What does a "great room" mean?

[stehno]

Thanks Stehno - very good points which I mostly agree with & as you can see from this thread I'm working my way into trying to better understand this whole room interaction area
I don't read the multi-channel comment in the same way that you do - what he is stating is again that what is heard IDEALLY SHOULD be independent of room interactions.

I'm particularly interested in what you said here & it's what I'm trying to tease out in this thread"Assuming the room is of reasonable quality to start, if the playback system is up-to-snuff (you can count them on one hand maybe), the room treatment should have little effect because what should be an overwhelming amount of music info filling the room (by a well-thought-out playback system) should easily overtake or overshadow a given room's reasonable deficiencies."
This exactly concurs with my experience & it's what I said in the "believability" thread & what I'm trying to delve into further in this thread - the idea that when a room is of a reasonable quality, it becomes a moot variable in achieving "believability", that what is of more import are improvements in the electronics.

My last post above yours was an attempt to question how DML work because understanding this may well give us a far better understanding of the role of room interactions & their place in our listening

In response to your particular interest, I'd first clarify my statement of "... the room is of reasonable quality to start." By that I imply the room is of reasonable size and measurements, relatively symmetrical left to right, few if any reflective furnishings, quality carpet & premium pad, and also assuming the enthusiast has reasonable speaker placement knowledge, i.e. the basics and not much else. Hence, the room's acoustic anomalies are already somewhat minimized and those that remain should easily be overshadowed by the sheer volume of audible music info stored in even some of the worst engineered Redbook CD's. Note that "should" was emboldened.

However, since much of this volume of music info remains inaudible because it remains below a much raised noise floor (due to distortions within the electronics), influences stemming from outside the reproduced presentation are gonna' have a far greater impact on the presentation. If that is true, it's no wonder that so many "all out assault type of system" owners claim the room (and all associated acoustic remedies) to be their greatest single component.

Think of this as watching a movie on an 11-inch TV vs a 50-inch TV. If a housefly was in your vision for either tv, for which sized tv will its flight have the greater impact? Maybe not the best analogy for what's going on, but hopefully still gets the point across.

 

[NorthStar]

Great question. I would love to tour a number of professional mastering houses to educate myself!

Good morning, :b

I would love to take you on a tour around the world in the best acoustic halls and also in some top professional music recording studios.
For that I would need my own personal learjet, pilot, limo, chauffeur, secretary and a good supply of gold in these uncertain financial times.

I am a little short of all the above (except for the secretary), and also because I am not an expert, however I could provide few interesting links.
And because good sound in our rooms starts @ the music recordings done in home studios for many recordings in the year 2016...
• http://therecordingrevolution.com/2013/12/20/stop-worrying-about-room-acoustics/

And in our own rooms...
• http://www.hometoys.com/content.php?post_type=1511
• http://www.gcaudio.com/resources/howtos/roomacoustics.html

And the overall various shapes of our rooms...
• http://knaufdanoline.com/wp-content/uploads/Room-shape.pdf

 

[Steve williams]

Good morning, :b

I would love to take you on a tour around the world in the best acoustic halls and also in some top professional music recording studios.
For that I would need my own personal learjet, pilot, limo, chauffeur, secretary and a good supply of gold in these uncertain financial times.

I am a little short of all the above (except for the secretary), and also because I am not an expert, however I could provide few interesting links.
And because good sound in our rooms starts @ the music recordings done in studios and live venues from the artists we love...
• http://therecordingrevolution.com/2013/12/20/stop-worrying-about-room-acoustics/

And in our own rooms...
• http://www.hometoys.com/content.php?post_type=1511
• http://www.gcaudio.com/resources/howtos/roomacoustics.html

And the overall various shapes of our rooms...
• http://knaufdanoline.com/wp-content/uploads/Room-shape.pdf

Interesting links Bob. Thanks.

Here's the quote from one of your links that caught my eye IMHO should dispel the notion that room treatments are not beneficial.

No matter how well treated, there is no such thing as a perfect-sounding room. Second, no matter how good a room might sound on its own, every room can be improved with intelligently-applied acoustic treatment.

 

[stehno]

... So how is this series of smaller decorrelated waves transformed into the auditory signals that we perceive as a pure tone?

This is what the NXT paper says - which isn't helpful "Think of it as an array of very small drivers, all radiating different, uncorrelated signals that nonetheless sum to produce the desired output." How do decorrelated signals sum to produce a correlated signal? Where does this happen - outer ear, inner ear, auditory processing?...

If I'm understanding your question correctly, how would a choir of 30 members singing the Hallelujah Chorus be much different? And would not the collective whole also be generating new correlated pure tones simultaneously?

And why would you think the hearing process would be any different?

 

[fas42]

Hence, the room's acoustic anomalies are already somewhat minimized and those that remain should easily be overshadowed by the sheer volume of audible music info stored in even some of the worst engineered Redbook CD's. Note that "should" was emboldened.

However, since much of this volume of music info remains inaudible because it remains below a much raised noise floor (due to distortions within the electronics), influences stemming from outside the reproduced presentation are gonna' have a far greater impact on the presentation. If that is true, it's no wonder that so many "all out assault type of system" owners claim the room (and all associated acoustic remedies) to be their greatest single component.

Think of this as watching a movie on an 11-inch TV vs a 50-inch TV. If a housefly was in your vision for either tv, for which sized tv will its flight have the greater impact? Maybe not the best analogy for what's going on, but hopefully still gets the point across.

This is an excellent version of describing the situation, IMO ...

 

[jkeny]

If I'm understanding your question correctly, how would a choir of 30 members singing the Hallelujah Chorus be much different? And would not the collective whole also be generating new correlated pure tones simultaneously?

And why would you think the hearing process would be any different?

What I'm asking is why would the many area resonances that we see on the panel for the 1KHz signal (see the youtube video i linked) give us the perception of a 1KHz tone? From what I read these different areas that are resonating aren't producing vibrations that are in phase (the are decorrelated vibrations) so they are not like a choir singing in unison?

 

[jkeny]

In response to your particular interest, I'd first clarify my statement of "... the room is of reasonable quality to start." By that I imply the room is of reasonable size and measurements, relatively symmetrical left to right, few if any reflective furnishings, quality carpet & premium pad, and also assuming the enthusiast has reasonable speaker placement knowledge, i.e. the basics and not much else. Hence, the room's acoustic anomalies are already somewhat minimized and those that remain should easily be overshadowed by the sheer volume of audible music info stored in even some of the worst engineered Redbook CD's. Note that "should" was emboldened.

However, since much of this volume of music info remains inaudible because it remains below a much raised noise floor (due to distortions within the electronics), influences stemming from outside the reproduced presentation are gonna' have a far greater impact on the presentation. If that is true, it's no wonder that so many "all out assault type of system" owners claim the room (and all associated acoustic remedies) to be their greatest single component.

Think of this as watching a movie on an 11-inch TV vs a 50-inch TV. If a housefly was in your vision for either tv, for which sized tv will its flight have the greater impact? Maybe not the best analogy for what's going on, but hopefully still gets the point across.

Yes, very good analysis & it concurs with my experience & where I focus my attention in the electronics area. In my experience a lower noise floor (or maybe it's lower noise modulation?) always brings more believability

 

[stehno]

Yes, very good analysis & it concurs with my experience & where I focus my attention in the electronics area. In my experience a lower noise floor (or maybe it's lower noise modulation?) always brings more believability

Yes. And in every last characteristic, particularly ambient info that as I recently posted in the "Believability" thread is what I consider the most important single characteristic to judge a playback system's level of musicality or believability. It's also when the ambient info embedded in the recording is prominant that the local listening room's quirks greatly diminish, even to the point of becoming a non-issue. Overshadowed.

 

[jkeny]

Yes. And in every last characteristic, particularly ambient info that as I recently posted in the "Believability" thread is what I consider the most important single characteristic to judge a playback system's level of musicality or believability. It's also when the ambient info embedded in the recording is prominant that the local listening room's quirks greatly diminish, even to the point of becoming a non-issue. Overshadowed.

+1

 

[FrantzM]

Yes, this is very much the case ... even though my playback is over speakers that nominally have poor bass response, the subjective impression is of deep, powerful, intense bass; there is absolutely no need to actually reproduce the fundamentals of the lowest notes for the replay to be convincing in the bass area - as an example, full bore pipe organ workouts have all the gusto one could wish for - vibrating window panes not required ... , .

I must take exception to this statement. This kind of back and forth has been going on for a while.Given the gentle nature of most at WBF many have been trying not to interject oo strongly. This is FALSE. POINT BLANK!!!! ..If it rattles the room and your bones when live you would like to have this happening at home at least if possible for so-called believability!
However much some would like to reject the basic but quite useful FR if the speaker can't do in room low bass at good volume levels at the listening positions then no amount of subjectivity will help. THis will not happen with a speaker that, in room, tops at 60 hz then drop down -30 dB at 40Hz when asked to play 40 Hz at 90 dB !!!! Reproducing the deepest notes of the organ is a requisite for realism, else you know it is an organ but you miss what makes it so ,.. well, powerful, There is no way you will reproduce Saint Saens Third without going lower than 30Hz.. Same with Poulenc Organ Symphony or many other organ works.. The ability to go low enough with cleanliness to feel the bass in the bones (a different mechanism of hearing that goes through the body as opposed to the air) is not a a "subjective" thing you build in your head. No! It is a reality that only good low bass reproduction can allow, and that requires power and linearity in the bass. No "ifs","buts" it is a necessity! .Regardless of the efforts put forth in this thread to show how unimportant the room is, the physical reality is that the room dominates in the bass and for that you need speakers, electronics and room treatments that optimize the reproduction of bass. Given the actual state of the High End, electronics capable of serious low bass are common. True there will always be the lone 3-watter not able to produce much low bass unless it finds a 110 db/w/m, 32 ohms woofer but for the most part most electronics reproduce bass rather well.. Of course some are better than others and for the "synergy" fan there will always be the need to have their midrange and treble amps to match their bass amps... Fine! they can do that too but addressing the room provides more.

On addressing the room the lack of consensus seem to be an argument. Are there consensus on what constitute a great sports car? Some like Corvette , some a Porsche 911, Some a Ferrari and some do find basic rocket-pocket like the best sports cars.. things like A Ford Fiesta GT, Volkswagen GTI or Mazda Miata, for some it is the basic American Muscle cars, Camaro, etc and this i not for a lack of funds... There is such a thing as a great sports car in lack of the absence of consensus .. We can round up a few tings.. For starters a sports car must be able to go fast ... and reach "fast"... quickly .. It must give you the sensation of you going fast .. A Rolls Royce Phatom going at 150 mph will not procure the same feeling as a Ferrari doing the same... Yet there are objective parameters that define a "sports"car. A car is not entrirely defined by objective parameters, some are subjective.. THere are a set of parameters that once met this car becomes a "sports" car.

Same with a room. We know it must allow the full enjoyment of the system allow it to shine. To provide to a listener a modicum of what makes things sound the way they are when real. There are certain characteristics of such rooms. Objective hard, measurable and there are others not easily measured but if they do exist not immeasurable either. There are different ways to go about that based on available parameters and some approach would suits some listeners (and their choice of electronics/speakers) and it will not do it for many others..

But to repeat, there are constants. One is a linear and smooth response in the bass at the listener position, another is to complement the directivity of the speakers used. Different acousticians take different paths and objective results vary , based on the relative knowledge and experience of the acousticians, the room given, the budget allocated, etc. There are many others that define a "good" room. I would have prefered that we go toward identifying those rather than bringing things down to the current triviality of room quality negation and of the merit of mp3 videos as a tool to acknowledge the relative quality of a speaker.. Reminds me of the Sony advertising of the 70's in which they showed the great SONY TVs as the best ever as seen through your current not so good TV! IMHO the room remains the most important component of a home reproduction system, identifying with the help of the collective in a hard, objective and repeatable way, what makes one "great".

 

[Mike Lavigne]

true deep bass headroom can only be appreciated if you have experienced it.

the whole idea of it is that when you have it the music (any musical information the media can capture) just 'happens' because there is sufficient headroom in the extension, dynamics, and linearity of the deep bass to give the whole musical message a performance envelope where it's not restricted. the room and system get out of the way and no longer hold the full picture back. and getting the complete picture of the mid-bass requires deep bass extension.

it's very musically significant.

saying it does not matter (or....."there is no need") is just sticking your head in the sand. if you claimed it was 'not essential' I would say maybe it happens to not be 'essential' to you but that is just you.

this has nothing to do with your perception of happiness and contentment with what you hear. that is a personal perspective. lots of systems which are low frequency limited sound great.

 

[Rodney Gold]

I must take exception to this statement. This kind of back and forth has been going on for a while.Given the gentle nature of most at WBF many have been trying not to interject oo strongly. This is FALSE. POINT BLANK!!!! ..If it rattles the room and your bones when live you would like to have this happening at home at least if possible for so-called believability!
However much some would like to reject the basic but quite useful FR if the speaker can't do in room low bass at good volume levels at the listening positions then no amount of subjectivity will help. THis will not happen with a speaker that, in room, tops at 60 hz then drop down -30 dB at 40Hz when asked to play 40 Hz at 90 dB !!!! Reproducing the deepest notes of the organ is a requisite for realism, else you know it is an organ but you miss what makes it so ,.. well, powerful, There is no way you will reproduce Saint Saens Third without going lower than 30Hz.. Same with Poulenc Organ Symphony or many other organ works.. The ability to go low enough with cleanliness to feel the bass in the bones (a different mechanism of hearing that goes through the body as opposed to the air) is not a a "subjective" thing you build in your head. No! It is a reality that only good low bass reproduction can allow, and that requires power and linearity in the bass. No "ifs","buts" it is a necessity! .Regardless of the efforts put forth in this thread to show how unimportant the room is, the physical reality is that the room dominates in the bass and for that you need speakers, electronics and room treatments that optimize the reproduction of bass. Given the actual state of the High End, electronics capable of serious low bass are common. True there will always be the lone 3-watter not able to produce much low bass unless it finds a 110 db/w/m, 32 ohms woofer but for the most part most electronics reproduce bass rather well.. Of course some are better than others and for the "synergy" fan there will always be the need to have their midrange and treble amps to match their bass amps... Fine! they can do that too but addressing the room provides more.

On addressing the room the lack of consensus seem to be an argument. Are there consensus on what constitute a great sports car? Some like Corvette , some a Porsche 911, Some a Ferrari and some do find basic rocket-pocket like the best sports cars.. things like A Ford Fiesta GT, Volkswagen GTI or Mazda Miata, for some it is the basic American Muscle cars, Camaro, etc and this i not for a lack of funds... There is such a thing as a great sports car in lack of the absence of consensus .. We can round up a few tings.. For starters a sports car must be able to go fast ... and reach "fast"... quickly .. It must give you the sensation of you going fast .. A Rolls Royce Phatom going at 150 mph will not procure the same feeling as a Ferrari doing the same... Yet there are objective parameters that define a "sports"car. A car is not entrirely defined by objective parameters, some are subjective.. THere are a set of parameters that once met this car becomes a "sports" car.

Same with a room. We know it must allow the full enjoyment of the system allow it to shine. To provide to a listener a modicum of what makes things sound the way they are when real. There are certain characteristics of such rooms. Objective hard, measurable and there are others not easily measured but if they do exist not immeasurable either. There are different ways to go about that based on available parameters and some approach would suits some listeners (and their choice of electronics/speakers) and it will not do it for many others..

But to repeat, there are constants. One is a linear and smooth response in the bass at the listener position, another is to complement the directivity of the speakers used. Different acousticians take different paths and objective results vary , based on the relative knowledge and experience of the acousticians, the room given, the budget allocated, etc. There are many others that define a "good" room. I would have prefered that we go toward identifying those rather than bringing things down to the current triviality of room quality negation and of the merit of mp3 videos as a tool to acknowledge the relative quality of a speaker.. Reminds me of the Sony advertising of the 70's in which they showed the great SONY TVs as the best ever as seen through your current not so good TV! IMHO the room remains the most important component of a home reproduction system, identifying with the help of the collective in a hard, objective and repeatable way, what makes one "great".

Very well said ..

 

[stehno]

.....
Regardless of the efforts put forth in this thread to show how unimportant the room is, the physical reality is that the room dominates in the bass and for that you need speakers, electronics and room treatments that optimize the reproduction of bass. ...."

It's no effort at all. Provided the noise floor of a given playback system is so low as to allow the vast majority of music info embedded in a given recording to remain audible at the speaker, the front half of the listening room becomes saturated with half-sphere of sound where much of that sound includes the ambient info of the music interacting with the recording hall. Where's the effort you speak of when it's really just a simple fact? From what I can tell, the real effort stems from those who've not experienced this and therefore find it impossible to fathom and since they can't fathom it, perhaps nobody else can either.

On addressing the room the lack of consensus seem to be an argument. Are there consensus on what constitute a great sports car? Some like Corvette , some a Porsche 911, Some a Ferrari and some do find basic rocket-pocket like the best sports cars.. things like A Ford Fiesta GT, Volkswagen GTI or Mazda Miata, for some it is the basic American Muscle cars, Camaro, etc and this i not for a lack of funds... There is such a thing as a great sports car in lack of the absence of consensus .. We can round up a few tings.. For starters a sports car must be able to go fast ... and reach "fast"... quickly .. It must give you the sensation of you going fast .. A Rolls Royce Phatom going at 150 mph will not procure the same feeling as a Ferrari doing the same... Yet there are objective parameters that define a "sports"car. A car is not entrirely defined by objective parameters, some are subjective.. THere are a set of parameters that once met this car becomes a "sports" car. ....

In your analogy, you seem intent to use the entire auto industry to determine worthwhile auto performance. Shouldn't we be beyond that phase?

After all, we're talking "What's Best Forum" stuff here. Assuming "What's Best..." is about performance and not the bling, wouldn't it be better to confine one's analogy to say Formula 1 race cars or perhaps Top Fuel dragsters (both of which are at the performance pinnacle of the auto industry) where the consensus is all-out performance means everything?

In Top Fuel drag racing there are numerous topics that appear undisputed (a clear consensus) by all serious participants. Drag strip raceway lengths, dragster chassis size, air-foil sizes and locations, tire types front and rear, blowers and strap-downs, fuel types, magnetos (1 or 2), shifters, transmissions, differential gearing ratios, number of cylinders, camshafts, etc, etc.. There's even a consensus on the use of parachutes, which has zero to do with winning a race. Sure the participants may disagree / prefer different manufacturers of each of these parts, but in reality many of these parts are near identical to the average reader. Shoot, there's even a consensus in Top Fuel drag racings that less is more. When is the last time you saw a Top Fuel dragster hauling a U-Haul trailer down the 1/4 mile strip?

That should be an excellent example of the mindset of a mature performance-oriented industry and the overwhelming consensus to extract maximum performance and more quickly aim for even greater performance levels as they all aim at a consensus of a target. As a result, the performance in Top Fuel is so great they can't even determine how much horsepower a Top Fuel dragster generates but they are convinced it's at least around 10,000 hp. Seems to me that they get it!!!

Now compare that balls-to-the-walls, pedal-to-the-metal consensus of a mindset to high-end audio where about the only consensus to be had is that a room, at least one component and at least 1 speaker are required. Everything else seems to be up for grabs and is all over the frickin' map including what if any training is required to sufficiently interpret what is heard and some-to-many think their systems sound exactly like the live performance. Yet every once in a blue moon, somebody comes around and says something akin to what Jonathan Valin once said, "We are lucky if even our very best playback systems are able to capture just 15% of the magic of the live performance." Yet, a few others will say even 15% is too optimistic.

The all-important question is, why is that? Why is there no consensus of any significant subject matter in high-end audio? Rather, when a new thread opens up (like this one) it seems every dispute under the sun must enter the thread and results in disputes and in-fighting at every turn. The majority in high-end audio can't even agree on a common target. Some-to-many even claim that all cables and components sound identical and few bat an eye. Some-to-many have given up entirely on audible performance - abandoned their "untrustworthy" ears and now rely on their "trustworthy" eyes to read measurements to determine their system's performance levels. This in an audio-only industry and very few even blinks an eye. Since there's no consensus for a target to aim for, it seems anything goes. And it surely has.

It seems to me that where Top Fuel drag racing participants "get it", high-end audio participants don't. When it comes to performance, (which is why we're here, right?) the less-is-more concept should be so easily understood that a 10-year old could comprehend it and adopt it as a necessary philosophy in all they do. Yet, how many ultra high-end playback systems consist of 5, 10, or even 15 components and claim "best" performance? In an imperfect world, it should be well-known that every wire, connection, and component will potentially compromise the signal's fidelity that much more. There's your U-Haul trailer.

 

[Rodney Gold]

Timeslips don't lie ..I'm an ex drag racer..
Saying a room is inconsequential is like telling a drag racer that traction is not essential..
It's where the rubber hits the road .. like where the sound hits your ears.

 

[stehno]

Timeslips don't lie ..I'm an ex drag racer..
Saying a room is inconsequential is like telling a drag racer that traction is not essential..
It's where the rubber hits the road .. like where the sound hits your ears.

If everybody who owns a playback system is an audiophile, then aren't we all ex-drag racers to one degree or another?

BTW, I don't think anybody (at least not me) made the blanket statement that a room is inconsequential. That would be silly.

But I wouldn't hesitate to say and demonstrate that if given a reasonable room and better than reasonable speaker placement within that room, and given an extremely well-thought-out playback system such that volumes of music info embedded in the recording remain audible above a much lowered noise floor, then the room's anomalies are generally diminished to the point of being negligible.

If one could find such a rarity, the sheer volume of audible music info from the playback presentation, which includes volumes of the recording hall's ambient info, will thoroughly overshadow most any reasonable room's imperfections such that your perspective now seems to be somewhere in the recording hall, even if it's off in the corner by the men's bathroom. Where there is little to no evidence that your room even exists.

 

[SCAudiophile]

I must take exception to this statement. This kind of back and forth has been going on for a while.Given the gentle nature of most at WBF many have been trying not to interject oo strongly. This is FALSE. POINT BLANK!!!! ..If it rattles the room and your bones when live you would like to have this happening at home at least if possible for so-called believability!
However much some would like to reject the basic but quite useful FR if the speaker can't do in room low bass at good volume levels at the listening positions then no amount of subjectivity will help. THis will not happen with a speaker that, in room, tops at 60 hz then drop down -30 dB at 40Hz when asked to play 40 Hz at 90 dB !!!! Reproducing the deepest notes of the organ is a requisite for realism, else you know it is an organ but you miss what makes it so ,.. well, powerful, There is no way you will reproduce Saint Saens Third without going lower than 30Hz.. Same with Poulenc Organ Symphony or many other organ works.. The ability to go low enough with cleanliness to feel the bass in the bones (a different mechanism of hearing that goes through the body as opposed to the air) is not a a "subjective" thing you build in your head. No! It is a reality that only good low bass reproduction can allow, and that requires power and linearity in the bass. No "ifs","buts" it is a necessity! .Regardless of the efforts put forth in this thread to show how unimportant the room is, the physical reality is that the room dominates in the bass and for that you need speakers, electronics and room treatments that optimize the reproduction of bass. Given the actual state of the High End, electronics capable of serious low bass are common. True there will always be the lone 3-watter not able to produce much low bass unless it finds a 110 db/w/m, 32 ohms woofer but for the most part most electronics reproduce bass rather well.. Of course some are better than others and for the "synergy" fan there will always be the need to have their midrange and treble amps to match their bass amps... Fine! they can do that too but addressing the room provides more.

On addressing the room the lack of consensus seem to be an argument. Are there consensus on what constitute a great sports car? Some like Corvette , some a Porsche 911, Some a Ferrari and some do find basic rocket-pocket like the best sports cars.. things like A Ford Fiesta GT, Volkswagen GTI or Mazda Miata, for some it is the basic American Muscle cars, Camaro, etc and this i not for a lack of funds... There is such a thing as a great sports car in lack of the absence of consensus .. We can round up a few tings.. For starters a sports car must be able to go fast ... and reach "fast"... quickly .. It must give you the sensation of you going fast .. A Rolls Royce Phatom going at 150 mph will not procure the same feeling as a Ferrari doing the same... Yet there are objective parameters that define a "sports"car. A car is not entrirely defined by objective parameters, some are subjective.. THere are a set of parameters that once met this car becomes a "sports" car.

Same with a room. We know it must allow the full enjoyment of the system allow it to shine. To provide to a listener a modicum of what makes things sound the way they are when real. There are certain characteristics of such rooms. Objective hard, measurable and there are others not easily measured but if they do exist not immeasurable either. There are different ways to go about that based on available parameters and some approach would suits some listeners (and their choice of electronics/speakers) and it will not do it for many others..

But to repeat, there are constants. One is a linear and smooth response in the bass at the listener position, another is to complement the directivity of the speakers used. Different acousticians take different paths and objective results vary , based on the relative knowledge and experience of the acousticians, the room given, the budget allocated, etc. There are many others that define a "good" room. I would have prefered that we go toward identifying those rather than bringing things down to the current triviality of room quality negation and of the merit of mp3 videos as a tool to acknowledge the relative quality of a speaker.. Reminds me of the Sony advertising of the 70's in which they showed the great SONY TVs as the best ever as seen through your current not so good TV. IMHO the room remains the most important component of a home reproduction system, identifying with the help of the collective in a hard, objective and repeatable way, what makes one "great".

+1 Very well said!

Living with a room with imperfections, given WAF, monetary limits or some combination of factors can be done but 'you cannot get blood out of a stone', i.e. if a speaker and audio system connected cannot get flat to at least 20hz (or lower), you are simply missing out on a lot of material in certain genres of music. Not looking to start a fight/war of words here, just stating an opinion.

That stated, the comments about noise floor and the other good advice on this entire thread should all be bundled up mentally together as great overall advice (IMHO). I've seen rooms that were professionally or individually treated 'all the way' but they did not sound great either because they were over damped, had a huge bass suck out somewhere (over treatment/including ceiling other aspects) despite all the $$$ spent and did not focus as much on quality of power as they did treatments on the wall....bottom-line, it's all related and for many of us, there is no way to get it all 'right' 100% together!

YMMV

 

[FrantzM]

@Stehno

I am sure you get what I said. You want to discuss almost for the sake of it. I post that while the consensus is not complete there are areas where there is some.You took drag racing and it would be clear to anyone that to achieve the goals of going fast different roads are taken. In small acoustics there are rules ,there standards there are studies. And of course, as in many endeavors there are different ways to achieve the goal of reproducing music in a home setting. No two Engineers or Team in Formula One go the same way about achieving the goals of this kind of race.

You keep on using the Noise Floor term. It certainly has a lot to do but in most cases , in most components we would deem High End , heck! even in many mid-fi, it is not much of a factor. Of course we can always tack to it some special meaning as we audiophiles are wont to do. It changes nothing about the importance of a good room in what we want to achieve. I can understand some of us prefer not to have a dedicated room and make do with whatever acoustics their Living Room may offer. That is another road. The end result is that they enjoy their system in a chosen fashion. There isn't a shred of a doubt that those systems would have performed better in a dedicated room. Would their owners have derived the same pleasure in dedicated rooms? A different question... that doesn't negate the need of a good room. Now if we could try to enumerate what we would like a "great" room to achieve...

 

[jkeny]

+1 Very well said!

Living with a room with imperfections, given WAF, monetary limits or some combination of factors can be done but 'you cannot get blood out of a stone', i.e. if a speaker and audio system connected cannot get flat to at least 20hz (or lower), you are simply missing out on a lot of material in certain genres of music. Not looking to start a fight/war of words here, just stating an opinion.

What instruments go to 20Hz & lower - organs? Any other? Just interested, not arguing with you

 

[SCAudiophile]

There is the concept of 'fundamental' (think primary) frequency ranges as well harmonic frequencies both above and below the fundamental frequencies of many instruments.

In terms of fundamental frequencies, pipe organ and synthesizer outputs are obvious "pits of hell bass" candidates in terms of potential to produce many tones well below
30, 20 and lower. For synth, Jordan Rudess and others prove this out in various recordings more than adequately. Contrabassoon fundamentals get down into the mid 20s,
artillery shot and largest orchestral bass drums (remember, frequencies are proportional to size and tuning of the drum) and the largest "Taiko" Drums also get close....if I make
any mistakes from memory on this stuff, you have my apologies in advance!

 

[fas42]

What instruments go to 20Hz & lower - organs? Any other? Just interested, not arguing with you

What's more relevant is how often are those lowest notes actually part of the music making - let's see, in an hour of a performance real musical notes with a fundamental less than 50Hz occur, say 5 times ... but if I can't hear that "information" then the whole hour's worth is down the gurgler - gimme a break!

What I'm after is the sensation of intense bass, and I haven't heard a system yet with walloping drivers that gives that impression - I hear music, and as an adjunct walloping drivers carrying on with a merry dance - it's just an irritant, a distraction from what counts, the music.

A good example of what I want happening is in classic Bony M tracks - there's a sensation of a deep, deep rhythmic punch that goes right through every part of you; if your system can't get this right then something's lacking ...