The Listening Room Reality

Oh my God! They are practically the measurements of mine, albeit almost a couple of feet taller. I now understand why my room almost perfect measurements make up for the reflections on the useful marble table in front of the sweet spot in the listening area, PeterR…, with a simple room treatment and without warming my head. But keep your fingers crossed, :wink:

So, additional life…

My new room in project. After reading the thread.

image

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You forgot the plant…

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This part of the video, posted above, shows Magico’s listening room.
Probably intended for prototypes final validation/testing.

It is a dedicated, carefully built/treated, listening room.

–> https://youtu.be/r5OMquMru3Y?t=674

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Interesting the are using Quadratic diffusers on the front wall behind/ between the speakers :thinking:. Just an observation from the mocked afflicted and of-course guilty as charged. ATB Peter

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Indeed. One could state that it doesn’t make sense to apply high frequencies treatment on the front wall (back of the speakers). High frequencies propagate more like beams while low frequencies propagate in a spherical way. This means that the front wall should be treated for low frequencies only, which makes sense. But… :wink:

I did quite the same; I placed diffusers based on a QRD sequence on the front wall, between the speakers. These diffusers are efficient between 310Hz and 8kHz (Vicoustic Multifuser Wood 64)

But they are very useful for absorbing and disseminating the second-order reflections caused on the front wall (back of the speakers) by the rebound of the linear high frequencies on the back wall (in front of the speakers), more as higher the ceiling.

In my room were needed the absorbents of high and mid-higher frequencies on the front wall (back of the speakers), and also on the back wall (in front of the speakers).

No, but I have a magic carpet.

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Beware Rooster, that looks way too much as a padded cell - Richard might move the Topic :slight_smile:

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:small_blue_diamond:frenchrooster,…This room reminiscent of,.the acoustic test-room at a Technical University that we usually visit.
But “our room” is even more advanced,.with electrically movable walls,and you can raise and lower the floor.

The Professor of Sound and Acoustics there,.is a big Music and Hifi-friend.
So there we’ve had a lot of interesting meetings and measurements,.among other things,on speakers.
By the way,.I have installed his music-system😉.

/Peder🙂

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Let’s hope he does not.

It would be nice if we could stick to the topic :wink:

Thomas

One of the things which was not mentioned in the video is that certain loudspeaker producers actually do good design and design the loudspeakers so that they sound decent with a minimal impact in the living environment.

Personally, I have struggled to get rear-ported loudspeakers working correctly in my room - they did, but only at the most inconvenient location: blocking the typical walking path to the sofa. Then - reading this forum - I decided to try SBLs. That was a thing I should have done earlier.

By looking at the loudspeakers only, it is clear that the designer tried to overcome typical problems like the bass boom by omitting the rear port - or shrill sounding higher tones by tilting the front baffle & drivers backwards. All the boom & issues on higher tones just vanished when I got the SBLs.

I believe that many loudspeaker companies do a wrong design. They dont ask themselves in what circumstances a loudspeaker would end up and therefore 90% of the current offerings only work decently when positioned well away from a wall. It is like a kid giving a present to another kid and he chooses the gift based on what he likes, not considering the one receiving the give. Or someone giving a presentation and not considering the audience.

Yes, I’m fingerpointing to the loudspeakercompanies here and that is because the things mentioned in the video - listening position, room treatment etc … can become so difficult when we need to care about the loudspeaker position first, before the listening position can even be considered.

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It’s a « chambre acoustic « or acoustic room. Should be extreme very probably…

It was just a joke…

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I agree. I have rear ported too and it was not easy to let them sing.

Hi Ardbeg.
I think there are speakers in a multitude of different design philosophies in the marketplace suiting all tastes and rooms. In my case a down sizing house move, which implied a listening room half the size of my previous one, prompted me to learn about room acoustics and the inherent problems that goes with it. I could easily have abandoned my Fact 12s in favour of a less full range speaker ( Kudos 505s spring to mind), but having previously loved the sound from them and decided they were keepers, there was only the room treatment route to climb.
This I am now very happy with having embarked on, as it was great to get to understand, how sound works in a room at different frequencies. Yes, it was at times highly frustrating, when implementation didn’t quite go to plan, as I had hoped. Would I do it again; Yes I would! I am actually proud of what I have achieved considering, that the speakers perform better now than in even my old place, where I was stuck with no room treatment being possible due to the room being our lounge.
I have previously owned SBLs active with 4x135s and Naim SL2s actively with Nap 300s. As good as both speaker designs are, a boundary dependent speakers has it limitations, when it comes to sound staging and deep bass. On the positive side of these designs they are brilliant for out of the way placement, highly musical and also their lack of output under 40-50 Hz, which lends itself not to kick off lurking low frequency room modes.
Enjoy your SBLs they are great speakers :+1:t3: ATB Peter

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It’s called an anechoic chamber. My old company had one large acoustic room & some smaller portable chambers for both acoustic & electromagnetic testing.

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Thanks, don’t know nothing about that but it’s a bit impressive. Can a system sound good in such room?

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Indeed, there are many ways to build speakers, some easier/cheaper than others.

But I wouldn’t say loudspeakers companies are unaware of their targeted customers needs . They most certainly know exactly what they’re doing. Speakers, just like any other product, are a business.

As for speakers design, sealed (non ported) speakers aren’t easy to design and tend to be costly, with some exceptions like ATC for instance.

Just like ATC, YG, Magico and some others, but not so many, do a fairly good job at building sealed speakers.

But the acoustic problems remain whatever speakers are chosen.

A room is a box. Pushing air in a box is very similar to pushing water in bathtub. Problems occur. The smaller the bathtub is the bigger the problems are. :bath:

A bigger box to put our speakers in is what we all need/want :smiley: