Author Topic: Masterset strategy for speaker placement  (Read 7134 times)

Offline mdconnelly

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Masterset strategy for speaker placement
« on: December 15, 2009, 07:26:28 AM »
Now that my system is sounding better than it ever has, I started investigating various approaches to speaker placement and ran across a series of discussions on Masterset method which sounds quite interesting.

My speakers are on the long wall separated by a fireplace.  While things sound great in the listening position, it is not nearly as enjoyable elsewhere in the room.  My understanding is that that Masterset approach addresses this.

Anyone have any experience with this strategy?   

Offline richidoo

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Re: Masterset strategy for speaker placement
« Reply #1 on: December 15, 2009, 09:10:56 AM »
I have used it about 6 months ago. It sounded lovely. Rich and even sound, very present, engaging. Being closer to the rear wall did shorten the soundstage depth, which I missed. I will try it again when I have diffusion on front wall. I did kinda what Tact does to the bass, even things out.

I had it set to about 90% perfect, Carl came over and heard it, he liked it. There was still one note on the godforsaken song which was a little loud which could not be fixed with additional in and out movements, so we assumed it was a node between L/R walls, and thus needed a right/left movement to kill it. That helped but screwed up other notes. At that time Carl was helping and did not have the concept of 1/16" movements so the set got messed up with our experimenting. Sticking to the master set instructions gave the best master set for me. But in the end Carl trumped it with his own laser setup which I still use now. He did it out of his brain without listening, sounds good!  But they are 5 feet into the room.

Use a line of tape perp to the front wall on the floor to mark your position with pencil. Set expected toe before you start, maintain toe as you move it in and out, that worked better for me than setting toe after the position, my speakers were too big for that, toing them changed the woofer position too much.  You are setting the position of the woofers for flat bass. Then worry about staging later.

Only use the first 2 verses of the song and listen only to the bass, ignore everything else until you get flat bass. Once you hear the backround singer overdubs you have gone too far. Keep a remote in your hand so you can rewind, or edit together an extended track of repeated 2 chorus'.

You have wood floors, so try to scheme up a way to slide the speakers smoothly and easily so you can make fast adjustments. Maybe a piece of thin carpet with gliders then the spikes on that - or something similar. Worrying about the floors will distract your concentration and sonic memory.  It helps to have a friend but it takes a long time. It took me three tries before I understood it well enough to get a good result, which basically meant follow the directions exactly.

I have the song so I'll put it in dropbox for you. It is from a scratched used CD from Amazon marketplace, so the track has some dropouts and glitches.

Eventually I would like to make a test track with sampled recording of acoustic bass set to same velocity so the notes are nominally all the same SPL, which I can verify in the waveform. Carl and I think that the bass recording is not perfectly flat. He is a good musician afterall, so they really shouldn't be perfectly flat dynamics. But a perfectionist will try to make it flat response and go nuts.  I have gigastudio and a nice bass gigasample. A 2 octave chromatic scale with slow notes to measure with SPL meter would be cool. Then tonal patterns like thirds to verify flat response within a tolerance. But as you know, I am very, very lazy so don't hold your breath.  :-P

The instructions say that in the first stage with the 2nd speaker still againstthe wall that the sound will seem to come all from the moving speaker. I found that only the bass came all from the moved speaker, the higher frequencies still came somewhat from both.

Have fun Mike! I think it's worth a try in your room, because the position will probably not be far from where you have it now, but might yield flatter bass without Tact.  Mark your present location before you start so you can compare. Marking is critical. You will want to go back and forth between candidate locations and the original. If a spot seems good, mark it. I marked the tape where the front corner of the speaker touched. Then I slid the speaker along the tape line looking for new spots in small increments.
Rich

Offline mdconnelly

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Re: Masterset strategy for speaker placement
« Reply #2 on: December 15, 2009, 12:15:10 PM »
Rich,   I'm off next week so I'm hoping for time to explore this.  Of course, I suspect my family has other designs on my time so we'll see how it plays out.  If you find yourself in need to a trip to Durham, let me know!   Thanks for the info! :thumb:

Offline richidoo

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Re: Masterset strategy for speaker placement
« Reply #3 on: December 15, 2009, 02:23:54 PM »
Have fun Mike!

Offline JLM

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Re: Masterset strategy for speaker placement
« Reply #4 on: December 16, 2009, 07:48:17 AM »
Link please?

Offline richidoo

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Re: Masterset strategy for speaker placement
« Reply #5 on: December 16, 2009, 08:25:07 AM »
Search AC for Master set

Offline mdconnelly

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Re: Masterset strategy for speaker placement
« Reply #6 on: December 16, 2009, 08:59:07 AM »
Here ya go... but there seems to be a good bit of discussion across several threads on AC

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=64321

Offline richidoo

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Re: Masterset strategy for speaker placement
« Reply #7 on: December 16, 2009, 10:21:01 AM »
Aussie Circle has a very long thread about it, that's where the current posts are happening.  Steven said last spring that there is supposed to be a DVD coming out at RMAF09 with Master Set instructions, but I haven't heard about it again.

Offline mdconnelly

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Re: Masterset strategy for speaker placement
« Reply #8 on: December 16, 2009, 11:12:05 AM »
I didn't see it in the Australia Audio Circle but did see this in the Aspen Amplifiers Circle:

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=65908.0