Long Wall vs Short Wall

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Housteau

Long Wall vs Short Wall
« on: 5 Jan 2013, 08:38 pm »
I had watched the video on this subject available on the GIK website and have to say that my experience with room modes in my room was nearly exactly the same as shown.  My room is a bit larger and very close to what some consider as an ideal ratio at 10 (aver. ceiling height)  x 15.3 x 21.5.  When set up against my long wall certain peaks and nulls are more pronounced, but that was and still is the right way for me to go.  This is why I feel this way.

First off my cathedral ceiling peak runs in that direction and being perpendicular to it would look and feel odd, but even if my ceiling was flat I would still use the long wall.  Because, the primary reason the long wall works for me is due to the kind of soundstage presentation it provides.  The illusion of space created can be very wide outside of the speakers wall to wall when the recordings call for it.  The same can be said for the height, although not as much.  Is this strictly an acoustic thing, or is it visual as well?  In other words are my eyes adding information to the sound I am hearing and telling my brain to create an image that is not true?  Does that even matter?  You often hear the stories of people with amutated limbs stll having pain in the toes, or fingers of limbs that no longer exist.  That pain is still real, as real as anything else, because it is our brains that create our reality.

I have been in many listening rooms that are set up against the short wall and in almost all of them I feel a constriction of space to my sides both visually and with what I hear, but mostly with that soundstage presentation.  Several of these rooms have been close in dimension to my own and that short wall width of 15 - 16 feet is just too narrow for me to enjoy the presentation.

Maybe a room with a wide enough short wall dimension would be a different thing all together and I would enjoy that room using the short wall?  I don't know.  By the way, I was able to deal with the negative room mode issues with the proper positioning of gear, listening chair and with the use of different acoustic controls.  Much of that was accomplished though help from the Circle and the Acoustics Forum.  It probably was more difficult than it needed to be due to my choices, but taken as a whole, they were the right choices.

I guess this shows that there are no real absolutes and with every choice we have to balance out the things that matter the most to us and provide the largest improvement.  As another example:  There are some that absolutely say that cathedral ceilings are evil indeed for any listening space.  My experience has shown that is not true at all assuming that you first understand the possible issues and are ready to deal and treat for them.  Once again in my case the positives of the visual experiece adding to my virtual soundstage far outweighed the negatives of the expense and trouble of correcting several detrimental sonic artifacts.

This is just something that I had been thinking about and wanted to share.  Are there any others out there that tend to go their own way with good results agaist the current of what some see as the common wisdom?