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"Sounds" great John. Can you post some pics of your "Listening Chamber"? Am interested in seeing what you setup looks like.
I've been using Auralex foam and a digital equaliser for the last few years to try and control room problems and thought I was getting a lovely sound, BUT......!From reading material on the internet I concluded that I was wrong because the foam only worked down to 125Hz and even though I thought I was controlling lower frequencies with the equaliser, in fact that's not really possible. From calculations and measurements it was evident that I had problems at 40Hz and multiples of that.I've now installed various bass traps following advice from GIK Acoustics, and according to measurements (using REW) and my ears, the sound is much improved. The bass I hear goes lower as room modes have been considerably (but not completely) tamed, and that seems to have allowed for a more balanced and enjoyable sound overall. Some tinkering with the equaliser has improved things further.
It seems to me there's always more to be had out of the system, and most of it, once you have pretty good gear, is from speaker/listening positions, room treatment with a small amount of equalising to complete the job.For me there are further options for improvement to investigate. As well as additional room treatment perhaps, subwoofers for helping solve suckouts and room modes; active crossovers with more amps.
speakers are those whose off-axis response closely approximates on-axis response, and that controlled reflections and/or diffraction between the speakers and the listener as well as behind the listener will (again) give the most pleasing sound (to most listeners).Just more food for thought.
The last frontier- aka the room- has always been a source of contention.Like most things in audio there is no clear winner...it's a matter of preference.
A mostly or totally (acoustically) dead room is certainly one approach to home audio reproduction; I suspect that for most of us it will be less than satisfying, though, for a number of reasons. To start with, it won't work with dipoles or bipoles. For the rest of us, research at Harmon International by Floyd Toole and others strongly suggests that for (blinded) listeners the best sounding speakers are those whose off-axis response closely approximates on-axis response, and that controlled reflections and/or diffraction between the speakers and the listener as well as behind the listener will (again) give the most pleasing sound (to most listeners).Just more food for thought.
But if you can get away with the man cave look....a well damped room like a monitoringroom has some advantages. You are not layering ambiance on top of recorded ambiance.ymmv. imho yadda yadda
How true. I don't consider the room just as another component, but as a major component. However, I think this is where much of this contention can begin. Many feel that the very best component is no component at all, that is one without any acoustic signature of it's own. In general I fall into this camp for all components, except for the listening room.Brian believed in the LEDE (live end - dead end) listening room and did all of his critical listening this way. Take a look at some of the photos from the different audio shows and how he had those smaller rooms set up to highlight his speakers. The LEDE concept seemed to work best for monopole designs. What I thought was interesting is that Brian moved to creating both bipole and dipole designs and yet continued with that LEDE concept.
Rives Audio, you know those folks that design some of the most exotic and technically correct listening rooms worldwide, do not believe in this LEDE concept at all. In fact, they believe in what could be considered as anti-absorption. Their rooms are designed to allow the higher frequencies to mostly remain, but be controlled through various reflective, diffractive and diffusive techniques.I should mention here that most, if not all of this room design contention has to do with how the higher frequencies are to be controlled. I believe that just about everyone believes and understands that the lower frequencies act very differently and need to be controlled differently. Absorption is the universally accepted method of control here, as well as the proper placement of those lower frequency drivers within the room.
I have found that the rear wave from a bipole needs to be controlled, not eliminated. I have never understood why Brian felt he needed to damped out that rear wave to a point where the V60 became nearly a monopole. I suppose that maybe he was more used to that monopole sound and felt his customers would be as well.
Carl, do you mean Ambiosonics? The idea of Ambiosonics is to eliminate 'crosstalk' from the speakers (where your left ear hears sounds from the right speaker and so on). In effect it tries to create the headphone experience, hence that barrier you mention. This thread, first post, explains something about it, and my post, #4, gives sources and questions:http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/the-waterloo-effect-interaural-crosstalk.323457/By the way, I've tried the 'Waterloo Sunset' effect and it's there!
This duplication of room created sound is a lesson we learned in our "live versus recorded" events.