How important is the room?

[Ron Party]

Gary, I don't see how what you posted contradicts that which I posted. Far from it, I would interpret what you posted as corroborative: the room & the speakers are one and, together, determine not just the 60 to 80% of the sound (which Bruce attributed solely to the room) but an additional 15% to that range.

 

[NorthStar]

That is also how I read it Ron, and you too are absolutely correct.

Gary simply brought another perspective to the equation, and he is also right as well.

See, we can say the same thing but using different phrases ...
Phrasing it with interwoven words.

=> Like we said before; the room & the loudspeakers form a communion together, and the more balanced that communion is (fitting for each other), the better the auditive results.

 

[DaveyF]

I would respectfully disagree. You have to consider the room first, and then select the speakers to go in that room. If you pick the speakers first, you'll have to design the room around the speakers. I suspect that it will be easier to consider the room first.

Gary that's a very good point. Getting back to my OP, the room that I heard these marginal speakers in was so great that it brought these speakers ( and the rest of the system) along for the ride. The result was absolutely an eye-opener. I'm a 100% certain that IF i heard a great system in this same room, it would have been an extraordinary sound and one that we could all envy.
The contribution of the room, in this instance to the overall sound that I heard that day, had to be about 90+% if not more of the total sound.
Frankly ( no pun intended) you could have put a Bose radio in there and been almost a contender for best at show type of sound!

 

[garylkoh]

Gary, I don't see how what you posted contradicts that which I posted. Far from it, I would interpret what you posted as corroborative: the room & the speakers are one and, together, determine not just the 60 to 80% of the sound (which Bruce attributed solely to the room) but an additional 15% to that range.

Put that way, I agree. In the end, the room and speakers are one and together determine 75% to may be 85% of the sound (I wouldn't go as far as 95%). My perspective came from picking a pair of speakers, starting to design the room for it, and then finding out that those speakers were no longer available. A 6 month quest for finding a replacement resulted in so far 10 years of toil....

 

[microstrip]

May be now that almost all of us have agreed on the easy thinks, how do you grade the parts of the 60-80% attributed to the room?

Suppose you should attribute a scaling factor to each of those:

1. Total volume
2. Relative dimensions
3. Bass treatments
4. Absorption and diffusion.

How would you class them?

For simplification I am considering that noise room was already successfully dealt with.

 

[mep]

They are all obviously important and intertwined, but I don't think your numbering system is too far off the mark.

 

[JackD201]

Me neither. I would have put 3 and 4 together though.

 

[DaveyF]

Jack agree with you. Interestingly, in this particular room, there were no "band-aids" at all....no bass treatments and no absorption or diffusion ( at least none that was added intentionally)!
I spoke to the owner of the home yesterday and he volunteered that they had recently had a concert pianist playing a Baby Grand in the room and the pianist absolutely loved the sound.
I can totally understand why

 

[mep]

Jack agree with you. Interestingly, in this particular room, the were no "band-aids" at all....no bass treatments and no absorption or diffusion ( at least none that was added intentionally)!

Let’s chalk it up to serendipity.

 

[DaveyF]

Mark, in that particular room, that would be probably the best explanation.
But I think there are some things to be learnt when a room such as this presents itself to us, which in my experience is rare.
The size and construction along with the overall sound to be obtained is one thing that is interesting to note.
Another, is that we can achieve a very good sound without the use of mega-buck gear and the various acoustic treatments that most of us are forced to use due to the inadequacies of our room(s); IF we can acquire a room such as this one.
As I said before, i can only imagine how tremendous a current SOTA system would sound in a room such as this one. I suspect very few of us have ever heard such a set-up.

 

[mep]

Davey-I think what your friend has proven to you in spades is what many have been preaching for a long time. And that is if you don't spend some time and money on getting your room *right* you are wasting your money on your gear. A great sounding room with so-so gear will smoke a terrible sounding room with mega-expensive gear every time.

 

[Steve williams]

Davey-I think what your friend has proven to you in spades is what many have been preaching for a long time. And that is if you don't spend some time and money on getting your room *right* you are wasting your money on your gear. A great sounding room with so-so gear will smoke a terrible sounding room with mega-expensive gear every time.

don't tell that to Frank

 

[NorthStar]

Funny that you just mentioned Frank Steve,
because I was thinking 'bout him exactly at this very precise moment. :b

 

[Bruce B]

Davey-I think what your friend has proven to you in spades is what many have been preaching for a long time. And that is if you don't spend some time and money on getting your room *right* you are wasting your money on your gear. A great sounding room with so-so gear will smoke a terrible sounding room with mega-expensive gear every time.

I certainly found that out quick. Before my studio was finished, I tried moving my equipment into the livingroom and then a loft area so I could start mastering a few projects. This was well over $100k of equipment and little to no room treatments. All the projects sounded like arse.

 

[DonH50]

May be now that almost all of us have agreed on the easy thinks, how do you grade the parts of the 60-80% attributed to the room?

Suppose you should attribute a scaling factor to each of those:

1. Total volume
2. Relative dimensions
3. Bass treatments
4. Absorption and diffusion.

How would you class them?

For simplification I am considering that noise room was already successfully dealt with.

I would rank relative dimensions (2) first as they determine room modes and interactions. Seating position also plays into dimensions (or vice versa -- room dimensions dictate optimal listening positions, which may clash with aesthetics).

The next few are tough as they are so interrelated. I would also group bass treatments (3) and absorption and diffusion (4) into a single "room treatments" category. Most rooms benefit from bass treatments and treatment of at least a few reflection points. Room dimensions determine the placement and number/type of room treatments.

Total volume is also a toughie. I tend to think too large or too small a room can be an issue, but a large room with the right dimensions is probably optimal. I am not sure how you would define large, small, etc. My current room is too small for my tastes (and seating area), at roughly 13'3" x 17'7" x 8'6", and the relative dimensions are close enough to integer ratios to cause some nasty standing waves. A 17' x 23' x 9' room strikes me as a reasonable size that ought to fit in most houses.

Poor dimensions can be helped with room treatments, though doubled-up dimensions that cause bass nulls are difficult (usually impractical) to treat. Room volume falls out of the dimensions chosen, and I would choose dimensions based upon both acoustic issues and the desired seating space etc.

Note that for media systems, dimensions are also driven by screen size.

All waffling does not leave me with a good feeling for assigning hard percentages. Perhaps 60% - 70% room dimensions and volume, and 30% - 40% room treatments.

 

[FrantzM]

To what Don Said I would add Room material... I had to deal with a concrete room. The walls being solid with nearly no absorption thus room modes are strongest. I had a wall basically covered with ASC Tube Traps and Tube Traps clones ... When I covered the concrete with Drywall mounted on 2 x6 wood studs, stuffed with fiberglass insulation material.. Then a second wall with the same insualtion and another drywall .. I would have used Acoustic Gypsum Board such as Silent FX but this was a pain to order and ship to Haiti so I used the locally found 5/8 sheetrock. Difference was dramatic... both measurable and audible. I ended up using much less of the Tube Traps and tube Traps clones...

I like large rooms ... I like large speakers anyway

 

[microstrip]

(...) My current room is too small for my tastes (and seating area), at roughly 13'3" x 17'7" x 8'6", and the relative dimensions are close enough to integer ratios to cause some nasty standing waves. A 17' x 23' x 9' room strikes me as a reasonable size that ought to fit in most houses.
.

Don,

Just entered the dimensions of your room in the Room Eigenmodes Calculator located at

http://www.hunecke.de/en/calculators/room-eigenmodes.html

and my naive analysis suggest you have a good room - no difficult problems up to 90 Hz. What are the nasty standing waves you are referring to?

Apologies for being so direct, but I am really interested on feedback abut this tool - I use it often to suggest speaker placement in rectangular rooms.

 

[fas42]

BUT---- Do you agree that headphones take the MAJOR contributor of your sound ( Your room) out of the equation?

At least part of the "argument" would be that bass is taken very, very seriously in your part of the world. As compared to, say the British. And when I say bass I mean the very bottom of the range, where the subwoofer really earns its keep. Now, being more aligned to the Brits in this area, that bottom octave or two is neither here nor there for me; if the soprano sounds right that's what counts for me.

But if getting the bass octaves truly "correct" is deeply important, then of course those room dimensions and treatment elements will be very crucial.

So, getting back to headphones, if we are talking about bass octaves only, then, yes, they would take the room out the equation. But higher up in the spectrum that's not the case. At least for me, because getting the system to work really, really well means that the acoustic of the recording, real or manufactured, dominates the room. The system reproduces the subtle acoustic clues clearly, cleanly enough that these key elements are what my ear/brain lock into, not into how the room is responding. When I was using the Sennheisers, HD650s, I tried the trick of running the speakers at the same time, putting the headphones on and taking them off to compare: I was getting more of the original acoustic, and sense of the recording space from the speakers then the HD650s.

Frank

 

[DonH50]

Don,

Just entered the dimensions of your room in the Room Eigenmodes Calculator located at

http://www.hunecke.de/en/calculators/room-eigenmodes.html

and my naive analysis suggest you have a good room - no difficult problems up to 90 Hz. What are the nasty standing waves you are referring to?

Apologies for being so direct, but I am really interested on feedback abut this tool - I use it often to suggest speaker placement in rectangular rooms.

Hi microstrip,

That calculator did not run for me on this old notebook; not sure why not (have to troubleshoot later, probably a Java issue).

I use a program (Mathcad) to calculate room modes. I made it long before I knew about all the ones on the Web. Anyway, for my room, the fundamental axial mode is at 32.1 Hz and there's a large null at that frequency. There are also a number of very closely spaced modes (only a few Hz apart) in the 50 - 200 Hz range, including a couple around 60 Hz, that make it very hard to treat.

The fundamental equation used is:

fmode = v/2 * sqrt[(n/L)^2 + (m/W)^2 + (k/H)^2] where
v = speed of sound (1130'/s)
n, m, k = integers
L = length
W = width
H = height

Axial, tangential, and oblique modes are calculated from this equation and the program spits out the modal frequency, type, and frequency spacing (delta-f) to the previous mode. Small spacing means modes "double up" and so are harder to deal with.

I'll have to try the calculator later on my desktop (which has the latest Java, I think).

Thanks,
Don

 

[NorthStar]

These calculators, are they taking into consideration mice exits, door openings, craked windows, and all that sort of Blues?