The Listening Room Reality

Not sure I get the Darko hate. He takes a refreshing approach. He’s accessible and he likes to demystify. Can’t imagine why anyone pursuing this hobby would be dismissive of that. Equally difficult to comprehend why the self-appointed experts on hi-fi fora get to disrespect that. Is there some formal appointment process I missed? Could it be he got to where he is because he didn’t have a closed mind and sat down and listened? Perish the thought eh!

Not sure the thread title especially helps the cause but you’d have to have an especially closed mind to reject this. Rooms impact. Sometimes you can do something about it and sometimes you can’t. I love some of the rooms on the System Pics thread but many of them with room treatments don’t look they’re occupied by actual human beings or like the poster has a family.

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@mikehughescq

I guess you misunderstood the aim of the thread. The thread’s title might be misleading.

Darko produces indeed some interesting and, yes, refreshing videos.

That specific video points out two things. Sometimes we (me included) tend to focus on electronics and/or speakers upgrades and forget the one main limiting factor of an audio system: the room.

The video is a nice start for a discussion around that reality and the compromises we accept (or not) in terms of room treatment.

As for me, I had to heavily treat my listening room, which was a disaster. The result was astonishingly good and certainly worth each euro/pound/swiss-franc :smiley:

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Excellent video of a much disregarded subject. Talks a lot of sense.

Treating my room was one of the best things I have done. Luckily I have a dedicated listening room so complete freedom of quantity and positioning of acoustic panels. Treated with advice from GIK and trial and error.

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I will never sell my D38’s - they will just be moved into another room. However, I might get the new K8’s in a couple of years, but only if we get a new house with a larger room size.

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It’s very positive that all work perfectly for you now, including your new speakers and top 500 system.
But how do you know that the acoustic treatments of your room have not to be adapted now to your new speakers ?
Certain configurations can work for one speakers and not the best for others.
Too heavenly treated room can also be a disaster or negative impact on the life of music.

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Indeed, the room is generally the most ignored part of a system - which is rather surprising when you consider the amounts many people spend on the main components, quite apart from speakers.

This post describes the absence of room effect:

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GIK give free advice - and they can take measurement files from REW to remove the guesswork, really seeing what your room is actually doing.

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REW + calibrated mic + time_and_work = well balanced frequency response.

Are you sure that measurements give always the best indications?
My dealer treated his main room by a specialist, REW…mic…etc
However 2 years after my dealer took off some panels because the sound was too anemic. ( aseptisé). The measurements couldn’t show that, only the feedbacks of customers who were listening.

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That’s exactly why I ended up with a bit of trial and error as to how many panels I used.

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The best results I had in my room were Finite elemente cerabases under my speakers. It was a revelation in my case.
I kept only one panel vs the 3 I had. ( wall acoustic panels).
Recently, to my big surprise, I put some plants in a corner and the sound really improved. I wanted only to decorate.

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Room treatment is for several different effects. The one for which measurement is certainly beneficial, and very informative, is removal of peaks and troughs, partly by speaker positioning and partly to absorb energy and reduce cancellations and resonances. (Measurement is far quicker and more accurate than by ear.). Another is room decay time, which can be adjusted by ear, but measurement helps focus the frequency range and thus what to address. And another is early reflections, that muddy the sound, for which ear is probably better than an unpractised eye with measurement, though easy or an experienced eye.

Overkilling the room or not of course is a matter partly of personal taste, partly (maybe very significantly) the type of music and type of recording to which you listen, partly the characteristics of the system up to the speakers, and partly (maybe very significantly) the characteristics of the speakers.

I guess that with a shop demo room the treatment has to be minimal so as to not make it so different that people send the system back because what sounded great in the shop sounds awful at home, and of course they have to compromise between different people’s musical tastes and tastes in speaker.

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Thanks for that lesson Doc.

Bottom line is my listening room is a compromise that I have to live with. For a variety of reasons -mostly due to disability at the time , I was unable to audition speakers and had to rely (mostly) on my own interpretation of many reviews. However, one of the things I did consider was how I expected a speaker to interact with my room. Throwing more money at a more expensive speaker may or may not have gotten me a better speaker . Fortunately, the ones I chose do work well in my opinion and I’m happy with them. The thing is, at some point improving the room acoustics is more important than the speakers - but my acoustics are locked in, so that the choice was to find a speaker for those acoustics.

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Most of us audition our prospective purchases in our own listening room…the judgement is made on the end result of the various interactions with no need to worry about what underpins them.

Fully agree.

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One of the best comments I have read, said if you can reach the point where you can afford speakers that cost tens of thousands of pounds , you should instead build a dedicated listening room . The point being that in a decluttered and dedicated room your existing stuff would sound far better.

So room or speakers?

If I had the choice it would be room over speakers every time with a second smaller system in the living room

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In the end, it is a question of balance and commitments, or rather trade-offs, but, IMHO the two main factors in SQ are, in this order, room modes and speakers. The third, the electronics.

In my case, my main room, so great and with so high ceilings, and no strictly dedicated, is quite treated, but fundamentally with quality wood furniture, carpets and strategic decoration, ando only some acoustic panels, eight, in the heights and, above all, destined to cushion the secondary reflections of the high and upper-middle frequencies. Unfortunately, it has been a constant work of trial and error for several years, almost 8 years, but at present the SQ is amazing: it may not be ideal and have some coloration, but finally it is the sound I was looking for my tastes and the all genre music I hear all around.

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I fear you may have completely misunderstood my post.

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What is wrong with what he is saying?