Article: Home Audio Fidelity - Room Shaper Review

[mitchco]

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[mitchco]

On 11/13/2019 at 10:57 AM, Ralf11 said:

Good to see the single blinded sentence.

 

A diagram of a standing wave in a room might help explain, and a comparison with Kii3 or Dutch et Dutch would be interesting.

 

Thanks. I linked two articles that explain room modes, standing waves, and room resonances, but a GIF of a standing wave may be helpful, agreed. 

 

I have listened (and reviewed) the Kii THREE and D&D 8c in my room before. Their cardioid design does a great job of minimizing Speaker Boundary Interference Response (SBIR). However, below the room’s transition/Schroeder frequency, the room is in control as per Dr. Floyd Toole’s (and others) research that I linked to in the article. In other words, regardless of speaker, room resonances, especially below 100 Hz, are determined by the physical size, shape, and construction of the listening room. As mentioned in the article, the worst resonances are the ones with long decay times, which is what Room Shaper addresses.

[mitchco]

13 hours ago, sdolezalek said:

What does this do that you cannot accomplish using Thierry's software and implementing those corrections in HQPlayer/Roon? 

 

@sdolezalekSee this article on three acoustical issues that digital room correction (DRC) can't correct:

 

1) Speaker Boundary Interference Response (SBIR). Agreed. Speakers like the Kii THREE and D&D 8c with their cardioid designs help deal with this issue. However, my research and results show that some DRC software packages, (that don't boost eq), do a decent job in dealing with this.

 

2) Strong Early Reflections. Agreed, DRC does not address this acoustic issue.

 

3) Long Decay Times. Agreed. DRC will not address long decay times, for example, in a bare room. This requires passive acoustic treatments. However, this is where Room Shaper comes into play as it targets and removes room resonances that have long decay times at low frequencies (i.e. think below 100 Hz). Thierry's Room Shaper software also takes the "boxiness" sound out of one's room, which is another type of room resonance, also reducing its long decay time. DRC does not do this.

 

Hope that helps explain.

[mitchco]

10 hours ago, JR_Audio said:

Hi Mitch. Great Report. Thanks. One question, as this seems to work “dynamically”: If you would make some steady state frequency response measurements with different levels, will you then be able to see changes / correction in the resulting frequency response? Juergen

 

Hi @JR_Audio Juergen, thanks! I hope you are well. I did not try that experiment, but next time I am measuring, I will. It does work dynamically with a Sense control in the digital domain, but is based on knowing your rooms impulse response ahead of time. So the software already knows the rooms frequency response and decay time before it processes the music... if you catch my drift 🙂 My hypothesis is that the frequency response will measure the same at different SPL's. Anecdotally, that's what my ears tell me while listening with Room Shaper on listening at different SPL's.

 

Kind regards,

Mitch

 

[mitchco]

10 hours ago, Graham Luke said:

Phew! I think my Sonos does all that for me...

 

Hi @Graham Luke are you referring to TruePlay? "Trueplay then applies a combination of equalizer and filtering techniques to correct these frequencies so your music sounds the way the artist intended it to." 

 

This is similar to eq room correction, and very cool! But I see no mention of removing room resonances (i.e. shortening the rooms decay time)...

 

[mitchco]

 

5 hours ago, kohmelo said:

Thanks Mitchco for this fantastic review/article!

 

One question, is there a reason why one would record impulse responses for Room Shaper with DRC filters enabled ?

 

 

 

@kohmeloThanks for your comment. Yes, the reason is DRC changes the amplitude/frequency response in the room and as a result will change the level of room resonances.

 

5 hours ago, kohmelo said:

Forgot to mention that I did notice one negative side effect, soundstage depth has gotten smaller in my case.

However cause for that can be so many things as my audio path is now so much more complicated than before.

 

Overall improvement means more to me than losing some depth, so I can live with it for now.

 

May want to check your audio path. In my case, I felt the soundstage depth got deeper as there are less room resonances to mask the depth of field in the recording.

 

[mitchco]

Hi @PorkChop Yes, this will work on a 2.1 system and yes to taming the bass portion of the total signal.

[mitchco]

Thanks @alec_eiffel And thanks for the write-up! Totally agreed! Thierry @fresponse has done a great job! It is indeed a unique DSP offering like no other. I hope Room Shaper finds its way into commercial products as you mention. It is a fantastic experience to not hear the room resonate. Like I mentioned in the review, the only time I have heard that clean of a bass response in a room is in purpose built studio control rooms where the $ build is in excess of 6 figures. Incredible what innovative DSP can do, especially for the price!

[mitchco]

Hi @deneb thanks for the kind words. Perhaps Thierry @fresponse can point us to the sweep signals...

[mitchco]

Hi @ecwl cool! Wrt Room Shaper and how it works, I think it best left to Thierry @fresponse to answer.