It is completely room dependent. See, for example, Steve Williams room where his big Wilsons are very close to the sidewalls what most would argue is a no-no, but properly treated room problem solved!
It depends on the dispersion pattern of the speaker, size of room and personal preference. My preference would be a somewhat nearfield setup with the speakers a good distance from any of the walls and a controlled, even and smooth dispersion pattern.
It is completely room dependent. See, for example, Steve Williams room where his big Wilsons are very close to the sidewalls what most would argue is a no-no, but properly treated room problem solved!
Solved is really a better word in my room. There are no side reflections. Having said that I agree that in a perfect world with a large room these issues are easily controlled.
It is completely room dependent. See, for example, Steve Williams room where his big Wilsons are very close to the sidewalls what most would argue is a no-no, but properly treated room problem solved!
Steve, I am not making any assertion. As I mentioned above, I have not heard every single implementation. But so many guys recommend absorption- which in my experience kills the fun.
Solved is really a better word in my room. There are no side reflections. Having said that I agree that in a perfect world with a large room these issues are easily controlled.
That's good, it does depend on personal preference. Personally, I'm happy without reflections off the side walls and also choose speakers with narrower dispersion so it's not an issue either.... others might see that as a huge compromise. Of course Harman's research says sidewall reflections are desirable and give you a sense of spaciousness. IMO it's a result of 1. Acclimation 2. A test system without sufficient resolution to reproduce most of the spatial cues in the recordings. But since Amir isn't here I thought it would be good to point that out.
It depends on the dispersion pattern of the speaker, size of room and personal preference. My preference would be a somewhat nearfield setup with the speakers a good distance from any of the walls and a controlled, even and smooth dispersion pattern.
I think sidewall reflections are often preferred due to acclimation (that's what we're used to) and the fact many systems can't reproduce many spatial cues in the recording so room reflections become the substituted spatial cues. But it makes it sound like all the music is being played in your room rather than hearing the acoustics of the various venues the recordings were made at.
No. Stereo needs some proper reflection in walls and there are so many variables in speakers, rooms, walls (!) and preferences that it is not possible to have a one figure recipe.
Solved is really a better word in my room. There are no side reflections. Having said that I agree that in a perfect world with a large room these issues are easily controlled.
Steve, can you please share how your problem was solved, or is something proprietary?
One way people solve this problem is using SMT wing products...in effect they become the "new wall"...yet even they need to be a certain distance from the speaker...
Nearfield gets you more direct sound vs reflected sound and also increases the time delay between direct and reflected sound, both are good things!
Dispersion pattern is dependent on the speaker only, a polar plot of the speaker will tell you most things about how the speaker will sound that we can measure. While overall dispersion width or angle is subject to personal preference a smoothly falling off-axis response is universally good.
Look up the Haas effect. There is a window where early reflections are BAD because in this short time range the brain mixes the direct and reflected sound. Outside of that the brain can distinguish direct from reflected and this is what is subject to preference. That said there are basically three ways to deal with the problem. Absorb, Diffuse or redirect with reflection. You just need to know the distance of travel of the direct sound and the distance of travel of the reflection to determine if that filtering your hearing is caused by your placement or not. You want their arrival times to be outside of the problematic time window. With speed of sound as constant simply compute if the distance from driver to wall to listening position will arrive later than the direct sound by at least around 100ms for music programme. That should put you out of the worst scenario as far as the first lateral reflections go. Of course now you have to deal with reverberation.
Look up the Haas effect. There is a window where early reflections are BAD because in this short time range the brain mixes the direct and reflected sound. Outside of that the brain can distinguish direct from reflected and this is what is subject to preference. That said there are basically three ways to deal with the problem. Absorb, Diffuse or redirect with reflection. You just need to know the distance of travel of the direct sound and the distance of travel of the reflection to determine if that filtering your hearing is caused by your placement or not. You want their arrival times to be outside of the problematic time window. With speed of sound as constant simply compute if the distance from driver to wall to listening position will arrive later than the direct sound by at least around 100ms for music programme. That should put you out of the worst scenario as far as the first lateral reflections go. Of course now you have to deal with reverberation.
Out of the 3 approaches you mention - Absorb, Diffuse, or Redirect with reflection, do you happen to know if the SMT wing products are in the Redirect camp?
No. Stereo needs some proper reflection in walls and there are so many variables in speakers, rooms, walls (!) and preferences that it is not possible to have a one figure recipe.
Look up the Haas effect. There is a window where early reflections are BAD because in this short time range the brain mixes the direct and reflected sound. Outside of that the brain can distinguish direct from reflected and this is what is subject to preference. That said there are basically three ways to deal with the problem. Absorb, Diffuse or redirect with reflection. You just need to know the distance of travel of the direct sound and the distance of travel of the reflection to determine if that filtering your hearing is caused by your placement or not. You want their arrival times to be outside of the problematic time window. With speed of sound as constant simply compute if the distance from driver to wall to listening position will arrive later than the direct sound by at least around 100ms for music programme. That should put you out of the worst scenario as far as the first lateral reflections go. Of course now you have to deal with reverberation.
For small rooms 100 ms isn't practical as that takes about 33 meters. General rule of thumb is ~4 meters so speakers should ideally be 2 meters or more from sources of reflections.
