Sierra-LX - Can I add some sparkle with EQ?

[gmetro]

I have my room finally set up as good as it can be without going to extremes. Speakers are lovely, and I've managed to get them sounding great with just some moving things around, a little bit of wall treatment/etc.

And this may be heretical, but the only thing I feel like I'm missing is that high end sparkle. That sort of over-analytical visceral feeling that comes with speakers like Focals. -- I want to feel when someone is finger plucking strings, bells should reverberate the little hairs in the cochlea.


I've been playing with the EQ a bit to try and squeeze that out, but I just can't seem to get it right. I'm using a fully adjustable parametric EQ, and a GEQ depending on source. Any suggestions for settings?

I've mostly been trying to bring up some high frequencies, but maybe that's the wrong approach.

example: The intro to Nightwish's Sleeping Sun. I mean, it sounds good. I can hear it. But I can't feel it at any volume.

[davef]

I have my room finally set up as good as it can be without going to extremes. Speakers are lovely, and I've managed to get them sounding great with just some moving things around, a little bit of wall treatment/etc.

And this may be heretical, but the only thing I feel like I'm missing is that high end sparkle. That sort of over-analytical visceral feeling that comes with speakers like Focals. -- I want to feel when someone is finger plucking strings, bells should reverberate the little hairs in the cochlea.


I've been playing with the EQ a bit to try and squeeze that out, but I just can't seem to get it right. I'm using a fully adjustable parametric EQ, and a GEQ depending on source. Any suggestions for settings?

I've mostly been trying to bring up some high frequencies, but maybe that's the wrong approach.

example: The intro to Nightwish's Sleeping Sun. I mean, it sounds good. I can hear it. But I can't feel it at any volume.

Hi gmetro,

Glad to hear you are enjoying the LX.

I am not quite sure I understand what you are trying to achieve, the LX are extremely neutral speakers, the highs are perfectly balanced with the mids and lows. You can not physically feel high frequencies, that is simply not possible as the wavelengths of high frequencies are very short. Generally speaking, we can physically "feel" frequencies below about 200Hz.

Which Focal speakers did you have prior to the LX? Many Focal's have a rising high frequency response and some of the models with the inverted metal dome will exhibit a nasty resonance (ringing) within the range of human hearing. This shows up in measurements as a very high q peak. The newer implementation of this tweeter is better, as it pushes the break up mode (ringing) above the range of human hearing, just like the LX tweeter and Be tweeters do.

Perhaps you became accustomed to that resonance, which should not actually be there? I will know more once you let me know which Focal model you had.

Thanks!

[gmetro]

Hi, thanks for the response!

The speakers in question are 165w, the tweeter is TN51. It is an inverted dome.

Maybe it is ringing, and I don't know what ringing sounds like at higher frequencies.
I mostly come from headphones and car audio so I can't even compare it to other known home audio speakers. I can kind hear it in big magnepans.

There's definitely a good chance I'm the guy who liked his rattling subwoofer running off an amp pushed deep into clipping in his toyota camry wondering where all the bass is in a properly tuned system.- but with tweeters.

[davef]

Hi, thanks for the response!

The speakers in question are 165w, the tweeter is TN51. It is an inverted dome.

Maybe it is ringing, and I don't know what ringing sounds like at higher frequencies.
I mostly come from headphones and car audio so I can't even compare it to other known home audio speakers. I can kind hear it in big magnepans.

There's definitely a good chance I'm the guy who liked his rattling subwoofer running off an amp pushed deep into clipping in his toyota camry wondering where all the bass is in a properly tuned system.- but with tweeters.

I am confused, these are car audio tweeters. Please do not make the mistake of trying to compare what you hear in a car (basically an echo chamber), compared to high performance home audio. Is this your first set of high performance speakers for your home?

Also, I would recommend having your hearing checked out just to see if you have any high frequency loss. If you do (highly likely - we all do to some degree), you can then easily determine what frequency range should be boosted to compensate.

[gmetro]

yes- first decent home speakers outside of magnepans. have been in the world of headphones (focal, sennheiser, audeze) until recently

the 165w had been moved to enclosures and used as bookshelf speakers. the lower midrange of course was a total mess due to that. the Sierras replaced them.

[davef]

My guess is that what you were hearing with the Focal tweeters in your car was boosted treble combined with a massive amount of uncontrolled reflections, sound waves simply bouncing off basically every surface in the car.