Does anyone in New Enlgand have a MEN220 I can audition?

Yesterday night I finally got around to installing the MEN220 and doing the Room Knowledge measurements. To my surprise the first set of measurements returned only 8% correction at 98% Room Knowledge [5 measurements], so I did it the second time placing the microphone in different positions than the first time, and it came back at 9% correction at 100% Room Knowledge [12!! measurements], so pretty consistent there. I was sure it would be a lot worse.
Listening-wise, I did not hear much difference in the Focus vs. Bypass modes, which was a surprise, reading all your glorious reviews...but it was very late at night and I was very tired, so my focus [no pun intended] was off. Will give it another go today.
 
Yesterday night I finally got around to installing the MEN220 and doing the Room Knowledge measurements. To my surprise the first set of measurements returned only 8% correction at 98% Room Knowledge [5 measurements], so I did it the second time placing the microphone in different positions than the first time, and it came back at 9% correction at 100% Room Knowledge [12!! measurements], so pretty consistent there. I was sure it would be a lot worse.
Listening-wise, I did not hear much difference in the Focus vs. Bypass modes, which was a surprise, reading all your glorious reviews...but it was very late at night and I was very tired, so my focus [no pun intended] was off. Will give it another go today.

What surfaces do you have in your room? Floor, walls, windows? How high is the ceiling?
Sounds to me like the room either isn't too bad or your measurement positions may not be getting the best room knowledge.
9% room correction won't be much EQ, so it will be subtle, Room Perfect wont "hack" into your system.

Perhaps, if you are wanting further EQ, you might want to customize one of the Voicing presets.
You can do this by downloading the MEN Voicing Tool, then connect your computer to the MEN via serial port.
 
Hi,
The dimensions I posted above. The floor is hardwood, walls are horsehair plaster, so is the ceiling, I think.
My measurement positions were random, and I adhered to the Ron-C tutorial and your suggestions. I'll snap some photos of the room.
I'll toy with it some more. Perhaps the room was not that bad to begin with. It only took $xxx to find that out. :scratch2:
 
Hi,
The dimensions I posted above. The floor is hardwood, walls are horsehair plaster, so is the ceiling, I think.
My measurement positions were random, and I adhered to the Ron-C tutorial and your suggestions. I'll snap some photos of the room.
I'll toy with it some more. Perhaps the room was not that bad to begin with. It only took $xxx to find that out. :scratch2:

Yes, well it is possible the room isn't that bad.

What is it that you think could be better about the sound in your room, what is the goal you are after?
Is it perhaps your speakers could be voiced slightly differently? Just reacing out with ideas...:scratch2:

I am thinking you might end up doing some custom voicing at this point.

I dont think you've wasted any money, 9% room correction is going to tighten things up a bit, and get you closer to the ultimate goal.
 
With your length of the room meaning you essentially have two rooms. I would take measures pointng mic at floor and ceiling. Also measure all the way into media room a few feet back from back wall. Also measure poing at fireplace reflective surface. Take at last three focus measurements at other listening positions. My room is funky with coffered ceiling, brick fireplace, hardwood, partial rug, and unequal walls behind right and left speakers. So 62 percent correction. You have to play louder to notice vast differences. A source that is quality using a couple of mics like in a concert hall rather than huge dubbing and multi layered tracks is where room perfect shines. You need to try the live recorded performance to really apreciate the difference.
 
The percent of Room Correction is not a merit measurement but shows how much of the processing power was used in YOUR room with YOUR speakers. I have a room that rarely will take more than 8 or 9 % correction with the speakers I have used.
If I had di-poles or line arrays then we could see Correction numbers in the 50 to 90% range.
Room Perfect is not doing EQ in the change-the-sound sense. It is looking at the response and pulling the narrow room-induced peaks down so the speaker will sound more like the designer intended in a 'perfect room' or no room at all as in placing the speakers outdoors in free space.
As far as corner and close to back wall placement these will both increase bass output and cause a more uneven bass response. Room Perfect will easily correct this which will be the same as adding a more powerful amplifier as pulling the room-gained peaks down will lighten the power usage from the amplifier.
Our assumption is that you like the designed response of the speakers you bought and the engineer was skilled enough to design a speaker with smooth response. Room Perfect will not attempt to make all speakers sound the same but will maintain the original design response characteristics.

Thanks,
Ron-C
 
The percent of Room Correction is not a merit measurement but shows how much of the processing power was used in YOUR room with YOUR speakers. I have a room that rarely will take more than 8 or 9 % correction with the speakers I have used.
If I had di-poles or line arrays then we could see Correction numbers in the 50 to 90% range.
Room Perfect is not doing EQ in the change-the-sound sense. It is looking at the response and pulling the narrow room-induced peaks down so the speaker will sound more like the designer intended in a 'perfect room' or no room at all as in placing the speakers outdoors in free space.
As far as corner and close to back wall placement these will both increase bass output and cause a more uneven bass response. Room Perfect will easily correct this which will be the same as adding a more powerful amplifier as pulling the room-gained peaks down will lighten the power usage from the amplifier.
Our assumption is that you like the designed response of the speakers you bought and the engineer was skilled enough to design a speaker with smooth response. Room Perfect will not attempt to make all speakers sound the same but will maintain the original design response characteristics.

Thanks,
Ron-C

Ron-C,

Where do you usually stop Room Knowledge percentage measurements at? I have XRT20 and XR19 line arrays set up as stack lind of a XR290 clone short on mid drivers. It starts sounding thin bassat 100 percent correction unless ypu are dumping in excess 50 to 500 watts. Do you have Room Perfect set up rules for Line arrays?

Thanks
 
Where do you usually stop Room Knowledge percentage measurements at? I have XRT20 and XR19 line arrays set up as stack lind of a XR290 clone short on mid drivers. It starts sounding thin bassat 100 percent correction unless ypu are dumping in excess 50 to 500 watts. Do you have Room Perfect set up rules for Line arrays?

I'm not Ron-C; but, I do have a lot of experience with this type of situation. The problem you're facing is the disparity between what people think they want (flat response) vs. the way human hearing actually works. Below about 250 hz, our sensitivity to sound starts to degrade. There's a reason the reference level LFE channel (dedicated 0-120hz channel used in movies) is set at a 10dB higher reference than the main mix (95dB mean reference for LFE vs. 85dB mean reference for the main mix).

Most mastering and subsequent EQ (I can't speak directly for the MEN220 and RoomPerfect directly) is done with a flat response in mind. But, since our ears don't work as well for those low frequencies, a flat response can often sound "thin" to us despite sounding "perfect" to the electronics.

For some better, more in-depth information, you should look into the concept of a "house curve."
 
Thanks a lot for your involvement.
I've been playing with the speaker placement. Klipschorns must be placed square in corners for the proper bass response, so I have false corners made for them out of some wood boards [plywood or mdf would be a lot better, but that's coming later]. With the false corners I can dial them in a bit in the room.
In the diagram posted on the previous page, R & L denote the speaker positions on the short wall. From the middle of the front of L speaker to the middle front of the R speaker is about 100", just over 8'. My seating position is about 90" away, in the apex of that triangle [Pythagorean equation makes it easy to calculate]. One of the reasons for buying the MEN220 was my hope that it would improve on the narrow soundstage, being that these speakers are too close to one another. There are other deficiencies in this space, namely uneven bass.
So I decided to move one of the speakers to the long wall, to see how they fare. In our previous home I had a very good listening room, the Khorns were positioned about 18 feet apart, as opposed to just about 8 feet here.
After moving one of the speakers to the long wall, where the FP is on the diagram, they were now 13 feet apart, and the soundstage widened significantly, perhaps even a bit much. Performing the Room Knowledge measurements yielded 8 or 9% correction, which I described above. I only measured for Focus 1 position, since there's only me in my chair, and no other listening positions in the room. The difference between Bypass and Focus became quite apparent in the lower register. Sound with the Focus mode selected on MEN220 at RK of 100% gained a significant amount of 40Hz bass, the singers voices became less sibilant, and less palpable, the same effect for the guitars; the bass started to overpower the singers. It was just too much oomph. In the Bypass mode the sound of the speakers along the long wall was more pleasant than on the short wall [where they sat prior to my measuring with RP], much wider soundstage, and more detail. However I was now lacking that bass I was getting with the Focus mode.
In a nutshell, I wasn't thrilled with what I did with the Focus setting in this arrangement. While adding the much needed bass, it had removed the finer points of musical spectrum, and the bass became bloated. It was nice to hear that my woofers were capable of throwing a cat across the room in the Focus mode, but I think by just cranking up the 70 Hz eq wheel on the C42 I could've attained a similar objective.
So I moved the speakers back to the short wall and did a set of 5 random measurements, as instructed by the MEN220. Room correction for Focus 1 position at 95% Room Knowledge was 17%, so I decided to stop there, without going for the 100% Room Knowledge. Being that it was already pushing 1am, I called it a night. Will get back to it tonight, with fresh ears.
 
I'm not Ron-C; but, I do have a lot of experience with this type of situation. The problem you're facing is the disparity between what people think they want (flat response) vs. the way human hearing actually works. Below about 250 hz, our sensitivity to sound starts to degrade. There's a reason the reference level LFE channel (dedicated 0-120hz channel used in movies) is set at a 10dB higher reference than the main mix (95dB mean reference for LFE vs. 85dB mean reference for the main mix).

Most mastering and subsequent EQ (I can't speak directly for the MEN220 and RoomPerfect directly) is done with a flat response in mind. But, since our ears don't work as well for those low frequencies, a flat response can often sound "thin" to us despite sounding "perfect" to the electronics.

For some better, more in-depth information, you should look into the concept of a "house curve."

The lyngdorf movie plus effects voing curve in Room perfect adds 10 dB down low and rolls highs off too for large theater effect. Too punishing for music. Having read Roger Russells pages on designing my speakers it was before they built a chamber and in reverbant rooms. If roomperfect tries to simulate the chamber response that maybe difference. I tend to use curves that add bass across the board and leave the highs untouched. The neutral is not flat across the spectrum and way better than bypass mode.
 
The percent of Room Correction is not a merit measurement but shows how much of the processing power was used in YOUR room with YOUR speakers. I have a room that rarely will take more than 8 or 9 % correction with the speakers I have used.
If I had di-poles or line arrays then we could see Correction numbers in the 50 to 90% range.
Room Perfect is not doing EQ in the change-the-sound sense. It is looking at the response and pulling the narrow room-induced peaks down so the speaker will sound more like the designer intended in a 'perfect room' or no room at all as in placing the speakers outdoors in free space.
As far as corner and close to back wall placement these will both increase bass output and cause a more uneven bass response. Room Perfect will easily correct this which will be the same as adding a more powerful amplifier as pulling the room-gained peaks down will lighten the power usage from the amplifier.
Our assumption is that you like the designed response of the speakers you bought and the engineer was skilled enough to design a speaker with smooth response. Room Perfect will not attempt to make all speakers sound the same but will maintain the original design response characteristics.

Thanks,
Ron-C

This is what I have been trying to say.

All room perfect does is takes the measurements and takes an average of the samples taken.
This does not change the character of the speakers.

However, I have found that Room Perfect does in my case, too much to the bass, which I feel is unnecessary.
I have a work-around for it, and I have arrived at excellent results.

I was trying to ascertain from the OP whether his displeasure with his sound was due to the room or whether the speaker system is playing some part in it too.

Remember, there are two different things which are at play here.

The Room, which is where Room Perfect comes in.

The speaker System which is where customizing one of the Voicings with the MEN voicing tool comes in. To do this you need some proper measurement equipment.
 
I'm not Ron-C; but, I do have a lot of experience with this type of situation. The problem you're facing is the disparity between what people think they want (flat response) vs. the way human hearing actually works. Below about 250 hz, our sensitivity to sound starts to degrade. There's a reason the reference level LFE channel (dedicated 0-120hz channel used in movies) is set at a 10dB higher reference than the main mix (95dB mean reference for LFE vs. 85dB mean reference for the main mix).

Most mastering and subsequent EQ (I can't speak directly for the MEN220 and RoomPerfect directly) is done with a flat response in mind. But, since our ears don't work as well for those low frequencies, a flat response can often sound "thin" to us despite sounding "perfect" to the electronics.

For some better, more in-depth information, you should look into the concept of a "house curve."

When I do room perfect with my system, I turn my subs down 9db, otherwise too much EQ is applied in the bottom end.
 
Thanks a lot for your involvement.
I've been playing with the speaker placement. Klipschorns must be placed square in corners for the proper bass response, so I have false corners made for them out of some wood boards [plywood or mdf would be a lot better, but that's coming later]. With the false corners I can dial them in a bit in the room.
In the diagram posted on the previous page, R & L denote the speaker positions on the short wall. From the middle of the front of L speaker to the middle front of the R speaker is about 100", just over 8'. My seating position is about 90" away, in the apex of that triangle [Pythagorean equation makes it easy to calculate]. One of the reasons for buying the MEN220 was my hope that it would improve on the narrow soundstage, being that these speakers are too close to one another. There are other deficiencies in this space, namely uneven bass.
So I decided to move one of the speakers to the long wall, to see how they fare. In our previous home I had a very good listening room, the Khorns were positioned about 18 feet apart, as opposed to just about 8 feet here.
After moving one of the speakers to the long wall, where the FP is on the diagram, they were now 13 feet apart, and the soundstage widened significantly, perhaps even a bit much. Performing the Room Knowledge measurements yielded 8 or 9% correction, which I described above. I only measured for Focus 1 position, since there's only me in my chair, and no other listening positions in the room. The difference between Bypass and Focus became quite apparent in the lower register. Sound with the Focus mode selected on MEN220 at RK of 100% gained a significant amount of 40Hz bass, the singers voices became less sibilant, and less palpable, the same effect for the guitars; the bass started to overpower the singers. It was just too much oomph. In the Bypass mode the sound of the speakers along the long wall was more pleasant than on the short wall [where they sat prior to my measuring with RP], much wider soundstage, and more detail. However I was now lacking that bass I was getting with the Focus mode.
In a nutshell, I wasn't thrilled with what I did with the Focus setting in this arrangement. While adding the much needed bass, it had removed the finer points of musical spectrum, and the bass became bloated. It was nice to hear that my woofers were capable of throwing a cat across the room in the Focus mode, but I think by just cranking up the 70 Hz eq wheel on the C42 I could've attained a similar objective.
So I moved the speakers back to the short wall and did a set of 5 random measurements, as instructed by the MEN220. Room correction for Focus 1 position at 95% Room Knowledge was 17%, so I decided to stop there, without going for the 100% Room Knowledge. Being that it was already pushing 1am, I called it a night. Will get back to it tonight, with fresh ears.

The MEN (Room Perfect) is not the right tool to directly alter these parameters.
You seem to be talking more about the speakers rather than the room.
Room Perfect will tune the room, it will not tune the speakers.
The sound stage may be affected indirectly by the room being dialed in more, but its not really the way to do it.

I would work on your speaker placement and forget Room Perfect for now until you are happy with speaker placement and the basic sound you are getting.
Once this is achieved then you can do Room Perfect and put the "icing on the cake" so to speak.
 
The MEN (Room Perfect) is not the right tool to directly alter these parameters.
You seem to be talking more about the speakers rather than the room.
Room Perfect will tune the room, it will not tune the speakers.
The sound stage may be affected indirectly by the room being dialed in more, but its not really the way to do it.

I would work on your speaker placement and forget Room Perfect for now until you are happy with speaker placement and the basic sound you are getting.
Once this is achieved then you can do Room Perfect and put the "icing on the cake" so to speak.

Interesting thing happened.
After moving the speakers to the short wall, and doing the Room Knowledge measurements, as described above [speakers about 7 feet from inner side to inner side of each other, room correction for Focus 1 position at 95%, Room Knowledge 17%] the effect was completely opposite from listening to the speakers positioned on the long wall, as described prior -
Bypass - bass more significant, but undefined, obscuring other instruments. Singer sounds a bit muffled, as if the voice is coming from behind a thin partition.
Focus 1 - nice, tight bass, less pronounced than in the Bypass mode, but not deficient. Singer's voice is more defined, more nuanced details in guitars.
I definitely preferred the Focus 1 sound in this set-up.
I must add that I have been perfectly happy with my Klipschorns in the listening room of our old home, and I was about OK with them in the current settings, but what the MEN220 RoomPerfect did was to definitely elevate/change the listening experience. How much...I'll have to see. I don't have golden ears, not even gilt ears.
I only had about half an hour of quality listening yesterday night, so I will probably do some more measurements in other Focus positions and see how the Global mode sounds.
So it's not all black and white here.:scratch2:
 
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Interesting thing happened.
After moving the speakers to the short wall, and doing the Room Knowledge measurements, as described above [speakers about 7 feet from inner side to inner side of each other, room correction for Focus 1 position at 95%, Room Knowledge 17%] the effect was completely opposite from listening to the speakers positioned on the long wall, as described prior -
Bypass - bass more significant, but undefined, obscuring other instruments. Singer sounds a bit muffled, as if the voice is coming from behind a thin partition.
Focus 1 - nice, tight bass, less pronounced than in the Bypass mode, but not deficient. Singer's voice is more defined, more nuanced details in guitars.
I definitely preferred the Focus 1 sound in this set-up.
I must add that I have been perfectly happy with my Klipschorns in the listening room of our old home, and I was about OK with them in the current settings, but what the MEN220 RoomPerfect did was to definitely elevate/change the listening experience. How much...I'll have to see. I don't have golden ears, not even gilt ears.
I only had about half an hour of quality listening yesterday night, so I will probably do some more measurements in other Focus positions and see how the Global mode sounds.
So it's not all black and white here.:scratch2:

Its definitely not not black and white, that much is for certain.

See, you can dramatically change the sound with speaker placement, so I believe finding the position in you space where you get the best result will give you a good place to implement the MEN.

Are you sure you had 95% correction with 17% Room knowledge? Or was it the other way round?

Keep experimenting, this is the way you'll find the best result.
 
Are you sure you had 95% correction with 17% Room knowledge? Or was it the other way round?

Yes, it should be the opposite. Thanks for pointing it out. Actually it's 91% RK and 17% correction.

Regarding the functions of this product, it's reviews like this one that skewed my impression of the functions of the MEN220 - http://www.tonepublications.com/review/mcintosh-men-220/

Now that I've used the unit for a few days, and plan to fine-tune it over the weekend, I can state that the ToneAudio review is misleading and is a load of bull. Like this.
So how close does the MEN220 bring a modest setup, with randomly placed speakers, to the megabuck systems, carefully tuned and tweaked in a room full of treatments? Much closer than any of us expected.

I am surprised though how much bass bloat was in my room, which the MEN220 detected and corrected. Until I heard the difference between the Focus and Bypass modes, I thought the bass reproduction was OK. I even removed the MEN220 out of the system to see if there really was that much excessive bass, or that MEN220 in the Bypass mode was coloring the sound further, but indeed there was definitely too much oomph that I never paid any mind to prior to installing the MEN220. Differences can only be properly gauged in direct comparison. And MEN220 allows for that. So far the biggest differences I've noted are in the bottom frequencies and the clarity of the vocals.
 
The MEN 220 Room Perfect lets you listen at lower levels. You will find besides bass and vocals you will find instruments an background singers previously obscured. If you like to feel your bass it is still there just takes concert level to bring back since reverb is npw gone. With my system party voicing does that by rolling off highs. Back to neutral at high SPL is still the ticket. Bypass I use on rare occasions. Overall room perfect will let you listen to music as you never heard unless you have a decent outdoor system where you had no modes or nulls.
 
Line array speakers should alwayshave the RPnmic at least 8 feet back since 8 to 10 feet back is where you will firs hear the whole speaker. Any closer and you will only be measuring part of the speaker with an uneven response.
This will apply to large tall panels like Martin Logan, Magnaplanar, etc.

Thanks,
Ron C
 
Yes, it should be the opposite. Thanks for pointing it out. Actually it's 91% RK and 17% correction.

Regarding the functions of this product, it's reviews like this one that skewed my impression of the functions of the MEN220 - http://www.tonepublications.com/review/mcintosh-men-220/

Now that I've used the unit for a few days, and plan to fine-tune it over the weekend, I can state that the ToneAudio review is misleading and is a load of bull. Like this.
So how close does the MEN220 bring a modest setup, with randomly placed speakers, to the megabuck systems, carefully tuned and tweaked in a room full of treatments? Much closer than any of us expected.

I am surprised though how much bass bloat was in my room, which the MEN220 detected and corrected. Until I heard the difference between the Focus and Bypass modes, I thought the bass reproduction was OK. I even removed the MEN220 out of the system to see if there really was that much excessive bass, or that MEN220 in the Bypass mode was coloring the sound further, but indeed there was definitely too much oomph that I never paid any mind to prior to installing the MEN220. Differences can only be properly gauged in direct comparison. And MEN220 allows for that. So far the biggest differences I've noted are in the bottom frequencies and the clarity of the vocals.

The article is not very helpful, and anyone that refers to a mic cable as a "cord" immediately loses credibility with me.

I am keen to read how you're going with it.

It's like anything which is more involved than just plugging in and turning it on, you will go through the process multiple times, and each time you do, you will have a better understanding of whats going on, what it does, what to expect from it, and finally, what you want it to do.
 
Line array speakers should alwayshave the RPnmic at least 8 feet back since 8 to 10 feet back is where you will first hear the whole speaker. Any closer and you will only be measuring part of the speaker with an uneven response.
This will apply to large tall panels like Martin Logan, Magnaplanar, etc.

Thanks,
Ron C

YES!! This is a very good point....:thmbsp:
 
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