Reverberation role in a listening room
- Thread starter Ronboco
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There should be a balance of reflective and absorptive surfaces. If it sounds dead try adding some reflective panels and see what sounds best to you.
Rob
Rob
The best sounding listening space I ever heard was a round roof top dining area, a palm leaf conical ceiling was supported by poles, otherwise open to the air 360 degrees. As we entered we walked between two fairly large speakers on stands, grill cloth covered the drivers but looked by shape like JPL's. Sound was incredible.
I hear room echo on every YouTube video of a system playing, even those with room tuning. I am wondering if anyone out there has put folding glass doors behind their speaker that can be opened up fully beyond the speakers lateral limits? Or other open listening rooms. Any photos?
I hear room echo on every YouTube video of a system playing, even those with room tuning. I am wondering if anyone out there has put folding glass doors behind their speaker that can be opened up fully beyond the speakers lateral limits? Or other open listening rooms. Any photos?
The doors open, but it doesn’t really help the sound as too much energy escapes the room. Already the rear of the room does not close off, only some curtains with acoustic liners. The music sounds better with the doors closed, and this was part of the expectation of the acoustic engineer when she modeled the room.
The RT 60's spectrum is more important than its total value. The best-sounding rooms have an even distribution of spectral energy that slopes down as the frequency increases and a very even response on the low end.
The current SOTA mastering room design is to highly control the energy to be very even with a short decay. It is an almost anechoic room where skyline diffusers have been strategically placed above the listening position and side walls. This generates a bit of even and diffuse liveness in the area of the listening spot but leaves the rest of the room echo-less. Low-end control is usually incorporated into corners, the ceiling, side walls, and the back wall, with sometimes complex construction techniques to even out the low-end energy.
I've worked in several of these types of rooms, and once you get used to them, the amount of information, especially imaging properties, is jaw-dropping. The super low level of ambient noise is somewhat disconcerting as well (when music is not playing), but that just increases the perception of detail.
The current SOTA mastering room design is to highly control the energy to be very even with a short decay. It is an almost anechoic room where skyline diffusers have been strategically placed above the listening position and side walls. This generates a bit of even and diffuse liveness in the area of the listening spot but leaves the rest of the room echo-less. Low-end control is usually incorporated into corners, the ceiling, side walls, and the back wall, with sometimes complex construction techniques to even out the low-end energy.
I've worked in several of these types of rooms, and once you get used to them, the amount of information, especially imaging properties, is jaw-dropping. The super low level of ambient noise is somewhat disconcerting as well (when music is not playing), but that just increases the perception of detail.
If you wanted to decrease room effects but were constrained in funds, what single modification would give the greatest bang for yer buck?
In a recent video (Darko interviewing Jesco from "Acoustics Insider") that question was asked and the answer was the ceiling, simply because it gives you the opportunity to treat a large surface. YMMV. Obviously if your main issue are room modes, ceiling treatment may do very little. So there is no single right answer.
