How NOT to set up speakers and room treatment ( Goldensound)

[Deleted member 48726]

Good question /good point. My hearing definitely rolls off around 14kHz.

The simple observation outdoors with fewer reflections improves clarity vs any indoors , has been around for 30-40 years...so I can't see how it's age dependent.

Hey, try outdoors for yourself...it's a no brainer, plain to see what you think, experiment.

It's actually not the HF roll off that's the issue here but the loss of mid band frequency hearing. An audiogram will tell you how much you have lost. On iOS a free app called mimi hearing test is comprehensive enough.

 

[Deleted member 48726]

That is puzzling. Go really outdoors and take a few steps away from listener. Then try to talk. It will take a lot of energy to communicate.

Along these lines, have you noticed how your loved one's voices don't change as you listen to them in different rooms in your home? Reflections are changing but adaptation makes sure that we mostly hear the direct sound.

Along the same lines having had two kids in outdoor kindergarten for four years I can definetely vouch for that they get used to turn their voices up until dads clipping point. Much more so than children in indoor kindergartens.

 

[Axo1989]

And by “we” you mean four people.

Yes, a rather small subject population. But taking the data at face value despite that, I think if you increase the time period for an impulse (via reflection or otherwise) you would expect increased audibility? That may or may not be what you want (again, for different music types and listening purposes) in your reproduction of the original signal.

 

[theREALdotnet]

Yes, a rather small subject population. But taking the data at face value despite that, I think if you increase the time period for an impulse (via reflection or otherwise) you would expect increased audibility? That may or may not be what you want (again, for different music types and listening purposes) in your reproduction of the original signal.

And how does all that affect the stereo sound stage? All this talk about audibility of echos etc. – what does it mean for listening to a stereo recording at home?

I’m increasingly convinced that the goal of stereo is one of two different things to people. Some like a wide wall of sound, spanned between the two speakers (or beyond). They like that wall of sound tonally accurate. The only way of improving on that would be making the wall of sound encircle you, either through copious room reverb or through multi-channel upmixing.

Others expect a virtual room with individual sound sources opening up in front of them. They like to hear precisely where those sources (performers, instruments) are, in terms of angle and distance from the listening position. A wall of sound that’s flat front to back is a defect (in recording or reproduction) to them.

 

[Vuki]

Yes you do if you are going to jump in an argument and keep posting as if this is wild west and any preference will do. We don't accept that in speaker sound and are not going to do it here when there is strong evidence of preference for reflective rooms. Really, your pleading posts are getting tiring. If you have some research to add to the topic, do. Otherwise I will be giving you a reply ban.

No, he doesn't.

preference

1. the fact that you like something or someone more than another thing or…

dictionary.cambridge.org

 

[amirm]

And how does all that affect the stereo sound stage? All this talk about audibility of echos etc. – what does it mean for listening to a stereo recording at home?

A lot of research has gone into stereo as well including the one I recently post:

As you see, it is stereo configuration and this again was the conclusion:

CONCLUSIONS
A study of the effects of loudspeaker directivity suggests that there is no clear consensus of preference across listeners and programme items overall although there is a tendency for naive listeners to prefer a more omni-directional response. Although it has been thought that this approach would lead to degraded stereo imaging, this was not confirmed by experienced listeners using rating scales and blind presentations of audio material. As a result of these findings, further tests will be carried out to investigate the effects of loudspeaker directivity for off-hot-spot listening.

 

[thecheapseats]

after 1000+ messages on this thread, I feel sorry for most anyone putting a sound system into a residential room... it's an extreme challenge with diminishing returns... if it were not for the pure enjoyment of music itself (fidelity be damned) I don't know why anyone would bother...

 

[MattHooper]

after 1000+ messages on this thread, I feel sorry for most anyone putting a sound system into a residential room... it's an extreme challenge with diminishing returns... if it were not for the pure enjoyment of music itself (fidelity be damned) I don't know why anyone would bother...

Eh.

Somehow I (and I'm sure many here) have managed it numerous times.

But, maybe my standards are too low

 

[Sancus]

due to declining SPL vs distance ( a reason that makes no sense)

Inverse square law doesn't actually happen indoors because reflections reinforce the direct sound. This reinforcement doesn't happen outdoors. Therefore at a given distance indoors, all else being equal, SPL will always be higher than outdoors, improving intelligibility.

 

[Descartes]

A decent pair of headphones like the Apple AirPods Pro 2 and I can enjoy the music without worrying about the room!

 

[Thomas_A]

Doing controlled experiments "at home" in this matter is very complex. Reducing DR ratio can be done by making the stereo triangle smaller (and the room relatively larger). You will change the timbre not only due to different amount of reflections (brighter if you DR ratio increase) but also due to stereo errors (ideeper 1.8 kHz dip if DR ratio increase). No contest that the first arrived sound is most important (for direction etc) but reflections affect tonality (and loudness), speakers use or real life sounds. The lateral reflections in small rooms are not related to "envelopment" as in large halls. The time is just too short. Our brain is filtering them out as long as they are not too loud or differ in spectral content. Our biggest problems are modal regions, masking details. Fix them and keep the decay times reasonable. Finally, add some surrounds and up mix for a subset of recordings. They add ambiance.

 

[Galliardist]

after 1000+ messages on this thread, I feel sorry for most anyone putting a sound system into a residential room... it's an extreme challenge with diminishing returns... if it were not for the pure enjoyment of music itself (fidelity be damned) I don't know why anyone would bother...

Since my enlightenment in this thread I have not listened to a note of recorded music: but as I was only listening to detail - free echo laden nonsense before, no difference there.

Don’t feel sorry, just make sure you warn everyone else off making the mistake I did!

 

[Bjorn]

Supressing all early arriving specular reflections below -30 dB isn't easy in a living room and especially with wide dispersion speakers. We are also here talking about ideally doing it close down to the Schroeder frequency. So just looking at the regular ETC doesn't give the answer as the ETC is focusing more on the highs. We can avoid bandlimiting by using broadband treatment. Typically 5 cm absorbers are way too bandlimited. Unless we're talking about some specific commercial products that works lower in frequency with less depth, an absorber needs to be 15 cm (6") thick to achieve this and also wide/heigh enough.

When we supress early reflections very low, remaning ones becomes considerably more audible.

Here's an example of a high reflection arriving from the opposite side wall of a speaker after 9 ms. The leves of this reflection is -16 dB. While that's fairly low, it becomes easily audible because the surrounding reflections are generally much lower.

Lowering this with absorption attenuates this to close to -30 dB but we have some remaining ones at around -25 dB. The later ones from about 16 ms is diffuse energy, and we don't want to absorb these since that's creating a dead space with poor envelopment.

To my ears, removing such a side wall reflection sounds better in the long run with different types of music. I only find this kind of side wall reflection preferable in the very beginning of the listening session (typically the first 5-15 seconds) with certain types of music. I need to listen a bit longer than the typical time span used for blind tests to figure that out in an AB test. Perhaps more like 30-45 seconds though needed time span here may depend on the material and loudness. Testing it with different genres is important.

 

[Bjorn]

Sure he can. Add more channels and upmix.

I exaggerate but only a little. Break free of the intrinsically flawed 'stereo ' paradigm.

That's a possibility but there are also traidoffs.

Several channels will increase comb filtering and there's frequency lobing between the channels if the level is high enough simultaneously. While you can't hear those discrete reflections well anymore due to that fact that you have so many that are masking individuals ones, it's messy. Polar lobing can vary but can be really detrimental at certain frequencies.

Personally I find multichannel music fatiguing and messy, and I much prefer spaciousness achieved with late arrival diffuse energy. But multichannel with active surrounds does provide even more envelopment than the passive diffusive contribution. That's for sure and I see no reason to debate with those who prefer this. I don't believe in absolute science when it comes to preferences. Just the fact that we have different rooms and listen to different music, makes science here more or less futile.

 

[Galliardist]

I'm going to throw in a more genuine concern than some of my other posts here as a warning.

Taking an interest, I looked around some of the Australian stores and particularly Sydney ones, and I notice that recently - in the last couple of months - our high end dealers are suddenly popping up with Vicoustics products and notes about things like "room acoustics is a proper science". Presumably I'm part of the target market, as I can add some of these in a "domestic environment to improve the sound of your system". Our resident High End dealer Audio Connection has teamed up with an actual acoustics consultant, but is putting room treatments on a par with the usual (cables and power treatments) as part of their way to sell us their magic.

What brings me back here, though, is that I had a conversation online this afternoon (not in a forum or anything) with a real life antagonist, who tried a new line on me: "you can't tell the difference with cables because your room isn't treated properly". This came out of the blue (the person concerned doesn't know I'm on ASR, either).

So, while not wanting to disrupt this debate, get your act together folks - room treatments are about to become the new snake oil, and regardless of what you think about reverberation times and first reflections, you all need to be ready to face a potential wave of genuine nonsense in this area.

 

[Sokel]

I'm going to throw in a more genuine concern than some of my other posts here as a warning.

Taking an interest, I looked around some of the Australian stores and particularly Sydney ones, and I notice that recently - in the last couple of months - our high end dealers are suddenly popping up with Vicoustics products and notes about things like "room acoustics is a proper science". Presumably I'm part of the target market, as I can add some of these in a "domestic environment to improve the sound of your system". Our resident High End dealer Audio Connection has teamed up with an actual acoustics consultant, but is putting room treatments on a par with the usual (cables and power treatments) as part of their way to sell us their magic.

What brings me back here, though, is that I had a conversation online this afternoon (not in a forum or anything) with a real life antagonist, who tried a new line on me: "you can't tell the difference with cables because your room isn't treated properly". This came out of the blue (the person concerned doesn't know I'm on ASR, either).

So, while not wanting to disrupt this debate, get your act together folks - room treatments are about to become the new snake oil, and regardless of what you think about reverberation times and first reflections, you all need to be ready to face a potential wave of genuine nonsense in this area.

That's not new allthought it was limited mostly in some products that was doing scattering,some of them really big.
I'll try to remember the brand,they somehow try to make them look some kind of artistic (not for my minimal taste but they weren't bad).

 

[thecheapseats]

Since my enlightenment in this thread I have not listened to a note of recorded music: but as I was only listening to detail - free echo laden nonsense before, no difference there.

Don’t feel sorry, just make sure you warn everyone else off making the mistake I did!

what is "free echo laden nonsense" ?... also, I have no idea what "mistake" you made...

 

[TheZebraKilledDarwin]

"Hier spricht Edgar Wallace!"

Let's bring some evidence from another angle to show why room reflections can be beneficial. Hopefully most of you know that we don't like resonances in speakers (peaks in some frequencies). But when it comes to the music itself, resonances are heart and sole of many instruments. In that regard, the more we hear them, the more enjoyable they are going to be. Research shows, counterintuitively, that reflections in room accentuate our ability to hear resonances. From famous Dr. Toole/Olive paper,
The Modification of Timbre by Resonances: Perception and Measurement*
FLOYD E. TOOLE AND SEAN E. OLIVE
National Research Council, Division of Physics, Ottawa, Ont. K1A OR6, Canada

A study was put together where a Q-1 resonances at 1 kHz was tested for audibility. Lower Q resonances like this are the most audible kind. An impulsive tone was used to detect minimum threshold of audibility. The impulse was then repeated at different rates. Here were the results with headphones, anechoic chamber and a reverberant room with RT-60 of 2 seconds (quite long/reflective):

View attachment 290295

Notice how the threshold of hearing for reverberant room was far lower than either headphones/anechoic chamber which were similar to each other. Listeners could detect the resonance at some 10 dB lower in the high reverberant room. In another test, RT60 was varied to see the effect on this threshold:

View attachment 290296

Remarkably, we are able to detect resonances at lower level at RT60 of 1 second (-14 dB) than at 0.3 second (9 dB). But both were superior to no reflections.

The last line is a sobering thought: that people creating music should allow reflections in their rooms as to better hear these resonances.

Many people have preference for speakers in rooms. This is one of the reasons for such preference over headphone listening, or the perfect non-reflective room (anechoic chamber).

The dose makes the poison (Paracelsus).

There are so many undefined parameters, that I am surprised how unscientific some of the quoted papers seem to be.

In the case of the above example, that a "small room" ambience was helpful in detecting a certain boost in the midrange, to me is not surprising at all:

Because the probability is high, that the used small room program emphasized the midrange and made it more audible compared to other frequencies.

But to conclude, that therefore reverbs were improving the ability to hear nuances, is almost comical.
Some "experts" in the field obviously have no clue, how audio engineers (= practitioners applying empirical facts) are working.
Obviously without knowledge of reality, they work with flawed imaginations of hearing (their models), build tests based on information filtering models (useless, because important parameters missing) and come to conclusions that are false (garbage in - garbage out).

Here's what is going on:
the CHARACTER of the added small room, just like the character of the listening room, or the character of the speakers, can hugely emphasize certain frequency ranges.

I have explained that already, but it all seems to fall on deaf ears (pun intendend):
Yamaha NS-10 are cherished to this day, (among other things) because they are hyping the upper mids. The result is, that the listener is made aware of unpleasant changes in that range more easily and the result is, that the upper mids are treated more carefully and become more controlled.

Why do mixes made in home studios usually sound bad?
Because the untreated small room EMPHASIZES certain frequencies, for example the midrange!
The result?
The room makes the home producer more susceptible to "too much mids" because of this emphasization.
He hears too loud mids and he reduces them. Then he makes the car test and cymbals with booom booom booom...

But I guess it takes an academic expert (too often synonymous for a person without any practical experience in the field) to conclude with his information filter, that listening in echo chambers even improves the ability to hear details...

If I wouldn't have experienced it myself at university, I would find it hard to believe, how uninformed and completely out of touch with reality "experts" can be and what their studies are suggesting.

 

[thecheapseats]

Eh.

Somehow I (and I'm sure many here) have managed it numerous times.

But, maybe my standards are too low

managed? - you put springs and rocks under your speakers - what did that manage?...

 

[Geert]

our high end dealers are suddenly popping up with Vicoustics products and notes about things like "room acoustics is a proper science"

He's right about "room acoustics is a proper science", and not the easiest science area (partly because it typically involves lots of compromises and it's not always easy to objectively verify the results, just look at this discussion).

So, while not wanting to disrupt this debate, get your act together folks - room treatments are about to become the new snake oil

Not new, there have been lots of companies manufacturing and reselling acoustic treatment materials in all shapes and forms without decent understanding of acoustics for decades. Some of them are nothing more then resellers of foam.

In the audiophile world the (pretty expensive) Acustica Applicata Daad has been popular for at least 20 year. Not necessarily an example of a company that doesn't know what they're doing, but Hifi shops want you to believe that only a few of these devices make a world of difference. That's not going to happen.