing a blanket over that TV, the reflections from the glass always stuff up the imaging. A tweak that costs nothing and easily removed during viewing times. It has proven time and again to change every system and room area. With my own system the bass tightened and the soundstage increased in depth and width.

I would be interested to know, after your recent changes, if this adds another element?

Cheers

Andy

 

[El Tel]

On 30/08/2022 at 11:07 AM, Dr.Funk said:

Hi,

Try throwing a blanket over that TV, the reflections from the glass always stuff up the imaging. A tweak that costs nothing and easily removed during viewing times. It has proven time and again to change every system and room area. With my own system the bass tightened and the soundstage increased in depth and width.

I would be interested to know, after your recent changes, if this adds another element?

Cheers

Andy

 

 

So this week has been a shocker. It's caused Mrs Tel and I to consider every aspect of our living spaces and not just the family room.

 

To cut a very long story short, I am now considering decommissioning and selling my 5.1 setup. We really don't use it, music is our priority and we can always supplement the TV with a sound bar to get 90% of what we had before anyway.

 

So the Onkyo amp, the B&W centre and rear speakers (the rear B&W stands too) and the B&W sub are likely to be stripped-out and sold regardless of shifting the room around. If only I can work out how to portion it up, or not, for selling....

 

I'm waiting on response from Christian on a few questions, but essentially we've decided to investigate shifting the entire room around. We now think it is viable to locate the TV and the hi-fi kit in front of the big window and have the speakers oriented down the length of the room rather than across the width. The heavy blinds will aid in absorption behind the speakers when listening critically. Christian has done good work for me so far, so will be guided by his advice.

 

T

[El Tel]

Christian has already come back. Working with him is an absolute pleasure. I absolutely endorse his work and his ethic: corsini.com.au

 

I have a path forward; now I just need a few weeks to align a few ducks, then we can start to move on the plans.

 

Watch this space.

[El Tel]

Torn the AV out in preparation for the space redesign. I enjoyed it, but it's all got to go to someone new now; hopefully someone will take good care of it and enjoy it as much as I have.

 

[BugPowderDust]

What model is the Oppo?

[El Tel]

1 minute ago, BugPowderDust said:

What model is the Oppo?

BDP-105D.

[El Tel]

Two days of humping furniture around and ruining my back, disconnecting stuff, cleaning everything, reconnecting a minimal system for the interim has got to this point:

 

Now I'm off to flex my private health card with the chiro. At least I'm ready for Christian again.

[BugPowderDust]

Looking nude mate.

[El Tel]

2 hours ago, BugPowderDust said:

Looking nude mate.

'kin oath.

 

The bad news is that sound pressure has dropped. Looks like new amp and speakers needed. Haven't told Mrs Tel yet...

[tripitaka]

1 minute ago, El Tel said:

'kin oath.

 

The bad news is that sound pressure has dropped. Looks like new amp and speakers needed. Haven't told Mrs Tel yet...

It does look like a fair way for the sound to reach longwise...

Could the speakers come up level with the couch at least?

[El Tel]

7 minutes ago, tripitaka said:

It does look like a fair way for the sound to reach longwise...

Could the speakers come up level with the couch at least?

 

All bets are on. Waiting for Christian to come back and help....

[Bisguittin]

7 hours ago, El Tel said:

Haven't told Mrs Tel yet...

I feel your pain.