Article: A New Listening Room Part One

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@The Computer Audiophile Generally, it is not a good idea to have a void behind your listening area. The sound will be a little clinical. Perhaps, your acoustician could suggest something to reflect the sound at the spot I circled.

 

Also, you may have a little issue with clarity as the rear wall ( window) can have a reflection of 10ms or more. It wont be an issue for full orchestra music but a typical audiophile album may feel like slightly lacking clarity. That also depends on the playback volume level. Try Stacy Kent and see if you are happy with the clarity. 

 

Just my $0.02.  

 

 

 

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7 hours ago, Shadorne said:

 

The worst thing you can do is to have clutter (or worse a wall) close to the listening position. Look at every multi million $ studio ever designed!

 

Listening room meant to enjoy the music is not the same as the listening room where they master or record. Somehow, the distinction got blurred and some try to recreate the studio acoustics.  Maybe, i got confused with Chris’s intention. 

 

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8 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

This project is getting more and more frustrating for me. I assumed this would be more of a science than an art, but given the wide range of feedback about what's right, what's wrong, and what I "should" do, it seems like much of this is an art.

 

Room acoustics is more of an art than science. I have given up on room measurement long ago when the results did not sound correct to my ears.

 

Quote

As you can probably guess, his opinion differs from both of these.

 

Room acoustics for stereo music listening is different from HT. Listening to playback is different from studio acoustics.  Some specialize for one but not the other.

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Poor OP. He will be more confused now. One member is suggesting not less than 6 feet and another member - quoting someone - tells the distance shouldn't be more than 3 feet. Which one is correct and why?

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36 minutes ago, monteverdi said:

It is about time difference of direct sound and reflected sound. 6 feet traveling difference (also applies to sides) is the minimum  for our auditory system not to confuse direct with reflected so a 3 feet wall distance gives 6 feet back and forth but more if quite better!

 

If it is more than 6 feet than the reflected sound will arrive later than 6 ms. That is enough to perceive short pulse as two distinct sound and when you approach 10 feet or more you fall within the threshold of echo which from ranges 20 ms and 40ms for all complex music. 

 

 

 

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9 minutes ago, Sal1950 said:

 

Not sure I can agree on the logic behind these two posts.

But once again we fall back to the ideal between designing a system for accuracy or tuning to  a personal preference.

IMHO I believe the journey should begin with a path that leads to the most accurate, transparent package the builder can accomplish A system most capable of reproducing that which the artist and producer intended.

After that tuning to a preference is a piece of cake.

 

 

Accuracy is not important. What matters to the listeners is the how real is the sound as listened in a real space. 

 

Technically, a DSD recording of a guitar and sax ( spread by 60 degrees) will be accurate compared to 16/44.1 format. But....if you play the DSD in a single speaker and the 16/44.1 with two speakers then the 16/44.1 will be closer to realism. The reason why we prefer an inferior format?  

 

In making of recordings, we strive to xapture the direct sound and a reasonable amount of reverbs. Some prefer without any reverbs so that the can artificially add the reverbs later. In a good recording environment it always the natureal reverbs is prefered over the artificial one. 

 

To record the natural reverbs, the microphone is placed about 50% of the critical distance sometimes even lesser. The spot where the microphone is placed is not the usual spot where we consider as the best seat to listen to the performance. 

 

In any case, whether it is a live or in studio recording with dead room the 360 defrees ambience is eliminated largely to avoid making the recording muddy. In studio, they achieve this by elimination as much reverbs as possible.  

 

In listening room, we want those missing reverbs which will be added by your room reflection. Often, the simplest aim is to creat Live end and dead end. Live end is where the listener sits. 

 

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54 minutes ago, Sal1950 said:

In who's opinion?

If it's your system then your opinion is all that matters.

But that has little to nothing to do with reproducing what the engineer heard and what he hoped you would be able to recreate.

YMMV

 

Accuracy of what? Positional accuracy? Or the timbre accuracy of the instruments? Or the accuracy of the dynamic range? A playback can never be the real event. Even if you employ a full 360 degree system to reproduce them, it will be a virtual reality of the  event but not the actual event. 

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32 minutes ago, HIFI said:

I'm thinking about your math ...you say you design your recordings with the thought of my room adding reverb you intentionally block.  Then I play back a recording that the sound engineers purposely and thoughtfully recorded the performance and the reverb (space) in that performance.  Then I add my room reverbs to this thoughtful recording. . . and I loose (accuracy) faithfulness.

 

The term “Accuracy” is confusing in this context. A piano can have a different sound when heard one foot away compared to hearing from a 30 feet distance. So microphones placed at the respective spot will have two different sound. Which one is the accurate sound?

 

What we consider as accurate is when the piano sound comes from the speakers is to sound recreating the realism as hearing the real piano. A large part of the realism that we perceive is not the real sound of the instruments but a mixture of the recording and your venue’s acoustics signature. Otherwise, every recording made as original as the real insturment should sound accurate in an anechoic chamber which we all know the sound is unnatural despite being 100% accurate reproduction of the instruments. 

 

I will stop here as I have deviated from the Op.