SACD of Wish You Were Here

I waited and waited for the 30th Anniversary SACD of Wish You Were Here.  It was promised in 2005, but by that time Sony, who was then the owning label of this recording, was deep into a format war (DVD HD vs Blu Ray) and had just dropped it's involvement with SACD like a hot potato.  Sony had ruthlessly promoted SACD at the beginning (refusing even to include DVD-Audio capability in any of its DVD players), then, when it becomes useless to the company's grand strategy to rule the world, it drops it in a flash.  No new SACD players were being introduced by Sony, and no new SACD recordings either.  I'm not certain that the Blu Ray format was technically superior to the other, in fact I thought it was the other way around, but Blu Ray prevailed, largely through Sony's relentless singing of deals with movie studios.  Meanwhile, and despite being declared dead many times, SACD soldiered on mostly through audiophile recordings on small labels.  DVD-Audio, which had been my preference to SACD, simply because I believe in high resolution PCM over 1-bit-like systems, has also continued, the latest knockout for the format being the 40th anniversary release of Lark's Tongue in Aspic (which is fabulous, fabulous!) which appeared a year or two ago.

Meanwhile, the 30th Anniversary SACD of Wish You Were Here was not appearing.  By 2008 or so I had given up looking.

But next thing I knew, I saw it being closed out in a famous online recording store (can't remember whether it was Elusive Disc or Music Direct).  So I immediately ordered a copy.

And let me tell you again, as with the Lark's Tongue in DVD-Audio, the SACD of Wish You Were Here is fabulous, fabulous, maybe even beyond fabulous.

This recording sounds incredibly analog like when played on my Denon 5900 (redigitized by a Lavry AD10 for digital processing in my system).  There seems to be zero grain at all, just pure smooth infinite resolution.  I remember this from my LP's of this recording, but here it is far cleaner as well, so you can really hear the infinity.

I have never heard this utter grainlessness on a regular CD, though my Mobile Fidelity Gold Disk of Meddle comes pretty close, thanks to fidelity to the master tapes (no added compression).  Most of the differences heard with audiophile versions seems to be differences in the mastering as opposed to differences in the formats themselves.  Still there may be ultimate advantages to the advanced resolution formats, and I've come to believe that SACD, despite my earlier misgivings, is one of them.  Despite the questionable nature of what is going on in the highest frequencies, above 10,000 Hz, there is measured to be 20 dB less noise in the midband, and SACD recordings do often seem to have very clear midrange.

Wherever the clear superiority of Wish You Were Here in SACD comes from, I am grateful to have it.

Equalizing the Living Room system with a few digital notches

The need to equalize the living room system became most apparent when I was checking out the sound transfer to the newly remodeled second bedroom I am setting up for a friend.  Despite the soundproof door, there was noticeable bass leakage to the room with the door closed.  But opening the door, then the bass boom was overwhelming.  The excess bass is less noticeable at the listening position, but the bass line still sounded quite blurry there, possibly being affected somehow by the boom in the rest of the room.

I was playing one of my bass test recordings, Bass Ecstacy by Bass Erotica.  I have tuned the bedroom system so that it plays this very well, with bass sweeps audible down below 16Hz, and fairly level from there up.  In fact, I used this recording for the final room tuning in that room, which is why it can play Bass Ecstacy particularly well.

But the recording wasn't sounding as good in the living room.  Still too boomy.  Then I took a look at the digital crossover, a Behringer DCX 2496, thinking about adding some room node suppression, and I noticed I had already added some bass EQ, but I had turned it off.  Ah, yes, I remember doing that some time ago.  I couldn't hear much difference with the EQ turned on, so I decided to leave it off.  I can't remember when I dialed in the EQ a few years before that, some time after I gave up on having the Tact 2.0 RCS adjust the full bandwidth response (only the most recent Tact units permit you to target the bass only, which is the most easily pleasing approach).

The EQ I had set before was an 8dB reduction at 45 Hz with a fairly sharp Q of 4.  That would correspond to a bandwidth about a 1/3 of an octave, a little bit more than 1/3 of an octave actually.  But when I first started playing with the control, I though it was even narrower than that.  Decreasing the Q to 1 made a noticeable difference, but the price for removing the boom was to suck out the bass.

I was determined to solve this problem without doing more measurements (which I've done many times anyway) but simply cut-and-try.  And that actually seemed to work out (refreshingly well).  OK, I did play recorded tones from 16Hz to 160 Hz that I have on my music server.  These tones are supposed to have some warble, but I don't notice it.

Clearly a huge amount of suppression is needed at 45 Hz alright.  The room lights up with bass, even if it's less noticeable at the listening position not far from the center of the room.  But if a Q is used much smaller than 3, the bass cutout affects tones as low as 32 Hz, where there's a nodal suckout.  And the area needing bass suppression is fairly broad, from about 36 Hz to over 70Hz, but with most of the suppression below 50 Hz, with the peak boom at 45 Hz.

All the above mitigates solving the problem with only one notch filter.  I ultimately settled on using two notch filters, one at 45 with a Q of 5.0 and amplitude of -11dB, and another at 57 Hz with a Q of 3.2 and an amplitude of -6.  This cleans up the boomy area pretty well without affecting surrounding areas, particularly at 32Hz which is already weak.  It does create a bit too much loss just around 50Hz, but not too bad.  I dialed in some boost at 30 Hz, 3.5dB of boost with a Q of 5.  Actually, it could use some broader boost below 30 Hz, but hard to dial that in with a parametric.

The result is that Bass Ecstacy is now far more listenable in the Living Room.  It has a coherent and tuneful bass line, not just boom.

I know, some say I should analyze the entire bass with something like RoomEQ Wizard and dial in a few dozen notches.  When that sort of analysis is done with hundreds of notches like the Tact, it's less than impressive to me.  Optimizing the listening position too much doesn't seem good somehow.  It's a lot easier just to use a few notches when tuning by hand, and focus on the really bad room nodes.  I found in adjusting the master bedroom system that combining 1/3 octave graphic EQ (done sparingly) with parametric notches is the most flexible and intuitive, and has given me the most satisfying results.  I have a second Behringer DEQ 2496 to do the graphic as well as the parametric, but it's currently tasked to correcting the European EQ of my Kenwood KT-6040 tuner.

I should remember not to turn off the Bass EQ now.  It sounds much better with it on.

Remodeled Master Bedroom has much better sound

My master bedroom was remodeled in early September, just before my first cataract surgery on September 18.  The carpeting was replaced with the top grade of Armstrong LUXE Vinyl Plank flooring, with the recommended padded underlayment (which is specifically recommended by Armstrong for better sound absorption).  Surprisingly large gaps in the walls just below ceiling level were thickly filled with mud and floated.  (The original builder had covered up gaps with up to two inches of tape with a thin coat of mud.  Eventually, the paper had torn, leaving large gaps that looked like serious cracks but were really just torn paper.)  The gap between floor and drywall was filled with OSI acoustical caulk and then covered with 5 1/2 inch victorian style hardwood baseboards. (Once I heard how those victorian baseboards "sounded" to a knuckle wrap, I knew they were the ones for me.)

Perhaps even more crucially, I removed all the four 2x2 Sonex panels from the left side wall in the room.  Instead, I have moved two additional wood CD racks into that area for sound dispersion instead of absorption.

I didn't (and still haven't) carefully measured and adjusted speaker position.  (I don't want to do this at all until I have time to get it right, the soft flooring is certainly dented below the rounded ends of the speaker stand spikes, and I'm just going to ignore those dents since I like the flooring so much, but I don't want a proliferation of dents from moving the speakers around too many times.)

But despite the careless (relatively) speaker positioning, the sound is fabulous, and I have an ever better center image than I ever have had before!  I chalk it up mainly to the removal of carpeting and Sonex panels, which were excessively damping high frequencies.

I had largely been in the camp that says you want to listen in the deadest room possible.  And I'm still quite suspicious of relying on resonances and reflections for "good" sound.  But I now think it's good not to have too much damping in the mids and highs.

Door re-test with iPhone, shows 4dBA improvement only

Since I didn't measure the door beforehand with my wonderful Galaxy (not Samsung, Galaxy brand SPL meter from 6 years ago, recommended and sold by Home Theater Shack for use with their famous equalization program) microphone, but only the iPhone, I need to trot out truly comparable before-after measurements, with a huge disclaimer.

The disclaimer is that currently I measure background noise level of 39.0 dB (+/- 0.5 db).  So that sets a limit on even how low infinite sound blocking could achieve.  Actually, I now measure dBA under same conditions as before in the room as 42.0dBA, compared with 46.0dBa previously.  In other words , only a 4dB improvement (comparing apples and oranges by using the Galaxy for the after-measurement showed 9.5dB improvement).  But since the ultimate noise floor is 39.0 dB, that then suggests that the unbiased estimate of the true noise level would be about 39dB (summing 3dB higher to 42dB, assuming no correlation), and more like a 6dB improvement.  It sounds to me more like the larger 9.5dB improvement I estimated earlier.  Anyway, it is showing over 30dB of total noise reduction now (well, from the listening position) which is pretty good.  Before the new door but after the wall upgrade it wasn't seeming like much more than 20dB reduction, as indeed it was measuring (much of that coming from the preceding wall improvements; the door is off axis from the hall that leads to the living room, so actually this isn't a test of the door per se.  Instead, it is intended as a realistic relevant test from the listener to the non-listener.  This is what I seek to maximize here.)

Anyway, with the current best measurement showing 

Door still needs sealing

The IsoDoor presents numerous difficulties to the installer because the seals and even the threshold are not initially installed, as they are with most door you buy that are intended to have seals (interior doors don't).  But now that the door is installed without seals (after two days of hard work by a very experienced carpenter about my age) I did some measurements.  The iPhone couldn't be found so I used a read SPL meter this time, the Galaxy recommended by (and purchased through) the Home Theater Shack.  I should have been using a real SPL meter all along.

The iPhone app RTA showed almost identical A weighted and C weighted results.  Well that was wrong, I see now, with the Galaxy the A and C weighted results are quite different, and my guess is that all the iPhone results, even with C weighting supposedly selected, are essentially A weighted possibly by the limitations of the hardware itself.

I say that also because the Galaxy C weighted SPL's don't show any improvement in sound reduction due to the new door over the C weighted SPL's I got with iPhone on the old hollow door.  In fact, there is only 16 dB reduction between living room and bedroom NOW, according to the Galaxy.  And the iPhone C weighted measurement showed 21dB reduction...with the old original lightweight door.  That can't be right (and btw, it doesn't sound that way to my ears either).

Comparing A weighted measurements across the two devices, I'm seeing a useful 9dB reduction from the earlier door.  Exact comparison before and after will have to wait until I find the iPhone.  The new numbers A weighted are 71.3 dB in the living room and 40.9dB in the bedroom, a sound reduction of 30.4 dB.  The previous iPhone A weighted measurements showed 21.5 dB of A weighted reduction with the old door.

It sounds like much more reduction than that.  But when you close the new door, still lacking seals, what you hear is mostly the high frequencies.  The midrange and bass are obliterated, but the extreme highs are hardly changed.  So when I play pink noise it sounds like distant very high frequency hiss in the bedroom.  The sound seems to be leaking around the door (but not under the bottom, which still lacks threshold but does already have the sweep).

Strangely, the extreme highs may even be attenuated less than before.  That's how it sounds.  It seem like the extreme hardness of the door is providing a better path for high frequencies around the door than before.

So seals will have to be added.  But at the same time, the door fits very tight into the jamb and it's unclear if the seals can even be added.  This is very worrisome.

It would have been far far better had Sound Isolation Store pre-mounted the seals.  In fact, other sound blocking doors (typically modified metal doors) come with pre-attached seals.  Such doors are either somewhat more expensive or far less attractive or both.

Bedroom STC

Actually, I don't yet know exactly how to calculate STC, but here are the measurements I made prior to the installation of the new sound isolation door (IsoDoor from Sound Isolation Company).  The doors are being installed as I write this...

The measurement I make is intended to be a relevant measurement simulating a person sleeping on a bed just away from the door.  I measure the SPL in the room one foot inward of the AC outlet (about 18 inches inward of the door), between 3 and 12 inches from the wall, and at elbow height.  I move the microphone in and out to get the lowest measurement (reducing one frequency modes just a bit), and the optimal position varies slightly from test to test.

The source measurement is made at the listening position (either nose position, or right ear position).  Source is Stereophile Test Disc 2, pink noise track, both correlated and uncorrelated.  I set the level control on Tact to 80.0 (about as loud as I dare at 1am) with the Sonos level at maximum.  The IOS app RTA was used running on my iPhone 3G.

C Weighted SPL's

               Listening Postion        Sleeping Position
Corr        67.7                             46.5
UnCorr   66.8                             47.2

While the correlation decreases output at listening position (due to relative lack of bass augmentation) it actually increases it slightly at the listening position.  Correlated is probably the more relevant test, since recorded deep bass is typically monophonic (with central image) and that shows 21.2 dB of sound reduction (this is actually about 10dB more than what I would have expected based on casual listening--there doesn't seem to be much reduction at all).

A Weighted SPL's

               Listening Postion        Sleeping Position
Corr        67.7                             46.2
UnCorr   67.7                             48.2

The A weighted test surprising shows almost exactly the same results in the correlated test, about 21.5dB of sound reduction (the 0.3dB difference well within measurement uncertainty, btw).  The uncorrelated result is 0.1dB worse than with the C weighting.

New System Photo Explained

The previous living room system photo was very outdated.  Taken in mid 2010, it showed the Krell, Acoustats, Elac supertweeters and SVS subwoofers.  The speakers are the same but the Krell is now offline (and to the side, still visible in new photo), having been functionally replaced by the Aragon 8008 BB.  The listening position has been moved up to 3 1/2 feet from speakers, the most important change of all.  Normally facing straight ahead, the listening chair is rotated in the photo to avoid hiding all the equipment, but is otherwise in correct spot.  And now there are additional piles of equipment to the left and right of the two center components.  From left to right and top to bottom, here are the electronic components:

Far far left:
120VAC to 240VAC hammond stepup transformer (for KT-6040)
Radio Shack Remote Extender

Far left:
Jenson Iso-Max...used to isolate ground from Kurzweil K2661 cables and convert to unbalanced
Behringer DEQ 2496...used to equalize output of Kenwood KT-6040 tuner from Europe.
Classe CP 35...used (sometimes) to amplify output of Kurzweil providing 10dB more gain
   Could also be used for transformerless input and conversion to unbalanced
Pioneer F-26...classic analog super tuner, used for living room system only
Kenwood KT-6040...digital remote tuner used whole house through Sonos
Sony CDP-507...original CD only player used for guest CD's

Left:
Aragon 8008 BB...amplifier for Acoustats full range above 80 Hz

Right:
Sonos ZP 80 zone player
Behringer DCX 2496...3 way digital crossover with delays and eq
Tact RCS 2.0...main system preamp, selector+level+eq, room correction not used

Far Right:
dB systems 5 way selector with teflon jacks
Lavry AD 10...digitizer for F-26 and Denon 5900
Denon 5900...universal DVD, DVD-Audio, SACD, HDCD player
Acurus A250...power amp used for super tweeters
Belkin UPS and audiophile power conditioner...used for all except Aragon