Should Room Acoustics be an Audiogon ‘topic’?

Well said Tcutter !

It has been my job & focus for over 2 decades now designing sound rooms & HT rooms. I’ve set up many systems in many environments and it seems most just don’t understand some basic guide lines.

Sound travels at approximately 1ft per millisecond, your brain cannot defferentiate time arrivals below 10 milliseconds; Therefore, any reflections arriving within 10 milliseconds from the direct sound of the speakers is indistinguishable and only blurrs the original direct sound. Detail, the true depth of a recording (if it’s in the recording to begin with), and stereo speration are lost. What a waste of equipment & money under these conditions.

So, even the space bewteen the speakers needs to follow suit for optimum stereo seperation. Hard to do if your room measures less then 12-14 ft wide. One would have to resort to nearfield listening to get over that to a limited degree.

Regarding hardwood floors & reflective surfaces; as a general rule only key spots need to be treated, and that doesn’t necessarily mean "absorption", redirection of reflections or diffusion are also ways to create what Studios have referred to as an "RFZ" aka, Reflection Free Zone. Most studios aim for an RFZ with a 15-20 millisecond window. This allows the listener to hear into the recording and extract detail & 3D imaging, in short. There’s far more like RT60 etc..., but that’s a basic explanation that gets you a long way. There’s plenty of information out there to learn from if you search for it. My acoustics journey started by reading Mix Magazine Studio Acoustics featured every August issue 30 years ago, then articles from the AES on same.. The first implemetation I did had such a profound effect on my sound room & system, I immediately realized this was half the game or more.... Look at studio designs, many of them and ALL the top studios spend fortunes on acoustics design, and for good reason, they need to hear the truth. As end listeners, I thought that was what the goal is ? !!

GdT

PS: What you will find with proper acoustic application is a huge difference between good & poor recordings, but the good ones will make it all worth the effort !

You'll also be in a much better position to judge components...

The problem with room acoustics is that they are specific to your room shape, materials and size.  I’m not sure that a separate Forum section would actually be of assistance to us, compared to say, having GIK look at your room and make recommendations.  Can you say that X’s bass trap is better than Y’s bass trap?  Not sure.  But what I can definitely say is that I have a cube shaped dedicated music room which is probably the worst for music.  Although GIK went wild and literally sent me a proposal that looked like it covered the entire room in room treatments, I opted for a more modest approach with bass traps in three corners, amplitude panels behind my chair and panels on the ceiling and I have to say that the sound quality of my system was improved by at least 40%!  A phenomenal change for about $3500!

@moto_man 

I substituted another audio component for “room acoustics”.  Changes are in italics.

“The problem with speakers is that they are specific to your budget, room size, and personal taste.  I’m not sure that a separate Forum section would actually be of assistance to us, compared to say, having a dealer talk to you and make recommendations. Can you say that X’s speaker is better than Y’s speaker?  Not sure.  But what I can definitely say is that I have a cube shaped dedicated music room which is probably the worst for music.  Although the dealer went wild and literally sent me a proposal that looked like it was great for near-field listening, I opted for a more modest approach with headphones.”

You could replace speakers with amplifier, streamer, etc. Doesn’t read any differently. I guess the real question is why have topics at all? Everything is ultimately "Misc Audio".

And your last two sentences reinforce the import of the topic.

“I opted for a more modest approach with bass traps in three corners, amplitude panels behind my chair and panels on the ceiling and I have to say that the sound quality of my system was improved by at least 40%!  A phenomenal change for about $3500!”

@tcutter, I have to laugh because you are 100% correct.  What I said could apply to virtually every aspect of this very subjective "hobby." I suppose that there is value in comparing components where the only variable is the component itself, so in the same system, swapping out X preamp for Y preamp gives some understanding of the differences that someone would hear, while I am not sure that the same is true for one bass trap vs another.

@tcutter I'm as surprised as you at some of the listening rooms i see with high end equipment and ignorance of the room itself--but in most instances it appears to me that WAF is the #1 consideration and will compromise everything, especially speaker location--i was amused at a fellow G'oner's comment above about putting wheels on your speakers so you could move them into position for listening and back to the corners for the spouse.  I'm lucky enough to have a dedicated listening room although it's small and not ideally dimensioned (but better than square) so i've set it up for nearfield listening and treated it as necessary with help from the late Jim Smith (RIP) who was the guru that first made me realize how important the room is.  Yes, novices need to understand the importance of the room but what happens next is usually "how can i make the best of the room i'm stuck with" and a partner whose priority is usually aesthetics over acoustics...