[studiotech]

...or at least mitigating the effects of the room.

I spent Friday evening dragging my baffles and new studio monitor design over to Starke Lake studios along with our lead engineer and co-designer of the monitors from Phat Planet Studios.  Starke has got the largest room in central Florida by far and I've really been wanting to take some measurements and do some listening far away from all boundaries. Pretty much the closest I can get to an outside measurement while still being cool, comfortable and mosquito free.

www.starkelakestudios.com/index.html
www.phatplanetstudios.com


To say it was a revelation, would be an extreme understatement.  I am now more convinced than ever, that folks who say the room is not a big problem or that their design does not get effected by the room, have never heard their design in the best possible circumstance.

From the pictures, you may surmise that is it a rather "live", reverberant sounding space, but that would not be correct.  Due to the ceiling being completely covered with absorptive material and all of the walls having very thick fiberglass behind the thin wood slats, which are spaced with about 1/8 -1/4" gaps, it is very "tight" sounding.  Not completely dead, but if you were walked in there blindfolded and asked to speak or make sounds, you'd have no idea just how large the room really is.  There's not much room sound to this room.  It's just over 30ft*60ft and ceilings are about 15ft high.  We are looking at a 2000sq.ft. room here folks!

The nearest boundary (other than the floor) was the glass wall looking into the control room.  it was about 12ft behind the speakers. The speakers themselves were 10ft apart and we sat at 9-11 away.  One chair in front of the other.  As some of you may recall from my build thread, I absorb some of the rear wave of the mids in my design, so only the bass region from 60-250Hz is true dipole.

OK, back to the listening impressions.  We made almost no measurements, because for hours we sat there amazed and transfixed by the music.  We rifled through track after track  on my hard drive, listening to the all of the top selections we've used over the years to tune both sets of speakers and countless other systems and rooms.  Selection after selection revealed new ambiance, detail, bad edits, singers placement with regards to the mic.  You could hear studio produced vocals with a level of precision we've never experienced before.  Absolutely incredible.  And on hi-rez, audiophile, minimal mic'd material like Chesky Records, oh boy, were you ever transported to the venue.  There was a bubble of space on well recorded selections that has never appeared before in any other room, even the control rooms at Phat or some excellent mastering studios I've been to.  It's really the only way to describe it....as a holographic bubble of sound and space.  I'm officially selling my house and moving into an acoustically treated warehouse.  Anyone wanna chip in?  There will be plenty of space for your system.

Greg

[Rob Babcock]

Nice!  I wish I had that much room to work with!

[WireNut]

Nice!  I wish I had that much room to work with!

Heard that 

[Rclark]

 

[*Scotty*]

What measurements did you end up making?
Scotty

[studiotech]

What measurements did you end up making?
Scotty

We got so absorbed in the listening, that all I got was basic sweeps at 1ft, 3ft and 9ft.  I really meant to get full polar plots, but this was such a success, that there's gonna be a round 2 sometime soon I hope.  What I am going to do now though is take the same three distance measurements back in my house so I can see exactly what to cry about.

[studiotech]

Nice!  I wish I had that much room to work with!

How bout this view?  Cool huh?

[SlushPuppy]

How bout this view?  Cool huh?

Oh yeah 

[*Scotty*]

While you are at it you could also do a full frequency sweep using REW at your preferred listening position. If you used a 1000ms window you could capture a good measurement of room's acoustic characteristics. RT 60, decay and waterfall plots would be very informative. The differences between this room's acoustics and the typical listening room available to the average audiophile would be interesting to explore. The ordinary listening room is seldom a performance space as well.
Scotty

[jtwrace]

that folks who say the room is not a big problem or that their design does not get effected by the room, have never heard their design in the best possible circumstance.

No doubt.  The problem is that people on this site and not have never done it themselves but are always the first to say that they don't need to do it because it sounds good.     They are clueless.  Science means a ton but it does require one to be open minded and think a little.

[rollo]

  Jason I agree 100%. Until one properly measures the room and then cures its ills ya never know how good it can really be.


charles

[Nyal Mellor]

That room looks like a proper studio! Not the bedroom sized places a lot of people call studios these days ...

[Rocket_Ronny]

Very nice space. Thanks for sharing.

My tag line on audiocircle forever was "Your room is everything. Use it well." That's because I had a 26 x 32 foot room and it was awesome, if a little live.



Tried building a 18 x 14 room downstairs but it was aweful compared to upstairs.

Rocket_Ronny

[lowtech]

"The importance of the room..."

I don't see the correlation between your observations and the subject of your thread.  If you really want to "be amazed" by how much the room contributes to the sound, listen to your system outdoors in an open area.

The real trick is making your speaker design sound good in a "typical room" since that's where most of us ultimately listen.   

[studiotech]

"The importance of the room..."

I don't see the correlation between your observations and the subject of your thread.  If you really want to "be amazed" by how much the room contributes to the sound, listen to your system outdoors in an open area.

The real trick is making your speaker design sound good in a "typical room" since that's where most of us ultimately listen.   

Well that's just it don't you see?  You will never get the best sound possible in a "typical room"  Sure, you can work at it...I know I have with room treatments and positioning, but pretty much all normal sized residential rooms are not ideal for the BEST sound reproduction possible.  I work in a lot of nice studios. Some control rooms sound better than others.  But to place my systems in that huge tracking room so far away from nasty boundaries made a tremendous positive difference for the clarity of the reproduction.  Plus inside has AC and no mosquitoes....that's a big plus for Florida.

Greg

[studiotech]

That room looks like a proper studio! Not the bedroom sized places a lot of people call studios these days ...

You got that right Nyal!  Don't even get me started down THAT rabbit hole.  You should see how big the control room is!

Greg

[studiotech]

While you are at it you could also do a full frequency sweep using REW at your preferred listening position. If you used a 1000ms window you could capture a good measurement of room's acoustic characteristics. RT 60, decay and waterfall plots would be very informative. The differences between this room's acoustics and the typical listening room available to the average audiophile would be interesting to explore. The ordinary listening room is seldom a performance space as well.
Scotty

For sure it will be interesting.  Don't let the look of the place fool you though.  It is NOT a reverberant space.  It's rather dead sounding and added no discernible character of it's own to the sound given that we were in the nearfield relative to the dimensions of the room.  Obviously, the first thing the sweeps show is much less 100-300 wonkiness given that room modes in such a large space are only developing at much lower frequencies.

Greg

[medium jim]

I have experienced "playback" rooms in several recording studios, and from very large to near field.  A modern near field setup can sound amazing and with excellent space and soundfield and can be as rewarding as a large room.

That said, I still remember my first experience in a studio in Chatsworth, CA that's playback room was huge and in the middle of it were a pair of JBL 4320's.  Close your eyes and you were there! 

Jim

[lowtech]

Well that's just it don't you see?  You will never get the best sound possible in a "typical room"  Sure, you can work at it...

I would submit to you that significant research has been done in this field several very talented individuals (not just Toole).  Their conclusion has been that the room contributes to the sound and that it's generally best to work with the effects rather than against them (by turning your listening environment into an anechoic chamber).  This has been my experience too... when using the right loudspeakers. 

http://www.amazon.com/Sound-Reproduction-Acoustics-Psychoacoustics-Loudspeakers/dp/0240520092

If you don't believe their research you can always resort to using headphones.   

[Rocket_Ronny]

Is that you Greg in the 3rd photo?

Rocket_Ronny