SUPERNAIT 2 + ATC ??

I think you'll be safe with SCM40 as well. They are infinitely more refined than CM9.

Ditch the sunfure as well.

Dan.S posted:

I think you'll be safe with SCM40 as well. They are infinitely more refined than CM9.

Ditch the sunfure as well.

thing is that I'm into a lot into rap stuff too ....so I need that deep pressures even if I' ve never heard scm40....

19 are unlikely to excite your room size and cause a bass peak.

40 are a different kettle of fish. My room is 4 X 4.2m and I have an issue with +10db bass peak at 45hz with scm40a. Speaker and listening position changes (keep well away from room corners and boundary) have made it tolerable but it's a small price to pay for such quality speakers. The peak is only noticeable on a few bass heavy tracks. Digital eq (roon is perfect for this) as you say is the easiest way to resolve, since changing position of speakers and chair I've not felt the need.

I previously had sn2 and it's a terrific amp.

Any suggestions here are largely guesswork as things like furnishings can also affect the sound and personal taste is significant.  I'm afraid the only way to be really sure is a home demo.  Personally, having heard passive SCM40s in a much larger space, I think you'd be pushing it in your room, with those speakers.  I found their bass a little loose for my taste, even though they were driven by a 250DR and wondered if they really needed a 300.  The 19s have more apparent bass than you might think for sealed-box standmounts , but it is very clean and controlled.  You might even try the 11s, they are also terrific speakers and, I would have thought, a good match for a SN2.

Roger

First, what are the ACTUAL dimensions of the room (LxWxH)?  The linear dimensions are what is involved in the room resonances rather than the volume (rooms don't normally act as Helmholtz resonators).

Second, what are the walls / floor / ceiling constructed, and these can markedly modify the acoustic properties.

Lastly you may well need to add LF absorption to the room (aka 'bass traps').  In this case, please note that blocks of open foam don't work for bass absorption, you need pressure mode acoustic dampers not viscosity mode absorbers.  To find out if you need to damp the room, you really need to measure the acoustic decay profile of the room (the frequency / time 'waterfall' plot).  To do this I recommend a miniDSP UMIK-1 calibrated microphone and a laptop running REW.  If you need it, can help with interpretation of the results.  From what you are saying this will probably be most beneficial in diagnosing and fixing the issue.

Peakman posted:

Any suggestions here are largely guesswork as things like furnishings can also affect the sound and personal taste is significant.  I'm afraid the only way to be really sure is a home demo.  Personally, having heard passive SCM40s in a much larger space, I think you'd be pushing it in your room, with those speakers.  I found their bass a little loose for my taste, even though they were driven by a 250DR and wondered if they really needed a 300.  The 19s have more apparent bass than you might think for sealed-box standmounts , but it is very clean and controlled.  You might even try the 11s, they are also terrific speakers and, I would have thought, a good match for a SN2.

Roger

god....scm40 with 250dr sound a little loose? so you think a SN2 will not make it?? I am wondering if it was a matter of driving them or....is that the way they are not beacuse of how they were pushed?? 

I can confirm that scm40 should sound anything but bass that's a little loose, if that is the case then something is very wrong. Scm40 is one of a few speakers that does bass properly.

I would check with ATC and Naim that SN2 can dive scm40 properly.

It can. Definitely.

Huge posted:

First, what are the ACTUAL dimensions of the room (LxWxH)?  The linear dimensions are what is involved in the room resonances rather than the volume (rooms don't normally act as Helmholtz resonators).

Second, what are the walls / floor / ceiling constructed, and these can markedly modify the acoustic properties.

Lastly you may well need to add LF absorption to the room (aka 'bass traps').  In this case, please note that blocks of open foam don't work for bass absorption, you need pressure mode acoustic dampers not viscosity mode absorbers.  To find out if you need to damp the room, you really need to measure the acoustic decay profile of the room (the frequency / time 'waterfall' plot).  To do this I recommend a miniDSP UMIK-1 calibrated microphone and a laptop running REW.  If you need it, can help with interpretation of the results.  From what you are saying this will probably be most beneficial in diagnosing and fixing the issue.

I have gone through mini dsp + dirac route and didn't like the result....it made things "too digital"...I hate this definition but it's the way it was.....the dspeaker antimode is a lot more natural....I mean it does less damage to the overall sound !

by the way I guess REW is all manual settings right?? I am aiming to correct only low freqs and not full spectrum as I cannot treat the room which is, by the way 4,50 mt x 4 mt x 4 meters tall but there are two "openings on both side wall so it's not "closed" and the house is made of tuff/tufa....is that how you say it in english?? 

999inmydreams666 posted:

Peakman posted:

Any suggestions here are largely guesswork as things like furnishings can also affect the sound and personal taste is significant.  I'm afraid the only way to be really sure is a home demo.  Personally, having heard passive SCM40s in a much larger space, I think you'd be pushing it in your room, with those speakers.  I found their bass a little loose for my taste, even though they were driven by a 250DR and wondered if they really needed a 300.  The 19s have more apparent bass than you might think for sealed-box standmounts , but it is very clean and controlled.  You might even try the 11s, they are also terrific speakers and, I would have thought, a good match for a SN2.

Roger

god....scm40 with 250dr sound a little loose? so you think a SN2 will not make it?? I am wondering if it was a matter of driving them or....is that the way they are not beacuse of how they were pushed?? 

You might read all I said including "I found..." and "...for my taste."  I was just recounting my reaction to what I heard.  I had just been auditioning SCM 19s in passive (with 250) and active form and have PMC Facts currently in my system, which many find too dry (not me).  So I react badly to what I perceive to be over-prominent bass.  Perhaps "loose" was not quite the right word, but for me and listening straight after activB 19s I found the bass on some tracks more full than I would ideally have liked.  But the main point I was trying to make, obviously unsuccessfully, was that, if it were me, I would be wary of spending the price of SCM40s without a home audition especially as you have been suffering from boom.  Your ceiling is high and I am unsure of the acoustic properties of tufa, so you might get away with it but it must be more of a risk than 19s.  You might ask Simon-in-Suffolk why he runs 19s with his 552/250 set.  As for whether a SN can drive them in your room, if a home demo really is out of the question, is a dealer dem possible, perhaps with your own SN?  Whatever happens I wish you the best of luck and please report back on what transpires.

Roger

I understand both terms tuff and tufa (from geology).

I agree on the use of digital room correction only for the lowest frequencies.  I use a set of Spendor SP2s positioned in bass null positions, and a sub that provides all the deep bass notes.  There's a miniDSP processor on the sub to do room correction, but there's no correction on the main speakers so as not to interfere with the main sound quality.  I found that trying to correct toward the midrange gave a loss of clarity and an artificial 'processed' sound that I also didn't like.

The way I use REW is manual in that I use it for analysis and then optimise the bass absorbers to damp the excessive room resonance.  I then manually programme the DSP filters for the remaining resonances and re-check this with REW.  However you can get REW to automatically generate filter programmes for a number of DSP units.

You can also use REW to check for unwanted sound reflections and use diffusers or move furniture to deal with them.  It can even be used to check the health of your speakers.

Acoustically speaking tufa covered by paint and/or plaster essentially behaves the same as limestone (my house is oolitic limestone).  Your room is going to have a massive resonance problem at 42.5Hz and another partially overlapping resonance at 38Hz, so your room is likely to be at least +15dB at somewhere 41Hz to 42.5Hz but it could be as much as +24dB.  The precise detail is dependant on the acoustic damping and how the speakers couple to the room acoustically.

In these circumstances the ATC SCM40s would most likely be problematic.  The -6dB point is 48Hz and with -12dB/octave you're still going to have about -9dB at 40Hz, this will still result in a large bass peak even if you have the lowest estimate of the resonance problem.

The SCM19 is going to be quite a bit better - -6dB at 54Hz also with -12dB/octave, so around -12dB at 41Hz  This will still result in a bass peak, but if you're lucky it may be insignificant; even if the bass peak is still too prominent, it will need a lot less bass absorption to tame it to acceptable levels.

In either case it'll be enormously beneficial to add some bass absorption to shorten the decay time at 38-43Hz otherwise the lengthened decay time in that frequency range will still be audible and the bass won't sound 'tight'.