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The Influence of room acoustics on the listening experience


MicroMara

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5 hours ago, Shakeydeal said:

Nearfield works for some designs. But IMHO, with horns you need some distance for correct integration. Things are certainly more "vivid" up close, but often times it's just a discombobulated mess.........

You'd be surprised. If you look at simple geometry: My speakers are 7 feet apart, angled in at 45 degrees. That puts the sweet spot at 3.5 feet back from the speakers.The further back you move, the more the room becomes part of what you're hearing. In my 3.5 foot sweet spot, there is amazing imaging (they are also 2 feet forward from the back wall), Instruments even sound like they are coming from behind the speakers, the bass slams without sounding boomy because you are missing most of the low frequency room bounce, and at 90dB's (which is the loudest I will listen at this position and only for a short time) there is NO discombobulated mess. Granted, my KLF-10's have FaitalPro tweeter driver mod and the crossovers significantly upgraded and tuned to a flatter response than stock using a measuring mic, REW, Audacity, and X-Sim. 

 

EDIT: And I have the speakers on 6 inch mounts so the tweeters are at ear height. It's like having headphones with body slamming bass!

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8 hours ago, MechEngVic said:

You'd be surprised. If you look at simple geometry: My speakers are 7 feet apart, angled in at 45 degrees. That puts the sweet spot at 3.5 feet back from the speakers.The further back you move, the more the room becomes part of what you're hearing. In my 3.5 foot sweet spot, there is amazing imaging (they are also 2 feet forward from the back wall), Instruments even sound like they are coming from behind the speakers, the bass slams without sounding boomy because you are missing most of the low frequency room bounce, and at 90dB's (which is the loudest I will listen at this position and only for a short time) there is NO discombobulated mess. Granted, my KLF-10's have FaitalPro tweeter driver mod and the crossovers significantly upgraded and tuned to a flatter response than stock using a measuring mic, REW, Audacity, and X-Sim. 

 

EDIT: And I have the speakers on 6 inch mounts so the tweeters are at ear height. It's like having headphones with body slamming bass!


You see, that’s exactly why I do NOT like it. I’m not a headphone fan and don’t care for that presentation. The soundstage in the near field (with horns) is too close for comfort. Maybe if I was working with a s&@tty room in the first place, but I’m not.

 

Shakey

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7 hours ago, Shakeydeal said:


You see, that’s exactly why I do NOT like it. I’m not a headphone fan and don’t care for that presentation. The soundstage in the near field (with horns) is too close for comfort. Maybe if I was working with a s&@tty room in the first place, but I’m not.

 

Shakey

No one is arguing that a good room won't sound great with horns. I'm saying horns can sound good up close. You're saying they can't. I'd be happy if you could acknowledge it's possible (countless recording studios have use near field horns to make music over they years), but I'm OK with a difference in opinion. But to insinuate that I must live in a sh*&$y place... I'm sorry you went there. Nothing in my comment was meant to be insulting to you. 

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No one is arguing that a good room won't sound great with horns. I'm saying horns can sound good up close. You're saying they can't. I'd be happy if you could acknowledge it's possible (countless recording studios have use near field horns to make music over they years), but I'm OK with a difference in opinion. But to insinuate that I must live in a sh*&$y place... I'm sorry you went there. Nothing in my comment was meant to be insulting to you. 
A friend of mine has a HT in a 10x12 shed that is fully treated....He runs LaScalas for the front channels, and I have to say it sounded great!

Sent from my SM-T830 using Tapatalk

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On 8/16/2020 at 12:00 PM, Chris A said:

I'd instead recommend moving the listening position instead of re-EQing, since the re-EQ differentials based on the listening positions (vs. 1-metre measurements) will screw up the response in the balance of the room--thus making the room into a "head-in-a-vise" listening room.  I think headphones work a lot better than trying to correct for non-minimum-phase reflections in-room. 

My REW simulation gave me flat bass response right smack in the center of my small living room, showing very little/tolerable variance from that spot. Everything from then on, including thick velour curtains on both side walls, and corner placement of speakers that have extremely well controlled polar responses above the Schroeder frequency. In fact their corner placement crates TOO MUCH BASS, and the room EQ takes care of that very well.

 

Having a "head in the vise" for critical music listening is perfectly fine if you are the ONLY head, which I am.

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On 8/27/2020 at 4:05 AM, Shakeydeal said:


You see, that’s exactly why I do NOT like it. I’m not a headphone fan and don’t care for that presentation. The soundstage in the near field (with horns) is too close for comfort. Maybe if I was working with a s&@tty room in the first place, but I’m not.

 

Shakey

You can't say that, because Unity Summation Aperture, Synergy Horns, or Multiple Entry Horns (like ChrisA's) do NOT suffer from what you speak of. So you are only correct in the circumstances where the horn design does NOT address the issues you speak of. That being said, the technology and products that DO correct this, has been around for 15-20 years now and has been done by many DIY guys, some of which I heard for myself and actually have owned over 2 dozen of ........................just sayin'!

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Quote

That being said, the technology and products that DO correct this, has been around for 15-20 years now.

 

If you are referring to digital room correction, no thanks is my reply. I've heard such processing suck the actual life out of music. Less is more when it comes to processing two channel music, IMHO.....

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2 minutes ago, ClaudeJ1 said:

Having a "head in the vise" for critical music listening is perfectly fine if you are the ONLY head, which I am.

If you're saying it's okay for me...then I'd reply that you're not correct.  I don't listen to music sitting in a chair like a statue. 

 

I dare say that the reason why Klipsch cinema (KPT) loudspeakers (and I assume Danley Synergies) work so well in a home hi-fi environment is precisely because "head-in-a-vise" listening is not required--listening almost anywhere in the room is fine.  And if you're using multichannel recordings, then the limitations of stereo are not binding on where you listen to the music in terms of soundstage imaging.

 

Chris

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On 8/16/2020 at 1:03 PM, Chris A said:

George, thanks for the response.  Greg, too.  The real problem is that music halls are not usually home hi-fi listening rooms. The dimensions of home-sized listening rooms vary considerably but are much smaller, and are also influenced by where we live.  These very small dimensions are the problem.  Nonparallel walls are not going to do very much for such small-dimensioned listening spaces, I'm sorry to say.  If you live in the middle of a big city, you're usually living in minimal-sized rooms.  It becomes cost-prohibitive to do much about that.  I recommend headphones--good ones that avoid eardrum-bounce issues in those cases.

 

In places like the US south, southwest, and west, the size of the rooms can easily be double the size (or more) of an average-sized European listening room.  The reason for stating this is because I think many forget this when talking on forums. 

 

I do believe that there is such a thing as a minimal-sized listening room.  In my experience, that's smaller than ~4m horizontally (both directions) and ~2.5m vertically.  It's not a very popular subject on audio forums, but it exists in my experience.  I've done a lot to mitigate one small room in my house that's 3.5 x 4 x 2.4 room--to no avail.  Good luck if you have a very small listening room, even using full-range-directivity loudspeakers (like Jubilees, K-horns, La Scalas, or Belles), there are still issues with opposite-wall reflections, and short of covering the entire exposed surface of the room with absorption, there's very little that you can do to increase the listening performance of the room. It is what it is.

 

Chris

Agreed. I just want to point out that Classical Concert Halls are for music PRODUCTION vs. Music RE-production at home. Different is not the same, but the same PHYSICS apply in both.

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5 minutes ago, Chris A said:

If you're saying it's okay for me...then I'd reply that you're not correct.  I don't listen to music sitting in a chair like a statue. 

 

I dare say that the reason why Klipsch cinema (KPT) loudspeakers (and I assume Danley Synergies) work so well in a home hi-fi environment is precisely because "head-in-a-vise" listening is not required--listening almost anywhere in the room is fine.  And if you're using multichannel recordings, then the limitations of stereo are not binding on where you listen to the music in terms of soundstage imaging.

 

Chris

Nope. I did NOT say it's was okay for you............only that it's OK for ME...............as well as many other Audio Geeks out there who want the best they can get from any room they happen to be stuck with. So for guys out there (majority) of serious listeners, it's a SOLO SPORT, unless you have a wife or girlfriend who listens as much as you do, then it's a different problem as well as requiring a different solution, since you have a second opinion to contend with. Admittedly, it sounds "good" in more than one spot for me, BUT the FLATTEST sound in the BASS below 100 Hz. is at my sweet spot.

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I have found that (with horn speakers) firing the speakers so that they cross JUST in front of your head (right speaker pointing at left shoulder, vice versa) the sweet goes from one person wide to three person wide. Yeah, it still sounds slightly better directly in the center, but it's now VERY good slightly off axis. And the center image is much more stable and focused even when moving your head around.  I have owned speakers before that literally everything came apart once you moved off axis by even inches.

 

Shakey

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32 minutes ago, NBPK402 said:

I have fou d a nice wide sweet spot by aiming the speakers about 1' behind my head.

Sent from my SM-T830 using Tapatalk
 

SWEETSPOT LOL ...I have a wide and deep soundstage that´s built up in front of me, no matter where I sit with exact positioning of the musicians in the whole music room

 

Your Avatar is pretty nice , I´m your femal contrary   smilie_op_007.gif

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On 8/29/2020 at 9:49 PM, NBPK402 said:

A friend of mine has a HT in a 10x12 shed that is fully treated....He runs LaScalas for the front channels, and I have to say it sounded great!

 

Dang...our master bedroom closet is 10 x 14.  I can't imagine my Belle clones in there.  lol.  Although, I do run the Belle's in my upstairs room on the long wall and I sit about 12 feet back from them.  On the short wall (15 feet), I run a pair of ads L1230's.

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10 minutes ago, avguytx said:

 

Dang...our master bedroom closet is 10 x 14.  I can't imagine my Belle clones in there.  lol.  Although, I do run the Belle's in my upstairs room on the long wall and I sit about 12 feet back f om them.  On the short wall (15 feet), I run a pair of ads L1230's.

I´ve read your thread once and I take pride in your project. Impressive work.  Perfect !

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HOW TO USE REWROOM EQ WIZARD )

 

REW is a software package that measures the transfer functions of acoustic systems and displays the corresponding frequency, phase and impulse responses and various quantities derived from them. Here´s a link for further information and praxis ........

 

http://www.roomeqwizard.com/help/help_en-GB/html/gettingstarted.html#top

 

and a video ......

 

 

 

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