Your almost there dbp24. 5 or 6 more years and you might be to the point of adding me to your list, lol. It’s tough isn’t it when you have this idea of someone in your head and your finding out they aren’t what you thought :) You’ll get there we all do.
I want to ask you guys something and I don’t want you to answer with audiophile-isms.
Instead of thinking about acoustics in such general terms why don’t you get more specific? The cool thing about acoustical, mechanical and electrical is how they are all part of each other. HEA has tried to make cookie cutters to make things easier to sell but in doing so they fail to cover the variables. Let me give you a few examples.
In 1989 when I designed and built my testing facility we did several different structures with the same measurements so we could study the surface effect among many other topics. The first rooms were built on the same slab inches apart from each other. Same construction materials and even the drywall screw patterns were the same, and using the same tension per screw. We measured the rooms to try to get them as close as possible from a starting point.
As a point of reference I used long time pals at Audio-Technica to do my anechoic measuring at their place in Akron Ohio in exchange for them visiting my tunes, plus 2 of them owned speakers I made for them. (nice to have friends) We tested many different variables in the audio chain and quickly came to the conclusion that at best testing is a snap shot approach to a continuum. This was nothing new as I came to the same conclusions in Atlanta in the early 80’s and further back in Miami and Europe in the 70’s. Audio is not a tape measurer and the more you experience audio the more you want to throw out the rule book and cut to the listening chase.
back to the 2 rooms
When we did surfaces testing in the two rooms we chose, there are a few things we did that might help you guys understand some variables.
1) when changing paint types the rooms performed differently
2) when changing temps and or humidity different sound
3) adding objects to the room, different again
4) different flooring, different sound
5) how long the signal played, different
6) changing the wall surface type (dry wall to wood to plaster) all different
7) diffusion, different
8) trapping, different
9) dampening, different
10) tuning, different
The list goes on, but lets get to speaker placement.
With any of the changes above (except for tuning) we found there was no two speaker locations that were the same. With any change, such as hard wood to carpet, the speakers’ locations changed. Even different brands of carpet and padding required speaker placement changes. We found that any and all speaker placement suggestions by the manufacturers to be completely off. We even went to the manufacturers facilities and found the recommended placements were not accurate.
In the case of panel speakers, the difference in setup in a plaster walled house and drywalled house are completely different. We also found there is no such thing as "first wall reflection", the way the audio folks describe it. Rooms are mostly made up of Pressure Zones not Reflecting Points. Reflecting points usually stay within a paralleled echo pattern. Remember when I introduced the clap test.
there’s more
mg