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The Room

Most often we hear folks saying the treble's too etched or sharp, sound is too bright and forward and piercing the ears, sound is 2-dimensional and flat, soundstage is lacking, not enough dynamics, bass is too loose or boomy etc. and often pass down comments of the equipment based on their listening experience. I wonder how many folks have a proper listening environment to pass down their judgements on the sound signature of the gears that are being reviewed or listened to. I am still in the learning process and have found that room treatments can have a huge impact on the sound, although in most cases results will vary with different rooms and environments.

I believe that any hard or bright-sounding components(perennial favourites are B&W speakers or Krell amps) when put together in an overdamped room will produce a sound that's dull to the point of being dead. Whenever I read comments on B&W's being harsh-sounding speakers, I don't know if they are being listened in a crappy room with bad acoustics or it's just the haters. Even with very minimal absorption on the sides and diffusion on the back, there is no issue with brightness at all. More absorption would kill off the high frequencies and make it too dull.

Just wanted to share my observations and experience. In my opinion, any particular description of any component's sound, taking individual listening tastes and preferences out of the context may not be too accurate based on the room layout and acoustics itself.

And just to point out, I am in no way associated with any room treatment manufacturers. Just a curious learner and currently still trying out different treatments to improve the acoustics in my small room. Have just got rid of the pyramid foams on my side walls as I figured out I can't live with the looks of it.
ryder

Showing 4 responses by rives

rives
953 posts
 
50% of the sound you hear in a well designed listening room is indirect--bouncing off other surfaces. Thus the room could easily be attributed to 50% of the sound quality. A modest system in a well designed/treated room will consistently outperform an "ultra-rig" in a poor room. It never ceases to amaze me at how many people will spend huge sums of money and completely ignore the room.

If you are looking for good resources, books, articles on the web, we've established a resource page on our website to help.

Here's the link:
Rives Resource Page
rives
953 posts
 
Ryder:

The ceiling is actually quite important. There was a group of Dutch researchers that showed the ceiling had the single biggest effect on sound quality (this was for a typical rectangular room). It makes sense because the ceiling is almost always the largest bare flat surface. Dealing with 1st refection points and using either pre-fab (RPG skylines or other) or self made diffusion for the ceiling can have a huge effect.
rives
953 posts
 
90 angles aren't the problem. People treat corners because they are the highest pressure zones, and thus trapping in the corners becomes the most effect--it deals with 2 and often 3 of your axial room modes. We often use soffits with single layer sheetrock. 90 degree sections are still there, but you have disrupted the area of the highest pressure and distributed the pressure and thus reduced the peaks and lowered the Q factor for the peaks. That's probably what you meant--but I just wanted to clarify it a little further.

As to the ceiling, RPG skylines and hemifusors are both excellent products and easy to mount. The downside is that depending on how much surface area you are covering it can get expensive.
rives
953 posts
 
Skyline LP is Low Profile. It's only 4" deep and has a bandwidth of approximately 1/2 that of the HP. The LP performance and Hemifusor performance is very close, but in my opinion the Hemifusor looks better. Thus if you need a low profile option (4") then I typically use Hemifusors.

There is one exception. Skylines perform well behind acoustically transparent fabric, Hemifusors do not. The two do function on different principles, so there is that caveat to watch out for.
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