Striking a balance between musicality and resolution

@theophile There is no “Absolute Sound” that can be verified, validated, and certified. The best that one could do is to compare the output of the source component to the output of the speakers and assess the accuracy there.

As for the room and acoustical environment, this is one of the biggest fallacies of the audiophile world and a complete misunderstanding of acoustics and lack of comprehension of the fact that our human brains have a built in sound arbitrator. To greatly overcome the room effect all one has to do is listen in the near-field.

I see unknowledgeable and misguided audiophiles spends some times hundred of thousands of dollars in bespoke custom acoustically “engineered” and  treated dedicated listening rooms not realizing that they are doing more harm than good; with the end result in most cases being over-damped and dead sounding rooms. BUT beyond that is the lack of knowledge and understanding by the so called “acousticians” and “acoustics engineers” that don’t realize that the frequencies that they are attenuating/absorbing, diffracting, and reflecting with the acoustical treatments do not only effect the frequencies in their calculations that they are attempting to target, without realizing and understanding that these same discrete frequencies serve as partial components of the more complex waveforms in frequency ranges that they were not attempting to effect.

In most cases these “acoustically engineered” room look beautiful but sound worst and more compromised than typical domestic rooms and acoustical environments. It is all about vanity without any real understanding of the science of acoustics and sound reproduction in acoustical spaces.

Then there are the guys that attempt to add treatment at the first reflection point on the side walls as if the sound coming from the speakers is a ray of light flrom a flashlight, not realizing that every frequency has a different first reflection point and it is dependent on the polar radiation pattern associated with the individual loudspeaker’s design.

As I often see, there is the blind leading the blind, a lot of clueless people with deep pockets not realizing that they are doing more harm than good to the sound of their systems. I could go on and on but I will stop here for now.

@carlos269 

I applaud your dedication to great sound and hope it's working out well for you.

@newton_john Thank you, but there is no hoping involved. I have posted audio recordings of three of my systems and they are what they are, there is nowhere to hide. This is what frightens most audiophiles who have made a sizable investment or who have made the effort…..to put the sound of their systems out here for others to hear, judge, scrutinize and get honest feedback. Who goes and listens to anyone else’s systems and tells the host that their system sounds lousy and underwhelming? Every guest offers their host a stellar review, at least in person, it is common courtesy. It takes courage to put it out there and showcase what you have achieved and accomplished. And that is why everyone runs to the forums to tell everyone else how great the new component they bought sounds, show beautiful pictures, and expressed how wonderful their systems sounds because it is easy to put it in words and writing about it, but when you ask the proud audiophiles to share some audio recordings of their wonderful systems to showcase what they have accomplished they will give you a ton of excuses why they cannot or will not. The audio recordings are what they are and there is nowhere to hide.

You probably never had a nearfield listening room to compare with regular one...

I had one and the other...

Nearfield listening minimize some aspects of reflections but never eliminate them...

It is something i experienced personally ...

It is something very well known...

Acoustics and psycho-acoustics  concepts rules audio engineering and even physics in sound experience...

A myth in audio an enduring one is the fact that some think that the gear pieces design alone determine S.Q.

It is totally false, acoustics and psycho-acoustics determine what we hear...

«The "near field" is a property of the ROOM, not the speaker. This graph and explanation come from the book "Architectural Acoustics"»:

https://digistar.cl/Forum/viewtopic.php?t=547

There is no “Absolute Sound” that can be verified, validated, and certified. The best that one could do is to compare the output of the source component to the output of the speakers and assess the accuracy there.

As for the room and acoustical environment, this is one of the biggest fallacies of the audiophile world and a complete misunderstanding of acoustics and lack of comprehension of the fact that our human brains have a built in sound arbitrator. To greatly overcome the room effect all one has to do is listen in the near-field.

@mahgister I believe that I used the word “greatly” when qualifying what I wrote about how near-field listening impacts the room effects.

Psychoacoustics combines physics and psychology and although a strong element of the listening experience, physics still has the dominant hand at determining how sound propagates and interacts with the environment around the source of the sound.

Out of curiosity, how much of the room do you hear in the audio recordings of my systems?

I think that the author of that article is referring to to listing within the near-field and has label the near-field distance I was referring to to as the critical area. What you want is to maximize direct sound. Reverberation is a key component of recording, as a matter of fact it is typically added to create a sense of space or room to studio recordings, but it should not be something you la Gould look for the room to add, it should come from the recordings. Don’t confuse ambience information with reverb.