Object of room treatments and equalization.

[evilkat]

Not to belittle your vast experience with audio, but isn't everything you described about your room pretty much subjective? They sound good to your experienced ears, but is it *really* as good as you say it is?

Apart from possibly affecting your interior decor and analysis, would it hurt to explore sound treatment? I am not advocating using it of course, (I currently have none in place :O) but I'd want to find out based on some actual testing if this thing is the real deal or not before I utterly and completely reject it.

My (limited) understanding is that room treatments cannot replace a good speaker set....it can only help enhance or tweak a decent sound system to make it sound like a great one, in an objective (room graphs) manner, rather than a purely subjective manner.

You have an ax to grind. I'm not buying it. Literally! If speakers are putting, their ugly footprint over the performance, you can never disguise it, no matter what you do. In my book you will not make a poorer speaker sound better than a superior one with room treatment.

In my system I have no bass boom. The bass strings have just the right balance. You really have the detail and the players "digging in" in the rough and tumble. The tympani are tight and articulate perfectly and with great effect. The high strings are silky and not wiry, and that's tough for speakers. The brass is thrilling and, never strident. Single voices to massed choirs sound realistic. There is a natural believable balance and sound stage with fantastic depth. At the same time the spoken voice is clear and natural, with good clarity. Now why would I want to muck about with it and spoil mine and my daughter's interior design? If anything I would rather have a room a little on the live side than dead. I believe a lot of random reflections contribute to recreating the live performance.

 

[jaxvon]

You have an ax to grind. I'm not buying it. Literally! If speakers are putting, their ugly footprint over the performance, you can never disguise it, no matter what you do. In my book you will not make a poorer speaker sound better than a superior one with room treatment.

In my system I have no bass boom. The bass strings have just the right balance. You really have the detail and the players "digging in" in the rough and tumble. The tympani are tight and articulate perfectly and with great effect. The high strings are silky and not wiry, and that's tough for speakers. The brass is thrilling and, never strident. Single voices to massed choirs sound realistic. There is a natural believable balance and sound stage with fantastic depth. At the same time the spoken voice is clear and natural, with good clarity. Now why would I want to muck about with it and spoil mine and my daughter's interior design? If anything I would rather have a room a little on the live side than dead. I believe a lot of random reflections contribute to recreating the live performance.

You need to re-read my post. Room treatments are about dealing with the room and how it interacts with the speakers. Your speakers might have awesome measurements, but that doesn't stop the room from being a big part of the equation. You aren't masking anything with room treatment. You're altering the acoustics of the room so reflections and absorption will occur in the manner you desire, not by chance. Your quest for random reflections is in the same vein, but unfortunately not based on any hard science.

 

[bpape]

Exactly. The room arguably has the 1st or 2nd (your choice as opposed to speakers) most impact on the sound. Again, it's not all about frequency response.

If room treatments are not required, then why do studios and performance venues pay so much attention to it? A live venue by definition according to you should require zero attention since it is live and there is no question as to the original sound - it is the original sound.

Again, not saying you don't have good sound - just that it's not as good as it could be. But it's your choice. I've had my rooms treated long before I got into this business.

Bryan

 

[Glenn Kuras]

NO! I have a nice smooth warm acoustic environment and a very natural sound stage well behind the plain of the speakers. It needs leaving well alone!

Well I am glad you like the sound of your system and it brings you pleasure. But if you ever have the chance you should test your room to see if it could be approved.

You have an ax to grind. I'm not buying it.

I think Bryan is just trying to explain what is going on with sound inside of a room and how to make it sound better.

Glenn

 

[Jack Hammer]

Honestly I don't really know the science behind treatments. What I can say is that my only personal experience is with my room. My room sounded like I was listening through a megaphone. I wasn't able to comfortably listen with much volume or I started to lose clarity and things echoed. I added a few treatments and it improved - alot. So I added a few more panels. Now everything sounds, IMO, very good. I had limited options on where or how I could place my equipment, and my room is somewhat awkward in its layout.

Maybe room treatment isn't necessary for everybody, I'm sure some places have a nice naturally occuring acoustical environment where the panels may not make a dramatic difference. That wasn't my case. So I used them and I believe in the differences they can make based on that. YMMV

Jack

 

[Davemcc]

Honestly I don't really know the science behind treatments. What I can say is that my only personal experience is with my room. My room sounded like I was listening through a megaphone. I wasn't able to comfortably listen with much volume or I started to lose clarity and things echoed. I added a few treatments and it improved - alot. So I added a few more panels. Now everything sounds, IMO, very good. I had limited options on where or how I could place my equipment, and my room is somewhat awkward in its layout.

Maybe room treatment isn't necessary for everybody, I'm sure some places have a nice naturally occuring acoustical environment where the panels may not make a dramatic difference. That wasn't my case. So I used them and I believe in the differences they can make based on that. YMMV

Jack

That's pretty much my experience. My acoustics still leave much to be desired, so one day soon I'm sure to engage the gentlemen above in their professional capacity to optimize my room.

 

[TLS Guy]

Exactly. The room arguably has the 1st or 2nd (your choice as opposed to speakers) most impact on the sound. Again, it's not all about frequency response.

If room treatments are not required, then why do studios and performance venues pay so much attention to it? A live venue by definition according to you should require zero attention since it is live and there is no question as to the original sound - it is the original sound.

Again, not saying you don't have good sound - just that it's not as good as it could be. But it's your choice. I've had my rooms treated long before I got into this business.

Bryan

Well actually modern science rather mucks up live concert venues! The classic case was London's Kingsway Hall. That hall had a nigh on perfect acoustic. It was a wonderful recording venue. For a listen the recordings of Sir Adrian Boult conducting Elgar's the Apostles and the Kingdom are one of the greatest achievements of the recording technology. Well Unfortunately men of science got involved in a make over, and now it is a dog and no longer a choice recording venue.

The best concert Hall's in the world are those prior to 1900. Examples are Vienna's Grosser Musikvereinssall (built in 1870), Leipzig's Gewandhaus (1885), the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam (1895) and Symphony Hall in Boston (1900).

It seems that concert Halls of shoe box design are best. Lots of lateral random lateral reflections, especially lots of early reflections within the Hass fusion zone give the most pleasing effect, with a total reverb time of 1.6 to 2sec. For liturgical music reverb times of 3 to 4 sec give the most pleasing effect.

I have found in listening rooms dead ones are very unpleasant. I have found speakers with limited vertical dispersion or those lobing downwards give the most pleasing effect. Of course the off axis response must closely mirror the axis response. I have also found that rooms such a my lower level living room that has a distinct echo can also sound very pleasing, especially when reproducing liturgical music.

Now there is a difference in the requirements for reproducing pop, rock, and jazz where a more dead acoustic is apparently preferred. However I don't listen to that. For music I listen to, a dead room does not produce satisfying results. I have used very high performance monitor class speakers for the surrounds, especially the center backs. On good SACD the original acoustic is reproduced with uncanny accuracy. I also find on a lot of good recordings the the Dolby PL IIx does a remarkable job of recreating the original acoustic.
On good recordings this space sounds much larger than it is. Good recordings in cathedral spaces, sound far in the distance as they should, and a wonderful sense of ambiance. Now those recordings really reveal the shortcoming of lossy compression algorithms. As soon as switching to one, even MP3 at 320 Kbs, the ambient field just collapses.

 

[bpape]

You're correct in your assessment of the large venues. By design, large spaces should be more diffuse than absorbtive. Why? Among other things, because in most cases, you already have a ton of absorbtion in there - it's called the audience. People are great absorbers. Also, the decay times you site for those places don't seem at all out of line, for a space of that volume. Look at the proportionate amount of the floor space taken up by 4' thick absorbers (people sitting) in those venues vs 1 person sitting in a listening room.

Target decay times are proportionate to the volume of the room. Smaller rooms need proportionately shorter decay times. Again, I'm not saying make a dead room. For 2 channel listening, we're talking about covering MAYBE 20% of the surfaces with absorbtion - and that includes people, carpet, furniture, etc.

I'll agree that truly dead rooms for 2 channel aren't desirable. A really dead space sounds like body sized headphones. I'd never want that and would never recommend that to a 2 channel customer. On the other hand, if one is listening in a 9x10 room, there are tradeoffs to be made that don't need to be in a 17x21 room with a 10' ceiling.

My feeling is that some of the treated rooms you've heard and base your opinion on were likely not done properly using way too much thin, upper mid/high frequency only absorbtion while ignoring the rest of the spectrum. Those types of rooms truly can sound bad IMO.

If that's what we're comparing to and it's that or no treatment, I'll take no treatment. But, if we're talking about minimal, targeted, broadband treatment which fits the design goal of not changing the spectral balance - yet still allows addressing of a few destructive reflections and bringing the decay times in line for the intended use, I'll take that any day to an untreated space.

Bryan

 

[Savant]

In my book you will not make a poorer speaker sound better than a superior one with room treatment.

I think this statement probably sums up what I perceive as a misunderstanding that underlies this thread (and others where TLS and I - and others - have exchanged niceties). No one is arguing that you can ignore loudspeaker performance if you simply address the room. What you say above is true, TLS, but it's not the point. The point is that a poor loudspeaker in a treated room can sound better than a superior one in an untreated room. Following from that, a superior loudspeaker in a treated room can sound better than the same in an untreated room.

And, as I have pointed out to you before and as others have pointed out to you here, "treatment" does not necessarily equate to "kill all the reflections and make an anechoic chamber." This is ground already covered...

Well actually modern science rather mucks up live concert venues! The classic case was London's Kingsway Hall. That hall had a nigh on perfect acoustic. It was a wonderful recording venue. For a listen the recordings of Sir Adrian Boult conducting Elgar's the Apostles and the Kingdom are one of the greatest achievements of the recording technology. Well Unfortunately men of science got involved in a make over, and now it is a dog and no longer a choice recording venue.

"Modern science" has given us many fantastic sounding concert halls. An entire branch of applied physics cannot be condemned on the basis of one "classic case." Admittedly / sadly, there are others, but great sounding "modern" halls far outnumber the "dogs."

The best concert Hall's in the world are those prior to 1900. Examples are Vienna's Grosser Musikvereinssall (built in 1870), Leipzig's Gewandhaus (1885), the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam (1895) and Symphony Hall in Boston (1900).

As an opinion, I respect this (and I wouldn't necessarily disagree). As a fact, it's false. One need look no further than Beranek's books (this one being just the most recent) to find countless examples of great sounding halls designed and built after 1900.

It seems that concert Halls of shoe box design are best. Lots of lateral random lateral reflections, especially lots of early reflections within the Hass fusion zone give the most pleasing effect, with a total reverb time of 1.6 to 2sec. For liturgical music reverb times of 3 to 4 sec give the most pleasing effect.

All valid points...and all things that can be designed into halls even if they aren't of the classic "shoebox" design, btw.

I have found in listening rooms dead ones are very unpleasant. I have found speakers with limited vertical dispersion or those lobing downwards give the most pleasing effect. Of course the off axis response must closely mirror the axis response. I have also found that rooms such a my lower level living room that has a distinct echo can also sound very pleasing, especially when reproducing liturgical music.

I would only comment (again) that no one here is advocating a dead listening room.

Now there is a difference in the requirements for reproducing pop, rock, and jazz where a more dead acoustic is apparently preferred. However I don't listen to that.

A good point. What works for you may not work for others!

For music I listen to, a dead room does not produce satisfying results. I have used very high performance monitor class speakers for the surrounds, especially the center backs. On good SACD the original acoustic is reproduced with uncanny accuracy. I also find on a lot of good recordings the the Dolby PL IIx does a remarkable job of recreating the original acoustic.
On good recordings this space sounds much larger than it is. Good recordings in cathedral spaces, sound far in the distance as they should, and a wonderful sense of ambiance. Now those recordings really reveal the shortcoming of lossy compression algorithms. As soon as switching to one, even MP3 at 320 Kbs, the ambient field just collapses.

All very interesting. But (again²) we are neither advocating a dead listening space, nor are we telling you you should change your room. Glenn has only made suggestions to you about testing your space and/or listening to your system in a treated space simply as exercises that he believes may offer insight about what acoustical treatments can do. I am very confident that you would probably stick with what you have, all evidence and opinion to the contrary. And that's fine. But, as you pointed out above, what you have may not work for others. And that's a good thing to remember when giving people guidance and advice.

Despite what you may believe, we all share the common goal of helping people achieve great sound in their listening rooms and home theaters. Your opinions on the matter are always extremely helpful and insightful. Personally, I welcome the opportunity to discuss such things with someone with as much experience as you obviously have. But flat-out condemning the opinons of others - regardless of whether you believe them to have ulterior motives (not all of us do, btw ) - moves us away from the goal. We all benefit from keeping things civil.