Listening room snake oil?

[kemmler3D]

I actually went to the guy’s place to hear these for myself after we had an online “disagreement” to their effectiveness.

His place in Long Beach was a great room/ loft with all brick wall boundaries. And the spaces were quasi open and divided. It had a church like acoustic.

So we are listening to his stereo and he is placing and removing these little cups from their little stands on the walls and looking at me as if I should be hearing these amazing differences.

Finally I stopped him and told him that even if these things made a difference there would be no way to hear it through the disastrous reverb of the space.

He kind of hung his head and acknowledged the space had issues.

And that was that.

Reading that 6moons article, it occurs to me that the "deep into it" audiophiles like the ones that wrote this article are probably the same people who get called up on stage in hypnosis shows...

Franck puts one little cup on the table while we are talking. We immediately notice how Franck's voice is changing. It becomes clearer and more articulate yet Franck doesn't change his voice. It's the influence of the resonator responsible for this perceived change. When an additional resonator cup gets placed on the table, the effect of the first resonator is enhanced. When even more resonators are added to the cluster, it gets too much. His voice becomes unintelligible. One less and we're back on track.

Really?

Anyway...

As for whether certain types of carpet are "snake oil"... I would say yes and no. It's well known that different materials absorb different bandwidths at different amounts. So in theory the difference between carpets with noticeable differences in bulk density, fiber density, fiber width, thickness and so on should be audible.

The snake oil bit comes in when you start saying one type is categorically better than another. No acoustic material is better than another unless you also define the task it's being used for. It's like saying salt is better than sugar.

 

[Yorkshire Mouth]

I suppose we need to appreciate different circumstances.

I’m in the UK, and my guess would be around 80-90% of lounges will have a fitted carpet, and most of those which don’t will have a rug.

If rugs and carpets are not only useless, but actually bad, in that they colour the frequency response of floor reflections, then hi-fi doesn’t exist in my country.

Calculated overstatement.

 

[EERecordist]

Listening room design and materials was one of the topics discussed during a recent visit to a fancy audio salon (more details on that HERE). One new thing I learned about was the importance of the proper floor covering fiber choice, as most listening spaces are carpeted. To my surprise I was told that pure wool is the only viable choice. Nylons, polyesters, polyolefin, cotton, sisal etc are apparently unsuited for listening spaces as their absorption or something adds colorations and too damping (or not damping enough?). Apparently though it's OK to put wool carpets over other kinds. There was no explanation offered for why wool is acoustically magical. Chemically wool is a form of nylon (polyamide) and I'd expect them to be quite similar, but no. I can't imagine where this stuff comes from. This goes way beyond cable elevators and $700 audio ethernet switches. Snake oil is plumbing new depths. God save us.

That's pretty funny. There are many acoustics forums with trained acoustics engineers. It depends on what you want your room to sound like and your budget. I would doubt the fiber of the carpet matters, just the thickness. I would use jute carpet padding instead of foam. Mass loaded vinyl is another accessible material. I'm sure that audio shop would love to sell you cashmere under carpet padding! Maybe they could throw come gold in it for mass?

 

[Waxx]

That's pretty funny. There are many acoustics forums with trained acoustics engineers. It depends on what you want your room to sound like and your budget. I would doubt the fiber of the carpet matters, just the thickness. I would use jute carpet padding over foam. Mass loaded vinyl is another accessible material. I'm sure that audio shop would love to sell you cashmere under carpet padding! Maybe they could throw come gold in it for mass?

Indeed, if you want proper answers, look at acousticians, preferable those with a good reputation and not selling their own magic stuff.

There are some who sell their own stuff like Ethan Winer (realtraps) that are an exception on that, as he is using science and does publish papers on his findings that are accepted by AES as real science based. His products are also not ridiculous expensive and do work (and some are scientific tested by relative neutral testers and confifm his claims). But those who have their magical claims with no science behind it are mostly ripoffs

 

[allmanfan]

are we really disputing that the listening room can affect the sound of a speaker system?

 

[kemmler3D]

are we really disputing that the listening room can affect the sound of a speaker system?

No, did you read the thread? The snake oil contention was that only specific types of fiber used in carpet were suitable for hi-fi. The rebuttal is that rugs and carpets in general do have an effect (obviously) but the effect of different types of fiber is probably much less than what the salesman implied.

 

[Emlin]

Ewe, sounds like they yakked a lot of nonsense. Fur gods sake, what a pile of fluff. I hope you told them to shag off?

It's all down to expectation baas.

 

[Yorkshire Mouth]

I know this is ASR, but science must be applied logically, and this is a good example.

We’re told that carpets handle different frequencies in different ways, and so are to be avoided.

Scientifically, the first part is true. But we can’t just say “It’s the science, therefore it’s true”. We need to ensure the logic also stands up.

Now we know that almost all, if not all, room treatments are not frequency neutral. That’s why we have bass traps which are much thicker. By the logic of the ‘carpet claim’, if a room treatment company really believes in that logic, they should not be selling any treatment which don’t treat all frequencies from 20Hz to 20kHz equally. And any surface in the room which doesn’t reflect all frequencies equally should be removed as the first priority.

 

[Purité Audio]

Vertical reflections from the floor and ceiling are never beneficial to SQ whereas horizontal reflections ‘can’ be perceived as beneficial .
Keith