Acoustical Room Treatment

Hello everybody

I am quite new to this forum and this topic interests me so I ask to be able to introduce myself (a bit rambling, sorry) & I will eventually get to a relevant Graham Slee bit, I promise....

I had worried about my music room acoustics for several years. It is a large-ish extension built 20 years ago from half the original double garage plus the gap between the house. 3 of the walls are concrete/brick with the wall behind the seating position stud/plasterboard. The floor is carpeted onto sold concrete. The speakers are about 1/4 length from the far end and the chair about 1/3 length from the plasterboard rear wall.  Everything is orientated down the long length of the room.

Although it is just a 2 channel hi-fi den, no matter what I did, there often seemed to be a bass hump which disturbed me - acoustically it was slightly cold and a bit dead sounding. Bass traps, curtains, rugs etc made slight differences but I knew there was something wrong.

A friend in Portsmouth had enthused about DEQX for several years (although I didn't get a chance to hear it until May 2012) and last July I decided to bite the bullet, after reading almost unanimous rave reviews everywhere (I know...snake oil etc but I really researched hard, speaking to various users and the system I had heard was quite frankly, unbelievable).

I must say that the learning curve to set this thing up properly has taken more than 6 months - all impulse response, x-over orders and phase/timing but just after Christmas I finally nailed it. The best description I can give is like turning the focus on a lens and then suddenly everything snaps into perfect focus. And I do mean clear focus !

Creating steep active crossovers between subs-mids-tweeters, time and phase aligning the speakers (in the outdoors!) and finally again in the room now gives me the nirvana I have searched for for 30 years ('smells like' etc etc). I know many will turn their noses up at going active & digital but I am now extremely happy. DEQX lets you 'see' the interaction with your room and adjust timing of every driver set individually to give you an amazing sound at the 'sweet spot'. I could also graphically view the various humps, bumps and dips created by the room (because the speakers were first set accoustically 'flat' outdoors) and then apply correction to return to the original sound. Believe me, when you see & hear it, it's hard to believe just what damage a room can do to your system !

Now to the analogue, phono-amp bit, thanks for your patience.....

One benefit of the DEQX processor is that it also becomes the pre-amp with a pretty good inbuilt DAC so my digital front end (CD & Synology streamer) sounded much better than a decent turntable/cartridge. That didn't please me at all because I am 56 years old and I grew up to love my ‘first born’ ….vinyl.

I had a Gram-Amp 2SE on trial from my local dealer for a week last year pre-DEQX and rejected it because it sounded cold and hard compared to what I had (not realising that this gear needs a Loooonng warm up period !). Anyway two weeks ago I bought a used Reflex/PSU1 from Ebay and it is starting to sound pretty special, better almost by the day as most of you say it will and through my system - very, very good - I will not turn it off until I inevitably send it off to Yorkshire to upgrade to the latest -M spec....oh dear, here I go again !

I am also arranging with Jon to demo some CuSat50 interconnects. (Better whisper that in case the wife hears….)

So, thank you for indulging me. I am not saying that DEQX is the only solution to a poor room. However I have learned that if you are prepared to put a ridiculous amount of effort into it , it really does correct the sound almost to perfection.

Anyone ever visiting Chester UK and interested to hear is more than welcome to PM me. You seem to be a well educated, honest speaking bunch and I respect the views I am reading so I’m always open to take further advice.…

(by the way, I will not be able to partake in all the techy, scientific stuff in this forum, fascinating as I find it. I just love music for music's sake, listen to it at every spare moment  and my wonderful wife indulges me in that. So I can only comment on what I hear, not really why it sounds that way)