Wait- room? What room??
Nevermind I get it now: Roon!
Nevermind I get it now: Roon!
About the importance of the room vs the electronics
https://positive-feedback.com/audio-discourse/acoustics-and-critical-listening/
Acoustics and Critical Listening.
As @ erik_squires and others have often mentioned ; the room is often forgotten . We put too much amphasis
on electronics.
Acoustics and Critical Listening.
As @ erik_squires and others have often mentioned ; the room is often forgotten . We put too much amphasis
on electronics.
44 responses Add your response
I get it now : The ´´ Chuck ´´ song with roon https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=video&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwi... |
"...As @ erik_squires and others have often mentioned ; the room is often forgotten We put too much emphasis on electronics..." A really good system in a crappy room will still sound better than crappy system in a good room. |
An average system in a very good room may sound better than a good system in a crappy room. I think, the point of link up above was about the amount of money , we spend on upgrading cables , upgrading DAC , amplifiers , speakers , power conditionners , etc. A fraction of that amount used for room acoustic treatment may be a better use of money. I see this as basic . We have all experienced , expensive systems in audio show that sounded like Wallmart gears. |
OP it is 1/2 the listening experience, but on the average less than 5% spent there. I think those numbers are creeping up though.:-) If Gear is all lumped into a pile and the (rest) environment you set up in is everything else.. It’s 1/2 the formula to get sound, without gear. Just acapella, it is sound + the environment (the room). It could be an Amphitheater and one singer.. 50/50 I’d say... Regards |
The room is the most important upgrade, the only one that matter in fact... Sorry for those who cannot afford an audio room... 😁😊😁 Electronic design is NOT the most important factor in S.Q. increase... It is only conditioning market social conformity to think otherwise... Ask any acoustician what they want to choose for great sound : the brand name of some speakers or the room acoustic control? It is the only factor that exceed almost any upgrades... All the story is in my thread...I created my room at peanuts costs.... Dont fall for costly acoustic products especially if you have a room dedicated to audio.... My solution are not esthetical perhaps but cost NOTHING at all... Contrary to the saying of some sunday skeptics and "scientists" our ears are the real tool....I used them with my own "no cost" mechanical equalizer..... My best to you.... |
I don't know if saying which is more important, room vs. gear is the right way to go about this. I think that if you are assembling a good system, you owe it to yourself to deal with the room early as best you can. Based on a lot of listening, both to audiophiles AND to systems I do believe that different consumers are more or less sensitive to the room. That they can in fact hear fine differences in an acoustically messy environment. Me, I absolutely cannot. I need at least some room treatment before I can listen critically. There's also the absolute truth that getting a good room often ends a lot of gear swapping and that you may end up with smaller, less expensive, but not less performing, gear as your room now behaves very well with a wide variety of gear. |
There's also the absolute truth that getting a good room often ends a lot of gear swapping and that you may end up with smaller, less expensive, but not less performing, gear as your room now behaves very well with a wide variety of gear.You said it more wisely than me.... You are probably wiser than me.... But anyway we think the same.... My best to you... |
@bigkidz Who knows, with a very little room treatment , your Bose Wave Radio may sound nearly as goog as the ´´ custom designed Tube Audio Components. DHT 101D Tube preamplifier, 6SN7 Tube preamplifier, 1010D Tube DAC, Tube Phono Stage, Hybrid Stereo amplifier ´´ that you built . Your Bose may sound ´´ like nothing you have ever heard before! ´´ I can get mad too. |
You’re just upset because we caught you on the "vs" thing and the unfounded idea it’s one or the other. You are lost, dead lost. If you think a Bose Wave Radio can sound like a 300B tube amp in any room you are so lost it is fair to wonder if you are even on the same planet. The greatest room in the world cannot turn a Bose Wave radio into a captivating stereo, but the greatest electronics in the world is going to sound insanely good even in a walk-in closet. Just not as good as in a bigger room. The room clearly is way less important than the electronics, or else there would be no good car systems. But there are some freaking insanely good car systems, so there goes that one. What would be reasonable, intelligent, and defensible is to say the room is as worthy an element of a sound system as anything else. No more important than the AC line, the speaker cables, the cartridge, or any other component in the chain. But that for some reason is the last thing certain people will admit. Now go ahead and attack me for getting it absolutely right one more time. Go on. Three, two, one.... |
Taking a truth and an evident experience for the few who experience it, that is to say an adequate PASSIVE and ACTIVE room treatment AND controls will make all sound system works at their peak working level of S.Q. better than any upgrade of gear, and mocking it because someone dont understand that what we listen to is NEVER mainly the electronic gear but the speakers/room where the gear is embedded is only revealing your own lack of experiments listening... Nobody will contest than a bose system is less than some costlier gear, but at the end PICK one system, any of them, this will be night and day diffrence before the acoustical controls and after.... I know it firsthand.... Not by reading review magazine.... This is TRUE nevermind the cost of the system.... |
What would be reasonable, intelligent, and defensible is to say the room is as worthy an element of a sound system as anything else. No more important than the AC line, the speaker cables, the cartridge, or any other component in the chain. But that for some reason is the last thing certain people will admit.Your remark point to a TRUTH a very important one: all matters in audio experience, all details, working with an audio system... BUT, there is a BUT, most if not all ordinary room even those dedicated to audio, if they lack passive adequate treatment and ESPECIALLY active controls , unbeknownst to the owner, ESPECIALLY if his electronic gear is very good and costly, all ordinary room will give only a fraction of the S.Q. the audio system could have given... I listened to hugely costly gear that sound horrible in what seems a minimally treated room.... And trust me i know that the problem is NOT the piece of gear at all.... It is not normal that my 500 bucks system sound more musical for me and on par with details.... The problem is the room unbeknownst to the owner is not up to the task, and my room is....It is the reason why i am proud of my room, not so of my gear even it is well chosen one and even if i love them.... Past a certain point in quality, which is NOT at all very high in dollars, few thousand perhaps, ALMOST ALL, if not ALL upgrade will never rival or compare with a very effective passive AND active room treatment in S.Q. increase... You said it yourself visiting Mike Lavigne Room, almost anything will sound good there... For people owning an AVERAGE good system like mine, the room acoustic control is the royal road to S.Q. without necessarily investing money, thanks to the fact that in a small room active controls, using many tools but especially Helmholtz method, can transform totally all system in a better one.... But i will repeat for the slow learner that nothing will make a bad system a good one, nor transform my average system in the best in the world.... But i prefer my actual system in my room, to a 100,000 dollars one in a bad room.... It takes me 2 years full time to get my room right.... Nobody teach me how.... Sellers of acoustic treatment sells too costly for my purse then i was in the obligation to improvise all passive treatment using my ears and what is at hand.... But the greatest upgrade come one month ago with the Helmholtz method which i developed designing my own mechanical equalizer with 24 discarded pipes and tubes and various types of Straws.... It take me 50 hours to tune it relatively well, fine tuning the speakers response of the tweeter wavefront in one speaker with the bass wavefront in the other speaker making the two ears synchronizing able to better locate the FIRST wavefront in the room...The mechanical equalizer did not work like an electronic equalizer with a tested response frequency for a microphone andfor ONLY a very smal location in millimeters but with a relative large bandwidth of sound for all the room, 2 main wavefront from the left speaker driver and right speaker tweeter, to each one of the ears by direct wave and a reflected different one for each single ears...The timing of the early and late reflections and their reverberation time is the key.... The tubes and pipes created an ACTIVE room, or activate the room so to speak, adding to it more different pressure zones which are designed for some frequencies and modify then the resultant timing and content of the wavefronts for each ears... This method make me able to balance these 2 acoustic factor, the ASW the source sound width and the listener envelopment factor LEV... these 2 factors are related by some tresholds in the timing wavefronts....This make me able after that to experiment with the Schumann generator grid effect on the LEV factor....Disconnecting completely or partly the S.G. grid decrease the LEV factor...This with my experiment with shungite and quartz on the capacitors reveal to me the physicality of the effect induce by the Schumann generator grid.... Without active controls i will have never been able to test that acoustic aspect of the S.G.... My best to you and to all..... |
@millercarbon´´ You are lost , dead lost ´´ if you think that I think that a Bose Radio sound as good as a 300B tube in a good acoustic room. It is @bigkidz that brough this . I took his idea and inflated it to the an absurd level.You haven’t seen that. On which planet do you live? ´´You’re just upset because ´´ you are not used to be counter attacked. It is funny to see you , play the psychologist . You would rather need one. I have just brough this thread as a discussion, with the link up above. YOU are here to win. You should give your feedback to the writer of the article. About attacking others , it is more your trade mark than me. ´´ Psychologicly’´ speaking , it is called : Projection . A defence mechanism of the EGO. Some members here think about themeselves as God. Well ,... I am atheist regards |
It is odd that some think it is vitally important to isolate their cables from vibrations and spend a fortune doing so, but they are happy to laugh at the much much larger effect of their walls being excellent reflectors, and vibrating at 70hz, and having 0.6 second decays of that source of vibration. Maybe it is easier to write a big cheque for a tweak with a negligible effect and bang on about it, rather than really accept the vibrating elephants in the room. |
@millercarbon @maxwave Both of you seem to thing that I am mad? Not sur why that is. Yes maxwave I read into the real thingie - my bad. I was thinking that most people want their systems to reproduce sounds like real instruments - again my bad for jumping to a conclusion on a topic that was not presented for thought. The Bose radio thing was a joke lighten up please - I did not intend to make anyone feel anything but a little love! Although MillerCarbon I would love to hear the Raven amp. Happy Listening. |
I will give an example of the LISTENER ENVELOPMENT concept and acoustical experience (LEV) for any audio system to test yourself... It take a great control of the room to hear this : Threepenny opera of Kurt Weill with Lotte Lenya 1958 version : https://www.amazon.com/Weill-Threepenny-Opera-Kurt/dp/B0000026HI/ref=pd_sbs_2?pd_rd_w=6koxC&pf_r... listen side no 15, The procurer ballad, 4minute 38 seconds: In my room the male voice sound in my left ear like with an headphone, same for the feminine voice singing in my right ear at the same moment, the 2 voices seems coming from behind me, opposite to the speakers location and the orchestra seems in front of me behind the actual speakers location, at 8 feet distance, filling all my front wall between the speakers but the sound coming from behind the wall that is behind them.... i have also the impression of 2 other virtual speakers behind me on each side of my ears.... Like if there are 4 speakers in my room... There are many sides of this cd that give the same effect not only this 15th side...But this one is particularly spectacular...You will undestand why i trashed my 7 headphones in a drawer and will never bought none other.... This is in my regular sitting position... It is no more true in nearfield listening... On this same side the 2 voices seems now coming with the orchestra and no more separately from the orchestra, in opposite direction, like in my regular listening position....In near listening the sound seems a "bit" more detailed but is less livelier or less natural and sound exactly like in an headphone but better with my speakers/room... Passive and active room controls work EVEN for near listening,but at a lesser degree for sure but work very audibly also, contrary to a false popular misunderstanding of the way the extraordinary speed of sound cross the room and affect it, in relation with the 80 milliseconds of critical analysis time treatment from the brain to make sense of these wavefronts travelling near 80 times per second in my room...Each wavefront is a bunch of frequencies travelling together and coming from slightly different pressure zones of the room meet in each ears differently for the brain timing analysis... It is an example of ACTIVE room control of the "listener envelopment" factor called LEV Listener envelopment ...LEV is the degree to which the reverberant sound, of the first main 2 wavefronts coming from the right and left speakers to the 2 ears directly but also indirectly from early and late reflections encounter themselves for each one of the ears and seems to surround the listener—to come from all directions, thanks to the active controls of the Helmholtz method... This listener envelopment factor in relation with the source width factor (ASW) put you on the scene of the past recording live event and make you able to live anew the live event like the recording engineer choice of microphones and location choices of these same microphones make it possible, it is a specific perspective take on the real event created by the engineer because the real event CANNOT be reproduced exactly but could be recreated FROM this perspective if your room is well controlled... The original event is not only in your room now, but you are actually there also....All recording are not on the same level of 3 dimensionnality it is the reason i choose this recording for a clear example.... With this example you will understand that nevermind the price an electronic design cannot make miracle in spite of the room lacks.... The room on the other hand CAN MAKE MIRACLE with any relatively good piece of gear able to do a decent job... Gear are replaceable, rooms are not..... Usual electronic design of dac or amplifier and even of speakers cannot replace the room nor compensate for the lack of controls in the room zone pressures and reflections.... We will need A.I. for that job....In the years coming tough... |
@bigkidz You may be the only one who noticed that my post tu you , relating to tube amplifier , etc ; was from your Virtual System. This is why , I used ´´ ´´ May be , you should use things like : lol , :-))) But you are right, I did not understand that you were joking I perceived it as sarcasme , the same about @mapman post My bad lol |
Maxwave, I’m sitting here now calibrating new speakers looking at graphs of exactly what the room is doing. I’m gonna die laughing:-)))You are looking at graphs not about what your room is doing because you dont use your ears to analyse the frontwaves crossing the room , but you use a mic to analyse only a selection of the tested frequencies response of your speakers in the room...Then you cannot know what the room is doing really to your ears...You adapt your ears to your electronic equalizer and say to your own ears," listen now it is better".... And you believe him yourself because your graphs said so...But the room could do way better if your ears would have open directly to the wavefronts instead of a tested frequency... But no way for you, because for you, science is a manual with a costly product not a real acoustic experiment.... A first frontwave is not a tested frequency or a bunch of tested frequencies, it is a finely timing set of complex musical events in the room for your ears, not for a microphone coupled to a computer... You can improve an already very good room with electronic Eq., this is true yes, BUT NEVER transform a bad room in a good room, and most room are bad anyway, unbeknownst to the listener, but the real problem of electronic equalization is that all is fine tuned ONLY for an extraordinarily precise location in millimeter and ANY change in the room put your selection of frequencies off the chart you have already choosen WITH YOUR EYES convincing your ears that it is the best choice and it is not true at all... Try at no cost a mechanical equalizer with none of these negative defects... And learn how to train your ears in real experiments tuning the speakers/room for your specific ears...Or stay voluntarily deaf, your eyes looking at chart and you ears closed....And call that "science" like boy scout call science their little pre-choosen chemistry box selected experimental sets... A mechanical equalizer cost nothing, what is the price of a good electronical equalizer? And you dare to call audiophile like me gullible? I am gonna laugh till i die.... Some remarks here : https://www.roomeqwizard.com/help/help_en-GB/html/iseqtheanswer.html |
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The first "logical" intuition so to speak is : this map is not the reality... The last " logical" intution is : but the reality is not another map either.. Anyway the reality and the map interact and it is more akin to "sex" than to logic... Translation for some: The electronic equalizer is not the room and even not a true representation of the room.. My mechanical equalizer did not reflect only an arbitrary "taste" like your prefered settings choices because he fill also the room itself and modify it , it is a map which is also at the same time part of the real territory, my specific EARS included... At the end the only important thing, is it not how do we use our "faulty" ears? «Logic is to sex at best a mute witness, what a chemical formula is to water "wetness"»- Groucho Marx chemist |
@ebm Your room is not .....what ? Racks , Pucks, Cones , Granit slabs under speakers, cables holders, Synergistic Black Box , HFT , the coming Vibratron .They do make a difference. Are they ´´ Room treatment ´´ . They are not ´´ Electronics ´´ . Often called ´´Tweaks ´´ Are they in a particular category ? |
Are they ´´ Room treatment ´´ . They are not ´´ Electronics ´´ . Often called ´´Tweaks ´´ Are they in a particularThere exist 3 working embedding dimensions controls for any audio system: Mechanical: all that pertain to vibrations and resonance control.... Electrical and acoustical are the 2 others... I hate the word "tweaks" because it suggest "snake oils" to half people here because of their cost relatively to the gear and "tweaks" are considered like secondary addition ONLY to the SUPPOSEDLY main source of S.Q. in audio experience: electronic design and gear... This is not all the truth... Only an half truth.... The main source of S.Q. is not the upgrading process nor the purchase of a miraculous tweak... It is the controls achieved in the 3 working embeddings dimension of any audio system... Unbeknownst to most, Acoustic control is at the end the main key between these very important other 2 keys.... This is my only important discovery in audio.... |
@mahgisterThanks for the explanation I am not perfectly bilingual , so the deep sense of some words is out of reach for me sometime. @millercarbon is brilliant ( I am serious ), he knows a lot more about audio than me. He gives good idea here , on AudioGon.It is just too bad , he has not received a couple of kiks in the ass when he was young. He would have learned how to behave socialy. |
The main source of sound quality is the air. No air, no sound. That simple.This is why i use 2 ionizers, and 24 Helmhotz tubes they change the "air", they change the normal pressure zones of the room.... And this is called acoustic.... 😊😊😊😊😊😊😊 What about water ?Wales can hear for miles .Good observation... Waves need a support....Air or water or ether.... «Fire speak, water cry, air smile, matter dance»-Groucho Marx |
Some virtual systems grab my attention. https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/9378 A perfect example of accepting your amazing living space and cool audio gear can exist, just accept whatever necessary. The space is amazing and really deserves to be seen, but the audio gear has to be heard! I get it. If one can get away with or approval(S.O) like this, you have it all figured out. There are some really nice living spaces among the virtual post. IMO, it's challenging getting your gear to adapt to an otherwise architecturally great room. Depending how $erious you are, is probably the limiting factor. Living space and decent gear is the biggest challenge. Dedicated room-piece of cake. |
Just as long as the room is not an empty echo chamber, but instead is fully furnished with both absorbing and reflective materials, then I do not see the issue. I have none of this BS in corners and hanging from my ceiling. My room sounds just fine to me, thank you. Most of us live in a normal house with a family, not in a mansion with dedicated areas for listening. There is something called a compromise. Most all of this expensive dedicated so called acoustic treatment, not to mention ugly, can be accomplished with common household items that are normally contained in a typical living room. Soft and hard furnishings (ie...upholstered couch/love seat, chairs, coffee/end tables, pillows/throws, wall hangings/tapestry, curtains/blinds, stuffed bookshelves & record shelves, carpeting, rugs...) etc, etc...doing anything further borders on excessive and insanity. The manufacturer of the speaker did not set out and design it to be listened to inside an anechoic chamber. https://www.hearingaidknow.com/quietest-room-anechoic-chamber |
Audioguy85, if you want to see the issue get a calibrated microphone and an impulse measurement program. Guaranteed to drop your shorts. I just finished setting up new speakers (Sound Labs 645-8s, an 845 that is 4 inches narrower) You can see the old curves on my system page. The new ones look almost exactly the same except I have a huge peak between 100 and 200 Hz. It is the rear wave bouncing off the wall and coming back in phase at this frequency. I can change it by moving the speakers or just use room control or both. But, the high frequency aberrations that you see in the old curves are exactly the same. +- 10 dB and each speaker totally different. The room is 16 X 8 with no back wall (open to the rest of the house) The first 8 feet from the speakers is totally symmetrical then there is a window on the right and an alcove on the left. The point being other than lack of a back wall there is nothing special about this room. This is way beyond the difference you would find between good electronics and sources. The asymmetry kills imaging. You can hear this instantly by switching room control in and out. This is what rooms do and there is no getting away from it other than messing around with room treatments. Room control has it's limits. If there is too big a dip, particularly in the bass the unit will clip trying to fix it (sounds like burping). If the peak is too high you loose resolution turning down the volume. Most room control units work a 48 bits or above so you can loose a fair amount before getting into audible trouble. You use room treatments to get close and Room Control to get the stragglers. You will never know what is going on and what you are doing with room treatments without a measurement microphone. If you think your room is even close to remotely flat, guess again. If you think you can use your hearing to fix this? Your hearing has accommodated to an aberrant frequency response curve. You have to listen to flat for a while to re-train your hearing even if you do not like it. I don't. I purposely boost the very low bass and put a 3 dB dip in centered on 120 Hz. This gives me the dry vibrant bass that I like. I also roll off the high end a little. Flat is usually too bright. When I first lit up these speaker the bass was so fat it was choking everything else. It was one of those, "what the F--- have I done," moments. Boy, do these things make bass. The baffle effect of the large speaker is impressive. The rear wave does not cancel out and it comes back at you almost doubling the volume somewhere between 80 and 300 Hz depending on how far the speaker is from the wall. I have 4" acoustic foam tiles behind the speaker which prevents the reflection of everything above 250 Hz actually making the bass problem worse! The peak at higher frequencies is not as bad so moving the speakers closer to the wall, turning the bass level control on the back of the speaker down all the way, Putting the subwoofer crossover point at 120 Hz 8 dB down by raising the high pass filter to 130 Hz and lowering the low pass filter to 110 Hz fixed 90% of the problem finishing off with room control. Now, we be rockin! |
