Reverberation role in a listening room

[Ronboco]

Hello all,
I would like to hear some thoughts on reverb in a listening room. I have a smaller room that was designed by an acoustician and it is almost all absorption. There is no drywall in the room. The walls behind the speakers have 1/4 inch pegboard on the studs and all other walls and ceiling have 2 inch rigid fiberglass over 1/4 inch pegboard. There is Rockwool in between the studs and in the ceiling. Everyone that has listened to my system has said it is over damped. Is this because they are just used to hearing reverb or does reverb play an important role in the quality of the music. Thank you for your thoughts.

Ron

 

[Alrainbow]

A room needs to be alive but how alive becomes the choice. basically some echo is ok but too much is bad. if the room is over damped live music looses some ambience. Studio recordings seem less your there.
Now having said this speakers have a varying degree of influence on the room. placement of speakers matters and the type of speaker as well.
Near-field , corner , how much tow all affect the needs of the room.
one very simple test is loud clapping in your room a tiny or slight echo maybe be heard. This is crude but does give some idea.
also have someone stand Ina corner have them speak you listen in your seat. do the same standing on the same wall as the person is speaking.
the vice needs to be alive not dead meaning some echo tiny but there.
I am not a room designer but I feel if it’s just for Hifi over damping is not always wanted.
for surround sound more damping maybe needed
many people are fans of both so choice is also important
I hope this helps

 

[Ronboco]

A room needs to be alive but how alive becomes the choice. basically some echo is ok but too much is bad. if the room is over damped live music looses some ambience. Studio recordings seem less your there.
Now having said this speakers have a varying degree of influence on the room. placement of speakers matters and the type of speaker as well.
Near-field , corner , how much tow all affect the needs of the room.
one very simple test is loud clapping in your room a tiny or slight echo maybe be heard. This is crude but does give some idea.
also have someone stand Ina corner have them speak you listen in your seat. do the same standing on the same wall as the person is speaking.
the vice needs to be alive not dead meaning some echo tiny but there.
I am not a room designer but I feel if it’s just for Hifi over damping is not always wanted.
for surround sound more damping maybe needed
many people are fans of both so choice is also important
I hope this helps

Thank you for your thoughts. I have had the room for just over a year so I’m inexperienced with what to listen for but it really sounds good to me. I know there aren’t many reflections and I’m probably listening mostly to the direct sound from the speakers. The soundstage goes well beyond the speakers and the center image is excellent. I get 3d sound if the recording has it. I am just wondering if livening it up will improve on what I am hearing now

 

[sbnx]

I have listened in rooms with a range of RT60 (Reverb) values from 0.2 to 0.65. To me anything over about 0.45 is becoming too "noisy" and the 0.65 room was hard to listen to. 0.2 is too low and does sound very dead and dry. I personally like it about 0.3 -0.35. However, some would think this is too low and like the 0.45 sound better. There have been studies that show the average furnished/carpeted living room has an RT60 of about 0.5.

If you have no hard surfaces at all and everything is covered in insulation then I would guess your RT60 value is 0.2 or maybe even less.

 

[Ronboco]

Hi sbnx. I had someone over who helped me sweep the room with REW. I will check to see what the RT 60 was thank you for the input.

 

[mtemur]

0.3 to 0.5 may be optimum for RT60 measurements but that is not the most important thing. Acoustic treatment stuff like rockwool, fiberglass, any kind of sponge etc are extremely bad for sound. It’s impossible to stand their sound signature. At the end of the day you can get a good measuring room in terms of RT60 and frequency response but with an awful sound.

For example same electricity passing through a copper and a silver cable, when you measure they give the same results but they sound different. They reflect their sound signature depending on the material they’re made of. Same goes for acoustic treatments. Two rooms, one is treated with rockwool other is treated with ebony and arranged to measure same but they will sound different.

I recommend you to use minimum acoustic treatment possible.

 

[Ronboco]

mtemur. Thanks for the response. What do those types of materials do to the sound ? Aren’t those the same materials GIK and the other big names are using? What materials do you recommend ? Would you recommend the absolute minimum amount of treatment no matter the room size ?

Ron

 

[Bobvin]

My room construction is a bit different. Recycled blue-jeans insulation between studs, then a layer of mass loaded vinyl, then sheetrock. After that, rigid fiberglass (different spec on different walls) THEN pegboard that was drilled onsite with varying sized holes. Over that some Guillford acoustic fabric. The drilled pegboard makes all the walls BAD (binary amplitude diffusion) panels.

Down the adjacent hallway, to reduce echo I used the fabric over the hard fiberglass without the drilled pegboard. This acts as pure absorption. I Imagine a room with fiberglass only would be very damped indeed.

 

[Ronboco]

Bobvin. Very interesting ! I’m assuming this is the inside of the room. The outside of my room has a layer of 1/2 inch drywall then a layer of mass loaded vinyl then another layer of 5/8 inch drywall. I measure 28 db inside the room with nothing on. Would love to hear your setup!
Ron

 

[Bobvin]

Bobvin. Very interesting ! I’m assuming this is the inside of the room. The outside of my room has a layer of 1/2 inch drywall then a layer of mass loaded vinyl then another layer of 5/8 inch drywall. I measure 28 db inside the room with nothing on. Would love to hear your setup!
Ron

Details of my room build-out were described in the thread

Bob's New Listening Room and System

I'll tell the tale of my return to Hi-Fi later, but here's my latest: Last year, about this time, my wife was told she'd worked her way out of a job, but there was a position in Portland they wanted her to take. I got the news, and a "Honey, I'm going to be living in corporate housing in...

www.whatsbestforum.com

beginning on page 3 you can see the photos

on the rhapsody.audio website, in the “portland” location page you can see more images

if you are in the area, I am always happy to share tunes

 

[Ronboco]

That is quite a story! We are in Colorado but if I’m ever up your way I’ll drop by. And you are welcome to come over for a listen if you are in Colo. I have Rockport (Avior ii) and Boulder (866). My system in on audiogon if you would like to see some pics. My handle is ronboco.

 

[Alrainbow]

on room echo how does speaker type and placement matter the goals on echo ?

 

[hopkins]

I have listened in rooms with a range of RT60 (Reverb) values from 0.2 to 0.65. To me anything over about 0.45 is becoming too "noisy" and the 0.65 room was hard to listen to. 0.2 is too low and does sound very dead and dry. I personally like it about 0.3 -0.35. However, some would think this is too low and like the 0.45 sound better. There have been studies that show the average furnished/carpeted living room has an RT60 of about 0.5.

If you have no hard surfaces at all and everything is covered in insulation then I would guess your RT60 value is 0.2 or maybe even less.

RT60 targets depend on the room size. For a small room, 0.2 may be fine. Here is a calculator:

RT60 calc

REW documentation states: "For domestic listening rooms and recording studios with volumes of less than 50 cubic metres (1,800 cubic feet) the recommended RT60 value is 0.3 s. For larger rooms, up to 200 cubic metres (7,000 cubic feet) the recommendation is 0.4 to 0.6 s. In both cases the value should be fairly uniform across the frequency range, though it will typically tend to increase at lower frequencies."

 

[hopkins]

I measure 28 db inside the room with nothing on

Nice. I'm 10db above that, but I live in a city and don't have a dedicated listening space that I can "isolate"...

What are your room's dimensions ?

 

[Ronboco]

Hello Hopkins. My room is 16’8” x 15’ x 7’6”. I have a 45 degree wall behind the listening chair so my room designer thought the best setup would be a corner placement on the opposite side. I haven’t tried any other configurations

 

[Kingrex]

It would seem to me, if all your walls and ceiling are treated fairly similar, your sucking a particular frequency and not impacting others.

 

[Ronboco]

Kingrex. That may be true but the sweep we did with REW showed a pretty flat response. I don’t have years of listening experience but as a whole the system sounds amazing to me. I welcome anyone to come over and see what they think. I always value more experienced listeners opinions.

 

[DonH50]

Where in CO?

Reverb is not really a thing in typical listening rooms as they are too small acoustically to support significant reverberation. RT60 does not really apply to small rooms though is often used anyway. Reflections, however, do contribute to the feeling of "space" but also mean the direct sound from the speakers is modified by the reflected sound. Opinions vary and the amount of reflected energy that is pleasing is a personal preference. Toole and others have done experiments showing most listeners do prefer a fair amount of reflected energy. As for me, I prefer a room that is more "dry", that is treated to reduce reflections. The sound is more direct and thus (arguably) closer to what the recording engineers intended, and I depend upon good speakers to present the soundstage. That avoids artifacts from reflections that can change the image and modify the frequency response, so yields a flatter frequency response, but also means a less "spacious" sound out of the main listening spot.

It's a personal thing so no real right or wrong, just what sounds good to you. You can cover the absorbers with heavy plastic or plywood sheets to add high-frequency reflections and see if you prefer that sound. I had to remove some of my side panels to make room for large side speakers. The sound changed a little but I could not really say if it was better or worse to me. Probably not a big enough change since it was only a couple of panels removed (one on each side wall).

 

[Ronboco]

Hi DonH50. Thank you for your thoughts. I am in Firestone north of Denver.

 

[Ronboco]

Hello DonH50
If you are in Colo also I would love to have you over for a listen. I’m not sure how to private message on WBF so if interested let me know.

Ron