Room acoustics, the last hurdle?

[jdandy]

4RE.......Once you accept the idea that a room is a speaker that influences your sound as much as the speakers you can then set about tailoring it's performance to your satisfaction. Room shapes, ceiling heights and slopes, room decorations, furniture and tables, carpeting or hardwood flooring, widows, curtains, openings into other areas, hollow or solid wood doors, everything in a room impacts the way speakers will interact within that air space. Acoustic treatments and bass traps are definitely helpful for controlling acoustic irregularities, but equally important is the proper placement of the speakers in a room. It is not any one single thing that dials in a sound system's highest potential, rather it's the cumulative effects of all of the above in combination with high quality equipment and peripherals.

Most of us are not so lucky as to be able to find that perfect home with the perfect room for a sound system. We are often left to make due with the hand we are dealt. How we approach that challenge is as individual as our personalities. The ultimate results of our efforts and attention to details plays into the end results. In my opinion, when it comes to premium sound reproduction in a home everything in your system and room matters. Trying to place a percentage on one aspect's importance over another, directing energy and dollars accordingly, isn't the best approach. Don't misunderstand my point though. The room is extremely important and treating peculiar acoustic anomalies is an essential necessity to achieving premium performance from any sound system.

[rbbert]

Given what many people here spend on their equipment I think it would be very cost-effective to actually hire an acoustician with experience in helping audiophiles. Jeff Hedback is one (East Coast?), another is Nyal Mellor (West Coast?), and I know there are many more excellent ones. There are not only many satisifed owners of such rooms, but also impressed listeners with no vested interest in the room or system. Just my $0.02

[4RE]

Most highly valued $0,02 !!

[essjay]

Speakers first then room treatments, so you know where and why you need to treat, as well as test the results as you add panels and traps in.

I would go as far as saying that those two key areas are 70% of the solution.

the rest fell into place for me after i adopted that approach.

[Glenn Kuras]

Originally Posted by 4RE

Will roomacoustics be the last hurdle to be taken in the quest for perfect sound?

If the importance of room acoustics should be expressed in a percentage of the total experience, how much would you estimate / declare?

You have gotten some great responses. For me it is all about the room sound but I live this stuff daily.
We did do a test of a recording of a empty room vs a treated room. You can hear the impact that treatment will make.
Acoustically Treated vs Non-treated Room - GIK Acoustics

[Glenn Kuras]

Originally Posted by 4RE

Anybody can do RT60 sweep nowadays, but interpretation and experience don't come with software.. ive seen too many expert acoustic 'jobs' completely overdampening a room to achieve an ideal RT60. Job done but music gone.
The 'damping phenomenon' seems a sticky thing amongst audiophiles.

That is why you want to use either something tuned and or us broadband with a membrane or slate design (helps scatter/diffuse upper frequencies) built to the front. Many different ways to tame a room to your own liking.

BTW small rooms do not have RT60 so if someone come in and used that tool/calculation I would be very skeptical of there knowledge. For small rooms you want to use frequency response, decay time and ETC. To view the RT60 for fun is ok but it really is not telling you much about the problem or how to fix it.

[GaryProtein]

To me, the untreated room is very echo-y, but the treated room sounds a bit over-treated and dead.

The examples demonstrate the extremes very well.

For my preference the ideal is about 2/3 of the way towards the treated room.

[Glenn Kuras]

To me, the untreated room is very echo-y, but the treated room sounds a bit over-treated and dead.

That recording itself does not have a lot of reverb in it, which is what you are hearing. The recording as it was done. There was still up wards of 300 ms in the upper frequencies which is considered pretty lively. We used a slate design (the scatter plate) on a lot of the panels to retain the upper energy but tame the low end decay.

[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.

[Glenn Kuras]

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.

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.