Just ordered a PSA (Power Sound Audio) 15S subwoofer (1 Viewer)

[Carlo_M]

Hi Tom!

Pioneer Elite SC-79 (I'm contacting CSR for a replacement MCACC mic per David's recommendation). Original Energy C6 Connoisseur mains (the original version not the mass market rebranded connoisseur line once they went big box store), matching AC300 center and RSL CG3 surrounds.

I'm hoping near-field placement will help out a lot, my 25' cable is supposed to arrive tonight. I don't need it to excite the whole room, just from my primary listening/watching spot.

I never thought to adjust the room size knob, so I'll do that when I get back from work, and after I put it in it's new (and hopefully better) nearfield location.

 

[JohnRice]

Time delay is more to help with the main speaker + sub integration.

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Isn't it generally better to set any delay to 0 and make sure the speaker distances are correct in the receiver's speaker setup?

Plus, Tom, would you explain exactly what the room size adjustment does? Is that the same as the "Q" setting?

 

[Carlo_M]

They're usually calibrated/paired to the receiver, so you will likely have to call Pioneer support.

Well I'm SOL. I emailed Pioneer and they replied that the microphone is discontinued and they have no stock and no expectation to get any more. Time to rummage through my place...

 

[Carlo_M]

Everything was fixed with a 25’ sub cable. Now I have the sub right next to the bed, close to the back wall, and I’m getting the bass that I was in the living room, and the gain is back down to where it was as well (around 10 o’clock setting). It passed the Sarah MacLachlan, Daft Punk tests. As well as the Edge of Tomorrow intro test.

I’m sure if I walk around the room there are still nodes, but in the bedroom I do most of my listening and watching on the bed, so as long as that location sounds awesome, that’s all I need.

Plus I now have a new potential second nightstand. Just kidding. Maybe.

 

[Tom Vodhanel]

Nearfield is worth a shot. Also, I would expect much out of mcacc, at least <120hz or so.

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[Tom Vodhanel]

Isn't it generally better to set any delay to 0 and make sure the speaker distances are correct in the receiver's speaker setup?

Plus, Tom, would you explain exactly what the room size adjustment does? Is that the same as the "Q" setting?

Either way. Shouldn't make any difference if the sub has a true time delay. The advantage for doing it as the receiver is you can sit in the key seating and experiment with all of the delays versus getting up and turning a knob back and forth..

Here is the electrical of the room size. The more you turn it to small, the more deeper bass attenuation.

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[Tom Vodhanel]

Well I'm SOL. I emailed Pioneer and they replied that the microphone is discontinued and they have no stock and no expectation to get any more. Time to rummage through my place...

If you know anyone who has one and uses REW they should be able to do a transfer function easy enough to show you if there's really anything proprietary about the mcacc mic. I'd bet it looks a lot like the old rat shack meter graph..

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[Dave Upton]

If you know anyone who has one and uses REW they should be able to do a transfer function easy enough to show you if there's really anything proprietary about the mcacc mic. I'd bet it looks a lot like the old rat shack meter graph..

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MCACC is one of the few room correction systems that managed to disappoint me almost 100% of the time so your hypothesis might be correct.

 

[Tom Vodhanel]

MCACC is one of the few room correction systems that managed to disappoint me almost 100% of the time so your hypothesis might be correct.

That reminds me of how I felt when I was asked to evaluate the Anti Mode stuff. After measuring YPAO, Mcacc, the new accu-eq, and a few others...let's just say I've learned not to expect much under(under 200hz anyway). Color me pleasantly surprised. I was emailing them a few hours later asking about distributor status..

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[Dave Upton]

That reminds me of how I felt when I was asked to evaluate the Anti Mode stuff. After measuring YPAO, Mcacc, the new accu-eq, and a few others...let's just say I've learned not to expect much under(under 200hz anyway). Color me pleasantly surprised. I was emailing them a few hours later asking about distributor status..

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I saw you guys carry them now. I take it you are happy with the results?

 

[JohnRice]

MCACC is one of the few room correction systems that managed to disappoint me almost 100% of the time so your hypothesis might be correct.

It's the only one I've tried, and it nearly scared me off the entire concept. I was using a higher end Pioneer Elite receiver as a head unit for a while and decided to give it a shot. It made my system sound like Bose.

 

[Dave Upton]

It's the only one I've tried, and it nearly scared me off the entire concept. I was using a higher end Pioneer Elite receiver as a head unit for a while and decided to give it a shot. It made my system sound like Bose.

Yeah, that mirrors my own experience. I'm using Audyssey XT32 right now, which is quite good, but I'm really wanting to switch to Dirac if I can, since it's more customizable.

 

[Carlo_M]

That reminds me of how I felt when I was asked to evaluate the Anti Mode stuff. After measuring YPAO, Mcacc, the new accu-eq, and a few others...let's just say I've learned not to expect much under(under 200hz anyway). Color me pleasantly surprised. I was emailing them a few hours later asking about distributor status..

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Yeah I'm starting to regret not buying the Anti-mode with my sub from you Tom.

 

[JohnRice]

Yeah, that mirrors my own experience. I'm using Audyssey XT32 right now, which is quite good, but I'm really wanting to switch to Dirac if I can, since it's more customizable.

Same as my AV7703. I need to give it a try, eventually. Have you used the MultiEQ App?

Yeah I'm starting to regret not buying the Anti-mode with my sub from you Tom.

Good to know. I hadn't seriously considered it, but I will when the time comes.

 

[Tom Vodhanel]

I saw you guys carry them now. I take it you are happy with the results?

Very much so, yes. I admit I didn't expect much but the results were very good. I tried to find my old before - after measurements but they aren't on this PC. A very good and affordable(to most) auto solution...I don't know of anything better. I grabbed one of the newer X4 processors recently too.

http://www.dspeaker.com/en/products/anti-mode-x4.shtml

Just scratching the surface of this one though.

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[Carlo_M]

Ok I am calling off the search for my MCACC mic. Reading about everyone’s displeasure, I decided to test something. I realized I had been running it in Pure Direct mode until I moved the PSA sub into my room, completing the 5.1 system, and now I switched to Auto Surround so that a stereo could have the .1 signal sent to the PSA.

Well that activates MCACC settings. The problem? Until a few weeks ago, the SC-79 was hooked up to all different speakers. So the MCACC settings (including distance, EQ, phase, etc.) were all screwed up. So I cleared all of the settings. Then just manually calibrated speaker distance and speaker levels. Then played my usual test tracks. They all sounded so much better. I’m just going to run it “flat” (no EQ, phase correction, etc. on the MCACC) with just distance and levels set. It sounded great earlier today, I’ll reconfirm tonight. All speakers to small, crossed over at 80hz.

 

[Carlo_M]

Spent all last night going through my music library. I can't take this stupid smile off of my face. Sure, my library doesn't have many songs pushing 20hz, but most who aren't in our hobby don't realize how much normal music lives between say 25hz-60hz, the upper level is where lots of mass-market floor standing speakers experience pretty steep drop-off. And when you have a capable subwoofer that can really articulate those notes and frequencies, you really start to understand how much most people are missing in their music playback chain.

Thanks to Tom's suggestion of turning room size to small, I am getting better deep bass results in the room. I know the 15S can recreate even the most punishing movie soundtracks, but what I've been enjoying over the last 6 or so hours has been how well the sub handles music.

 

[Phil A]

Congrats on the purchase. I bought an S1500 last year for movies (use two Rel Storm IIIs for music) in the main system. Definitely was a great purchase (I had lightning damage just over a year ago and the old Dayton Audio Titanic bit the dust).

 

[Tom Vodhanel]

Spent all last night going through my music library. I can't take this stupid smile off of my face.

That is always great to read..

Whenever someone asks "What should I play first" when they are waiting on their order to arrive my response is "grab your favorite concert discs" Zep, Rush, Blue Man, Cypress Hill, anything that floats your boat".

I don't understand some of the posts I read at times. " I re-watched fast and the furries 12, god what a horrible movie. But it has a 10 second scene with 10hz so I don't mind sitting through the 2 hours..."

Or worse, let's spend 95% of our time using the opening 10 seconds of EoT to judge a subwoofer's sound quality. Yeah, a couple of test tones that aren't even related to the movie in any semblance(just an error by the sound engineer during the mastering process?). Some discussions can have literally hundreds/thousands of posts about that and a tiny handful about how the product actually sounded with music tracks...

This is the important stuff.







Tom V.
Power Sound Audio

 

[Tom Vodhanel]

What a trip down memory lane, thanks Tom!

Here was one of our test sessions(outside measurements) way back in the day. There might be a few subs you guys can recognize?

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