There probably has been another thread such as this - but if there is, I have not seen it in a long time. I see many new members coming on board in the last few months asking for advice of varying nature. There are members in this forum with incredible knowledge and expertise, yet only a few offer truly valuable assistance. Often the thread turns into a debate about fine technical aspects of hardware that indeed would improve a system, but are of very little consequence if the basic foundations of good sound reproduction have not been met.
This is not for the hardcore guys? and too, let us not have this become another cable debate thread. I accept that when it comes to audio craft, just about anything can make a difference. Speaker position, for example, makes a big difference and is foundation building stuff. Changing the power cable is not going to have any audible impact on a system at basics level. I?m hoping to just give some guidance to the newly acquainted, and that like-minded forumites can add real value.
We tend to throw the term "transparent" around too easily. It's hogwash actually. In theory, an artist plays music and it is recorded, then a system plays it back and it sounds the same as the artist in a "transparent" way - not changing the sound from how it does listening directly to the artist in the recording studio. GOOD LUCK!!! Anyone who knows anything about live music, on stage or in the studio, knows that they are audibly different experiences. Not quoting a statistical fact here, but let's say that best case scenario is a 3 out of 10. What we want is to get as close to that 3 as possibly.
The room, above everything else, is your sound system. The most audibly influential component, combined with the component system reproduces sound in a certain way. The world's best system will sound terrible in a bathroom. If you are considering spending money on any sort of upgrade to your system before dealing with the basics of room optimization and component positioning within, you are simply wasting time and money. On this note...
The Room:
We have all seen the pictures. Dedicated sound rooms with custom fabricated dispersion panels engineered to software generated specification, placed in perfect symmetry. Strategically placed bass traps, and, and, and. All of them are very effective, but too often score low on WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor - for the noobs). It doesn't need to be all that, but one needs to understand a few simple basics that will give a room significant acoustic improvement. Most notably, hard and flat surfaces are nasty - especially when in the reflection area between the speaker and listener. These reflective spots can easily be identified with a mirror, placing it at various points to identify where the speaker drivers can be seen in the mirrors reflection when viewed from the listening position. The higher the frequency, the more subject to reflection they are. Focus more on the mids and tweeters for these reflections. Now we don't necessarily want to kill off these reflections. What we want to do is scatter them around the room, much like light does when hitting the reflective facets of a mirror-ball, allowing a better image of the audio to develop in the room. Furniture items such bookshelves placed at these areas can really help disperse these immediate reflections. Floors need carpets. The thicker, the shaggier, the better. Cover as much floor space as possible, but pay attention to ensure the reflective spots are covered to absorb them.
I often refer in conversations to speaker bloom. I can't remember is I heard it somewhere or made it up. None the less, it is for me a descriptive term of how audio signal generated from the speaker "blooms" into the room like some kind of cosmic explosion. As it does, the image of this makes contact with all the surfaces in the room, causing all sorts interference - not all bad. Any hard and flat surface will cause a reproduction of the sound image that is audibly close to the original, and have a negative effect. It?s like overlaying two photographs imperfectly... blurry and hard to recognize detail within. Remember - these reflective surface actually amplify the sound in the same way a polished diffuser on a torch bulb intensifies its' lumens. Given that the higher frequencies are more reactive to this, they increase in intensity, leaving lower frequencies sounding less prominent and a perceived lack in bass.
The natural shape and dimensions of a room cause it to have specific resonant frequencies. These are known as "Room Modes". There are many calculators and visual graph generators on the net that will show you this... but we are already moving towards more advanced discussions. By simply achieving the basics, huge differences in audio quality can be heard before getting into this.
Speaker Placement:
Enter the craft. Whilst many aspects of audio tech are measurable and scientific, there is this element of craft that I once heard Hans Beekhuyzen speak of. It?s the magic sauce that makes good systems great. Speaker placement can be calculated fairly easily with available tools, but more often than not places the speakers in positions that don?t suit the rooms primary function, having a pair of speakers in the middle of the room. It just doesn?t work when the system is in your lounge. Noted ? but try and keep as many of these principals in place.
The equilateral triangle, often referred to as the ?Cardas? triangle. This refers to the distance between the left and right speakers being equal to the distance from the listening point back to either of the speakers ? a perfect triangle when viewed from above. Just about every person I know uses their multi-channel HT system for stereo music use too, and is just as relevant. I have noted before that the more common use of processing has led to less user experimentation of careful speaker positioning.
The assumption that Audyssey or other correction software will miraculously cure all the physical wrongs of a room is nonsense. It?s no cure, but is simply correction?. like using tipp-ex. The problem is still there - just a little harder to notice. Anyhow ? the Cardas triangle is a good starting point for speaker placement. The closer the speaker end of the triangle is placed against the wall behind them, the bigger (most often) the bass. This booming effect is caused by the natural amplification of the low frequencies into the corner, and is not a good thing. Speakers placed close to side walls are going to have some undesirables added? more on this later. Whether or not the triangle can be placed in the optimal position of the room according to its natural ?modes? is another story. For those with HT, the answer is no. For those with systems in your social lounge, the answer is no. Those with dedicated sound room ? you probably won?t be learning anything from this.
The next step is toe-in. Should I angle the speakers towards my listening position? You definitely should experiment with it. The toeing in of a speaker can have very different effects, dependent on their positioning in the room. In a perfect triangle, free-air environment without reflection and the speakers facing the listener at 60 degrees, the bloom of the left and right speaker will intercept at the listening position, projecting a spherical holographic audio image on to the listener. Toeing the speakers further in to intercept in front of the listening position causes a virtual elongation of the audio image bubble, stretching it wider from left to right, and in doing so compressing in from front to back. Toeing back out to intercept behind the listener has the opposite effect, narrowing the left to right image and stretching it front to back.
Got it?
Alright - don?t get too carried away with this description. What is more important is that by visualizing this explanation we have a way to better comprehend what is happening in the room. The example mentions a room without reflections ? which practically doesn?t exist. If we manage to understand the explanation above, then it becomes easy to grasp the concept of how reflection comes into play. The bigger the surface area of a smooth, hard and flat surface area, the more complete the reflected image is, resulting in a fractured portrayal of the music. A highly dispersed reflection actually has a positive effect to the image, adding pizazz to the soundstage, energy and ?Bokeh? (photographic term) if you will. They form the characteristics of the complete system.
It is worth noting the somewhat opposite effect of toeing in when one is faced with the situation that the speakers are closer than ideal to side walls. These side walls will have the most immediate reflections, and due to this will have an increase in brightness, the less toe-in you have. The more toe-in applied, the less direct reflections are projected on to the side walls, positively effecting the system. I these scenarios, I have generally found that it is better to apply more aggressive toe-in, even to the point of being cross-eyed in front to the listener.
Holographic imaging is another wormhole that I will try to use visualization to explain. A simple explanation of how a holographic image works is that two laser-beams intercept in floating space, and cause a double light intensity ?dot? to form, floating freely in mid-air. Positioning multiple laser beams allows one to form multiple dots in various positions, and can then form a complete image in the same way as pixels. Move the dots and you have animation. Audio imaging can be visualized in much the same way, if one imagines each speaker to be a source of multiple audio ?laser-beams?. These virtual beams of sound intercept in between the left and right channels and, if accurately phased and positioned, produce a stunningly real center-stage. This is one of the most effective traits of good system layout.
Component Chain / Signal Path:
I once used the following explanation with someone. The music source is like a glass of clear water. Each and every component in the chain adds a drop of colour to it. Some colours are warm, some bright, some cold and other fresh and light. Some colours cancel each other out, others intensify each other. One fact remains is that the more drops of colour you add, the more ?greyish? the water becomes, regardless of the colour outcome. We would love fully transparent, but that would mean a bare instrument and someone to play it. In the world of audio kit, we need records and digital files, stylus and DAC?s, pre-amplifiers, amplification, cables and speakers? all of this at a minimum. Less is more. Keep it pure, aim for the simplest, cleanest chain you can.
Source:
Should I invest in a record player? What is the best digital source? Player? Digital is easy, relatively inexpensive and super convenient. Stop playing MP3?s, and don?t use Bluetooth. Subscribe to a good Hi-Res FLAC streaming service like Tidal, and preferably stream direct (PC or streamer) instead of via any mobile device. The DAC does make a difference ? there is enough information on that to read around here. Records are great, but do require significant care and investment. Doing it on the cheap is a waste of money. A record cleaning machine should be your second investment after the turntable.
...and have fun.
This is not for the hardcore guys? and too, let us not have this become another cable debate thread. I accept that when it comes to audio craft, just about anything can make a difference. Speaker position, for example, makes a big difference and is foundation building stuff. Changing the power cable is not going to have any audible impact on a system at basics level. I?m hoping to just give some guidance to the newly acquainted, and that like-minded forumites can add real value.
We tend to throw the term "transparent" around too easily. It's hogwash actually. In theory, an artist plays music and it is recorded, then a system plays it back and it sounds the same as the artist in a "transparent" way - not changing the sound from how it does listening directly to the artist in the recording studio. GOOD LUCK!!! Anyone who knows anything about live music, on stage or in the studio, knows that they are audibly different experiences. Not quoting a statistical fact here, but let's say that best case scenario is a 3 out of 10. What we want is to get as close to that 3 as possibly.
The room, above everything else, is your sound system. The most audibly influential component, combined with the component system reproduces sound in a certain way. The world's best system will sound terrible in a bathroom. If you are considering spending money on any sort of upgrade to your system before dealing with the basics of room optimization and component positioning within, you are simply wasting time and money. On this note...
The Room:
We have all seen the pictures. Dedicated sound rooms with custom fabricated dispersion panels engineered to software generated specification, placed in perfect symmetry. Strategically placed bass traps, and, and, and. All of them are very effective, but too often score low on WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor - for the noobs). It doesn't need to be all that, but one needs to understand a few simple basics that will give a room significant acoustic improvement. Most notably, hard and flat surfaces are nasty - especially when in the reflection area between the speaker and listener. These reflective spots can easily be identified with a mirror, placing it at various points to identify where the speaker drivers can be seen in the mirrors reflection when viewed from the listening position. The higher the frequency, the more subject to reflection they are. Focus more on the mids and tweeters for these reflections. Now we don't necessarily want to kill off these reflections. What we want to do is scatter them around the room, much like light does when hitting the reflective facets of a mirror-ball, allowing a better image of the audio to develop in the room. Furniture items such bookshelves placed at these areas can really help disperse these immediate reflections. Floors need carpets. The thicker, the shaggier, the better. Cover as much floor space as possible, but pay attention to ensure the reflective spots are covered to absorb them.
I often refer in conversations to speaker bloom. I can't remember is I heard it somewhere or made it up. None the less, it is for me a descriptive term of how audio signal generated from the speaker "blooms" into the room like some kind of cosmic explosion. As it does, the image of this makes contact with all the surfaces in the room, causing all sorts interference - not all bad. Any hard and flat surface will cause a reproduction of the sound image that is audibly close to the original, and have a negative effect. It?s like overlaying two photographs imperfectly... blurry and hard to recognize detail within. Remember - these reflective surface actually amplify the sound in the same way a polished diffuser on a torch bulb intensifies its' lumens. Given that the higher frequencies are more reactive to this, they increase in intensity, leaving lower frequencies sounding less prominent and a perceived lack in bass.
The natural shape and dimensions of a room cause it to have specific resonant frequencies. These are known as "Room Modes". There are many calculators and visual graph generators on the net that will show you this... but we are already moving towards more advanced discussions. By simply achieving the basics, huge differences in audio quality can be heard before getting into this.
Speaker Placement:
Enter the craft. Whilst many aspects of audio tech are measurable and scientific, there is this element of craft that I once heard Hans Beekhuyzen speak of. It?s the magic sauce that makes good systems great. Speaker placement can be calculated fairly easily with available tools, but more often than not places the speakers in positions that don?t suit the rooms primary function, having a pair of speakers in the middle of the room. It just doesn?t work when the system is in your lounge. Noted ? but try and keep as many of these principals in place.
The equilateral triangle, often referred to as the ?Cardas? triangle. This refers to the distance between the left and right speakers being equal to the distance from the listening point back to either of the speakers ? a perfect triangle when viewed from above. Just about every person I know uses their multi-channel HT system for stereo music use too, and is just as relevant. I have noted before that the more common use of processing has led to less user experimentation of careful speaker positioning.
The assumption that Audyssey or other correction software will miraculously cure all the physical wrongs of a room is nonsense. It?s no cure, but is simply correction?. like using tipp-ex. The problem is still there - just a little harder to notice. Anyhow ? the Cardas triangle is a good starting point for speaker placement. The closer the speaker end of the triangle is placed against the wall behind them, the bigger (most often) the bass. This booming effect is caused by the natural amplification of the low frequencies into the corner, and is not a good thing. Speakers placed close to side walls are going to have some undesirables added? more on this later. Whether or not the triangle can be placed in the optimal position of the room according to its natural ?modes? is another story. For those with HT, the answer is no. For those with systems in your social lounge, the answer is no. Those with dedicated sound room ? you probably won?t be learning anything from this.
The next step is toe-in. Should I angle the speakers towards my listening position? You definitely should experiment with it. The toeing in of a speaker can have very different effects, dependent on their positioning in the room. In a perfect triangle, free-air environment without reflection and the speakers facing the listener at 60 degrees, the bloom of the left and right speaker will intercept at the listening position, projecting a spherical holographic audio image on to the listener. Toeing the speakers further in to intercept in front of the listening position causes a virtual elongation of the audio image bubble, stretching it wider from left to right, and in doing so compressing in from front to back. Toeing back out to intercept behind the listener has the opposite effect, narrowing the left to right image and stretching it front to back.
Got it?
Alright - don?t get too carried away with this description. What is more important is that by visualizing this explanation we have a way to better comprehend what is happening in the room. The example mentions a room without reflections ? which practically doesn?t exist. If we manage to understand the explanation above, then it becomes easy to grasp the concept of how reflection comes into play. The bigger the surface area of a smooth, hard and flat surface area, the more complete the reflected image is, resulting in a fractured portrayal of the music. A highly dispersed reflection actually has a positive effect to the image, adding pizazz to the soundstage, energy and ?Bokeh? (photographic term) if you will. They form the characteristics of the complete system.
It is worth noting the somewhat opposite effect of toeing in when one is faced with the situation that the speakers are closer than ideal to side walls. These side walls will have the most immediate reflections, and due to this will have an increase in brightness, the less toe-in you have. The more toe-in applied, the less direct reflections are projected on to the side walls, positively effecting the system. I these scenarios, I have generally found that it is better to apply more aggressive toe-in, even to the point of being cross-eyed in front to the listener.
Holographic imaging is another wormhole that I will try to use visualization to explain. A simple explanation of how a holographic image works is that two laser-beams intercept in floating space, and cause a double light intensity ?dot? to form, floating freely in mid-air. Positioning multiple laser beams allows one to form multiple dots in various positions, and can then form a complete image in the same way as pixels. Move the dots and you have animation. Audio imaging can be visualized in much the same way, if one imagines each speaker to be a source of multiple audio ?laser-beams?. These virtual beams of sound intercept in between the left and right channels and, if accurately phased and positioned, produce a stunningly real center-stage. This is one of the most effective traits of good system layout.
Component Chain / Signal Path:
I once used the following explanation with someone. The music source is like a glass of clear water. Each and every component in the chain adds a drop of colour to it. Some colours are warm, some bright, some cold and other fresh and light. Some colours cancel each other out, others intensify each other. One fact remains is that the more drops of colour you add, the more ?greyish? the water becomes, regardless of the colour outcome. We would love fully transparent, but that would mean a bare instrument and someone to play it. In the world of audio kit, we need records and digital files, stylus and DAC?s, pre-amplifiers, amplification, cables and speakers? all of this at a minimum. Less is more. Keep it pure, aim for the simplest, cleanest chain you can.
Source:
Should I invest in a record player? What is the best digital source? Player? Digital is easy, relatively inexpensive and super convenient. Stop playing MP3?s, and don?t use Bluetooth. Subscribe to a good Hi-Res FLAC streaming service like Tidal, and preferably stream direct (PC or streamer) instead of via any mobile device. The DAC does make a difference ? there is enough information on that to read around here. Records are great, but do require significant care and investment. Doing it on the cheap is a waste of money. A record cleaning machine should be your second investment after the turntable.
...and have fun.
