Sealed Statements 2.0 + Center Channel

[kevinm]

Making more progress!

For configuration 1, I have settled on using the bass bins up to 150hz and the Statements down to 45hz. Crossovers are 4th orders. I have more fine tweaking to do - especially after I get my bass traps in. So far, this setup has been phenomenal at being pushed hard and showing absolutely 0 signs of stressed. As you can see from the graphs below, I prefer a fairly steep house curve, so the added power has cleaned things up. They're truly incredible. I am hoping the room treatments will help me further smooth out my response:

Left tower



Right tower



Averaged responses



I'd like to extend the bass bins a little lower, but I haven't played around much with the iNuke DSP to extend the response down below - other than applying a HPF at 22hz.

No pretty pictures yet - waiting on getting the carpet spikes on and the new bass traps in since I'll have to move everything. In the meantime, I am having way too much fun.

[5th element]

Okay so I'm sorry for the delay in getting back to this, as I've been changing the bass section to my mains (you can see that in the FST thread) I had to sort all that out before I could post.

This is going to briefly describe how I integrate the bass for my system. Before I mentioned that I had used shelving filters to handle all of this, but this time round I gave notches a go and they are probably even easier to use but do require good measurements to be effective.

The first thing that I should mention is that when making measurements for sub integration you make these in the listening position, with NO smoothing and with NO gating. At low frequencies the wavelengths are so long, relative to the room dimensions, that reflections don't really occur. You do not need to gate them out because they do not exist and applying any smoothing will only result in artificially blending out the detrimental effects of room modes. So without further a do...

To start with you need to make individual measurements of all the sections of your set up. For me I have four channels of amplification on the bass and 5 bass modules. The first two are the main left and right channels of the two loudspeakers, the next is one sub situated behind the left main and it's placed up against a wall. The last two subs are both wired in parallel, one sits along the side wall and one sits along the back wall.





Here is the frequency responses of the individual units and their summed responses within LspCAD. Nets one and two are the left and right mains respectively and nets three and four are the subs against the front wall and then the pair of subs. The first thing to notice is the region between 20 and ~30Hz, for the most part, this is relatively room influence free, apart from one of the subs and aside from the roll off of the mains, there isn't a lot of peakiness within this region. This is mainly because my smallish room stops being modal at around 40hz. This was the main reason I wanted the mains to go down to around 40Hz, which they do, just about, because I wanted all the bass sources within the room to excite the last major room mode that my room shows. Obviously between around 40 and 200Hz there is a lot of modal activity going on, the first at 40Hz being clearly visible on all the bass sources and the higher room modes being excited to different degrees by the different sources.

As the region below about 30Hz sits significantly below the 'average' of the flat region of the systems upper response, the first thing required was to raise the level of the subs so that the final octaves level matched that of the rest of the system.



Here we can see the result of doing just that and I think it is worth pointing out that at their worst the room modes cause the response to fluctuate by as much as +- 20dB on the individual sources at some points. This has a very detrimental effect on the way the system sounds and actually makes balancing it quite hard. Turn up the bass sections of the main loudspeakers so that the exaggerated modal region of the bass isn't prominent and the mids end up becoming way too thin and strident. Turn up the bass section so that the mids are well balanced and the bass becomes overpowering. As the modal region goes up quite high this also has an affect on the lower range of the female voice and male voices, it isn't particularly great.

After having turned up the subs it's time to start equalising the system response. There is no easy way to do this and Geddes has a computer program that does all of this for him, sadly I do not have this and have to do it by intuition, but it's not amazingly difficult to come up with something significantly better than before. The first thing to do here is note how the individual subs are affected by the room. We can easily see that all of the sources have their response modified considerably at 40Hz and while I could have EQ'd for flat by simply applying gross EQ to one or two channels only it is far more effective to notch them all out.

I will point out here that although ones goal is to end up with a decently flat response at their listening position it is also the general goal to help flatten out the overall room response so that you end up with flatter bass everywhere, rather that in just one location. If you start applying gross EQ to just one bass source it may look better in one location, but if that node happens to not be present in another secondary listening position then all you'll do is create a huge notch, which is no use for anyone. Applying gentle EQ to all bass sources is a very good way to make sure that you're going to end up with a nice flat response at your listening position, but also with a vast improvement elsewhere in the room too.

It isn't fantastically hard to start applying notches to the rest of the channels and after a bit of work I ended up with something that looked like this.




And the filter transfer functions, for the bass, looking like this.




This was the first time I'd tried using this method to balance the system and the listening proves that the concept works. The mids are now nicely balanced without the bass sounding overblown. The house curve I've got could be a little too strong for my liking and room averaged responses at the listening position still show a little too much energy in the 40-50Hz region, but the response in my second listening position is hugely improved over what it was before. This is only the first pass and I am sure I will make changes to this later on, but I figured I'd post this in case it helps you sort out your system.

[kevinm]

Hi 5th, this is an excellent walkthrough. Hearing someone else's thoughts as they walkthrough it is very invaluable.

I've gotten my LFE channel (2 independent subs) EQ'd and leveled correctly. I'm still playing around with the bass modules/Statements. At the moment, I am EQing the bass modules and Statements separately (using the MiniDSP) before summing them together. Once they are moderately smooth I sum them together and add final tweaks to the entire channel in UMC-200 EQ settings. Can you see any more advantageous way to do this? Any recommendations on integration at the cross points?

For example, here is the raw left tower (no bass module, no eq)



And left bass bin (no tower, no EQ)



After the rough EQ and integration it came out like



If anyone else wants to chime in with some thoughts, please do!

[SaltyPaws]

Hi Kevin. Your sealed statements & center look truly amazing! If they sound half as good as they look you must be in audio nirvana (and from what I read they probably sound even better). As one of the few persons who has heard both Statement versions, I am anxious to hear your detailed comparison once you finished the tweaking. As a side note, if your parents take the original boxes, it could prove a rare opportunity for side by side A/B testing if the drivers are installed before moving them.

[kevinm]

Hi Kevin. Your sealed statements & center look truly amazing! If they sound half as good as they look you must be in audio nirvana (and from what I read they probably sound even better). As one of the few persons who has heard both Statement versions, I am anxious to hear your detailed comparison once you finished the tweaking. As a side note, if your parents take the original boxes, it could prove a rare opportunity for side by side A/B testing if the drivers are installed before moving them.

Thank you sir. They are truly audio nirvana. Unfortunately, I didnt A/B them with the original cabinets, but my parents did grab the old cabinets. If I ge the hankering to install my parts or they purchase their own, I'll definitely have to run them side by side. I will say that for me, it is DEFINITELY a worthy upgrade. I agree wi Jim's original opinion, for movies only/mostly, it would be far less noticeable. But for music (in my case, concert blurays), they are truly standouts over the TB mids. Plus, the new, bigger center is soooooooooooo much better -at least in my room.

[kevinm]

Hey guys, I am planning to build speaker grills this weekend/next, but am trying to figure out the best form factor since I have 3/4in round overs on my towers. Has anyone put grills on a cabinet with large round overs? How did you match the edge? Large round over on the grill? Flush with the sides? Any ideas?

[Philzeemon]

Hey guys, I am planning to build speaker grills this weekend/next, but am trying to figure out the best form factor since I have 3/4in round overs on my towers. Has anyone put grills on a cabinet with large round overs? How did you match the edge? Large round over on the grill? Flush with the sides? Any ideas?

Kevinm...
Did you ever make those grill covers?.. would like to hear about them,(If you did, some visuals would be great) ...I'm in the braces stage on a CC.. a cross between a Frodaddy and a StatementII. with Curved top, bottom, and sides (with a 24"+/- radius)...Thanks, Phil

[JonMarsh]

I will check that out...

[Philzeemon]

Guess I aught to jump out of my comfort zone and consider a build log...Lots of fine projects on these forums, the bar is set pretty high.. The Kevinm Statements Project along with the matching Subs in Walnut look so awesome, I can only imagine how the sound.

[kevinm]

Kevinm...
Did you ever make those grill covers?.. would like to hear about them,(If you did, some visuals would be great) ...I'm in the braces stage on a CC.. a cross between a Frodaddy and a StatementII. with Curved top, bottom, and sides (with a 24"+/- radius)...Thanks, Phil

Hi Phil,

Sorry for the delay! I haven't been able to get to the grills yet. I had plans to get tarted on them, but after a little experimentation, I realized I wasn't going to be happy with the results until I got a router table up and running for the trimming/roundovers. So I've put the project on hold - hopefully have an operational table by End of July/August.

Edit - Also, thanks for all the kind words. You are too nice!

[kevinm]

I've made LOTS of progress on the EQ/setup of these guys - INSANE amount of work. Jim, 5th and Jon all said it would be a lot of work and they were right! I've probably done 200-300 sweeps on them. Yikes!



I think I've nailed it - or I am close. Well, I'm really satisfied with them at the moment - that's probably the more realistic answer. I've tried both Jim's recommendation of a low xover to the subs (40-50hz) and 5th's higher suggestion (120-150hz xover with the subs and 40hz HPF on the Statements).

A couple of weeks back, I had a light bulb go off about setting the xover based on the distortion charts. So, I ran 90db (at the listening level) sweeps and looked distortion charts. I saw that the Statements saw rising distortion below 80hz.

Raw Left Spkr data (Note, the sweep level is lower than the EQ'd level down below)



So after some testing, I settled on a 90hz (24db slope) HPF for the Statements and a 120hz (48db slope) LPF on the bass modules. Additionally I added a shelf filter to the bottom of the bass modules - relatively flat to 15hz.

EQ'd Statement and Bass Module



So how do they sound?
Incredible! Absolutely incredible.The bass is very authoritative and clean. Because the Statements only handle from 90hzish and up, they are INSANELY clean in lower octaves. It's really hard to describe with words. And of course, the mids and highs are open and airy - typical Statement traits.

Now, having mains that are flat to 15hz is a very visceral experience. I never realized how much content I was missing running them large when I was only flat to 20-28hz before. Things like the Game of Thrones intro just slams the room with ultra-low bass content that is something else. Not loud - just deep. Definitely can never go back!

[Philzeemon]

So how do they sound?
Incredible! Absolutely incredible.The bass is very authoritative and clean. Because the Statements only handle from 90hzish and up, they are INSANELY clean in lower octaves. It's really hard to describe with words. And of course, the mids and highs are open and airy - typical Statement traits.

Now, having mains that are flat to 15hz is a very visceral experience. I never realized how much content I was missing running them large when I was only flat to 20-28hz before. Things like the Game of Thrones intro just slams the room with ultra-low bass content that is something else. Not loud - just deep. Definitely can never go back![/QUOTE]

Kevinm... I sense a gynormous grin on your face as you describe "how they sound" PH