XMC-1 Review And Comparison To The Prev Gen - Dirac Update

[geebo]

Dec 16, 2014 10:37:49 GMT -5 Jim said:

Dec 16, 2014 10:33:09 GMT -5 ansat said:

I tried everything the way the instructions were written, my room was just too quiet. The manual wants you to set the input gain to -24. What it is really doing is increasing the sensitivity so that the rooms noise floor is at -24. the quieter the room, the higher the gain needs to be to follow the -24 guideline. The louder the room, the sensitivity will be decreased. In each of my attempts including the successful ones, I did set the output to the center of the green. I spoke with Keith this morning and this was written this way to keep people from turning their speakers up louder then they should be played.

Tony

How quiet is your room when it's silent?

Just curious what noise floor you have.

Yeah, about the quietest I've been able to get in my home is in the high 30s and even that's difficult.

[ansat]

Dec 16, 2014 10:37:49 GMT -5 Jim said:

Dec 16, 2014 10:33:09 GMT -5 ansat said:

I tried everything the way the instructions were written, my room was just too quiet. The manual wants you to set the input gain to -24. What it is really doing is increasing the sensitivity so that the rooms noise floor is at -24. the quieter the room, the higher the gain needs to be to follow the -24 guideline. The louder the room, the sensitivity will be decreased. In each of my attempts including the successful ones, I did set the output to the center of the green. I spoke with Keith this morning and this was written this way to keep people from turning their speakers up louder then they should be played.

Tony

How quiet is your room when it's silent?

Just curious what noise floor you have.

I don't know the accuracy of my meter at that low as I only have the Dayton IMM-6 that goes that low But the IMM is spot on with the radioshack meter at higher spl. But I am measuring at 34db in the room. 42db outside the room.

Tony

[ansat]

This is using the room within a room method. Floor is concrete -> Delta FL 5/8 riser/moisture barrier -> Wood subfloor -> commercial carpet squares. Ceiling is 2 x 5/8 drywall -> furring strips -> insulation. Side walls are 2x 5/8 drywall -> insulated 2x4 structure -> 4 in airspace -> insulated 2x4 structure -> 5/8 drywall. The room has a medium treatment with around 30% of the walls treated.

Tony

[Lsc]

Man that is one quiet room!

[ansat]

Took some sweeps with REW (only did the fronts and the subs)

[ansat]

measurement - onedrive.live.com/download.aspx?cid=A511D833FA1D5C22&resid=A511D833FA1D5C22%2113792&canary=

[ansat]

added -

Edit 7 01/27/2015 Dirac continued.

It has been an interesting ride this far. Some things that I have discovered and shared with the fellow loungers as I progressed. The measurement process while pretty quick and painless to perform, I find myself almost overwhelmed at the amount of different ways they can be taken and end results are only limited to how you took your measurements. You can group your microphone tightly to create a narrow zone of perfection. You can take a wide measurement to make a very wide less then perfect zone. You can meet in the middle of all this. There are just to many different combinations of microphone arrangements and results to count.

Currently I am also under the belief that the EMM-1 microphone has a calibration process error that is resulting in lower then normal highs and higher then normal lows. I have done extensive testing with other microphones as well as requested assistance from others who have a calibrated microphone as well. While an consensus has not been reached as of today, I have altered the default calibration to so that the EMM-1 consistently is producing the same results of my ECM8000 and my UMM-6 calibration microphones that were calibrated by Cross-Spectrum. Having done so, has made a noticeable improvements over previous calibrations (from the microphones perspective). From my before and after measurements, I am seeing a flatter response than I was able to achieve using PEW alone and the impulse response have been cleaned to a little further (these were small changes visually over a wide frequency where the sum of which creates some fantastic results).

Now as far as my listening experiences, I trust my microphone more then I trust my ears. And as someone who has spent as much time reviewing graphs and charts of their room, my microphone and my ears are in agreement with each other. I know what flat sounds like and I know where my preferences are with a house curve. While I do not think that Emotiva's curve is aggressive enough on the low end for my tastes, but I do understand why it was done this way and the full version will rectify the situation.

All and all, I prefer Dirac (with some minor level adjustments) over my PEQ (which I have spent a significantly greater time investment on) for movies and multi-channel music. For 2 channel music, the reference stereo along with my Mythos ST-L's sounds too good to be beaten by room correction.

[LCSeminole]

Thanks for your thoughts and ideas Tony & I too look forward to the full version of DIRAC!

[ansat]

Jan 27, 2015 17:32:46 GMT -5 LCSeminole said:

Thanks for your thoughts and ideas Tony & I too look forward to the full version of DIRAC!

Super excited - Which is an odd feeling coming from someone who went to emotiva to get away from Auto Room Correction.

Tony

[LCSeminole]

Jan 27, 2015 17:35:52 GMT -5 ansat said:

Jan 27, 2015 17:32:46 GMT -5 LCSeminole said:

Thanks for your thoughts and ideas Tony & I too look forward to the full version of DIRAC!

Super excited - Which is an odd feeling coming from someone who went to emotiva to get away from Auto Room Correction.

Tony

You aren't the only one here that was a critic of Auto Room Correction. I was a firm believer in REW/P-EQ over the "set-it and forget it" softwares, but I'm quite liking DIRAC.

[ansat]

Added some initial thoughts on Dirac Full. (no listening tests yet)
Added FW 3.0 info. (no time to play with the new stuff yet)

[etc6849]

Nice set up! I just picked up the XMC-1 and a Dirac full license.

Any recommendations on whether to use the Dayton UMM-6 or the Emotiva mic? I think the emotiva mic that came with the XMC-1 is more sensitive from what I've read, but my Dayton UMM-6 was calibrated by cross-spectrums...

My room is very well treated, so raising the noise floor to -24dB in Dirac (per Emotiva's suggestion) seems to make the test tones very low (even though the level is in the green region according to Dirac).

What dB's do you guys run the Direct test at? It seems my last test where I set mic input/sensitivity just above 0 was 85dB-90dB.

I want to measure my XMC-1 and Dirac Pro using REW and my UMM-6 sometime this week.

Here's some previous pics and measurements before 8 more panels (Audyssey Pro and AV8801):
www.avsforum.com/forum/91-audio-theory-setup-chat/1449924-simplified-rew-setup-use-usb-mic-hdmi-connection-including-measurement-techniques-how-interpret-graphs-487.html#post33794657

Most recent impulse (AV8801 and Audyssey pro after additional panels):
www.avsforum.com/forum/90-receivers-amps-processors/1617090-emotiva-xmc-1-owners-only-thread-142.html#post38855457

[ansat]

pics fixed.

Tony