Fullrange Drivers

[WmAx]

This still sounds to me like an artifact of the listening room. I heard this kind of thing from the Ohm Walsh speakers. It was pleasant at times, but you couldn't turn it off, nor did it vary depending upon the recording.

Was this room well dampened, acoustically? A reflective, untreated room is never going to sound great. The point is to leave certain reflections live, not to leave all or most of the room live to the point where extreme poor decay times are present. A speaker with exceptional power response will need less treatment, but no treatment is another matter.

I've had described to me some recent work on producing "ambiance" by active means. In other words, adding extra speakers to the sides and back and using DSPs to extract and reproduce the ambient cues from the original recording. I suppose "surround sound" systems could do this too, but I don't think anyone is using it for anything but spectacular sound effects. The person I talked to reported excellent results, and others have reported the same after listening to his setup.

Indeed. One of my future hopeful projects [might never materialize due to the extraordinary requirements] is to have a room acoustically inert on all walls, the ceiling and the floor[yes, I mean an anechoic chamber for a listening room]. Then add monopole 2 way speakers at all of the important positions to be able to synthesize any ambiance property desired using DSP controller(s). In addition, strategic reflectors would be used. The idea is, of course, outlandish. But is a goal.

-Chris

 

[skrivis]

Was this room well dampened, acoustically? A reflective, untreated room is never going to sound great. The point is to leave certain reflections live, not to leave all or most of the room live to the point where extreme poor decay times are present. A speaker with exceptional power response will need less treatment, but no treatment is another matter.

It was a pretty decent room, with some acoustic treatment and also tube traps in the corners. What I noticed was a wide soundstage with some things apparently from outside the speaker positions, some depth, and a sense of being _in_ the soundstage. On the other hand, the imaging wasn't "pinpoint" in that the positions of instruments was a bit blurred and almost everything seemed larger than life. The bass, while extended, was quite tubby. (I bet they would have worked great for watching movies.)

Indeed. One of my future hopeful projects [might never materialize due to the extraordinary requirements] is to have a room acoustically inert on all walls, the ceiling and the floor[yes, I mean an anechoic chamber for a listening room]. Then add monopole 2 way speakers at all of the important positions to be able to synthesize any ambiance property desired using DSP controller(s). In addition, strategic reflectors would be used. The idea is, of course, outlandish. But is a goal.

-Chris

I was once in a "recording studio" that someone built in their basement. They leaned some old mattresses against the wall and then hung a bunch of Army surplus blankets vertically from the rafters, leaving an open space in the center of the basement. The center of the basement had a couple layers of carpeting on the floor, and I think he put some kind of batting or insulation between the joists for the ceiling there. He had all of his equipment in the center.

It made for a very dead room and didn't cost much. The drawbacks were that you wasted a lot of space, and it collected dust and odors like a sponge.

 

[WmAx]

It was a pretty decent room, with some acoustic treatment and also tube traps in the corners. What I noticed was a wide soundstage with some things apparently from outside the speaker positions, some depth, and a sense of being _in_ the soundstage. On the other hand, the imaging wasn't "pinpoint" in that the positions of instruments was a bit blurred and almost everything seemed larger than life. The bass, while extended, was quite tubby. (I bet they would have worked great for watching movies.)

Subjectively, I have never noticed what I would consider super pin-point imaging from a speaker with a very wide dispersion, such as a speaker approaching full band omnipolar behaviour. However, I have never noticed pin-point imaging in real performances, either. Therefor, I can not admit to caring for imaging that exceeds the focus of what one would notice in a real circumstance. If the room you refer to was being heard on everything[close mic things with no reverbs or delays, this is to expected, but not on most recordings] in an obvious way, something was probably wrong with the acoustics of said room. That should not happen if it is properly treated. I personally found that using a large center absorption device between the front speakers(about 5' deep, 4' high, tandem absorption structures spaced about 4' apart from each other, with angled front taper) to remove flutter echo from the space between the walls where the speakers are located, and to prevent cross channel reflection from the center of front wall(however, not blocking the 1st reflection on front wall that is mirrored directly to you), provided a good measure of improvement to such a speaker.

I was once in a "recording studio" that someone built in their basement. They leaned some old mattresses against the wall and then hung a bunch of Army surplus blankets vertically from the rafters, leaving an open space in the center of the basement. The center of the basement had a couple layers of carpeting on the floor, and I think he put some kind of batting or insulation between the joists for the ceiling there. He had all of his equipment in the center.

It made for a very dead room and didn't cost much. The drawbacks were that you wasted a lot of space, and it collected dust and odors like a sponge.

This sounds like it would not have very good broadband effect(mattresses, blankets and carpets don't generally absorb low enough frequencies for my satisfaction), in addition to being ugly. My idea is to use a room that is about 15' x 17' x 10', then build a secondary frame that is 17" deep on all walls, and 12" deep on the ceiling and floor. I would place 2 layers of 705 2" FRK or ASJ(membrane faced away from room interior, with fiberglass side pointing towards room interior) to get 4" of this material, with 12" air space between it and the walls, and 1" left over for cosmetic frame/fabrics for the faux walls. The ceiling would be the same(with less air gap) and the floor would the same, except instead of fabric, I would mount plastic composite floor grating, then some padding and carpet over this. I would mount 8" of 705 ASJ or FRK in 8' wide corner mounted panels on 4 room corners, and 4' wide corner mounted panels on horizontal/vertical corners. The result would be an effective anechoic chamber with a very broad bandwidth(pretty much >80Hz, I would expect, would lack any sort of appreciable reflective ability). The chamber would look not much different from a regular room. A blank, attractive slate for my set-up/experiments. Add transducers and reflector panels accordingly.

Note: For purposes where I need a true anechoic behaviour, such as measurements(sure beats having to use narrow gating caused by normal circumstances), I would remove all reflective items such as reflectors. I may have to roll some thin acoustic foam out over the carpet, as it is likely the carpet may cause some reflections at higher frequencies). I could have acoustic 'slip cover' foam to put over the existing electronics or speakers in the room instead of having to remove these things for measurements.

Perhaps now you realize why I consider my idea as far-fetched.

-Chris