The importance -or not- of room acoustics.

AVForums

Help Support AVForums:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

joel

AVForums Super Veteran
*
Joined
Sep 25, 2007
Messages
1,561
Reaction score
121
A contentious issue, and one that last time I got involved, someone called the headmaster to set me straight. (and he eventually agreed with me)

SO how important is your room in the listening equation?

There are certainly two opposite poles of thought in this forum, with some saying room acoustics are vital and others that it isn't.

Research seems to show - and here I'll mention one paper in particular at the end of my post- that a little bit of common sense should be applied and that as with most things, the optimum is somewhere between the two opposing poles.

Without getting too technical, we humans have a wonderful capacity to adapt.
We adapt to heat/cold, light/dark and yes, to sound.

Importantly we have the ability to adapt, or at least rather quickly, to the differences in static sound(the room) and changing sounds(the music we listen to)
This capability to adapt means that if we compare two loudspeakers, CD players ETC in either a "good" or a "bad" room, as long as we have adapted to the rooms, the better piece of equipment will sound better in both good and bad rooms.

And now to the crux of this post.......
If we know the room in which we listen, be it good or bad (both of which are relative terms) if we introduce a better piece of equipment, WE will be able to hear the difference.

The question of which is more important, the room or the equipment is then to a degree moot. (and I'll get to why I've said, To a degree shortly)?
Lousy speakers in a lousy room will sound Lousy.
Lousy speakers in a good room may sound even worse (more lousyness is heard)
Good speakers in a lousy room will sound good(because of adaption)
Good speakers in a good room will sound better.

Now there limits to our adaptions and if a room is really bad most things placed in it will sound, less than stellar.
There are also limits to how quickly we adapt to rooms.
I like to think that many years being an audio reviewer have left me with the ability to adapt both quickly and deeply, thus giving me the ability to quickly "hear" equipment in different venues.

My view is that some treatment is certainly a good think.
My room has bass traps, carpeting and special latex under carpet cushioning. There are CD/LP racks on some walls and even some posters, that all add up to bring some diffusion and LF control into my room.
Measurements show that the room is reasonably good, and as I know where there is some bass resonance I can tell the difference between speakers in this area.

I wouldn't mind adding a little more treatment, but it isn't absolutely necessary as the room itself is pretty good, and treating more LF would be too intrusive.

In closing I'm going to repeat what was said right up front.
A little bit of common sense is probably what's needed when considering wether to upgrade the room or components.

Loudspeakers and Rooms for Sound Reproduction - A Scientific Review
Floyd E Toole   
 

Latest posts

Top