Ah, that sweet sound of glass and marble....sorry, I just could not resist...
Good ol’ honest engineering - the world best cd transport from years ago
- Thread starter Sangbro
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You do not know before speaker placement you should not treat your room.
The most important thing is speaker placement, it takes time and effort
So, the proud presentation is just a work in progress, than? Looking forward to see the final result....at least the marble tiles are useful for moving things around...and for cleaning...'clean sound'....sounds like a great marketing slogan....
TAD design is far from marketing clean sound.
The design is very minimal with minimum parts and very simple circuit design. No voltage feedback just very little current feedback.
The sound is very analog and pure without any dynamic compression.
The contrast between cd albums (and every changes) is very high.
TAD Labs has no rival in this industry at the price range
Dear @Amir IME glass is not the worst sounding material regarding acoustics. If they are well fitted on windows, dampened with rubber and thick enough they actually don’t do much harm. Marble floor is not the worst either. Maybe more carpeting helps but a well supported wooden floor is better.
IMHO the most problematic area in the picture of your listening room is drywall. Drywall is ultimately worse than glass and marble. I’m guessing the air vents on the ceiling constructed using drywall. It works like an additional driver ruining bass and midbass by adding reverberation, killing clarity. I hear you’re saying your system sounds great and clear but I’m sure it will sound better when you get rid of that drywall. I cannot explain how bad drywall is and how impossible to get rid of it’s negative effects. Concrete or brick walls and a concrete floor and ceiling is a must for a listening room. If desired they can be covered with wood afterwards but it must be supported/dampened not to resonate. Anybody thinks a drywalled room (all walls) sounds good or can be treated to sound good is wrong.
IMHO the most problematic area in the picture of your listening room is drywall. Drywall is ultimately worse than glass and marble. I’m guessing the air vents on the ceiling constructed using drywall. It works like an additional driver ruining bass and midbass by adding reverberation, killing clarity. I hear you’re saying your system sounds great and clear but I’m sure it will sound better when you get rid of that drywall. I cannot explain how bad drywall is and how impossible to get rid of it’s negative effects. Concrete or brick walls and a concrete floor and ceiling is a must for a listening room. If desired they can be covered with wood afterwards but it must be supported/dampened not to resonate. Anybody thinks a drywalled room (all walls) sounds good or can be treated to sound good is wrong.
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Properly used drywall in an excellent material for sound rooms. There are many approaches to building a listening room, there is not a "best" . In fact some of the best listening rooms we read about in high-end forums are drywalled rooms, as you call them.
Surely I also do not find the shown HVAC structure as a good thing, but I do not know what care was taken when building it. And from a purely subjective and personal perspective , listening in the shown space with such clean and empty aspect would create a negative listening bias in me. Just my opinion, others would probably love it.
No, drywall can never be good cause it doesn't have the stiffness, rigidity, high specific weight that bricks and concrete has. It also has a very bad character of reflected sound.
Obviously, they’re not the best listening rooms. If they had put the same care and effort into building a listening room with brick or concrete instead of drywall, it would have been significantly better.
I agree but there is a cure for it as long as it has been covered with stiff, rigid material like concrete and marble. There is no cure for drywall. I don't take into consideration of a person's evaluations about audio who is listening room is made out of drywall. I don't aim you or @Amir with this sentence. Actually I don't aim anybody. I just wanted to point out how bad a room covered with drywalls. That's my opinion.
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Thanks for your opinion. It seems to me you do not consider the acoustic problems caused by stiffness, rigidity, high specific weight - I refer to medium size listening rooms, not to cathedrals or music halls.
Acousticians and scholars addressed these issues - should we believe it is all a big conspiration financed by drywall manufacturers?
Thanks for telling us that you do not consider opinions of people who disagree with you. Nothing to add.
Do Acoustic Engineers recommend using drywall instead of bricks and concrete? Is there any proof of that? On what basis?
Is your listening room is made out of drywall?
Again, it is not a black and white affair that can be summarized in a post - this is not the story of the three little pigs and a wolf. Usually sound rooms are a mix of techniques for engineering and sound reasons. The point is that we can have excellent rooms using drywall. The main reason is bass absorption, addressed in most books about the subject.
Yes, but not all of it. Feel free to discard my opinions. Are you putting on ignore anyone in this forum having vestiges of dry wall in his room?
No, I don't ignore anybody. The problem with drywall is its reverberant character. Unlike heavy, stiff walls of concrete and bricks, thin drywall panels act like an additional driver due to its light weight. Covering it with absorbing material can only reduce reflections over the surface but cannot stop it moving like a driver.Again, it is not a black and white affair that can be summarized in a post - this is not the story of the three little pigs and a wolf. Usually sound rooms are a mix of techniques for engineering and sound reasons. The point is that we can have excellent rooms using drywall. The main reason is bass absorption, addressed in most books about the subject.
Yes, but not all of it. Feel free to discard my opinions. Are you putting on ignore anyone in this forum having vestiges of dry wall in his room?
...drywall issues, since it a very common building product, are often managed using a constrained layer, and then a second layer of drywall. Would an outer layer of luan be better? Maybe. You're still going to have to treat the space more or less, in my experience.
The spectrum of audio is wide 20 - 20000Hz, materials have different properties depending on frequency. Remember drywall is associated with powerful absorbers, such as rock wool when used in acoustics.
The energy radiated by speakers must be absorbed - and a moving surface can be an indication of absorption in bass frequencies. Can we talk in terms of standing waves?
A moving surface means it’s vibrating and producing sound. Try listening to your setup with additional speakers in the room—ones with large bass drivers but not connected to an amplifier. You’ll notice a smear in the sound due to vibrations produced by the unconnected speakers. The main speakers playing act as the source of these vibrations in the passive speakers. Same goes for drywall cause it is light, not as light as a cone of a driver but still light. Increased rigidity and weight of a concrete or brick wall compared to light drywall, it is more difficult to move it in audible frequency range by sound produced by speakers. This is about reverberation and resonance.
On the other hand standing waves are related with reflection.
Maybe you found a way to overcome those shortcomings of drywall but it is difficult. Just my two cents.
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Sorry it is not possible to debate anything using old myths and such basic empirical evidence. I did not find anything - I just used existing knowledge on acoustic room design and treatment.
If you are curious see how some rooms referred in this great old thread are built see :
https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/best-dedicated-listening-room-youve-ever-heard.30662/
If needed chatgpt will easily find additional information for you on these rooms.
I bet my room sounds better than yours and I have a mixture of drywall, stone, and wood.
This definitely has not been my experience. This is the first time I have even heard of this claim.
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