The Perfect Room: Spaces

[mikebake]

While the room is as important as the equipment... we almost always ignore it because it is the most difficult to contend with.:D

That could be the next thread; "Perfect Room? Let's hear your vote! :rotfl:


Widget

I've listened to gear in alot of different spaces; the first thing to emerge is that bigger has usually been better than smaller. Even with smaller systems, they can be backed up to wall, subs (if involved) placed similarly, and the listener sitting in the proper distance. Even if the room is huge, the results can be good, and better than in the all too familiar "too-small" or problem room.

Problem rooms seem to be more common than not. My personal experience is that in homes/apartments/dwellings, 90+ percent are problem rooms. My brain has always registered the acoustic properties of the space I am in, and I have been aware of it since at least my early teens. I've walked into some spaces and immediately sensed a good balance in the acoustic environment.

I remember a fairly large living room in a high-end late 50's ranch; heavy carpet and drapes, etc. Lots of room for bass to develop. Exceptional room. The guy happened to have Mac and JBL, too, but we all dragged our gear over and it was a good room.

Plus, in larger rooms, and I have tried to expound on this before, with the vast majority of speakers that have their sweet spot/range of SPL, you can turn up the volume to where the speakers sound best, then move yourself accordingly so the SPL is where you like it. i.e. instead of the speaker averaging 85db at your 2.5 meter listening position, you can crank it a bit and have 85db at your 5.5 meter position; same measured db but generally quite a difference, as you are feeding more power into the room and the speaker may simply sound better playing with some juice into it.

When I enter a space with live music, I always inherently move to the room position where my ears and brain tell me the best sound will be. This is mostly amounts to the SPL/dynamics I want to hear, and a ratio of direct to reflected sound I prefer. I'm more of a fourth row guy, or a stool on the corner of the bar with a good shot of the band, than a balcony guy.
OTOH, if I can't find a spot in a club where it isn't too loud, I just leave.

Back to home audio. Spaces I have found exceptional sound over the years (and I've had systems in some pretty different places) include a large acoustically treated theater/auditorium, a church (was not echo-ey), a small den, an open basement living room, outdoors on a wood deck with boundary reinforcement.........
The common denominators included size (usually), absorption/reflection ratios, solid construction, good boundary reinforcement oppotunities, luck, and some good beer or wine. Back in the day, some rightous herb and a tar paper shack were sufficient space for the Mahavishnu Orchestra to transport one.............:D
Let's see some room photos of some rooms you folks believe have good sound, or some stories of good spaces and what you believe made them good.

[Mr. Widget]

While I was being a bit tongue in cheek when I proposed this subject... you are right to bring it up. The room should be considered a component in our audio playback chain.

My room is a barn with curtains around the perimeter to help control the RT60 ... it is OK, but not really worthy of comment. Anyone have any really good rooms?


Widget

[morbo!]

a high ceiling?

I just measured up
this gotta be bad

H 12ft , L 12ft, D 12ft

omg it`s a perfect box:barf:

well at least i have as bigass window right behind me
with plenty of dampining over it

nowonder my neibour`s house is empty
every time there is a buyer looking at it i turn this room into a gaint speaker!
anyone know how to tune a window for maxium neibour anoyance?


I think if this house has any redeeming quality`s it`s the 12 to 16 foot ceilings through out

[mikebake]

High, and particularly slanted, ceilings seem to be one of the better things a room can have. I have a small living room, but with a rather high ceiling, and it is decent, but I do not keep a system in there, other than one for background music which fires out of the loft on one side. The large glass expanse is problematic if undraped.

[johnaec]

My room is a barn with curtains around the perimeter to help control the RT60 ... it is OK, but not really worthy of comment.I don't know, Widget - I think you've got one of the sonically nicest rooms I've ever had the pleasure of hearing good speakers in! :yes:

John

[mikebake]

While I was being a bit tongue in cheek when I proposed this subject... you are right to bring it up. The room should be considered a component in our audio playback chain.

My room is a barn with curtains around the perimeter to help control the RT60 ... it is OK, but not really worthy of comment. Anyone have any really good rooms?


Widget
Rough dimensions?

[Fred Sanford]

Jim D'Addario, of D'Addario guitar strings, owns a house that is built off of the chapel from one of the Morgan family estates. The choir loft is his office, and the church his living room, with guitars and a grand piano on the altar area. I just love working up in the loft (we installed his home AV system) and hearing his caretaker pick up an acoustic & play down in the chapel. No, we don't have speakers in the church itself, just the loft. Nice room, though.

je

[Mr. Widget]

I don't know, Widget - I think you've got one of the sonically nicest rooms I've ever had the pleasure of hearing good speakers in! :yes:You are far too generous... but thanks, it does sound much better after I picked the best spot for the couch, speakers, and moderate room treatment.

Rough dimensions?Rough? ;) The ceiling height is 10' 3".


Widget

[Bob Womack]

Can't top that, but my living room's dimensions are 30' long by 13' deep, with the speakers on the outside long wall. The room has a cathedral ceiling that starts at 10' at the outside long wall above the speakers and slants up to 18' on the back wall. That means the room can support down to 20hz.

Bob

[Titanium Dome]

Ralph Hodges wrote in Stereo Review many years ago about his "yellow room." The room fascinated him because it wasn't regular. The ceiling rose a bit from one end to the other, the long sides weren't parallel, one end was wider. He was in a state of ongoing exploration with the room because it held the promise of giving him the best listening environment, and, on occasion, it seemed nearly perfect.

Someone with an old copy of Stereo Review might find the original article to see if my memory is as good as my recollection. I'm certain the article was entitled "The Yellow Room," and it obviously struck a chord with me.

I've never been happy with a regular room since. Just before coming to CA, I was constructing a room in MI that embodied some of these deliberate oddities. I went back to MI to finish it before selling the farm to stay permanently in CA. Even empty it had a wonderful sound. :(

[mikebake]

I remember that Yellow Room article, too.

[speakerdave]

. . . . sufficient space for the Mahavishnu Orchestra . . . .
Ah, yes. That was a room. Inner Mounting Flame, Birds of Fire, even the Sri Chinmoy albums, Love Devotion Surrender with Carlos Santana and the John Coltrane tunes, and My Goal's Beyond, the acoustic album--you can still hear the music playing through the sanctimonious fog. They all still get their turn.

David

[Steve Schell]

Great topic. I think the best listening environment is outdoors, at least if circumstances are right. Rooms are evil in what they do to the sound of our speakers, and it is truly a revelation to hear what a system can sound like when it is not sabotaged by the room it is in.

There is a lot of hocus pocus surrounding the subject of room dimensions and bass response. I have found that very good 20Hz. bass is possible in small spaces as long as the boundaries are lossy enough to let most of the extreme l.f. energy escape rather than recycling it. This does require a system with genuinely extended response, like a big bass horn, that is not overly dependent on room gain. Due to cheapo frame construction I have solid, palpable 20Hz. response in my room, and the neighbors get to enjoy it too! I have also heard very good low bass in small bedrooms, where the speakers are able to pressurize the entire room volume like a boom boom car stereo.

Smaller rooms like my current 14' by 17' space need a lot of room treatment to keep from sounding horrible. I have about 170 square feet of 6" thick R-19 fiberglass and about 228 square feet 1 1/2" thick compressed fiberglass in my room at present. This stuff is installed into movable frames which cover most of the wall surfaces and bass trap the corners diagonally. As a room grows larger the need for treatment becomes less acute, but is always necessary to at least tame slap echo. Basically I am trying to maximize the ratio of direct to reverberant sound at the listening chair and kill off the reverberant field in as broadband a manner as possible.

One thing that is nice about a larger room is that it is possible to begin to create the illusion of a large symphony orchestra in size as well as in timbre. One friend has a space about 20' by 30' with a peaked ceiling. It sounds quite good even without much treatment, and his big horn system does a believable job of orchestral scale.

Widget's arrangement looks nice! With no nearby walls, closely timed refections are avoided and his system should image like crazy.

I suppose the perfect room for me would be the one that would let my system sound like it does in my back yard. I'm a long way from this goal.

[mikebake]

Hi Steve
I agree with your lossy room idea. And I have been a porponent of outdoor listening on this forum for eons, but neve with much sympathy. If you take "regular" speakers outdoors and give them a back wall to reinforce the bass, it's generally quite good.

[Hoerninger]

... And I have been a porponent of outdoor listening on this forum for eons, but neve with much sympathy...
Yes, it's great to listen outside.
a) I remember,when I used a backloaded horn - not mine - in the garden. Bass tones poured out like clean bubbles.
b) Simple open baffle design with a cheap speaker (QTS> 1) and some bass boost made Glenn Miller very present. (Garden work was much easier ;) )
____________
Peter

P.S: Unfortunately I do not have good sounding weatherproof speakers.

[Gary L]

This has been a pet peeve of mine for a long time. Why do we strive for the very best in speakers when we cram them into sardine can rooms?
As mentioned above, few homes have exceptional listening rooms.

I was in one home located in Tuxedo Park, Harriman, NY. This entire area is loaded with very large multi-million dollar old homes. The particular mansion had a listening room that was simply spectacular and opened up into a cathedral ceilinged center staircase where 5 people could stand side by side on any one step and the ceilings were 40 feet high.
The treatments in the room were also spectacular with large tapestries and persian rugs hanging from the walls and very plush furnishings throughout. Seating for 30 people easily.
Now please don't laugh because I found it criminal. The only stereo in this room was a Bose Wave radio/CDP. The owner was not at all into music except that he played the Violin quite well.
I wanted so badly to bring some gear down just to set it up and rock this room for a while. The owner could easily afford anything and everything in my stable and the stable itself but has no interest and truely feels his radio is more then ample for the room.:banghead:

Gary

[coherent_guy]

I hear you Gary L., and I too have cringed when seeing what could be a listening room vs what passes as one. Of course, a dedicated listening room is quite rare and rather a luxury. I am referring more to ludicrous setups like say 4350's in a 10' by 12' room, or what you described. I recall a photograph accompanying a review in a major high-end audiophile magazine in the late 80's or early 90's. The reviewer was posed next to a pair of six foot plus tall tower speakers, and less than a foot from the top of the speakers was the ceiling, that could not have been more than seven feet from the floor. Clearly a basement room, complete with metal support posts. This, the environment for a multi-kilo-buck speaker review? At least it was a subjective review, no measurements were done. But that was the usual environment this reviewer used for equipment reviews? Unless the room was anechoically treated, or only near-field listening was done, it was ridiculous. So don't feel to bad about your rooms people, some of the "pro's" have it much worse.

[LowPhreak]

Welp, if I were to build the "perfect" room, I'd start with dimensions based on the Golden Ratio: 2.6 to 1.6 to 1.0, or say a room of 26'L x 16'W x 10'H; larger than that would probably be better to help develop the uber-lows. That would "theorectically" have the least standing wave/null, or would distribute them more evenly amongst the frequencies.

Then of course the walls would be of brick or cinder block, with appropriate absortive/reflective treatments all around.

That's my quick n' dirty version anyway.

[doyall]

While admittedly far from optimal, especially with respect to speaker placement (and particularly on the vintage stereo w/L250’s), my current listening environment has some attributes that are typically mentioned as being sonically positive: some (albeit small) non-parallel walls and a cathedral ceiling, 10’ in the center running the entire length of the room sloping to 8’ on the sides. Diagram is below. Without wholesale rearrangement, does anyone have any suggestions as to things that can be done to make the space more acoustically friendly or at least less objectionable? (For instance, would bass traps behind the L250’s in the vintage system do anything to compensate for their being placed so close to the wall?)

21384

[LowPhreak]

Without wholesale rearrangement, does anyone have any suggestions as to things that can be done to make the space more acoustically friendly or at least less objectionable? (For instance, would bass traps behind the L250’s in the vintage system do anything to compensate for their being placed so close to the wall?)


Bass traps almost always help, but I'm not sure to what extent in those 45 deg. corners. You'd probably have to cut them in some way to fit the shape.

I'm no expert, but I don't know how you can get an accurate or consistent soundfield from speakers placed in that corner. Seems that the inner half of the soundstage (between the speakers) would be reflected in odd directions, in relation to the outside of the soundstage (the outer sides of the speakers), when the speakers are placed parallel to the main walls. If they're placed parallel to the 'flat' corner, then the opposite would seem to apply.

You may be able to tame much of that by covering the entire flat area of the corner with Auralex or Sonex sheets, and the wall behind the speakers out to a couple of feet past the sides and higher than the speaker tops. If you can afford it, use the 4" version since they will attentuate everything down to the upper bass range. If not, the 2" or 3" will do fine from the mids up.

I'll bet the soundstage and clarity would improve dramatically, and overall the sound would be much "quieter" and less irritating from being smeared with near-field noise.

[MJC]

Welp, if I were to build the "perfect" room, I'd start with dimensions based on the Golden Ratio: 2.6 to 1.6 to 1.0, or say a room of 26'L x 16'W x 10'H; larger than that would probably be better to help develop the uber-lows. That would "theorectically" have the least standing wave/null, or would distribute them more evenly amongst the frequencies.

My LR/HT is close to those dimensions. 20+'L x 17.5'W x 10'H. I made sure I didn't have any divisible dimensions. That 20' is when the insulated sliding pocket doors are closed in the 8'8" x 7' elipical archway. When open the room is 32'L. The ceiling is vaulted, so that eliminates one set of parallel boundries. And although the side walls are parallel the main speakers are far enough away(over 5') that I get very little, if any, early reflections.
Of coarse, listening outdoors is great. The Pine Knob amphitheater, in Michigan, comes to mind. Saw Blood, Sweat and Tears there in '75.

[B&KMan]

While admittedly far from optimal, especially with respect to speaker placement (and particularly on the vintage stereo w/L250’s), my current listening environment has some attributes that are typically mentioned as being sonically positive: some (albeit small) non-parallel walls and a cathedral ceiling, 10’ in the center running the entire length of the room sloping to 8’ on the sides. Diagram is below. Without wholesale rearrangement, does anyone have any suggestions as to things that can be done to make the space more acoustically friendly or at least less objectionable? (For instance, would bass traps behind the L250’s in the vintage system do anything to compensate for their being placed so close to the wall?)

21384

Hello,

Well, well, well,

acoustic treatement is really complex :D

No exist ideal room size but exist less poor size room... :applaud:


first , 2 separate problems in same expression.

-------
the resonnace of room is equal of modal dimension of room.
3 modes modal exist : Axial, Tangeancial and radial. It is the generator problem in bass and very low bass frequency.

this resonnace is linked by room dimension and not affected by position of speakers. move your speakers not affected the response else if you put your speaker in exact opposite phase of modal resonnace. this is one reason to speakers have a critical position (millimeter)

the treatment is diapram absorber or any same principe system.


for found the less poor position speaker without formula and any other complexe calculs just buy a excellent software CARA. (never regrets)


-------
the reflexion section is linked by the reverberation time. and surface reflexion...

the ratio volume of room VS the RT is important.
and the regularity of time to entire spectrum.

but professional, is more fine research reverberation and analyse the EDT, TR 20 , TR30... and the RASTI factor to determine the articulation response.

More than is make by the intensity probe who expose clearly the reaction of sound in situ and show where direction come... front or back.

The RPG site explain a many acoustical principe and good principe of correction treatement...

the room affect 50% of final result and convert the best speaker to drum garbage.

remember the real sound is not extraordinary!!! is just real. when you play instrument music, do you extasy by the real sound to come in your ear, same who peoples talk with you... Voilà..

my 2 cents.

:Cheers:

B&KMan.

[LowPhreak]

B&KMan -

All good info to be sure, but I think doyall might be wedded to the position he has his "vintage system" in right now. If that's the case, then the first best thing to do is to kill the near-field reflections as I outlined above. Controlling the lows with bass traps is the next thing I'd do.

If that were my room, I would have the speakers placed in different areas to begin with, but maybe doyall wants to keep them where they are. :dont-know

[doyall]

... but maybe doyall wants to keep them where they are. :dont-know

It's not that I want to keep them where they. It is my aesthetic concerns (can't blame it on a wife as I do no presently have one) along with the practicalities of relocating them (i.e., space limitations - it looks better on paper than it really is) that are the major impediments.

[Shane Shuster]

I always thought the "perfect" room thing was was a cop out like burn-in. Don't like your speakers, you need to change electronics. That didn't work? Your room is terrible you need sound treatment, or better yet build a custom house with a golden ratio room with floating floors.

How come the guy playing the sax at the tile filled airport tunnel doesn't sound terrible? When someone talks to you in a room do you notice the room or just the voice? (within reason, no indoor pools)

I've read a lot of the papers on the benefits of larger rooms. I've listened in larger rooms and like them less than medium to small rooms. Larger rooms have a set of problems. Small rooms have a different set of problems. I don't think one is scientifically better than the other, just trade offs.

My personal perfect room would be about 14ft wide 18deep and 9ft tall. Nearfield speaker placement with no bass traps or foam on the walls. Just regular furnishings.

[mikebake]

"I always thought the "perfect" room thing was was a cop out like burn-in."

It's not. It's real. i'm with you on the general idea, though; a lot of what you hear is crap/excuses. Rooms are not one of them.

" How come the guy playing the sax at the tile filled airport tunnel doesn't sound terrible?"

Believe me, sometimes he does. The answer to that question is a bit long-winded, but I will relate two things; a live sax has very strong acoustical output, and that output is also in a range that lives in the mid-band of human hearing, which helps. Secondly, I have had live bands with sax in environments where it sounded really crappy. It was the space. In this case, the lower floors of a parking garage, where we had to move the band due to a monsoonal rain storm. I had them on the top level initially, and the sound was glorious.

"Larger rooms have a set of problems."

What are they?

[Shane Shuster]

"Larger rooms have a set of problems."

What are they?

The sax was just an example. I think he was playing a guitar. My point was that he can sometimes sound good and he doesn't have a golden ratio environment or padded studio walls. What I was getting at is the one thing most of us can't change is the room. Its too easy for the mags/salesmen/audio companies to tell us to buy a new house because we aren't getting the "magic" out of what we bought. It gets people wishing for something that can't be changed. Its much easier than explaining what gear works better where.

This is just my opinion but smaller rooms have better dynamics. Lower power and less excursion to reach an spl. I would say they have better bass down really low. I can't put it into words very well but large rooms have large room imaging. Kind of too big of a soundstage and phasey/airy/ghosty. (these aren't very good words to describe it)

Reading about large rooms on the internet makes a person think they are great but for some reason when I listen in them I think they are just different and end up missing some of the things a small room does.
The major bad thing about small rooms is you have to pick your speakers much more carefully because not all designs will work in them.

Mike do you like headphones? It seems like some people really don't like them but I love mine. Maybe the perfect room thing is kind of like that.

[LowPhreak]

It's not crap Shane, or some naive belief in marketing spin. It's physics. Frequencies will be reinforced or nulled in ratios directly related to room dimensions. That fact is well-established.

It's also well-known that too much - or the wrong 'kind' or wrong frequencies of - reflected sound has a distorting effect on what's heard at the listening position.

It sounds to me like you've become so used to hearing music in a small room that anything playing in a larger room throws you into a bout of cognitive dissonance. I don't know about you, but I've seldom heard live bands or solo musicians playing in 14'x18' or smaller rooms unless they were crammed into a recording studio, or perhaps one guy in a corner of a small bar strumming an acoustic guitar.

But then recording rooms/booths are not generally designed to present the most pleasing sound to an audience; they're made for recording sound into a mic.

[Shane Shuster]

LowPhreak, you make some good points. Maybe I have become accustomed to a small room. But let me ask you this. Have you ever heard a large scale orchestra in a 26x16ft room?

A large room lessens the nulls and peaks but doesn't get rid of the problem entirely. I think bass and dynamics are harder for a speaker system to do correctly than frequency response. I understand the physics of wanting a bigger room but a bigger room cuts into other areas of physics.

I did not mean to imply anyone was naive, its just that the things I've read on the internet state large rooms are always better. I think its more like how some people sit in the front row at a movie theater. You can make arguments that the middle seats are better because of pixel blending or a million other things. The front row people won't care, the middle row picture isn't as big.

[Zilch]

Read Toole in the June '06 AES Journal.

He's the Harman VP of studying this stuff.... :)

[Shane Shuster]

Read Toole in the June '06 AES Journal.

He's the Harman VP of studying this stuff.... :)

Zilch, can you paraphrase it?;)

I can find well written papers by professionals on why dipole is the only way to go. They make good arguments but when I listen to the things its a no go.:)

[Zilch]

Zilch, can you paraphrase it?;)Sure - "The science of moving big room sound to living spaces." :yes:

[26 pages, as I recall.... :p ]

[Steve Schell]

Shane, we're talking about two different things here: sound production versus sound reproduction. If the sax player sounded great in the airport tunnel, fine. If I made a recording of him there, I would want the playback at home to sound like he did in the tunnel. This would require a well damped room that contributes little to the playback sound, or else we would have swimmy reverb on top of swimmy reverb. Also, a very live room for playback will make every recording sound like the musicians are playing in the tunnel.

[Titanium Dome]

People have varying opinions about the site, but I find I go here to get some general room info when I need it from time to time.

http://www.audioholics.com/techtips/roomacoustics/index.php

[mikebake]

This is just my opinion but smaller rooms have better dynamics. Lower power and less excursion to reach an spl. I would say they have better bass down really low. I can't put it into words very well but large rooms have large room imaging. Kind of too big of a soundstage and phasey/airy/ghosty. (these aren't very good words to describe it)


Mike do you like headphones? It seems like some people really don't like them but I love mine. Maybe the perfect room thing is kind of like that.

I should have clarified that I like larger speakers in larger rooms. Smaller speakers may well suffer from too much distortion/excursion to reach proper SPL, as you mentioned. I'm a fan of big spaces and big systems. If I am in a small space, I tend to prefer small systems, but I'll take larger room, larger speaker all day long. A Mike Baker quote from way back "I'd rather here a large speaker loafing than a small one working hard".

I used to like headphones but I haven't listened to any for quite some time.

[Shane Shuster]

Dome: nice link

Steve: The sax thing was a bad example. If you made that recording and played it in a well damped room ok. What happens when you play a recording that someone else made thats too dull? Given that stereo is a phase trick isn't there a lot of room for interpretation? I don't like overly live rooms very much myself.

When Nebraska warms up I will try my speakers outside and see if I like them better. What kind of placement do you guys like for outside. (near field or sit like 20ft back?)

[Shane Shuster]

I should have clarified that I like larger speakers in larger rooms. Smaller speakers may well suffer from too much distortion/excursion to reach proper SPL, as you mentioned. I'm a fan of big spaces and big systems. If I am in a small space, I tend to prefer small systems, but I'll take larger room, larger speaker all day long. A Mike Baker quote from way back "I'd rather here a large speaker loafing than a small one working hard".

I used to like headphones but I haven't listened to any for quite some time.

That's a good quote. I use medium to large speakers in a small room and find the dynamics to be ok.

[mikebake]

It's the whole nodes and reflected sound issues that hurt rooms. Larger rooms keep coming closer to mimicing outdoors. I like sitting back a ways outdoors, and feed the box a bit of power.
Most speakers need some bass reinforcement from a back wall, as well as the ground, to help the bass.
You mentioned dipoles. I used to own Maggies and they sounded much better outdoors, with some backwall reinforcement but much more distance to the backwall than you would normally set up in an indoor situation.

[LowPhreak]

LowPhreak, you make some good points. Maybe I have become accustomed to a small room. But let me ask you this. Have you ever heard a large scale orchestra in a 26x16ft room?

That question is disingenuous, because I never claimed that size room would duplicate a large-scale orchestra's sound, however, I can probably get sound more like an orchestra's in a 26x16 room than a 18x14 room. Of course there are many other variables. We have to keep in mind here that most of us live in reasonably-sized abodes, not something that is the size of Carnegie Hall or the Hollywood Bowl as our listening/living rooms.


A large room lessens the nulls and peaks but doesn't get rid of the problem entirely.

Correct. But a room with a calculated dissimilar ratio of LxWxH - if we're 'stuck' with traditional rectangular-shaped rooms and flat walls, (as opposed to a circular room or a geodesic dome, etc.) - will help to tame the frequency peaks and dips better than some random ratio of LxWxH.


I think bass and dynamics are harder for a speaker system to do correctly than frequency response.

Bass and frequency response will be much easier to deal with in an optimally dimensioned room. Dynamics certainly won't be hurt in such a room.

[Ducatista47]

Ralph Hodges wrote in Stereo Review many years ago about his "yellow room." The room fascinated him because it wasn't regular. The ceiling rose a bit from one end to the other, the long sides weren't parallel, one end was wider. He was in a state of ongoing exploration with the room because it held the promise of giving him the best listening environment, and, on occasion, it seemed nearly perfect.

Someone with an old copy of Stereo Review might find the original article to see if my memory is as good as my recollection. I'm certain the article was entitled "The Yellow Room," and it obviously struck a chord with me.

I've never been happy with a regular room since. Just before coming to CA, I was constructing a room in MI that embodied some of these deliberate oddities. I went back to MI to finish it before selling the farm to stay permanently in CA. Even empty it had a wonderful sound. :(

From this recently cited page http://www.ethanwiner.com/basstrap.html


When bass frequencies bounce around in a room they generate standing waves. Standing waves are pressure nodes created when a sound wave reflected from a wall collides with the direct sound emanating from the loudspeaker. At some frequencies the reflections reinforce the direct sound, creating an increase in level at that location in the room. And at other frequencies the reflections tend to cancel the direct sound, lowering the volume or in some cases eliminating it altogether. (Standing waves can be reduced with non-parallel walls and an angled ceiling, but such construction is too costly for most home studios.) The variation in bass response caused by standing waves is perhaps the single biggest obstacle to mixdown satisfaction for home-studio owners. You create what you think is a terrific sounding mix in your studio, only to get complaints that it sounds either boomy or thin everywhere else.

Would such a room still need bass traps?

On the bright side, I always wanted a geodesic dome home. If I ever move to a larger property, I'm in. I'll build a listening room in the yard.

Clark

[LowPhreak]

Would such a room still need bass traps?



Clark,

Almost any room could use some bass traps, correctly placed of course.

There are a few brands/types out there, but Auralex' are one of my faves. They're effective, good-looking, easy to mount, not overly expensive, and have various models to choose from.

http://www.auralex.com/category_bass_traps/category_bass_traps.asp

[Ian Mackenzie]

Depending where you sit in your room and they way the 2 loudspeakers are located near the front / side wall you can create a large scale / forward presentation or a deeper / narrow more distant one. This is done by articulation of the early reflections. Its also depends on the dispersion control of the mid/HF drivers used.