Sierras, Dynaudio, REW, and my room
Hey guys, a few weeks ago I got hold of a Dynaudio Audience 42C center channel and I did some listening comparison with my Sierras. My receiver is an Onkyo 805.
Here's a pic of the Dynaudio:
And of course the Sierra:
I noticed the Dynaudio seemed a little more prominent in the lower midrange (say around 100-200hz) maybe that's upper bass, I'm not sure. Anyways it prompted me to take same measurements to see if my Sierra was lacking in this range or if the Dynaudio was boosted.
Using REW on my PC and an AKG Perception 150 microphone (with calibration file loaded) here's what I came up with for each speaker measured from 6 inches away. Both speakers were mounted vertically on a speaker stand.
Sierra:
Dynaudio:
Overlay:
You can ignore below 80hz because I was running the speakers as small with an 80hz crossover from my receiver.
It looks like the Dynaudio has a boost of around 3-4dB in the 100-200hz range. The Sierra is flatter in this range and certainly isn't lacking. Also interesting is that the treble range on the Dynaudio seems to be a bit higher than the Sierras well.
Now here's where things start getting interesting. I decided to measure from my couch where I normally sit. This is about 8 feet away from the speakers.
Sierra:
Dynaudio:
The top line in each graph is the measurement from 6 inches. The bottom is from 8 feet.
As you can see in both graphs, my room is causing a suckout in the 100-300hz range. This explains why I have felt the Sierras sound a little "thin" in my room. I've often used the manual EQ in my receiver to try and boost this range as well as reduce the mid-bass around 45-60hz. But I could never get it quite right.
I've tried the Audyssey calibration on my receiver but didn't like how it reduced the high frequencies so much. But then I read how you can just use the treble adjustment to boost it back up a little. Knowing that, I decided to run Audyssey again. Here's what it did:
Sierra with and without Audyssey:
Zoomed in a little:
The gold line is Audyssey. As you can see, Audyssey added around 3-5dB from 100hz to 250hz. It also reduced the treble quite a bit. This gave the Sierras a fuller sound but muted treble. I used the treble adjustment on my receiver by +2dB and it sounded much better. So it looks like Audyssey did a decent job with the lower midrange suckout. Although I don't know why it had to mess around with treble. It's actually flatter without Audyssey.
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