Room Acoustics is a Total Waste of Money

[AcuDefTechGuy]

...Okay, now that I have your attention, what do you guys think about this Linkwitz Lab guy?

"...I am convinced that a properly designed sound system can perform well in a great variety of rooms and requires only a minimum of room treatment if any at all...Room treatment can be very effective above 200 Hz, but the same result may be obtained more aesthetically with ordinary furnishings, wall decoration, rugs on the floor and the variety of stuff we like to surround ourselves with...The acoustically most problematic frequency range is below 200 Hz...Attempts to treat the room with absorbers will make only marginal differences unless very many absorbers or large absorbing surfaces are used. It is best to attenuate peaks in the bass response with parametric equalization. Holes in the response cannot be filled in..."

http://www.linkwitzlab.com/rooms.htm

So I guess the take-home message is that certain rooms and certain loudspeakers require more room treatments than others? Some rooms and some loudspeakers don't require $4,000 room treatments at all?

 

[Penny]

Don't you work?

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Full-Time, man!
That's what I'm doing right now.

 

[GlocksRock]

This may be best posted in the room acoustics and layout area... but I've never had any acoustical treatment, but I highly doubt it's a waste of money. Why do you think speakers sound different in every room you put them in... because not all rooms are the same, and they need treatment to make your speakers sound better.

 

[fmw]

This may be best posted in the room acoustics and layout area... but I've never had any acoustical treatment, but I highly doubt it's a waste of money. Why do you think speakers sound different in every room you put them in... because not all rooms are the same, and they need treatment to make your speakers sound better.

Sometimes yes and sometimes no. I agree that room acoustics are more important than the speakers themselves, but I don't agree that you can make any speakers sound better in any room with treatments. In truth, most of the audiophile-treated rooms I've heard have sounded deat and uninteresting. I have a small listening room that no amount of treament will help without making it dead. I have another room with perfect dimensions that performs wonderfully for audio no matter how you "treat" it. No doubt room acoustics are critiical. Plenty of doubt that room treatments are always the answer to improving them.

 

[InTheIndustry]

Phase Technology dARTS is designed to essentially calibrate the room out of the equation. Only system I know of that does this and it actually works.

 

[InTheIndustry]

Now that I tink about it. The Jamo R909 actually requires a "live" room to give optimal sound. The only major treatments required are diffusion pieces for the ceiling to floor boundry.

 

[jaxvon]

Phase Technology dARTS is designed to essentially calibrate the room out of the equation. Only system I know of that does this and it actually works.

Now that I tink about it. The Jamo R909 actually requires a "live" room to give optimal sound. The only major treatments required are diffusion pieces for the ceiling to floor boundry.

You are simply re-emphasizing an important point that many people miss: room treatment is dependent on the properties of your speakers. You need to properly match your treatment scheme to the dispersion, linearity, and bandwidth characteristics of your speakers, as well as other factors if you want to achieve optimum performance.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

You are simply re-emphasizing an important point that many people miss: room treatment is dependent on the properties of your speakers. You need to properly match your treatment scheme to the dispersion, linearity, and bandwidth characteristics of your speakers, as well as other factors if you want to achieve optimum performance.

So in other words, you just can't say that you NEED to spend $4,000 on room treatment without knowing more about the acutual room and the way the speakers actually sound in this room?

Some rooms + speakers may require more or less room treatment than others.

And quite possibly, some don't even require room treatment at all to sound great?

 

[GlocksRock]

I agree that some rooms need it, and some rooms don't, as far as how much, or how little depends on you speakers and the room. The only way to know for sure is to get a professional out there.

 

[jaxvon]

So in other words, you just can't say that you NEED to spend $4,000 on room treatment without knowing more about the acutual room and the way the speakers actually sound in this room?

Some rooms + speakers may require more or less room treatment than others.

And quite possibly, some don't even require room treatment at all to sound great?

Yes, you've got the right idea. It is very possible to create inferior sound by improperly treating the room. But I find the idea that a speaker would require no room treatment to be too wishful. Unless your room is designed by a company that specializes in acoustics design (and therefore includes room treatment already), I doubt that your room will have the proper acoustics to facilitate maximum fidelity. There are plenty of people on here that can help you match your speakers to a treatment scheme, you just need to gather the most comprehensive measurement suite you can before you start buying treatments.

In regards to the original topic (Linkwitz), he is a very accomplished engineer and designer, but I feel that he is lacking in knowledge in room acoustics as it relates to perception and audibility. Expertise in one field does not imply it in another. The owner of Mapleshade records is a great example. He is an excellent Aerospace Engineer, but is seemingly obsessed with Snake Oil in audio (or maybe he just likes money).

 

[bpape]

Pretty much any room will benefit - especially in the bottom end. Yes - some depends on the room, furnishings, and speakers themselves. I will disagree that you can fix everything with EQ. You can help with peaks (not nulls) with EQ - but that's only in the frequency domain.

Treatments are required in many cases to deal with early reflections (depending on speaker type and directivity). In almos all cases, treatments are required to get the overall decay time of the room under control from 250Hz down. You can have the flattest response you want but if bass is ringing on for a full second or more, it's masking detail, muddying things up, and actually costing you bass extension and tightness.

Obviously, some will consider this a slanted point of view due to my business association. I'll just say try it. Go to the hardware store and grab a few bales of insulation. Stack them up in some of the corners of your room and listen for yourself. It's cheap and easy and you can return them when you're done. It's not an end all but can give you an idea of what you're missing.

Bryan

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I'll just say try it. Go to the hardware store and grab a few bales of insulation. Stack them up in some of the corners of your room and listen for yourself. It's cheap and easy and you can return them when you're done. It's not an end all but can give you an idea of what you're missing.

I have actually tried it.

I bought four ATS panels (4 in x 4 ft) and placed them in the four corners of my HT room. I could not hear one once of difference whatsover. Zippo. Nothing. Of course, I'm going to keep them because I hate returning four HUGE panels. But I tried to listen back-and-forth, I can truly cannot hear one bit of difference.

 

[Seth=L]

From my understanding, and it's limited, Bi-polar towers such as the Definitive Tech towers are meant to be used in a room without acoustic treatment, or as little as possible. They use the walls as reflection points to aid in the presentation for that type of speaker. Mono-polar speakers stand to gain much more from acoustic treatment.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

From my understanding, and it's limited, Bi-polar towers such as the Definitive Tech towers are meant to be used in a room without acoustic treatment, or as little as possible. They use the walls as reflection points to aid in the presentation for that type of speaker. Mono-polar speakers stand to gain much more from acoustic treatment.

That's exactly what Chet @ Definitive Technology told me.

 

[Seth=L]

That's exactly what Chet @ Definitive Technology told me.

I would take them down if I where you.

 

[avaserfi]

From my understanding, and it's limited, Bi-polar towers such as the Definitive Tech towers are meant to be used in a room without acoustic treatment, or as little as possible. They use the walls as reflection points to aid in the presentation for that type of speaker. Mono-polar speakers stand to gain much more from acoustic treatment.

This is not necessarily accurate. Differing driver alignments from mono-polar, omni-polar or bi-polar require differing methods of treatments in varying rooms. Also, it has been shown through credible perceptual research that first reflections, if of similar magnitude to the axial response and arriving to the listener within a specific time frame, actually increase listener preference.

It should also be noted that room interaction has been shown to increase resonance audibility. Thusly, a low resonance speaker would also be beneficial for use in an environment where first reflections are untreated to keep the audibility of this coloration to a minimum.

The use of room treatments is highly dependent on the room, speakers and application.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I would take them down if I where you.

Oh, come on!

They cost me like $160! I can't let that go to waste, can I?

At least they always excite interest in everyone who comes into my HT room!

The first question they ask me is, "What are those big rectangular things?"

 

[jostenmeat]

ADTG, no doubt that di-polar electrostats are quite the different animal than bipolar DTs, but I thought you might be slightly interested in this ML thread. I doubt you will do much more since your first try shows you no improvement. Anyways, its long, over 200 posts, and Mr. Winer joins in for a while there:

Placement options – Impacts of location, orientation and treatments
http://www.martinloganowners.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5435

I think if I got an overall generalization with consumer results on these particular speakers, it was that diffusion didn't help, comb-filtering is a serious concern, mid-bass absorption is good to help avoid dipole cancellations, and that hi-freq reflections need to be delayed enough to not be mistakenly perceived as the "same sound" which might appear as smearing.

 

[annunaki]

Phase Technology dARTS is designed to essentially calibrate the room out of the equation. Only system I know of that does this and it actually works.

I completely agree. Fantastic system!