[audiojerry]

I am starting this thread because I am seeking a clarification to statements made by avahifi.

quotes from avahifi post:

I am pretty amazed to see that in all the posts regarding wires, parts, and so on, there is not a single clue that anyone here has considered the most important sonic accessory of all, namely their listening room.
 
The object, of course, is to make your listening room "go away" as it is not supposed to be part of the musical performance at all. All the sound spattering off of your floors and walls is dead wrong, and painfully obvious to me.

Any acoustical output or reinforcement from your room is wrong, it was not part of the recorded acoustical enviornment.

Based on these statements, I get the impression that there should be no reflections coming from any surface of the listening room. Am I wrong?
The only room that reacts this way is an anechoic chamber. An anechoic chamber would not be a good place for listening to music.   As I stated before, there are varying degrees of dampening that can be effected in a room. Once you reach a certain point, additional dampening is harmful and will have a dulling effect. I speak from a certain amount experience because I must deal with a room that is too acoustically inert, and it robs my system of energy to a degree.  

I was sincerely seeking a clarification from avahifi, but for some reason, Dan B, took offense to this and felt he had to defend avahifi's statements.
It seems that Dan tends to get hostile when his preachings aren't accepted as gospel and someone questions him or seeks further elaboration. In this case he seemed to get hostile when I wasn't even addressing him. What's that about?

Let me reiterate. I was not looking for a fight. If you read my post, I think you will see that I wasn't being adversarial; I merely wanted avahifi to elaborate on his statements, and correct me if I was wrong. If I was correct in my interpretation, then his advice needs to be carefully examined.

[Beezer]

Should this post be in the AVA forum?  Or are you looking for other people's opinions also?

The one anechoic-like room I heard was pretty lifeless - certainly not my pint of beer!

Beez

[David Ellis]

This is an interesting subject.  I might have something to contribute.

First, I think the subject of room impact is intimately related to reflections and distortion.  I don't have the timing memorized, but will try to summarize the acoustical information.  First, very early reflections are mentally combined with the origional signal and the brain thinks this is okay.  Slightly delayed reflections are the problem because the brain doesn't know if they are a reflection or part of the origional signal.  It therfore confuses the brain, and the brain doesn't like this.  The very late reflections are easily discerned as reflections, and these also aren't so bad.  I do realize this information is crude.  The Master Handbook of Acoustics defines this information and should be used for complete clarification.  I also remember reading about this information online.

I agree with the remark about the stale sound of anechoic rooms.  Big rooms have a similar, albiet lesser effect.  When I recently moved, my listening room tripled in volume.  The sound became thinner, but much more clear.  The thin sound is due to the lack of early reflections.  The clear sound is due to less reflections overall.  

I believe the same is true with paper louspeaker cones.  The flex of the cone causes some signal smear due to the lack of waveform clarity.  This creates a more full-bodied sound.  Stiff cones are often perceived as thin.  

So, IMO, a purist would desire a to kill the reflections, but guy seeking some warmth to the sound might apprecaite a few reflections.  Either are fine.

Dave

[jackman]

Good post Dave.  I have a question.  If the objective of a system is to accurately reproduce the sound of a live performance, is some reflection welcome because it adds to the live sound?  I know in theory, microphones capture this ambient sound in the recording process and a system (if it's accurate) should only produce what is on the recording, however, the feedback on an anechoic chamber (which theoretically will have no reflected sound) provided by Brian and some others indicates that this is not the best listening environment.   Where is the happy medium?  

If a listening environment with no reflected sounds is not optimal and some reflected sounds are admitedly not good, where do you draw the line?  Dave captured some of the details in his post as to which reflected sounds are the most detrimental, however, how are the good and bad ones measured?  I have not done any work addressing these aspects of my system and feel they will become more important as I try to integrate a sub in the system.

Thanks!

Jack

[Dan Banquer]

I think it depends on what you need. I have been in soundproof rooms where studios were doing mix down. It's necessary for them to work in this environment. I certainly don't mind listening in that environment either. The silence in a room like that does take a bit of getting used to. One of the main reasons I back LEDE so heavily is that rear wall reflections really are the worst, and so many audiophiles ignore this and think "wire tuning" solves the problem of rear wall reflections. Wire does not solve acoustic problems.l

[Xi-Trum]

So, IMO, a purist would desire a to kill the reflections, but guy seeking some warmth to the sound might apprecaite a few reflections. Either are fine.

Actually, my experience was otherwise.  Adding room treatment and removing reflections reduce bright/harsh/glaring sound, giving a warmer presentation.  Did you mean to say "but guy seeking some liveliness..."?

[SWG255]

Greetings:

In the late 1970's i had the pleasure to tour the McIntosh plant in new york. One of the more interesting parts of the tour were the rooms where they measured their (and their competition's) loudspeakers. The two rooms I remember were a very bright room, with very hard surfaces and painted with a paint that added to the acoustic reflectivity of the room and their anaechoic chamber. We could listen to a loudspeaker in each room. I discovered two things: both rooms sounded bad. The bright room was just that, the sound was way too bright and the room gave me a headache. The anaechoic chamber was very dead, the speaker sounded dull and rolled-off on both ends of the spectrum. The anaechoic chanber did cure my headache though. So, as with almost everything in the realm of reproducing audio, the "truth" is somewhere in between. A truly anaechoic room is not an acceptable place for reproducing music, but a room with poorly managed acoustics will rob an otherwise good system of much of its clarity and make it sound harsh or overly bright.

AS an interesting aside, the McIntosh speaker engineers used medium-sized room fans as "white noise" generators for doing measurements in these chambers and their listening rooms. Remember, this was well before computer-aided design was practical, let alone affordable.

[David Ellis]

I was addressing the issue of reflection time, not sound aborption.  Both are valid concerns an you address the impact of the latter in a listening environment.  I totally agree with you with regard to you assertions about adding absorption material in the listening room.  Adding stuffing will change the overall room response.  It will sound warmer with more "stuffing".

Thanks for you mention of this topic.  

Dave

[audiojerry]

SWG255,
Thanks for sharing the story. That was interesting. The subject of Mcintosh would be a worthwhile as its own discussion. There are still many loyal Mac owners, and Mac still seems to sell a lot of product, but that would be for another topic.

[chuck josephson]

I am starting this thread because I am seeking a clarification to statements made by avahifi.

quotes from avahifi post:
Based on these statements, I get the impression that there should be no reflections coming from any surface of the listening room. Am I wrong?
The only room that reacts this way is an anechoic chamber. An anechoic chamber would not be a good place for listening to music.   As I stated before, there are varying degrees of dampening that can be effected in a room. Once you reach a certa ...

I agree totally that the room should add nothing to the sound and I one of the few that has done this.A total anechoic
will sound sound dead and lifeless.Using ceiling diffusers
thick carpeting helmhoz resonaters bass traps will help.Avoid reflective objects ,mirrors larg e smooth reflective surfaces.Avoid large loose objects .All my many pictures are screwed to the wall.Most important,
keep speakers as close to the back wall as possible.Check my pics in Gallery.Chuck Josephson