Article: Calibrating Desktop Speakers using Focus Fidelity Filter Designer

[mitchco]

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[The Computer Audiophile]

Thanks so much for this @mitchco. $250 for this improvement is peanuts for how much time many of us spend using a desktop system. 

[jrobbins50]

@mitchco, great article. As I am already invested in Audiolense, will that DSP software work as well for a desktop powered speaker setup — I have Audioengine A5s. JCR 

[cjf]

Nice article @mitcho, thanks.

 

I'll be doing a similar process soon for my two newly acquired Genelec 8020D desktop monitors I just picked up for my office.I'll use Audiolense, REW and Roon convolution.

 

Its impressive what the little monitors with a Napoleon complex can do these days in terms of sound output. I was pretty shocked with the sound of the little Genelecs out of the box. I'm sure once I perform the same process you outline here ill be even more impressed with them.

[JR_Audio]

Hi Mitch. Ah, great you are introducing a new (at least for me new) room correction solution. I will read through it and will give it a spin. If you have a regular room, you can do so much with room correction to get good sound, much more than with most of the “tweaks” that are used to improve the sound. Thanks for writing.

[Confused]

@mitchco - A fascinating article.  I have to admit that the very concept of "room correction" for desktop speakers had never occurred to me, but it seems obvious now it is out there!  Thanks for writing this.

 

You mention at the start of the article that correction for a desk top set up is "highly demanding", and the ultimate conclusion is that the Focus Fidelity software did a good job.  Can it be extrapolated from this you would recommend Focus Fidelity for a conventional (not desktop) hifi set up?

 

I have spent quite a bit of time with REW, and have obtained reasonable results, but I always feel it would need a LOT more time and effort to get everything "just so".   Is Focus Fidelity a better option than REW, in terms of results obtained versus time invested? 

 

I am planning to make some changes to my room, which will include some room treatments etc., so it would be great to have some (reasonably) user friendly software to assist with periodic updates.  I know this stuff will never be easy, it does take effort to move along the learning curve, but any software that might help just a little has to be of interest.

 

[Crom]

  @mitchco another really interesting article - thank you!. Similar comment to above... is this easier to work with and/or to get better results with than audiolense?

[mitchco]

 

10 hours ago, JR_Audio said:

Hi Mitch. Ah, great you are introducing a new (at least for me new) room correction solution. I will read through it and will give it a spin. If you have a regular room, you can do so much with room correction to get good sound, much more than with most of the “tweaks” that are used to improve the sound. Thanks for writing.

 

Hi Juergen, good to hear from you. Totally agreed - room correction, properly applied, can make an outstanding difference in sound quality, especially for the price! 

Kind regards,

Mitch

[mitchco]

9 hours ago, Confused said:

@mitchco - A fascinating article.  I have to admit that the very concept of "room correction" for desktop speakers had never occurred to me, but it seems obvious now it is out there!  Thanks for writing this.

 

You mention at the start of the article that correction for a desk top set up is "highly demanding", and the ultimate conclusion is that the Focus Fidelity software did a good job.  Can it be extrapolated from this you would recommend Focus Fidelity for a conventional (not desktop) hifi set up?

 

I have spent quite a bit of time with REW, and have obtained reasonable results, but I always feel it would need a LOT more time and effort to get everything "just so".   Is Focus Fidelity a better option than REW, in terms of results obtained versus time invested? 

 

I am planning to make some changes to my room, which will include some room treatments etc., so it would be great to have some (reasonably) user friendly software to assist with periodic updates.  I know this stuff will never be easy, it does take effort to move along the learning curve, but any software that might help just a little has to be of interest.

 

 

Hi @Confused Yes, Focus Fidelity will work fine for any setup.

 

While I use REW daily for acoustic measurements, it is not marketed or sold as "room correction" software. While one can use it for taming some peaks in a room, it is not at the same resolution as "purpose built" room correction software with it's 65,536 tap length FIR filter. Parametric eq's or PEQ's don't have any excessphase correction capabilities, so it is missing half of the "transfer function" for proper room correction. At low frequencies this translates into the difference between smooth bass versus smooth and clear bass using Focus Fidelity. Once you hear the clarity of the bass, it is hard to go back to anything else.

 

Kind regards,

Mitch

[mitchco]

@jrobbins50 Yes, AL will work for desktops as well. @Crom The process of designing a custom room correction filter takes some effort and understanding. This is one of the reasons why I write "step by step" articles of walking through the process. If you can follow the steps in the article and arrive with similar results, mission accomplished :-)

 

Focus Fidelity joins a "very" small group of room correction software that can achieve accurate sound reproduction both in the frequency and time domain for just about any loudspeaker and room combo.

 

Kind regards,

Mitch

[Danny Kaey]

you are an asset to the AS community!!! Love this stuff. 🤩

[Matias]

@mitchco this or Audiolense XO? What are the pros and cons of each, other than the price difference (250 usd x 400 euros)? Thanks!

[Focus Fidelity]

On 3/5/2021 at 10:10 PM, Confused said:

@mitchco - A fascinating article.  I have to admit that the very concept of "room correction" for desktop speakers had never occurred to me, but it seems obvious now it is out there!  Thanks for writing this.

 

You mention at the start of the article that correction for a desk top set up is "highly demanding", and the ultimate conclusion is that the Focus Fidelity software did a good job.  Can it be extrapolated from this you would recommend Focus Fidelity for a conventional (not desktop) hifi set up?

 

I have spent quite a bit of time with REW, and have obtained reasonable results, but I always feel it would need a LOT more time and effort to get everything "just so".   Is Focus Fidelity a better option than REW, in terms of results obtained versus time invested? 

 

I am planning to make some changes to my room, which will include some room treatments etc., so it would be great to have some (reasonably) user friendly software to assist with periodic updates.  I know this stuff will never be easy, it does take effort to move along the learning curve, but any software that might help just a little has to be of interest.

 

Hi @Confused Our software is intended for conventional Hi-Fi layouts and we expect this to be the most common use case.

Once you have a set of measurements and are familiar with our software you'll find it only takes a few minutes to make adjustments and generate a new filter.

 

Kind regards,

David

[Ron Scubadiver]

@mitchco you are definitely the one who knows all about these advanced audio software packages.

[AudioDoctor]

I just started playing with DSP in HQP with some corrections for my headphones and can now see the potential in it. I may have to give this a try and see what it can accomplish with my speakers as well.

[michaelg]

I've bought a license and like it -- It may not have as many knobs to turn as other products but this makes it easier to use for non-specialists. I had to manually set zero positions and did at first not zoom in to do it precisely. This led to lengthy filter computations and a sub-optimal result. Having fixed that, the wizard-based approach of the GUI is snappy and easy to use. I'm doing filters for a setup with floor-standers in a relatively small (18 m2) room.

 

 

[Confused]

On 3/8/2021 at 7:24 AM, Focus Fidelity said:

Hi @Confused Our software is intended for conventional Hi-Fi layouts and we expect this to be the most common use case.

Once you have a set of measurements and are familiar with our software you'll find it only takes a few minutes to make adjustments and generate a new filter.

 

Kind regards,

David

Hi David - The software look interesting. 

 

From my perspective time is important.  As an example, when using REW or similar I have spent a lot of time trying things, then not being 100% sure I had got everything right, checking back through forums and similar, basically spending a lot of time on a learning curve.  This has been useful, I have learned much  I am now pretty proficient at taking REW measurements. But I still like the idea of of a software package that takes you though the required stages, step by step, if only for the added confidence that I have got everything right, and the results are optimised.  

 

All of this begs a couple of questions. 

 

Firstly, the article mentions that you are developing your own measurement module.  This appeals to me because if the measurement module and correction software are more integrated as one package, this should mean a reduced chance for less experienced users to make errors, less chance of what is done in REW not being quite correct for Focus Fidelity.  Basically a more efficient approach, less mistakes, better results, demanding less time for the user learning curve.  So the first question here is when do you expect to have the measurement module available?  To be fair, I can imagine that this is a significant amount of work to get right.

 

Secondly, you mention above once you "are familiar with our software".  Do you have an estimate of how long software familiarity would take?  Clearly this almost impossible to answer as it will vary enormously depending on the experience of the user, but is it likely to be similar to REW for example?

[Focus Fidelity]

Hi @Confused,

 

Yes, a dedicated module for performing measurements will be released but is likely several months away. This will have a workflow that makes it easy to perform measurements of multiple speakers in multiple positions. All settings will have suitable default values and a good step by step user guide will be included. It'll be tested thoroughly with the UMIK-1, UMIK-2 and a Dayton EMM-6 plus USB audio interface.

 

If you're up and running doing measurements with REW then I think you'll find the learning curve with the filter design software straight forward and you should be generating filters within an hour by following the user guide https://www.focusfidelity.com/FFDManual.pdf

 

Kind regards,

David

 

[Bob Stern]

Mitch & Chris:  To give this new software better exposure, I suggest you retitle the topic "Focus Fidelity digital room correction software".  I initially ignored the topic because I thought the software was focussed on desktop speakers.  (Forgive the pun.)

[mitchco]

Hi Bob, good idea!

 

Kind regards,

Mitch

[dm68]

Hi Mitch, great article. I bought a license. I'm intending to use the filters with HQPlayer which requires seperate filters for the left and right channels. I can't for the life of me work out how to export the filters for the seperate channels. Any help would be much appreciated.

[mitchco]

Hi @dm68thanks! I don't know if David @Focus Fidelity has that feature in the export filters yet... In the interim, an easy way to to split the stereo filter is to use an audio editor like Audacity to open up the stereo filter and select "split stereo track into two mono tracks" like so: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/splitting_and_joining_stereo_tracks.html

Then select the top split track and Export as "other uncompressed file" and in then click options and choose .wav as the header and in encoding choose 32 or 64 bit float (based on the format exported by Focus Fidelity Filter Designer) and save as left channel. Repeat for the right channel and now you have two separate mono channels for HQP.

[Focus Fidelity]

1 hour ago, dm68 said:

Hi Mitch, great article. I bought a license. I'm intending to use the filters with HQPlayer which requires seperate filters for the left and right channels. I can't for the life of me work out how to export the filters for the seperate channels. Any help would be much appreciated.

Hi @dm68 The filters are exported as stereo *.wav files so both channels in one file. There is no feature right now to export as mono *.wav files. I can however add this as a feature if needed.

[dm68]

@mitchco thanks for that I will give it a go. @Focus FidelityDavid thanks for offering to add the mono feature, I'm sure there are quite a few HQPlayer users who will benefit from it.

[dm68]

Just wanted to say thank you to David from @Focus Fidelityfor how quickly he has made it now possible to export Mono filters for use with HQPlayer. I've only had a brief chance to listen to the filters in use, but I'm very pleased with the results.