With non-parallel boundaries, distances vary across each boundary. Why? Standing-wave frequencies are distance-dependent. Al! room-boundary surfaces would be non-parallel.The room would be symmetrical in shape, relative to an imaginary line running from the middle of the listening area to midway between the speakers.Any flexibility in the room boundaries will cost you some deep bass, because some of the sound-wave pressure is lost through the flexing of boundary surfaces. The idea! room would have brick or cinderblock walls, a concrete floor, and a concrete ceiling.You can specify exactly what the listening room is to be like, and get it custom-built to your requirements.īut what is this "perfect listening room"? To answer that, let us start with the ideal and move from there to practicality. And if you're building your own home, you have it made. I'm not really suggesting that you move just because you want a better listening room, but if you have to move for some other reason, there's no rule that says you can't keep the ideal listening room in mind when looking at new homes. And it will make any system sound better. Construction work isn't cheap, but a suitable room will cost you less than you can pay for some loudspeaker systems. One of our readers did just that, and described his project in a two-part article in Stereophile some years ago ("The Ultimate Component," by Roger Sanders, Vol.4 Nos.2 & 3). To begin with, you can consider adding a proper listening room to your house. But that isn't to say there's nothing you can do.
And since the room is already there, properly dimensioned or not, that too is not easily changed. Since the system is usually in the living room of the home, and decor makes the room livable for its inhabitants, decor comes first. But, like decor, the size and shape of the listening room are usually seen as givens, to be worked around rather than utilized to benefit the sound.įew of us are in a position to do much about either the decor or the physical attributes of the room, just as few of us are in a position to buy a $35,000 loudspeaker system. They are purely a function of the room dimensions, and if the dimensions are wrong, these response irregularities can be quite severe and will occur at the wrong frequencies. And since bass is difficult to absorb, low-frequency standing waves-which cause peaks at some frequencies and dips at others-tend to behave as they damn well please. The bass always seems to end up in a part of the room where you can't hear proper imaging, forcing you to make an unhappy choice about where to sit while listening. L-shaped rooms are notoriously bad for sound reproduction. Apart from the fact that this makes it necessary to keep the balance control 'way over to one side, it also fouls up the stereo imaging.Įven the size and shape of the room can have a profound effect on the sound, particularly at low frequencies. If, as is usually the case, the speakers are placed at one end of that room, the reflective side will make that loudspeaker sound bright and hard, the dead side will make the other sound soft and muted. Then there's the lopsided room, one side of which is bare wall with perhaps a large picture window to make matters worse, the other side lined with furniture, bookshelves, warm bods, and other assorted sound absorbers. If the decor is Overstuffed Homey, one speaker or the other may be half-hidden behind an obesely upholstered chair, producing a distinctly lopsided stereo image-if the system will image at all. If the decor is Danish Modern Sparse, with a couple of orientals or throw rugs on the floor, the room is likely to be a veritable echo chamber, with complex reflection and standing-wave patterns obscuring half of what comes out of the loudspeakers. Typically, the audio system is a victim of the home decor. And reflections from side walls are heard as false stereo direction cues, impairing the accuracy with which a system reproduces instrumental locations. Echoes reverberate back and forth between parallel reflective surfaces, adding more smear and coloring the sound with spurious brightness or resonating bass hangovers. Sound waves reflect from walls, floors, and ceilings, reaching our ears milliseconds after the direct sounds from the speakers and smearing those sounds. It is probably safe to say that 95% of the systems in audiophile homes are being degraded by a bad listening environment. Question: What is it that almost every audiophile takes for granted, yet has more effect on the sound of his system than does any single component in that system? Answer: His listening room.
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