Sound Correction, Where to start first?

[Golucid]

Where do you start first? Room Acoustics or with your equipment first [equipment, cables, stillpoints, etc]?

[Bikeman71]

David, It's the quintessential chicken or egg first question. I think it takes a balance. If I were starting over from scratch I would begin with a speaker/amp/source set up that sounded best to me against others in a showroom (it would take an impressive showroom to get a full audition.) Then I would use that equipment and send a full room description to GIK for suggestions on acoustic treatment. Then I would hire someone with way more knowledge than me to come out and dial in speaker placement and fine tune the placement of the acoustic treatment. Finally, I would play with cables, stillpoints, power conditioners, etc to get the sound perfected.

More than one way to skin a cat, but this approach makes sense to me.

[Golucid]

Hey Brent!

[antipop]

Start with room treatment. It can solve issues that cannot be solved (reflection for example) by any other method no matter how much you spend on gear.

Once you have a good treatment you can move on active treatment and dealing with the remaining issue that would be too expensive to do passively (e.g. solving a resonating mode in the low)

GIK is a great place to start. They have a tutorial on how to use REW. You can start there.

[GaryProtein]

The better the equipment gets approaching "perfect fidelity", the more similar they all sound. By definition you have to accept that.

The room and its treatment makes a BIG difference.

[chessman]

Mid-fi in a treated room sounds better than hi-fi in an untreated room, unless you are very, very lucky.

[Golucid]

Originally Posted by chessman

Mid-fi in a treated room sounds better than hi-fi in an untreated room, unless you are very, very lucky.

Randy. You virtually made a direct quote that one of the folks at Mellennia said to me. Awesome.

[jdandy]

David.......To me the room as a speaker. A room, its contents and their locations have nearly as much impact on the sound quality of your system as the speakers themselves. The largest culprit to poor quality sound from high quality gear and speakers is the room, in particular the corners and the first points of reflection. It is almost universal that corners behind speakers generate standing bass waves where low frequencies bounce around and amplify themselves in specific frequencies. Treating corners with bass traps of one type or another is almost mandatory for a rich low frequency response. Then there are the points of first reflections where midrange and high frequencies bounce and then remix in a delayed manner with the on-axis sounds from the speaker's drivers. This often causes a smearing of the resolution and loss of a well focused sound stage. First reflections can also exaggerate certain frequency ranges making them sound shrill or piercing. Taming first reflection points in a room with absorption and/or diffusion helps eliminate arrival time issues with the sound from your speakers to your ears. Diffusion on the rear wall behind your main seating works wonders to maintain the sense of life to a performance, again taming direct reflections without over damping a room.

There is much that can be done to a room's acoustic properties to help create an environment conducive to music reproduction. I am no acoustician but personal experience with the recording industry and years of home system setups has broadened my knowledge about what works for me. A live room is too "hot" and a seriously damped room is too "dead". Creating the right combination of bass traps, absorption and diffusion in a room goes a long way to reducing or even eliminating the necessity of using electronic measures for taming room acoustic anomalies.

Proper speaker set up in a room is another critical factor that is often haphazardly done with little to no attention paid to getting the speakers low frequency drivers to properly load the room. This can take a great deal of time and effort to dial in and is often shortchanged in the end. Of course there is also the WAF for many where location compromises are necessary to maintain marital bliss. Short of a dedicated room there isn't much that can be done about that issue without involving an attorney. .

So, for me the answer to the original topic is treat a room first, then install the system, dial in your speakers properly, make adjustments to acoustic panels as necessary, and only then consider electronic alternatives if absolutely necessary. My experiences have shown me that a well setup room delivers tremendous performance advantages that are well worth the effort. The room really is a speaker and requires adjustments just as do the loudspeakers in it.

[Golucid]

Originally Posted by jdandy

The room really is a speaker and requires adjustments just as do the loudspeakers in it.

+10

[Cohibaman]

Originally Posted by chessman

Mid-fi in a treated room sounds better than hi-fi in an untreated room, unless you are very, very lucky.