The Listening Room Reality

Some live recording studios, pictures.

image

image

1 Like

However you pointed that for you the real sound is to be the closest possible to the recorded album. But even the recording process and rooms can vary a lot…

Considering that many many recordings are multi-track layers where the actual musicians never meet or be in the same venue but e-mail their contributions in from all over the world the idea of a domestic room capturing the live essence of a recording is not tenable for many recordings. This doesn’t mean they aren’t great art…

:small_blue_diamond:No,No,No…certainly not in my headphone-system.

I started building a headphone-system in the summer of 2016,.and it has happened,that I had sat and listened for 4-5 hours.
I’ve described that system before,.but I think it was on the old forum.

But for it to be good,.well then it is as usual “Attention To Detail” that applies.

•Tested Powercables.
•Dedicated hifi-rack for the headphone-system (Mana Acoustics).
•Tested Ethernet/Streaming cables.
•Possible pro-tested USB cable.
•Dedicated mains.
•Everything matters,.so correct Nm-value on the audioboard,linear power supply etc,etc.

And of course…
•Headphones.
•Headphone-amp and dac.
•Feets,.and a lot of other things

:small_orange_diamond:It is very easy to hear the difference between different ethernet/streaming-cables,.if you listen through headphones.

/Peder🙂

You don’t have the physicality and realism like with good speakers. But only my opinion.

Knowing being sat on top of an empty absorber resonating away, as deep bass notes were being played, simply presented itself as too much of a temptation… ( even realised that the bottom cover is perforated to allow for air flow ).


Work in progress…

Now that feels a lot better…

So the first test parameter after carefully sealing/ nailing the bottom membrane back was the buttock test playing Trentemoller ( a fellow countryman in my case):
There was a distinct longer RT60 time to feel inside the sofa, so say a very deep short burst of a sub 40 Hz
bass note felt to run longer, as a buttock feeling, if at all this makes sense. This I can only interpret as a sign, that the sofa is actually if less distinctly than previously now absorbing bass.
For the purpose of the test of sonic improvements I ran my usual deep bass test tracks incl. Yello, The Pineapple Thieves and Fink Live. At this point it is easy to succumb to hyperbole, and as from previous occasions on this Forum, I shall remain as factual as at all possible.
To say that the music reproduction was now simply night and day would be an understatement. The myriads of details, that I had never heard before was simply astonishing and presented themselves on an inky black back ground. The room has taken on a sonic tightness again not previously achieved and without a hint of overdamping. Any signs of distortions caused by potential uncontrolled reflections has miraculously also vanished. It simply was like having the musicians right there in front of me on the stage. I felt like getting up from my massage sofa and walk in between the musicians and get a sweaty hug, after they had finished my favourite song.
This is a milestone upgrade, which is difficult to put into words, unless you have heard it for yourself.
Do not hesitate to do this, if you have a bank balance to suit.
Thank you Peter

3 Likes

Cascade Ciscos appear even less as a madness thread than here…Time guys to buy an audiophile boutique sofa! :star_struck::star_struck:

PS: I however don’t say that I don’t believe Peter or other set up.

2 Likes

:small_blue_diamond:@frenchrooster,.I know what you mean,.there is a little different presentations of the musical message.
But for me,.they’re just as good,but in different ways.

But it took me almost two years of testing,.before I found the synergy in my headphone-system.

/Peder🙂

Now where is my wife, when I need her…:pleading_face:

1 Like

Some live recordings or just recordings of albums are made in churches. There is no room ( church) treatment. But the sound may be fantastic. I guess there are church reflexions, but they seem to be not destructive.

I agree, who can’t ? But if in the condition of the recording, in that case the place, there were destructive reflexions for the sound, they should be present in the recording too.

I have no doubt that very good headphones can sound very good, and indeed with the entire acoustic environment being within the manufacturer’s gift to control (apart from the effect of different shapes of ear pinnae and different amounts of hair that might protrude), therefore they certainly have the potential to sound better than any loudspeaker in any real world listening room. Except, as I pointed out, they have the fundamental limitation that you cannot feel the sound, only hear it, therefore part of the listening experience is missing and do not true to life, and less capable of conveying the emotion of the music than good loudspeakers in a good room.

Yes, and as mixed/mastered or even direct recorded that is how the music was accepted by the artists. But, and this is the key point regarding rooms, the moment you play back and add more destructive interactions as you call them, whether comb filtering, nodal cancellations, resonances, added reverberation etc, then you are no longerr hearing what was recorded as a live recording, but your own system and room’s modification of it.

Now, you might like the effect of doing that, in which case great, when you find your ideal additions and subtractions you can enjoy listening. But if you want to hear the music as it was recorded (and mixed/mastered) then you need the system and room to add or take away as little as possible - which is where we come back to room treatment, well controlled full range speakers as uncoloured as possible (and DSP if applied appropriately).

@HansW

In the great scheme of things we are never going to reproduce the original performance, we all know that.

HiFi is just a means of enjoying our love of music, and we all distort the original recording in a myriad of ways, so why not the listening room, if it gives us pleasure, mission accomplished!

If it doesn’t then room treatment, I’ve come to recognise, can be a cost effective tool (which I guess was part of the reason @thomas started the thread) of enhancing that pleasure.
“time for bed”

2 Likes

It looks as if I for posterity need to highlight, that my above post was complete ‘ tongue in cheek’, but also thanks to Frenchrooster for getting it at least. :face_with_head_bandage: Thanks Fellas

No , I don’t like it. I have some minor problems with bass , only on a few albums. I ameliorated a lot since but want to tweak the acoustic a bit still. So will investigate some bass traps in 2 corners.
So, no, I don’t like distorsions and bad reflexions. But I don’t like also too much room damping.

1 Like

It was humor Peter ? The sofa tweaking was a joke ?

1 Like

Man, to sound as well as you said it sounded, to me, honestly, it seems to take things a little far; but, well, with resources, time and desire, everyone with their decisions…

I tend to agree with Peter and had a very similar experience after room treatment.

My personal “beta tester” experienced the same (aka my wife)

For me, it was even more then “night and day” .

I probably already wrote that before, anyway here it is again:
upgrading from SuperNait2 to 252/SuperCapDR/NAP300DR was a huge disappointment. I spent a lot of money and got a very poor result.

Room treatment allowed me to enjoy the 252/300 system for what it was. And, as I kept the SuperNait for a certain time before selling it, I could even compare both systems.

Without room treatment, there was a thin difference.
With room treatment the difference was worth the spending.

2 Likes

Yes, I did indeed fill the sofa to reduce its resonant frequency, but my report of my findings was simply trying to inject some humour into this thread, when to me things were getting a little bit too serious and the hair splitting took over. I will now go and sit on the naughty step, but in my book the best laugh to have is the one of your quirky self!
Did my experiment filling the sofa in with acoustic wool help to dampen its resonance at a narrow low frequency band or ‘ singing along’ with the speakers at that frequency - it certainly did, buy clearly the sonic improvement in my description above was ‘slightly’ exaggerated :crazy_face: ATB Peter
PS. Surely Churchill must have said something ingenious about taking oneself too seriously? :thinking:

3 Likes