Are you saying that if a speaker is designed well-enough, it will work well in any room - period?
No. I'm saying, if anything, the opposite: that one should choose a loudspeaker with a coverage pattern that works well for the shape, boundary materials, intended furnishings, etc. of that room. A fairly live room will generally work best with narrower pattern speakers. A more absorptive room will likely need wider-pattern speakers. (All that assumes one's goal is maximizing perceived spaciousness, which studies show is the general preference so long as imaging is not too degraded. If one's goal is laser-focus imaging with minimal hall ambience, then perhaps narrow-throw speakers in an absorptive room is one's ideal. The only way one can determine one's preferences on the focus-spaciousness continuum is to listen to well-designed systems with one or the other trait optimized.)
That is to say, not just "which speaker?" but "which speaker
for this room and for my sonic preferences?
Many people simply cannot spare the front- and sidewall-clearance that even the best speakers require for optimal performance.
The main issue with boundary placement, assuming a competently-designed speaker with a fairly constant midrange pattern and low diffraction, is just excess upper bass reinforcement from the boundaries. That happens to be one thing that DSP room correction is very, very good at fixing.
(Incompetently designed speakers have all sorts of issues with boundaries, because their midrange power response is so crappy.)
When some say that carpets, furniture, curtains, etc, should suffice, they are talking about room treatment - intentional, or otherwise.
That is, to some degree, true. However, it doesn't change the fact that dedicated "room treatments" are mostly just band-aids for incompetently-designed loudspeakers.
Actually, I'm surprised to read that you admit that the modal region can be an area requiring help.
Why?
ou believe that "multiple subwoofers well set-up will get one most of the way there"? That's just active room treatment, as opposed to the passive treatment provided by acoustic panels.
That is a valid way of looking at it.
How do you differentiate between "big treatments like lossy false walls" and corner traps?
That's really simple. Consider the size of the wavelengths in question. A 100Hz wave is over 11' long, for instance. What the hell is some little 18" wide pie wedge in the corner supposed to do about that?
Putting a wedge of foam in a corner is easy but pointless. Also, even "bass traps" that are ineffective tend to be larger than the subwoofers needed to smooth the room response would be.)
Buliding lossy pairs of walls (front wall-back wall, etc.) with constrained layer damping is very expensive (both in terms of cost and because it
materially reduces the square footage of one's dwelling) and permanent, but has been shown effective in concert with multiple subwoofers. (No "room treatment" works in the bass with a single sub, or two "full-range" mains. Multiple subwoofers are required regardless.)
I still have room modes, and EQ helps, but it doesn't help in the time-domain. That's where the bass traps did help.
That's one thing I don't understand in theory, though I have observed it, too.
Dr. Toole and others have written that correcting FR with EQ fixes the time issues as well. However, I've taken a single subwoofer, EQ'ed it flat...and the system still had pronounced "room boom." But with the addition of two additional subs and proper calibration, the boominess went away. Completely. Before EQ. (Just adjustments of relative level and phase/delay of each of the three subs.) Even though the observed spatial average was (modestly) worse than the single-sub EQ'ed solution. EQ just added some proverbial whipped cream on top.
I say that to say this: Check out how your room sounds, then treat it.
I still plan on adding more traps, because I do notice them helping. My main problem isn't level frequency response, it's getting RID of the bass so that the next note is clear.
Multiple subwoofers will do the same thing, but take up a lot less space in the room. May be more expensive, though.
Why should I believe you over Dennis Erskine?
Perhaps you have a white paper or two I could read on how room acoustics play little to any role in the role of sound in a room?
Nobody's claiming that, of course. There are some room things that are very important. For instance, keeping the front wall clear of things like equipment racks or anything else that could cause diffraction. And removing stupid obstructions such as coffee tables from between the loudspeakers and the listening position. Such things are universal improvements, but sadly more people in audiophooldom are "auditioning" wires than losing the coffee table for end tables.
But as an aside I'd also be a little leery of taking on faith what anyone who has a pecuniary interest in a subject has to say about it. Any reasonable person will naturally skew her/his interpretation of data in a direction consistent with that person's self-interest. That's not nefarious, and it's certainly not wrong. It's just human nature.
