Wow, I have with mounting dismay skimmed through the article by Richard Mak and disagree with most of it. Let's start in chronological order with his comments in
italics.Room Dimensions:
Start with a room that closely follows the Golden Ratio. So what hope do those who don't have GR rooms do? Sell their house? Take heart guys because virtually any room can work. Sure a cube would be bad but even that can be made to work. The GR room certainly is not devoid of issues and will have peaks and nulls only at different frequencies and easier to correct spacings. Understand that no room exists that does not have modal issues, how can it?
Speaker Size: Choose the correct speaker size for your room. Avoid oversizing; a speaker that is too large can overwhelm the space and result in uncontrolled bass resonance issues. The size of the speaker is a non-issue unless it does not fit through the door
The large bass speakers if propery dialed-in will not overwhelm anything except your appreciation for impactful and very low distortion bass. The ability to move a lot of air with only tiny modulation of the speaker cone is desireable and noticed in cleaner performance across the spectrum. I will address the
uncontrolled bass resonance issues later.
Bass Control:
Large speakers in small rooms lead to boomy bass. Maybe but only if you don't know how to dial them in.
Minimal Treatment:
A proper-sized room with the right speakers needs little room treatment. Just wrong. He also says to avoid
devices like isolation pucks, Really? I bet he uses spikes.
Look guys this is tiresome. His comments, though I'm sure he means well, indicate a fundamental lack of understanding regarding acoustics which have been thoroughly researched by famous acousticians such as Leo Baranek, Geddes, Toole and Welti. It's physics, it's a a science. Not once do we see any measurement of the resulting frequency response, the cumulative spectral decay providing RT60 figures, nothing at all. The only mention of any substance is Floyd Toole. The gentlemen mentioned above are the ones to listen to. Anything written by them will immediately convince you of their authenticity and above all how to achieve the best sound in
your room. They of course acknowledge the advantage of GR rooms based on the Fibonacci series but provide methods to get any room to achieve the goal of removing the damaging effects an untreated room will have on your sound. Dr. Earl Geddes wrote his thesis on this very topic.
Regarding
uncontrolled bass resonance issues Geddes recommends using multi-subs to smooth out the modal region which is from low bass up to the Schroeder freqency after which it transitions to a reverberant field where broad-band absorbers are very effective at reducing the echo. It must be clear that moving your speakers in 1/8" increments and listening to catanets is not going to do anything for overly long decay. For the modal region bass traps help but the biggest and most transformative result is by using 2 or 3 or even 4 subwoofers to smooth out the response.
The best way to go about this is to measure the response at the listening position. Regardless of the size of the speaker there will be peaks and nulls and this occurs in each and every room. So, what to do? Well you add subs but my advice is to buy sealed subs and they must have variable phase. These 2 requrements make dialling in much easier and allow you to place the subs where you prefer.
Those huge peaks and some can be 15 to 20dB higher than the average SPL are understandably going to take much longer to decay thereby leading to comments like boomy bass, uncontrolled bass, one-note-bass and slow bass. No such thing, there is I say again no such thing, just untamed peaks and nulls. Now what about those nulls? Those are long wavelengths combining out of phase and cancelling, it's a hole where there is no sound so music is missing and it's some of your bass the very foundation of music. Read all about it then go get at least 2 subs. They can be small and different brands but must meet the 2 most important conditions. Variable phase and sealed. Why not ported? The port resonates at only 1 frequency so by definition is frequency invariant so represents another bass source which makes set up much more difficult.
This post has gone on longer than intended but you should get the idea. Read the guys I mentioned and visit sites and forums that deal with acoustics and provide DIY plans and consider dowloading the free REW software and buy yourself a microphone and advance with substantiated knowledge.
