[chadh]

Suppose that you had two hobbies.  One, of course, involves listening to loads of music through obscenely nice stereo equipment.  The other involves keeping tanks full of exotic marine life.

Suppose you wished to enjoy these two pursuits simultaneously: watching the fish frolic amongst the coral while listening to music.  Without drawing a curtain across the tank, or positioning the tank around knee-level, is there any way of arranging one's room to minimise the accoustic effects of placing a whopping great tank in view of one's listening position?  

Are there relative advantages to using glass or acrylic for the tank?  Any advantage to using a bow-fronted tank rather than a standard rectangular prism?

Chad

[PhilNYC]

I'm going to throw out some ideas...some will make sense, others won't, and I have no idea if any of them are correct...

Assuming that you put the tank directly in front of you, between the speakers:

-Get some of the new 8th Nerve Adapt products.  As Nathan from 8th Nerve will tell you, you are getting far more distortion from the corners and seams in your room than you are from direct wall reflections.  And from that perspective, a fish tank isn't necessarily a horrible thing...the water inside will actually behave as an absorber at some level.

-Get a curved tank.  The curved face will disperse reflections and minimize the reflections that come directly back to the listening seat (see Mike Lavigne's room http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue16/lavigneroom.htm, with particular attention to the curved surface on the front wall.  Maybe you can even have the tank built into the wall.

-Get a glass tank.  The fish will look better.

-Get horn-loaded speakers and place them a foot or two in front of the tank.  They are less/not sensitive to front-wall reflections.

[chadh]

Thanks for the ideas Phil.

I suspected a curved tank might be a good idea:  but I suspect that these are structurally much less stable, so that a curved tank of any reasonable size becomes inordinately expensive.  Sometimes you see 45gallon bow-fronts, and very ocassionally something bigger.  But never anything like 125g+.  I'm sure one can have them custom made, but I'd hate to convince the wife of the necessity.  Also, anything curved like that at any significant size would almost certianly have to be acrylic.

As for materials, if all I were to care about was how the fish looked, then I'd be choosing acrylic for sure.  Especially for large tanks, acrylic provides fewer refraction problems and is actually clearer than glass.  It's also MUCH lighter and MUCH stronger.  Of course, it's much easier to scratch...and wayyyyy more expensive.

But front and center positioning sounds like excellent news...and a great way to discourage TV watching!

One question though: why would horn speakers be less sensitive to front-wall reflections?  I mean, once the sound has been produced at a particular point, why would the sound waves care about which technology had been used to produce them?

Chad

[PhilNYC]

I'm not an expert on horns, so someone else might want to chime in...but it's been my understanding that it has something to do with the way a horn i shaped that will affect the way sound disperses from the speaker.  A megaphone is an extreme example...

[ScottMayo]

Suppose that you had two hobbies.  One, of course, involves listening to loads of music through obscenely nice stereo equipment.  The other involves keeping tanks full of exotic marine life.

Suppose you wished to enjoy these two pursuits simultaneously: watching the fish frolic amongst the coral while listening to music.  Without drawing a curtain across the tank, or positioning the tank around knee-level, is there any way of arranging one's room to minimise the accoustic effects of placing a whopping gr ...

Keep the tank up against the wall. Reflection off the tank won't be all that different than reflection off the wall, unless the tank is over 3' deep. Your speakers should be out from the wall somewhat - rumor has it that having big solid objects in the same plane as the speakers causes sonic artifacts.

A tank full of water shouldn't be a huge acoustic problem - the water should hold down resonances somewhat. Of course, air pumps and filters and so on make noise, which personally would drive me up a wall. Hopefully you have a dedicated air and water pump in another room, feeding the tank?

[John Casler]

Put the tank in the next room with a "high quality" video camera on it.

Get a projector and project a "larger than life" tank on the wall or a screen between the speakers in your Audio/HT Room.

As Ross Perot would say "Problem Solved".







Just joking of course

[ScottMayo]

Put the tank in the next room with a "high quality" video camera on it.

Get a projector and project a "larger than life" tank on the wall or a screen between the speakers in your Audio/HT Room....

Spoilsport. You're depriving the fish of all that wonderful musical energy. Fish *need* whitecaps, and I figure with the right gear and music, he could get his whole tank in a single "standing wave" pattern. A high-rise for the fishies!