Initial Thoughts on the MEN-220

[Still-One]

Originally Posted by Ron-C

MEN220 will never 'bump up' or turn up a certain frequency. It will lower frequency response peaks caused by the geometry of the room and your speaker's positioning. By removing the large peaks in the response the other close sounds are no longer masked so you hear them for the first time.
MEN220 should lessen this smearing of the sound and allow a much more natural 'Focused' presentation.
You will also hear much deeper into the mix which is a goal for many.

Thanks,

Thanks Ron, I know what I was hearing but did not know how it was being generated.

[Still-One]

Originally Posted by Ron-C

MEN220 will never 'bump up' or turn up a certain frequency. It will lower frequency response peaks caused by the geometry of the room and your speaker's positioning. By removing the large peaks in the response the other close sounds are no longer masked so you hear them for the first time.
MEN220 should lessen this smearing of the sound and allow a much more natural 'Focused' presentation.
You will also hear much deeper into the mix which is a goal for many.

Thanks,

Ron
Could you expand upon the differences in the design intent between the Global and Focus positions.
Jim

[PHC1]

Originally Posted by Ron-C

MEN220 will never 'bump up' or turn up a certain frequency. It will lower frequency response peaks caused by the geometry of the room and your speaker's positioning. By removing the large peaks in the response the other close sounds are no longer masked so you hear them for the first time.
MEN220 should lessen this smearing of the sound and allow a much more natural 'Focused' presentation.
You will also hear much deeper into the mix which is a goal for many.

Thanks,

The Lyngdorf white paper describes the "peaks and dips" and offering a solution. So if it never bumps up the response, how can it compensate for woofer to woofer and woofer to boundary induced suckouts that are present in every room?

[Still-One]

Darn
I just lost my update that I spent a hour writing. I know I should have copied it in case the system logged me out.

[two dot]

Jim,

Man, I hate that...

Looking forward to your thoughts.

[JFR0317]

Originally Posted by Stillone

Darn
I just lost my update that I spent a hour writing. I know I should have copied it in case the system logged me out.

I hate it when that happens! Of course, with my typing speed, I would have only gotten three lines done in an hour.

[Still-One]

I spent about an hour earlier today updating this thread and lost all the info when I went to post it. The system had logged me out. I should know to always copy it to the clipboard in case I have to paste it back after I get logged in.

The bottom line is I have not made a decision as to whether I will keep the unit or not.

Just to summarize what has been going on. I ran thru the Room Correction set up for the third time today. If you are following this thread plus Ivan’s Cape Cod thread you will know his Room Knowledge was up to 99%, whereas I stopped at 94% on my first go on Friday and reached 96% yesterday. Since I had a marked change in bass correction between my first two attempts, I decided to repeat the process today. So this morning I cleared the stored filters and started all over.

Today I did something different from the my first attempts and it was quite apparent that it impacted how the unit accumulated Room Knowledge percentages.

The first action is to place the mic at the listening position and adjust the output of the MEN-220 until it is correct and the unit tells you to move to the first location. In my first two attempts I left the mic in the seating position and collected the first sample for the unit. I think this is why Room Knowledge was about 88% after just one measurement. Today I collected my first sample high and to the left and after one measurement I was at 55%. As I moved the microphone around I jumped to about 75%, 88%, 90%, 94%, 96% and ended at 98%.

What am I now hearing? Well, not a lot.

I played a lot of familiar tracks today and kept trying both the Focus and Group modes, then Bypassing the unit altogether. I used tracks with female vocals, male vocals, violin, drums, guitar, sax etc. With the unit in play I heard a bit better bass. The vocals seemed to separate themselves a bit from the mix. Now, the vocals seemed to have some noise around them that I do not think is there in ByPass, but that could be because it was hidden in the mix. If you just walked into the room it is unlikely that you would be able to say whether the unit was in the loop or not unless you picked up on the improved bass and that was not on every track. Even while I was writing the original post, I could not tell you whether the unit was in Focus, Group or Bypass without looking at the display.

I went back to the dealer who provide the unit and we talked for about an hour. I am going to try a couple of other things before I make a decision. First I borrowed a Transparent Super Balanced interconnect to drop in place of a Tributary I had laying around. (I sold all my Analysis Plus when I switched to Transparent Ultra). Second, I think I am going to try just a couple of readings mainly around the seating position to see what happens when I am not trying to average out the entire room. (I think this was Serge’s suggestion) Will I get improved bass but keep the smooth vocals where I have them without the MEN-220?

Sorry about the quality of the pics. I was in too much of a hurry.

[Masterlu]

FWIW, the first reading in my exact listening spot yielded 55% Room Knowledge.

[hkval]

I wonder how much the design characteristics of the MBL might factor in to the effectiveness of the MEN220. Ron C. did say that different speakers and rooms might be more/less affected by the MEN. I would guess that the Quads, line arrays, front firing etc. would all react differently.

[Still-One]

Originally Posted by hkval

I wonder how much the design characteristics of the MBL might factor in to the effectiveness of the MEN220. Ron C. did say that different speakers and rooms might be more/less affected by the MEN. I would guess that the Quads, line arrays, front firing etc. would all react differently.

It am not sure how the MBL's fit into the equation. I am not trying to change the sound of the speakers, just correct for any room anomalies that may be present.

Since the MX150 is built to handle surround sound, I would assume the Room Correction process should be able to handle all of the basic effects of any 2 channel system.