your listening room is your biggest problem

Hello

We have talk a little bit before about the effect that a room has on the sound that our speakers make. Whilst we cannot turn our rooms into recording studios and a 'dead' room is not always desired, colouration can be nice, I just thought that I would point out that month after month in Sound On Sound www.sos.pubs.co.uk in the studio rescue pages, it is the spaker positioning, room reflections, wrong room shape, etc etc that is mucking up the ability to get a good mix. I think that we should pay more attention tot he room and where and how we set up our gear.....and also to read SOS a bit as they have some really good articles that would also apply to hifi.

DominicT

 

Ah room problems:cry:

I remember those.....:JPS:

 

With a bit of planning, one can do a pretty good job, still keeping the room nice and conffy... :MILD:

But next week I will have TMREQ to make it "perfect", I wonder if it will make that much difference...

I sure will let you guys know... :beer:


See Merlin, my avatar is now music, no more hifi... :duck:

 

I personally believe the room to be the most important factor when deciding on what speakers to buy,and how they'll work within that room,as it's size, construction will affect the final outcome.

My current room is from hell,as it gives a massive hump at 45hz,which has been virtually impossible to erradicate,ive used the cara test disc to try to help with some success,moved the speakers around to try to find the best placement,but the room just keeps the hump in,it's probably too small at 3.5m x 3.5m,but is dead sounding with no echo,but still manages to screw the upper bass right up.

 

The room and equipment set-up therein is not so much important as absolutely critical. Yet the basic fundamentals of acoustics are too often overlooked by audiophiles more interested in pseudo-scientific nonsense such as that peddled by the cable industry.

Adam,

Quite right. It's not unusual for speakers (especially bookshelf) designs to exhibit a 'knee' in the LF response. If this coincides with the primary room mode then in-room bass response will likely be compromised.

Room modes themselves are a factor of room size, and are an innevitable consequence that can be controlled, limited, but never wholly eradicated. When setting up your system are you able to move the listening position as well as the speakers?. If all else fails it may be worth considering a bass trap?.

 

That was the beauty of the cara test disc, as it did a 45 second sweep of all freqs,it enabled you to walk around the room,even though small it was easily discernable to hear were the modes were worse,as you walked closer to the walls it was so nausiating from 54hz-43.

Intrestingly there was no deep bass at all,at about 40hz you could hear nothing,but when playing music,you think you getting deep bass,but your not it's produced at 50hz,and is as you say hard to entirely elliminate,which is odd as in my older house,same construction a tad bigger,faced no such problems.

Bass traps.....yeah nice idea,but exspensive and rather unsightly.

 

What exactly is the score with these test discs? They just do a freq' sweep and you walk around the room? How much? where from?

 

Mo i ordered mine from www.cara.de It was 18€ for the disc but you can order a pc programme to,it produces some intresting results if you find that your room is causing havoc on the system,and as i said the closer you get to a wall the more profound the effect.

PS...you cant dance to it.

 

Cheers Adam, been looking for a program like that, it doesn't cost the earth either which is unusual for HIFI things, so someone finally sees sence then.

HEHE my system causes havoc to the room! On certain bass notes I've found the lamp shade gives off a very strange vibration noise, it took me ages to figure out what was making the noise!

 

why pay for test discs?theres loads of free signal genarator software on the web,Also software like cooledit have the facilaty to produce alll sorts of coloured noise ,frequncy sweeps,single tones ect.might even be avalible on the free demo

 

Hey guys... hifi existed before all those programs, with some common sense and moving speakers around a bit, we can get pretty good sound, as long as you are not trying to use huge boxes in a small room... :MILD:

 

who me :MILD:

 

If ya speakers / furniture is light, then yes lumping it around the room to get the right sound by trail and error is ok, but my speakers and dam heavy so I want to get it right first or second time, so if I can use a program to calculate the best postion for them in my room then that takes the hard work out of it, my listening room isn't square, if it were I'd have no problem, but I have a very odd shaped room with chimney and 2 walls either side that are not at the same angal, so its a complete nightmare, it always sounds like my music has a left bais and I can't solve it, and I'm sure its the room.

 

and where might such a freebie be found?

 

I also had a massive problem with bass at 40hz in my old room with my floorstanders.
The best method I found to improve things were concrete slabs under the speakers. It certainly didn't eliminate the problem by a long way, but helped to control it.

As it happens, I've recently moved and the new place seems to have hardly any "hump" at all.

 

There is an interesting site here which is supposed to be for setting up a Behringer Feedback Destroyer but it also contains other useful information plus a series of test tones to download.

It is mainly used for setting up subwoofers but can also highlight problems further up the frequency scale.

 

If you've got a laptop with a decent soundcard (ie one with stereo line in (a mic input will not do) and stereo line out) or you're prepared to lug a desktop into your listening room then the best software around (for a reasonable price) for doing room measurements and analysis is ETF 5 from ETF Acoustic.

You'll also need a mic or preferably an SPL meter with a line out (eg the Radio Shack digital SPL meter easily available for £20-30) and some longish (listening position to amp) ICs (any old black and red cheapies will do) and some RCA "Y" adapters.

I first heard it mentioned in the Tag forum as an essential tool for setting up the Tag RoomEQ system (in the AV32R DP and AV192R AV processors) but have since used it to excellent effect for setting up and configuring my sub.

Test tones in 1/3 octaves will only get you so far, even with an SPL meter. The ETF software is very accurate - as Lowrider will agree

Michael.

 

Personally, I reckon the idea of getting a pair of speakers that'll best in your choosen listening room is a better starting point, and then you can fine tune around the speakers and use acoustic treatments as a last resort.

For those that listen in rooms with boomy mid-bass (circa 50Hz), I would strongly suspect that speakers which "couple" to the room very strongly are best avoided e.g. reflex/port loaded design. Also choosing speakers with minimal tweeter/main driver side splash and diffraction effects would also help in the cause to minimise room interaction.

Some of the best system I've heard have been in what appear to acoustically awful rooms on first sight. Sure, a flat response is a must for recording studios and probably home theatre, but not so much for pure music system, IMHO. Best to avoid room interaction/interacing in the first place rather than try cleaning up the (unnecessary) aftermath.

In any case, what if you spend all this money and time on building and restructuring work and don't like the sound at the end of it? It's going to be a right pain to reverse the work, depending on how radical work was.

 

I will do my TMREQ with test tones and SPL meter, then Michael will measure to see how well I've done...

 

Couldn't agree more that ported speakers are a P.I.T.A. but using sonus faber concertino homes,small box/driver still manages to tricker of room modes,is frusrating,only by closer the port complety can i reduce that lump in the bass,plus virtually all speakers seem to come with boom ports.