Do You WANT to hear your room?

I imagine a lot of our forum members have spent time and effort to "clean up" their own rooms and remove "mud and boom" and "slap echo" when these intrude on the enjoyment of the recording.
If you have been on this forum for any length of time you probably drank the cool aid that "clean, flat, non reflective room sound is a big deal---maybe 50% of your final enjoyment comes from the room."
And the idea you might want to "put back IN" some distortion seems weird unless you believe music is a performance and if it is more believable---that's a GOOD thing.

And then there is the current Stereophile Magazine lead off column: "You Too can listen like a PRO!"
In it Jim Austin describes and explains the "accurate" room sound used by an engineer that removes room reflections versus the "colored" sound which a home audio enthusiast might prefer for "playing it back for PLEASURE."
Jim seems to appreciate the clarity of not having reflections AND YET he also digs a room that adds a bit of warmth.
I myself like BOTH approaches especially when thought and design went into their creation.

You, too, can listen like a pro!

Why is it even important to understand what a pro likes versus what a home audio nut likes?
Isn't listening to the recording like it is hardwired to your brain---the ULTIMATE for "clarity and accuracy"?
Can recording engineers be listening to everything WRONG? TOO CLEARLY?
Well, as many concert listeners have noticed, some great concert halls are just more "fun" to hear a band play in---because the "room" sounds great.
Perhaps it has a signature fullness of reflected reverb and low end solidity that makes it a "great" room.
Jim speaks to a conscious decision about adding selective reflection "on purpose" to purposely ADD the kind of coloration you might hear in a great concert hall---thus increasing the enjoyment of how great "this room sounds."

So, does your own set do one type of "room sound" or the other?
Which do you prefer and why?
My own main room was designed to sound generally pleasant back on the sofa AND also sound much clearer sitting closer without hearing reflected "distortion" when mastering.
I have a movable mastering station with controls that wheel into place and a roller-chair to sit on when work has to be done.
Sitting back later and relaxing on the sofa the room gain always adds drama and hyper clarity to the soundfield which is holographic when you are sitting that far back--and almost a bit "shouty" if you believe my mastering buddy who criticizes my rig when he is over here.
It sure ISN'T flat and uncolored back on the sofa---but it sure sounds BELIEVABLE.
Anyway, BOTH sound great.
And it is hard to believe both effects are happening in the same room at the same time.

I LIKE dead flat accurate sound that is musical in itself.
And I LIKE a "great room sound" that takes that sound and ADDS some drama into it.
I LIKE things hyper-realistic and holographic---even if it truly ain't on the record!
Why not have the choice of BOTH?
Pictures on my profile if you want to see the room set up for sofa listening.
Comments?

 

I like both. If I want super accurate I listen with headphones. But those make me feel a bit isolated at times.
I play music as well and have recorded my own stuff. So I get the engineer aspect.
But I want to hear some of the room. Just more natural to me. I don’t have to hear every single darn detail.
And just try to get the sound where things aren’t overly bad.
Then it’s all fine.
I’ve been to recording studios. They mostly are sterile and for a reason. But I don’t like the sound in them. It’s too analytical and it should be. But I was some room ambiance or color when listening for pleasure. I don’t want to feel like I’m on the f#ucking moon when listening to music. It’s weird. Not natural sounding.


was just telling a friend as well that I don’t think I would ever make a “ listening room” just for that reason alone.
I am in my living room 80% of the time in the house which is my maximum comfort area. So if I lose some aural enjoyment the coziness of the room makes up for it big time.
Listening to the room is also part of enjoying the room in its entirety if that makes sense.

 

I just bought some Rockwool slab to make bass traps. I’ll let you know which sort of room I prefer hehehe ...

 

I installed ASC tube traps in my room and they cleaned things up a lot. I mean my listening experience has improved significantly. I'm considering installing more, but there is always the risk of too much of a good thing.

 

I don't want to hear my room. I want to hear into the recorded space in the performance. I don't want to hear local room bass overhang. I don't want to hear comb filtering changing treble and imaging when I move my head. I don't want to hear a warm room with too much high end absorption and not enough low end absorption. I don't want to hear, even worse and in my experience more common, a bright splashy room fullnor image destroying flutter echo. I don't want lumpy bass response with boundary related peaks and nulls. I don't want wildly differing decay times across the frequency spectrum. And I don't want room noise obscuring detail either -- I want a whisper quiet room. BTW, in my experience, you get much more focused and detailed lifelike imaging the more you take the room out of the equation. A home listening environment is not like a concert hall (for one thing it is not the size or acoustic design of a concert hall, for another thing the concert hall or sonic space of the recording is already on the recording adding local layers of reverberant mush, lumpy frequency response and comb filtering on top of that doesn't make for a better or more pleasant listening experience to me).

 

My multi-purpose room absorbs a lot of sound because of how it's furnished. I wouldn't mind a more live sound.

 

My basement is the same way. My main floor listening room was too bright and had a lot of echo. I calmed that down with acoustic panels, so i have the desired sound i was looking for. What can be done in a fully furnished basement, other to get rid of the flat muddy sound? I tried moving all my gear upstairs to the main listening room, and it was better. I tired a different amp in the basement to no avail. So the culprit is the room. At this time, i am not complaining about the quality or clarity, i have to increase the volume in order to get the same listening pleasure that i get at lower volumes upstairs. I know i may be splitting hairs here, and should just enjoy it as it is. After all, it is more for background music when i am down there. Speaker placement isn't perfect.

 

I found after much trial and error, there is one best position for the two speakers in my listening space that really allow the room to augment and reinforce the sound. This is something I've heard called "room lock", where the speakers just seem to be most efficient and dynamic across the frequency range. If you don't manage to find those two positions, the sound becomes less dynamic as you get farther from it, as the room acoustics start working against the speaker's output for maximum efficiency, rather than augmenting it.

 

Absolutely! It' s also called 'sumiko master setup'. Well, that's a set up method to hopefully find those 2 spots within a few hours. I found mine by trial and error and it took me a year or so .

I also prefer a more 'lively' sound. Same as damping cd players and dacs, some prefer that sound, I find it sounds rather dead and prefer a more open sound (voices will be effected most by extra damping of gear like cd players etc...).

Then there's the little things like placement of a Tv in between the speakers, at a certain point/distance it can enhance the sound (imo), so rather than just throwing a blanket over it, I start shoving it backwards and forwards inch by inch to find a place where it will work with the sound of my speakers rather than against it.

 

I honestly don't know what type of room I even have. I know I have put years of tweaks in it.
It's small and really I can't change a thing. Years back I added a bunch of diy treatments and days like today it sounds wonderful and I'm grateful I have it. I just have no idea how it compares to anything else.

 

I treated my room; night and day difference.

 

I have a problem... it’s called WIFE. Very powerful.

She accepted moderate speakers (70 Liter Volume). I wanted to DIY big speakers (250L Volume)
and uh, better I don’t tell her comments. Also the bass traps from a long gone sound room had
to go, my friend (he is single) has them now.

So what to do ... I am modifying the speakers no choice

 

I feel your pain ... but there is a (partial) solution ... 'room correction' EQ which can reduce the peaks, but probably not do much with the nulls. I used to use a KRK ERGO, it's a 'lite' version of RoomPerfect (only works <500Hz, and is limited to about 5dB of correction). That did actually help make the sound (bass) clearer/cleaner, and took <50Hz load off my main amps/speakers (has low/high pass filtering). Other types might work better.

I have a dedicated Audio Cave now, luckily! So will get some modest room treatment and see what happens.

 

My biggest concern was bringing in a Subwoofer, and getting it set up right. Not too much boom or muddy sound, but just enough extra thump to enhance the other speakers.

Never saw the need for expensive cables or room treatments, and am more than happy with my music.
But, that's just me...

 

I have a dedicated listening room and the powerful wife has no say in there.Her greatest power is in the kitchen.

 

As a member of the vintage hifi church you are talking to me about Satan here
No worries, the first speaker mods were already quite good
The room has no big problem overall anyway, bit too much 60 Hz

And a 2nd system in the small man cave (apartments in Singapore are small,
unless you are a multimillionaire - 2 or 3 not enough) is in construction
The 2nd speaker arrived today, Sunday I’ll fire the old ladies up (EMI drivers)

 

I agree with @chervokas on this -- not just the snippet above, but his whole post. And about the importance of quiet in a listing room, I agree 1,000%.

Nothing improves the S/N ratio more than making the denominator as small as possible.

I want to hear the ambiance on the record, not hear the ambiance of my room.

BUT

I once visited an audiophile whose room is designed (successfully) to eliminate ALL room sound. To my surprise, I found the result quite unpleasant. Was it the acoustics? The rest of his setup? I don't know, but it wasn't for me; it seemed dry and uninvolving, at least with the tracks he played for me. Maybe it was that his DSP system didn't put in enough bass boost or high-treble cut for my tastes. We didn't have time to do a lot of fooling around with that.

In my basement room, I've done a lot (with acoustics and choice of speakers) to reduce room sound. Still, I'm not aiming to remove the small amount that remains.

 

I don't want to hear my room. I don't want it to be an anechoic chamber, but I want room reflections and resonances to be 90-95% stifled. Room reverb and reflections are mud generators that mask musical detail to an astonishing degree. If you want to enjoy the subtle natural decay of a guitar string or cymbal, you need to prevent and eliminate all the acoustic room gunk that can cover it up. The classic test is still a good one. Loudly clap your hands and carefully listen for any room reverberation. Even a small, brief amount of reflection can severely degrade the sound of a great recording and great playback equipment.

 

I know these guys as well - acoustically dead rooms sound shrill and highly unpleasant
One guy nearly blasted off my ears to demo me his Marten speakers with Diamond tweeters
That was a horrible day

So SOME room I really want to hear ... because you are used to the room, when you hear noises,
voices ...

 

my setup is asymmetrical ... left speaker has an open 'office area' behind it (but only about ... 8' deep); the right speaker has a regular corner, is about 3' from the speaker. I don't hear any anomalies really (yet, haven't been able to spend a lot of time listening) but do plan on getting some acoustic panels. A 4x4 one to place in front of the TV, a couple 2x2s to place flanking the TV (at reflection points from the speakers), probably a couple corner ones for the right hand front and back corners of the room, and maybe one or more at the right hand side reflection point of the right speaker. The left side wall is about 6' further away from the speaker than it is with the right.

Probably symmetrical is better, I could do that rotating everything 90 degrees, but there'd be a window in the center of that, and I want the TV centered, and don't want to block the window. Anyway, I don't seem to be hearing the room all that much, but want to add some treatment and see what the difference is (hopefully improved soundstaging and DEPTH (the Holy Grail for me)).

I do have a nearfield setup (300B tube amps drive Triangle Titus speakers on stands, pulled out to the sides in this pic). When I listen to that system, they're "in line" with the MA Silver 8s, but only 7' apart and 7' from my ears. This system is especially 'deep' and spacious since things are well away from walls. I'd like to get similar space/depth from the Silver 8s, hence trying the room treatment.

 

The most important thing are panels behind your listening place
Avoiding reflections there is most efficient

 

Do you mean behind me? I was planning on possibly doing some diffusion there, not necessarily absorption (at reflection points from the Silver 8s, for instance). I also have the Yamaha DSP soundbar for movies/surround. It actually works pretty well! and I don't want to place absorptive panels where it needs to reflect the sound. So it's going to be an interesting 'balancing act'. I think I can absorb at least the RH side reflections from the RH Silver 8 and still have a wall ('beyond' that point) to reflect the sound from the Yamaha soundbar.

I do plan on having a corner absorber behind and to the right of me, and maybe some 'triangular' ones in the upper corners. Those would be for bass absorption mainly ... but hopefully would also help with full range issues ... thinking all that would let me 'not hear' the corners ... if I even actually hear them now. I think it'll be an interesting experiment.

 

IMO, it's an audiophile paradox. Symmetrical is better for imaging and soundstaging. Not symmetrical is better for reducing room influences (peaks and nulls). Catch-22!

 

Give it a try and place them behind you ear (most likely your sofa or chair is at a wall which is acoustically wrong, but can’t be changed). Put them there without hanging them up and take them away after 2hrs. Missing something? If not, then they are not needed - but often this is the most critical point.

And room corners, yes, I fully agree. If you go with your ear into a corner, it’s quite shocking what is happening there.

 

Hmm, my experience usually has been that room can be overtreated in the high frequencies relative to the lows -- almost anything absorptive is going to absorb high frequencies, absorbing below middle C is challenging -- which can make for a really imbalanced sounding room: dead on top, boomy on bottom. Rarely have I heard a room treated with absorption that sounds bright or shrill (lots of untreated rooms sound bright and shrill to me, especially if there's flutter echo). Maybe those speakers were bright and shrill. I think the best thing to do always is to measure -- not just frequency response but especially decay times, not just try to set things up by ear using program material. The program material is too varied and our hearing is too non linear in terms of volume vs. frequency. I know some people really don't like a tight sounding room. Diffusion can really help with that if someone has the space for it.