Introduction to Room Acoustics

[gene]

<font color='#000000'>Rives Audio has contributed another article to Audioholics regarding room acoustics, the often forgotten, yet critical component in ones audio system. &nbsp; This article serves as an introductory of what will expand upon all facets of room acoustics and how the every day audiophile can improve the fidelity of their system by understanding how it interacts within the room and what steps to take to ensure the interaction has positive acoustic values.


http://www.audioholics.com/techtip....cs.html</font>

 

[av_phile]

<font color='#000000'>Are there any fast rules an audiophile can follow in his road to sonic nirvana? &nbsp;Like, there should be no opossing paralel walls that are reflective in a sound room. &nbsp;That dipoles should sit adjacent to relfective walls. &nbsp;That there should be no reflecting surface between the speaker and the listener. &nbsp;That it is better to have an irregular shaped room as a sound room. Treat the floor or the ceiling, not both. &nbsp;Etc, etc

I have a few more questions like: Is it good to have plants with lush but small foliage behind speakers? &nbsp;Are walls adjacent to speakers better treated with abosrbent matierals or diiffusive materials?</font>

 

[Chuck]

<font color='#000000'><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Are there any fast rules an audiophile can follow in his road to sonic nirvana?</td></tr></table>

There are some things that should be avoided, like cubical rooms, but there are matters of personal preference that come into play.  Also, loudspeaker designs can vary so widely that there are going to be cases where the usual guidelines don't apply.  If you want to try to get the most from your room and loudspeakers it is probably best to do what was suggested in the article.  Either hire a professional, or learn enough about acoustics to be able to figure out for yourself how to get where you want to go.

Personal preferences and loudspeaker design are both major considerations.  Those who like omni-directional or direct-reflecting loudspeakers because of the huge sonic soundstage they create may not like the results they get if they treat their room to reduce early reflections.  Not all dipoles are intended to have a reflective surface behind them.  Even if we narrow things down to a single loudspeaker type, it is hard to make hard and fast rules that apply in every case.  For example, most people who own or build ESL's recommend placing them some distance from the back wall.  InnerSound recommends placing their ESL's close to the back wall, and since their loudspeakers are designed to be placed that way they are likely to perform better close to the wall.  It seems that there are always exceptions, due to preferences, loudspeaker design, and no doubt to the infinite number of possible room configurations.  That said, I believe that if you follow the series of articles you will learn all or most of what you need to know to get more out of your gear by working with the room and loudspeaker placement.

There really is no single &quot;right way&quot; to design a loudspeaker or treat a room, so it is best to understand how it all works, so that you can achieve the results you want.  The designer of the 901 loudspeaker (for some reason you can't use his name on this forum without it being changed to booze) went out of his way to create lots of early reflections with his famous design, but I do what I can to minimize early reflections.  The designer of the 901 (what a silly way to have to say that) certainly isn't wrong, having created the best selling loudspeaker of all time, but I'm not wrong either.  We're trying to achieve quite different things, so it is to be expected that we might do things quite differently.  As you probably realize, there is a lot more to the room and loudspeaker than just the frequency response.

Gene, why does my message change &quot;booze&quot; to &quot;booze?&quot;
(Heck, I can't even ask the quetion!)  

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[EdR]

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gene : Rives Audio has contributed another article to Audioholics regarding room acoustics, the often forgotten, yet critical component in ones audio system.   This article serves as an introductory of what will expand upon all facets of room acoustics and how the every day audiophile can improve the fidelity of their system by understanding how it interacts within the room and what steps to take to ensure the interaction has positive acoustic values.

This is really good stuff, Gene.  I stoutly maintain that once one moves one's listening position away from the near field, then what one is really listening to is the speaker/room system, and plunking a very expensive speaker into this system without regard to the other half is very unlikely to yield the best results.

I believe that educating oneself about and than playing with the room acoustics is much more profitable, and will give much better audible results than any speaker cable or connector tweaks.

I did find a good product at Parts Express- the Sheffield Sound Labs 'Test Disc', which for a bit over twenty bucks will give you every test signal that you'd ever need, as well as a number of well recorded musical selections on its 84 tracks. As one might expect from Sheffield Labs.

These include 1/3 octave warble tones with when used with a Radio Shack sound level meter will enable you to chart your room responses and thus see what's going on.  This CD is pure gold.  Thus, for about sixty bucks, you can have a pretty darn good analysis instrument and hours of 'fun' tweaking.   The next step up would start running into the four figures.

For the record, I was very pleased with Parts Express, everything arrive in two days as described.  Here's the exact info in the disc.

SHEFFIELD/AUTOSOUND 2000 TEST DISC
Part Number 510-206
Price: $22.95 EA</font>