Custom dedicated audio room owners unite!

[sbo6]

A bit of acoustic trivia Stevie, if you are positioned less than the circumference of your head from the wall, the reflections are imperceptible. Outside of that ........

True, however, reflections that are not directly behind your head (behind left and right) will be perceived as smearing.

Then there's LF reinforcement at or very close to the rear wall (one - note / muddy bass).

 

[Steve williams]

True, however, reflections that are not directly behind your head (behind left and right) will be perceived as smearing.

Then there's LF reinforcement at or very close to the rear wall (one - note / muddy bass).

FWIW my good friend JackD201 is a trained acoustician so his input is valuable. Yet having said that I am always concerned about my head up against the rear wall for reasons you state

 

[Ronboco]

Hello everyone,
I have been enjoying reading about everyone’s rooms and thought I would share my room as well. My room is on the smaller side in my basement (16.5’x15’x7.5’H). Since I was building from scratch I decided to get the design from a professional and build it while my speakers were being built. I was very nervous and when the system was first fired up there was no bass and I thought the room was a dud. I have double drywall outside the room with a layer of MLV in between. Rockwool in the studs and 1/4 inch pegboard and 2 inch rigid fiberglass inside. No drywall ! About 4 months in the speakers loosened up and the room sounds amazing. It definitely punched above its weight. I’m glad I hired an acoustician for the design.
Ron

 

[cal3713]

Hello everyone,
I have been enjoying reading about everyone’s rooms and thought I would share my room as well. My room is on the smaller side in my basement (16.5’x15’x7.5’H). Since I was building from scratch I decided to get the design from a professional and build it while my speakers were being built. I was very nervous and when the system was first fired up there was no bass and I thought the room was a dud. I have double drywall outside the room with a layer of MLV in between. Rockwool in the studs and 1/4 inch pegboard and 2 inch rigid fiberglass inside. No drywall ! About 4 months in the speakers loosened up and the room sounds amazing. It definitely punched above its weight. I’m glad I hired an acoustician for the design.
Ron

Would love to see some pictures. Finished, in construction, or whatever...

 

[Ron Resnick]

Hello everyone,
I have been enjoying reading about everyone’s rooms and thought I would share my room as well. My room is on the smaller side in my basement (16.5’x15’x7.5’H). Since I was building from scratch I decided to get the design from a professional and build it while my speakers were being built. I was very nervous and when the system was first fired up there was no bass and I thought the room was a dud. I have double drywall outside the room with a layer of MLV in between. Rockwool in the studs and 1/4 inch pegboard and 2 inch rigid fiberglass inside. No drywall ! About 4 months in the speakers loosened up and the room sounds amazing. It definitely punched above its weight. I’m glad I hired an acoustician for the design.
Ron

Welcome, Ron! Congratulations on finishing your room!

 

[pjwd]

True, however, reflections that are not directly behind your head (behind left and right) will be perceived as smearing.

Then there's LF reinforcement at or very close to the rear wall (one - note / muddy bass).

I would think that low fr reflections will be less detectable as smear than high fr specular reflections and if there are corner or other traps to deal with lf reverb it should be not bad .. in fact I have heard it sound fine .. I suspect that the nice point about getting away from wall is the reverberent tail ( say -10db) is more even .. a subtle improvement .. I suppose you could call that smearing of sorts
Subjectivity it has been my experience that room behind and to the sides of speakers are more important than depth behind chair .. one of the many tradeoffs in our constrained world
Phil

 

[JackD201]

True, however, reflections that are not directly behind your head (behind left and right) will be perceived as smearing.

Then there's LF reinforcement at or very close to the rear wall (one - note / muddy bass).

Yes, I would be more worried about any of the walls ringing most especially the one you are closest too. That is a very uncomfortable feeling.

 

[Johan K]

I work on quite a few projects and I also have my own diffuser product which can be seen on the back walls and doors of the demo room I have been building.

My interest lies with small listening spaces and let me tell you, it is not a popular one. Besides the ones who are working on various scientific experiments, most acousticians deal with noise or voice intelligibility. A very limited number of them work with concert halls and Some work for recording studio designs. Studio design has two faces (recording and mixing) and two separate goals. The mixing room goals and applications are very similar to our listening room goals in a way that the goals are fixed and we know what to shoot for. For concert halls or recording spaces there are some broad rules but no set goals, as recording and creating a sound is an art form in itself with no single right answers.

Back to our listening spaces; Contrary to studio mixing spaces we have many more problems. A domestic listening room adds multiple complexities because of set room shapes, furnitures, variety of speakers that are not as easy to work with as studio monitors, not being able to make all needed treatment because of decor and lastly the clients tend to pick and choose. I am also sorry to say the audiophiles are a hard breed to work with. Sometimes it becomes frustrating.

The descending rt60 is right, like the frequency response curve, mostly even but with a slight rise at LF. It will be like that if the treatment is rightly done, it will follow the speakers response. If you have strong LF but straight rt60 that means you are dampening lf more than hf. So, a good fr and a good rt60 will actually look similar.

The rt60 I showed was flat because the response was flat. I was adjusting my speakers and room. I attach the corresponding fr response of that rt60 so you can see. This is not how I listen, I prefer a slight rise on LF but not as much as Harman target curve but closer to Toole's preferred response curve.
View attachment 104625

kodomo,

Nice to read something of someone (you) that knows what his talking about - so logical - and so much sence? ! Thank you for your inputs!

All the best

/ Jk

 

[Johan K]

If you have not tried Gulf of Maine fabric, take a look at them. They have a good stretch to them and the right fabric can go on in any direction and looks perfect. All of my walls are done with 2" thick Owens Corning 705 fiberglass in a 3 " deep frame stretched with Gulf of Maine Fabric.
When I built my room I chose total dampening and then added diffusion as needed to create the spaciousness I wanted.

My approach is not for everyone but I am very happy with the results.
View attachment 104761

Looks mighty impressive - I imagine the sound is about the same as the looks. Very very nice !!

/ Jk

 

[Johan K]

View attachment 104968

Looks beautiful there Steve… very impressive!
Looks like a place to share a single malt, with some nice Chet Baker jazz a couple of hours after midnight, hehehe.

Cheers

/ Johan

 

[Fishfood]

And as promised The Conran Store delivered these today … Heavy Grade Chocolate Hide / Rosewood / StainlessSteel:

View attachment 105327

Fun fact. My uncle worked for Charles Eames in the 60s. So many cool stories, my favorite being Eames walking in the basement where he and a coworker were working on the office chair and Eames deciding it should recline and them looking at each other and saying, "how the hell do we do that" because the reclining office chair hadn't been invented yet.

 

[PYP]

Getting the sound right in a dedicated audio room is challenging. What about the same task in a multi-use cathedral? Not just any cathedral, but Notre Dame which is in the process of being repaired. Interesting story with interactive 3-D visualizations and associated sound.

The Quest to Restore Notre Dame’s Glorious Sound (Published 2023)

In Paris, experts are modeling ways to revive the burned cathedral’s centuries-old acoustics. A Times interactive shows how space can affect what we hear.

www.nytimes.com

Much of the cathedral’s restoration, projected to be completed in 2024, will address these large holes. They affect not just the structure of the building, but also something that cannot be seen: the acoustics. “Notre Dame has lost about 20 percent of its acoustics,” says Mylène Pardoen, who is the co-director of the acoustics team working on Notre Dame — under the aegis of the French Ministry of Culture and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (C.N.R.S.), a research organization from whose ranks specialists have been drawn for the restoration. The holes caused a measurable decline in the glorious resonances that gave the building its unique sound.
...

Any change in a space can have a large effect on sound. Despite the size of the cathedral, or perhaps because of it, “a very small change in some material, since it is propagated over hundreds of square meters, can have more of an effect than you would imagine,” Katz says. In comparing acoustical measurements from 2015 with ones taken in 1987, Katz found that even though the cathedral had not undergone any major alterations, the acoustics had changed. The likely culprit turned out to be a carpet strip that had been added to reduce the noise of footfall from tourists visiting during Mass. “That installation of the carpeting reduced the reverberation time a noticeable amount over that period,” he says. “This was remarked by the organist and the choir.”

 

[sbo6]

Getting the sound right in a dedicated audio room is challenging. What about the same task in a multi-use cathedral? Not just any cathedral, but Notre Dame which is in the process of being repaired. Interesting story with interactive 3-D visualizations and associated sound.

The Quest to Restore Notre Dame’s Glorious Sound (Published 2023)

In Paris, experts are modeling ways to revive the burned cathedral’s centuries-old acoustics. A Times interactive shows how space can affect what we hear.

www.nytimes.com

Much of the cathedral’s restoration, projected to be completed in 2024, will address these large holes. They affect not just the structure of the building, but also something that cannot be seen: the acoustics. “Notre Dame has lost about 20 percent of its acoustics,” says Mylène Pardoen, who is the co-director of the acoustics team working on Notre Dame — under the aegis of the French Ministry of Culture and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (C.N.R.S.), a research organization from whose ranks specialists have been drawn for the restoration. The holes caused a measurable decline in the glorious resonances that gave the building its unique sound.
...

Any change in a space can have a large effect on sound. Despite the size of the cathedral, or perhaps because of it, “a very small change in some material, since it is propagated over hundreds of square meters, can have more of an effect than you would imagine,” Katz says. In comparing acoustical measurements from 2015 with ones taken in 1987, Katz found that even though the cathedral had not undergone any major alterations, the acoustics had changed. The likely culprit turned out to be a carpet strip that had been added to reduce the noise of footfall from tourists visiting during Mass. “That installation of the carpeting reduced the reverberation time a noticeable amount over that period,” he says. “This was remarked by the organist and the choir.”

Folks like us can appreciate the deleterious effect of noise dampening techniques; however, I wonder how many visitors / taxpayers really care and / or notice...

 

[rando]

Fun fact. My uncle worked for Charles Eames in the 60s. So many cool stories, my favorite being Eames walking in the basement where he and a coworker were working on the office chair and Eames deciding it should recline and them looking at each other and saying, "how the hell do we do that" because the reclining office chair hadn't been invented yet.

Talk about pinpointing the moment of decline. A lot of fun could be had reclining on a desk with supple leather blotter.

 

[cal3713]

Folks like us can appreciate the deleterious effect of noise dampening techniques; however, I wonder how many visitors / taxpayers really care and / or notice...

100% of people are taxpayers due to the tax on purchases. At least in most Western countries.

 

[PYP]

Folks like us can appreciate the deleterious effect of noise dampening techniques; however, I wonder how many visitors / taxpayers really care and / or notice...

It is interesting to me that since the cathedral has different "users" with different needs, their preference for the sound is probably different:

In studying sound, researchers are not trying to make an exact copy but hoping to understand how a space functions. “There’s no perfect acoustics” for a space, Katz says, “but every action or every use has its ideal acoustics.” As he explains: “If I want to hear the singing of the clergy doing polyphonic music, as they did in the Middle Ages, there is an acoustic that’s best suited to that. If I then go forward to when the preacher is now preaching in a language known by the public, and I want to be able to understand it, that’s going to require a different acoustics.”

In the survey on the acoustic experience of Notre Dame, respondents commented on the building’s unique sound. But the reverberation, which made listening to concerts a particularly moving experience, could create confusion and stress among the singers. They complained about not being able to hear one another and needing more time to rehearse when they performed in the cathedral. As Katz and his colleagues note, acoustic parameters may be objective, but what matters to us in the acoustics of a building evolves over its long history. This meaning has as much to do with the sound itself as with the question of whose history, or whose past, we are trying to restore.

 

[sbo6]

It is interesting to me that since the cathedral has different "users" with different needs, their preference for the sound is probably different:

In studying sound, researchers are not trying to make an exact copy but hoping to understand how a space functions. “There’s no perfect acoustics” for a space, Katz says, “but every action or every use has its ideal acoustics.” As he explains: “If I want to hear the singing of the clergy doing polyphonic music, as they did in the Middle Ages, there is an acoustic that’s best suited to that. If I then go forward to when the preacher is now preaching in a language known by the public, and I want to be able to understand it, that’s going to require a different acoustics.”

In the survey on the acoustic experience of Notre Dame, respondents commented on the building’s unique sound. But the reverberation, which made listening to concerts a particularly moving experience, could create confusion and stress among the singers. They complained about not being able to hear one another and needing more time to rehearse when they performed in the cathedral. As Katz and his colleagues note, acoustic parameters may be objective, but what matters to us in the acoustics of a building evolves over its long history. This meaning has as much to do with the sound itself as with the question of whose history, or whose past, we are trying to restore.

What's key which you pointed out in your words is - the mix on stage is always different than the mix to the listeners in the audience. Same thing in everything from small dive bars (I can attest to) to the biggest venues in the world. And if you don't amplify via electronics on stage or for the audience it's much more difficult to rely on the structure of the space to do the work, hence the challenges you mentioned. The net IMO is - Whether is 100s of years ago or today, there needs to be a balance and ultimately a compromise to achieve both, there it's no perfect both scenarios.

 

[Ron Resnick]

My RT60 is 0.40

My RT60, according to the iPhone ClapReverb app, is .45.

 

[sbo6]

My RT60, according to the iPhone ClapReverb app, is .45.

Just an FYI - RT60 is not one value as it varies across the frequency spectrum and should not be / is rarely the same throughout.

 

[sbnx]

It also varies with where you sit (place your mic)