System #242 (Summit X, Stage, Script i)

1. Member Name: Shahrokh Hafizi

2. Location: Tucson, AZ

3. ML Models:
Front: Summit X Bubinga (Upgraded from Purity)
Center: Stage
Sub Woofer: Paradigm Seismic 110 (Upgraded from Descent i)
Rear: Script i

4. Year Purchased: 2016

5. Mods/Changes: None

Associated Electronics:
TV:65" OLED65E6P
Surround Processor: Emotiva XMC-1
Amplifier: Anthem Statement P5
BD Player: Oppo-103
DirecTV
Speaker Cables: Clear Day Silver Cables
Surge Protector: EP-2050
8 Dedicated circuits (one for the TV, seven for audio)
Sound Absorbers (GIK Acoustics Tri Corner), A small 244 behind the Stage Center Channel
Audio Racks: Adona Corporation

7. Comments and/or stories about your Martin Logan experience:
I use my system 90% for movies and 10% for music. I am truly happy with my system and I think this was the best A/V system I could get with my budget.

Nice system.. Welcome aboard!

Tom.

Thanks for your help

Hi Tom,
Just wanted to thank you for the instructions.

Very clean and Zen like. :music:

sharok said:

Hi Tom,
Just wanted to thank you for the instructions.

Click to expand...

Not a problem at all.

Nice looking system and room. I got a chance to spend some time listening to the Puritys and Source when we toured the ML factory last year and it they were excellent sounding speakers.

Welcome to the forum and look forward to your questions and inputs.

Now yer cookin'!

Use this thread or start another to ask the members the questions that I could not answer. There are a lot of things you could do that would make a noticeable difference in your sound. I'm sure it sounds awesome just like it is but part of the fun is making those little tweaks (that you can tell with your own ears) improves the experience.

Satch

Need Help With System Optimization

Hi Everybody,

Any ideas on how to make my system sound better?
I appreciate any suggestion.

Thanks

sharok said:

Hi Everybody,

Any ideas on how to make my system sound better?
I appreciate any suggestion.

Thanks

Click to expand...

Hi Sharok, first, very nice room layout and system. Clean and nicely done.

Since you asked, and you indicate you use your system 90% for movies, I'd focus on getting the center performance to be as good as possible.
For starters, the Stage as you've mounted it, needs to be in front of an absorbent panel, and not a reflective wall. That will clear up dialog a good bit.

Given the clean looks of your room, and the fact that this in the front of the room, I'd recommend looking into a solution that really matches the decor, and delivers the acoustical goods.

This can be done fairly cost-effectively yourself (or hiring a contractor to do it for you).

What you're looking to do is create a rectangle of treatment on the wall the goes between the top of the equipment center to the bottom of the plasma.

The materials used will be simple, some Owens-Corning 2” 705 fiberglass panels (3 pieces of 2x2’) mounted directly to the wall, framed with 2x2” wood frame wrapped in Guilford Of Maine (GOM) acoustically transparent material (which comes in many colors).
A less permanent version, would mount the 705 to some perforated peg board backing and then hang that on the wall behind the center.

Looking at your room, it’s all hard (stucco walls, tile floor) reflective surfaces. This is the least beneficial to good mid and high-frequency reproduction. Trust me, my living room is stucco walls, hardwood floors, it’s reverb central. No audio system will be happy there.

So also think of adding stand-alone decorations and other artistic wall treatments that are as absorbent in the mids and highs as you can think of.
Fiber arts and rug type wall hangings doo well.

Also consider putting a rug on the floor between the entertainment center and your seating position, as you really want to absorb the floor reflection from the tweeter in the center channel.

Oh, and each time you add significant treatments, re-run the Audessey EQ setup on your Denon.

There, your wife will hate me, but you’ll love the sound

It's hard to tell from the picture, but it looks like the left side of you set up opens up to the room or hallway and the right side has a long wall. This looks some what like my room, where my speakers sit back in a recessed area. I tend to get slightly unbalanced sound, more from the wall side due to reflections. Where as the open side does not reflect any sound waves. If you have balance issues you may want to look at acoustic treatments on the right side wall to absorb reflections and balance out the sound.

....and welcome to the crazy house.

The best advice I can give you is to listen to the advice given above. Your system looks great, but your room is a nightmare of acoustic reflections. Your sound is probably not half as good as it could be if you had proper acoustic treatment in that room. The trick, as Jonathan mentioned, is getting some good acoustic absorption in the right spots, while maintaining a nice decor. There are lots of threads on this site discussing various ways of treating the room with absorption/diffusion in a WAF-friendly manner. Enjoy.

Thanks Again for your help. I think this will keep me busy for a while. It seems like the most difficult part is to figure out a way to make the center channel looks good with the fiberglass panel behind it.

JonFo said:

For starters, the Stage as you've mounted it, needs to be in front of an absorbent panel, and not a reflective wall. That will clear up dialog a good bit.

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I'm in the process of purchasing my first ML system and I already love this forum! What a great community you guys have going here.

Question about a comment above. I should have my Stage center next week and while it won't be mounted on a wall it will be setting on the bottom shelf of a BDI Axis stand that sets in front of a standard sheet rock wall. The wall behind my stand has a window on it (which kept me from wall mounting the plasma) so I've already hung floor to ceiling curtains behind the stand for aesthetics to cover up the window.

My question is. Given that I'll have curtains behind my center is that absorption enough or should I consider mounting an absorbant panel behind the center as well. Also, does it seems reasonable that I could just mount said panel behind the curtains such that no one would ever know its there.

A bit more info... My HT room is 19x12, has burber carpeted floors, acoustic ceiling tiles, and 3 big windows that need 14 panels of curtains to cover so there's a fair amount of absorption already going on in the room.

I should be posting my system in a couple of weeks so I'm sure you guys will be able to give much more targeted advice once you see pics of the room but I saw yet another fantastic set of tips posted above so thought I'd go ahead and start asking questions.

Again... Awesome forum guys!

-steve

stevenic said:

My question is. Given that I'll have curtains behind my center is that absorption enough or should I consider mounting an absorbant panel behind the center as well. Also, does it seems reasonable that I could just mount said panel behind the curtains such that no one would ever know its there.

A bit more info... My HT room is 19x12, has burber carpeted floors, acoustic ceiling tiles, and 3 big windows that need 14 panels of curtains to cover so there's a fair amount of absorption already going on in the room.

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Steve, curtains will only absorb the high frequencies and will do nothing for the mids. A lot of sound will still reflect through the curtains to muddy your clarity and imaging. I highly recommend you mount an absorbent panel behind your curtains behind the stage speaker. Try to get a panel that has even absorption over a wide range, from about 250 hz. on up to 20,000 hz.

The same is true for your first reflection points on the side walls. Curtains alone will be insufficient to absorb the full frequency range of the sound that will bounce off those points and muddy your imaging. Curtains, carpet, and ceiling tiles will also do very little to nothing for bass absorption. To get tighter, more coherent bass, you would want some bass traps in the corners.

Rich said:

I highly recommend you mount an absorbent panel behind your curtains behind the stage speaker. To get tighter, more coherent bass, you would want some bass traps in the corners.

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Thanks for the tips Rich. I'm definitly going to look into getting a trap for behind the center speaker and I'm looking forward to hearing the difference. Bass traps for the corners may take a bit more doing because I'll have to win over the girlfriend on that one since they'll be visible.

Hopefully a marked improvement by the center treatment will convince her that we should experiment with the corners (there's only 3 I can treat do to a door and low ceiling in one). She has pretty good ears and was convinced the sound improvement of the MLs over our Mythos was worth the $10k so... Ok well maybe she didn't think it was worth $10k but she isn't stopping me from writing checks.

-steve

sharok said:

Thanks Again for your help. I think this will keep me busy for a while. It seems like the most difficult part is to figure out a way to make the center channel looks good with the fiberglass panel behind it.

Click to expand...

Remember, if you did the Audyssey setup with the microphone, then your Denon AVR have corrected some (or most) of your balance and frequency issues. Just make sure that you have setup your Denon correctly. The Denon cannot correct for everything, but you may not hear a huge tremendous difference with the sound treatments because of Audyssey.

I did not use Audyssey. I used a Radioshack sound meter and an audio test CD. I think I have the right speaker setup.

I really like the painting on the back wall...Nice. Oh Yeah, your system rocks as well..