Room acoustics, the last hurdle?

[antipop]

Originally Posted by shindostevesan

My experience is: the better your system the more everything matters, and maybe most especially speakers and your room, depending on how they interact--as others have said here.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is digital correction and believe me I thought I would be the last to tout it. But I have a weird room that I have treated with bass traps, reflection absorption panels, etc. Which have helped my issues a lot. But I still have a mid bass mode in the right channel that is irritating. It gives an extended bloom to that band in the music which you can really hear.

Enter the Dspeaker Anti-mode 2.0 Dual Core that a friend lent me. After a few hours of set up we eliminated 80% of this mode. The gains have been big: soundstage growth, instrument separation and presence, tighter bass, but just all together a cleaner more open and livelier sound. If there is a loss of transparency, and maybe I hear a smidge, it is more than made up for by the improvements above. Never thought I'd think about living with an ADA device between my pre-amp and amp, but my room has been holding my system back to a huge degree! It is uncanny.

Digital correction--not that I know that much about it--seems like the brave new world of hi fi.

Steve,

Active correction is the cherry on top. It helps solve the last problem that room treatment cannot fix. I believe they go hand in hand.

[shindostevesan]

Originally Posted by Glenn Kuras

It sounds like you have one speaker close to a corner, and the other is not? I see this a lot where people have an open area on one side of the room. Symmetry in the front of the room (where the speakers are located) is very important to get proper balance.
Great to hear you have the problem fixed though.

Glenn,

You nailed the problem. I have tried moving the problem speaker further from it's normal best position about 45" from the wall--and it has attenuated the mode slightly--but this causes the listening position to get seriously off center which wrecks havoc with soundstage, etc.

At the risk of sounding like I know what I'm talking about, it seems to me that acoustical room treatments will solve some issues digital isn't great at--the high frequency issues--and digital is good at solving some issues that room treatments can partially address but not easily solve (well maybe a FULLY treated room)--such as mid to lower bass issues. (Which is all that the Dspeaker unit is designed to address.)

But it's a balancing act because over treatment with either method will take the life out of the show.

[Glenn Kuras]

At the risk of sounding like I know what I'm talking about, it seems to me that acoustical room treatments will solve some issues digital isn't great at--the high frequency issues--and digital is good at solving some issues that room treatments can partially address but not easily solve (well maybe a FULLY treated room)--such as mid to lower bass issues. (Which is all that the Dspeaker unit is designed to address.)

I have no problem using EQ to tame things under 45hz. You can partly do it with treatment but not all the way. For the most part treatment will help with the low end ringing, which I think is just as if not more important for tight low end. Any kind of correction can't tame ringing, but great for low end spikes.

But it's a balancing act because over treatment with either method will take the life out of the show.

Depends what you use.

[Elberoth]

Originally Posted by antipop

Instead of spending 10k on a source, spend a fifth of that on room treatment and you'll never look back.

Great advice.

From my experience, I can recommend SMT products from Sweden (also available state side AFAIK).

Their 'wing diffuser' is highly effective in first reflection points (side walls, front and rear walls) and thanks to beeing transparent, almost completely disappears from the room. Think of high WAF !



here you can see 4 wings by the windows:

[GaryProtein]

Originally Posted by Elberoth

This one is quite a room!