Detailed Speaker Setup and Optimization

sbnx said:

Al, I agree 100%. But there are two ways to control the reflection. One is to add an absorber (or diffuser) and get rid of the reflection. This is what most people do on the sidewall at the point of first reflection. The second way to control the reflection is with speaker placement. This is actually the main idea -- very small, controlled movements to remove the "blur" caused by interactions.

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The second approach takes a lot more work and it depends on speaker type dispersion patterns, and the stuff on the side walls. The advantage is that you are not removing certain frequencies through absorption, and the energy stays in the room. This is where those with experience and knowledge can get good results.

Elliot G. said:

Actually there aren't. Like I said I don't want to start an arguement but someones feelings dont make it true.
People like what they have and what they did thats perfect for them but trust me it's not all there is.

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From my experiences, which are certainly not as deep as many people here, I do believe that how one treats their room along the continuum from more lively to more controlled, can come down to personal preference just like many other things in this endeavor.

I’m allergic to overly reverberating rooms. Good live music doesn’t sound like this. (There is bad live sound - acoustic or electrified!)

And I’ve heard some stunningly good sound in a very carefully treated pro studio monitoring room (that maybe to some would sound too damped.)

I’ve played around with a lot of room treatments. I’ve taken a lot out, but I recently added some RPG fractal wide band diffusers (Quadradic “defractals”) which I feel have gotten the room to the balance I’ve been looking for. Whatever gets me closer to the music…

The best system I heard was no longer than a year ago and there was not a single acoustic treatment in the room. I remember I kept saying "this sounds so natural", actually, it sounded like there were no room around us... What I have noticed though is that apart from the turntable the system was full DIY (speakers, amplification, cables, tweaks, ...) so the owner could not only tune speaker placement and so on but even better choose and tune every component of the system.
So to me it is clear in my mind that a room can sound great without any acoustic treatment. But not for everyone indeed and not in every single room. I can't imagine my own room without treatment although I do my best to keep it minimal/optimized...

Why no mention of ambient noise floor in these large, untreated living rooms that are open to the rest of the house?

We are taking some singular example and using it to justify the whole AGAIN.
Your opinion does not make it fact. "The best YOU have heard is truly a very insignificant statement" when it does not have much more detail. Most people have never heard a reference level system properly set up. They are not at shows and very rarely in a retail store. Most manufacturers DO NOT have one.
THis forum is full of opinions and that's fine but when these opinions are stated as factual with no context IMO they are just that an opinion. I can say this without fear, give the same system in two identical rooms one with the ability to use room treatment and the other without room treatment set up by the best people possible the one with treatment will win every single time !

I believe what I hear not what I think

I read all these eloquent talk about the importance of this or that and yet when I listen the sound qualities they do not correlate. I see adjustments in mill’s and beautiful bespoke acoustically engineered rooms then I listen , in person and over audio recordings, with great anticipation and there is no resultant performance readily discernible. How does one explain all the expense and effort not materializing into concrete performance gains? Where is the yield in performance from all the extra cost and efforts? Can someone please provide a link to something that will blow me away in terms of sound? Talk and texting is very easy to turn into roses, the resultant sound on the other hand has nowhere to hide.

sbnx said:

Al, I agree 100%. But there are two ways to control the reflection. One is to add an absorber (or diffuser) and get rid of the reflection. This is what most people do on the sidewall at the point of first reflection. The second way to control the reflection is with speaker placement. This is actually the main idea -- very small, controlled movements to remove the "blur" caused by interactions.

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Again, it will depend on the room -- it always comes down to that. Some will have easier rooms than others.

In my relatively narrow room (12 feet wide) ASC SoundPlanks are needed at the first reflection points in order suppress room distortion from the sidewalls. This can easily be demonstrated.

And, yes, in addition careful speaker placement also is needed in order to control distortions from speaker/room interactions.

Furthermore, in my particular room ceiling diffusers are needed in order to control first reflections from the ceiling. Without that, the room becomes unlistenable at high SPL.

(Note: I have changed the topic somewhat from detail reproduction to plain room distortion, but it's still related.)

Tonari said:

So to me it is clear in my mind that a room can sound great without any acoustic treatment. But not for everyone indeed and not in every single room. I can't imagine my own room without treatment although I do my best to keep it minimal/optimized...

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Exactly. It depends on the room (and on the speaker type as well). This needs to be repeated.

If some think their untreated or minimally treated room works well for them, great. But they should be aware that this is not a general rule.

But hey, some people are more comfortable with black-and-white dogma that with the more ambiguous (but truer) "it depends".

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(I also try to keep my room as minimally treated as possible -- but it's all relative. In my room "minimal" unfortunately means "quite a bit". I still plan to try to experiment with reducing the size of the carpet around the listening position; I have taken out already lots of carpet in order to counter absorbing effects of other indispensable room treatment.)

Mike Lavigne said:

my point was only that if a concert hall was designed with an acoustic agenda, and not just a big box, why can't a listening room also have some acoustical design behind it?

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Good question, Mike. I could start off by saying a well-designed concert hall has quite a different purpose and must take into account many sound sources (instruments, vocals, etc) but individually and collectively for various sized audiences covering vast distances whose space is potentially many times the size of most any listening room. In contrast, we have significantly smaller listening rooms with 2 sources of sound if no subwoofers with the smallest number of listenings a very short distance away. IOW, we may have a genuine love for a particular venue's sonics. But at home, what does that have to do with anything?

And presumably every room already has a slant of its own. But what if one did intentionally influence a room? What principles and what slants would they choose to follow?

Recordings of live performances are done in thousands and perhaps millions of different venues around the world? Maybe if somebody only listened to recordings from one venue, there could be a benefit. But I doubt it.

In reality, we're hopefully hearing a great multitude of venues with most every recording we hear with all recordings. But here's the rub with your philosophy. No matter how successful one may think they are contouring/influencing a room to sound like something it's not, there's still a very very big problem.

Nobody I know wants to hear the room. Hearing anything from the room is the direct opposite of the old adage, "make the room disappear." and everybody loves hearing somebody say that.

And of course nobody wants to hear the speakers either. Again the direct opposite of the old adage, "make the speakers disappear."

Given the above, what could possibly be the point of attempting to sonically influencing a room in any given direction?

Mike Lavigne said:

both might be good or bad, or even both good and bad from time to time. rooms start out one way but sometimes evolve.

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This all boils down to what we are hoping to hear and/or actually hearing in our rooms. Do we really want to hear the room at all? Or do we really want to hear as much of the recording hall's ambient info embedded in the recording as we possibly can?

Would it make sense if I said the more resolving a playback system the more of the recording hall's natural ambient info we hear embedded in the recording and the less unnatural ambient info we'll hear from the room?

If we do attempt to influence the room's acoustics in a given direction, what might that hybrid generate sonically? We have the room influenced by your preferences and since everybody's system will eek out at least a little ambient info, what type of hybrid sound is formed when those two ambient info sources meet?

What kind of a hybrid of ambient info are we listening to? IMO, anything I hear from the room would be unnatural (compared to the reocrding that is) and any ambient info I hear embedded in the recording I consider natural - since it was captured from the live performance. Some may disagree but that said, I'd venture I'd be listening to a funky hybrid of two ambient info sources potentially duking it out. One unnatural and close up (the room) and one natural at a distance (the recording hall). Wouldn't the results be a complete box of chocolates - never knowing what you're gonna' get?

As for rooms evolving, my room was remodeled in 2007 and about the only serious influential thing I've done since is replace the listening chair a few times. Since the only ambient info I hope to hear is in the recording and the more I focus on that source of natural ambient info, the less I hear the unnatural ambient info of the room.

Mike Lavigne said:

whether those ideas have anything to do with great sound or not is a different point. only those intensions don't disqualify it as artificial out of hand as Graham inferred.

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Isn't this where somebody is supposed to chime in with, come let us reason together?

Mike Lavigne said:

and great sound is a personal judgment, not any objective truth. but some groups of listeners might tend to have a bit of convergence about stuff, but not always.

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Yes, it is a personal judgment but sometimes I think we go out of our way to further personalize things. And I can't figure out why we might entertain such thoughts in a high-fidelity pursuit? How high can audio fidelity get if we're attempting to sonically influence in any way what we hear? How genuine is that high fidelity?

FWIW, I think it's amazing how our personal judgments change as our education improves that much more with most every sonic difference we hear.

stehno said:

FWIW, I think it's amazing how our personal judgments change as our education improves that much more with most every sonic difference we hear

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Yet for many it will never change at all. I present this analogy.
I play Golf.
I see people at the driving range hiting ball after ball wrong. They are practicing and engraining how to do the same thing wrong over and over. Do they take a lesson from an expert to fix the issue? or do they continue searching for mysteries on thier own with little or no improvement?

Taking certain philosophies that are represented hear like judging high end system on cell phone videos or by drive by's at audio shows DO NOT foster education but rather keep hiting balls at the driving range.

Open your mind and try to learn , do not assume that you know it all and that what you have is the end of the road. An open mind leads to more enjoyment. I believe that staying home in your basement and creating things you believe may not be the answer and may take you down the wrong path.

sbnx said:

I think the point Elliot and Carlos are making is valid. (Who knew they could be making a similar point) We all have different experiences and reference points. For the most part we have not heard each others systems and likely not even heard a common system. So it is hard to judge where someone is coming from. Just because someone has an expensive system does not necessarily guarantee great sound. And just because someone has a modest system does not mean they don't have great sound. In my experience, a well tuned modest system is going to outperform a haphazard expensive system.

If we were to put sound quality on a scale from 1-10 of someone's best sound. Then one person might be a 4 while someone elses might abe a 7. The person with a 4 still heard the best sound they ever experienced. Unless we experience the person's system or go experience a common system then we don't know where each person is coming from. This makes forum discussions weird.

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Carlos and I can never agree that would cause the world to end!
I do agree however with most of the above post. I say again YOUR OPINION DOES NOT MAKE IT TRUE! ( not addressed to you Todd lol)

People can rank whatever they want , but there never will be consensus .
So it doesnt mean anything.

Greetings from sunny Nice France ( la plage).

The motto of MOC munchen was very good this year " Diversity "

Its like people ranking rockgroups

It would be stupid to rank

IRON MAIDEN .
Deep Purple .
ACDC

Same goes for classical composers

They all mean something to different people.

People chose systems based on music preferences.
To argue about that is just dunb imo

Argonaut said:

Randomly strewn planks are where it’s At … Apparently !

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Yes, to me it qualifies as acoustic treatment, but was temporary, so Peter could get a general idea of potential improvements.

stehno said:

Good question, Mike. I could start off by saying a well-designed concert hall has quite a different purpose and must take into account many sound sources (instruments, vocals, etc) but individually and collectively for various sized audiences covering vast distances whose space is potentially many times the size of most any listening room. In contrast, we have significantly smaller listening rooms with 2 sources of sound if no subwoofers with the smallest number of listenings a very short distance away. IOW, we may have a genuine love for a particular venue's sonics. But at home, what does that have to do with anything?

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my room designer also designed recording studios, mixing studios, and mastering studios......in addition to listening rooms. and that the aims of each were different. he felt like one constant was retaining energy in a room, once lost you cannot get it back. but also you need balance. the space needs to breathe.

he viewed a listening room like a concert hall only in the basic pieces, but not the scale of course. small room domestic acoustics work completely differently than large hall acoustics based on the volume and space and how speakers work compared to live performances. yet the idea of no square corners....essentially an oval shape, mostly diffusion, the speaker end (stage) having hardwood projecting all that energy, the listening end more carpet of some sort, the ceiling diffusive and not flat, plenty of width and height, stout construction. nothing too out there in acoustic viewpoints. pretty conventional.

those attributes i still seem to like when i experience them in other rooms, but i have no broad based experience, just my own room where i like it.

he intentionally designed in excess bass trapping, telling me it was easy to remove them once i lived in the room, but designing them in later would be very difficult. this turned out to be right. as i lived with my room eventually my final changes were to tame excess energy here and there with surface cloth texture, but zero absorption. otherwise it's as designed.

my room's aim was to be able to do large scale music and handle all that energy from a large speaker system. it can do that and listeners can enjoy that in my room. it does not get over-driven or get hard and stressed. the bass stays agile and natural.

coming back to the concert hall compare issue; there is more than one way to do large scale music in a domestic room successfully, mine is simply one way that works. there could be 100 other ways.

i don't think my room has a particular coloration or filter, no constant influence on the music. it allows each recording to be what it is. i've tried various pieces in my system and always gravitated to the gear that tells me the most about what is happening, avoiding sameness. but i suppose that is for visitors to my room to comment on. too personal for me.