Acoustic treatment for my living room - Page 17

Amir...I am an open minded person, but I'd like to see graphs of this room...simple LF response and waterfall would be nice. Can you supply those?

terry, I would take it a step further (firmly into personal opinion territory ) - IMO there is a reason why quadraphonic recordings, 5.1 audio, Q-sound etc etc didn't really take off. I don't think very many people want to listen to music with gimmicky effects swirling around. I also don't think many artists (except Alan Parsons perhaps, and the Flaming Lips occasionally) are interested in presenting their music in that fashion. So I would tend to believe that most spatial effects like that are, in fact, unintended. At any rate, for me its just not a priority to reproduce that with 100% faithfulness.



That won't work - the only recordings that are truly meant to be listened to with headphones are binaural recordings. If you build your room to reproduce the headphone experience you are moving further away from "accuracy" for nearly all recordings.

But Amir - surely you would agree that your dedicated room (with prescribed acoustic treatments) sounds better than the average living room (with common household items "approximating" the same treatments), even if all the equipment was the same?

As I recall, the JBL Synthesis SDEC-4500 processor/EQ costs in excess of $18,000, plus the cost of the subs, and of course the cost of the calibrator. So it is really only easy to investigate for someone with $25,000 or so to invest. Is that what you would suggest for the OP?

Dennis Erskine uses QSC processors for the same job - still pricey at around $3K-$5K I believe, but less than above

It depends on the recording, but most pop music and most classical music I hear has at least some "large room" sounding reverb, and you can hear that clearly with headphones if your room isn't treated to absorb early reflections.

--Ethan

I'll give you the one example that best illustrates my thinking - the track 'kappa' from Mogwai's album Come On Die Young. Every time I listen to this it sounds to me like it was recorded in a giant warehouse - just a huge acoustical space.

Here is where it was actually recorded:

http://www.davefridmann.com/tarbox/B...g_Space.html#4

So for me, the whole notion of accuracy as it relates to reproducing the acoustical space of the recording is really just a mirage - looks good from a distance, up close not so much

It wasn't meant as literal reproduction of headphone experience. It certainly can work if you know what to listen to in sound characteristics.

Interesting quote from Keith Yates' website about one of his home theater designs:

"Critical areas of the ceiling were also extensively treated to suppress first-order median-plane specular reflections from the front speakers for dramatically improved tonal and spatial focus."

I guess Floyd Toole would be apoplectic if he knew this is what Harman certified Master Calibrator KYDG is up to instead of simply relying on an overstuffed sofa.

Here is an example of what can be accomplished:

http://www.music.mcgill.ca/thevirtua...scription.html

Altiverb 7 is one of the more popular convolution reverb plug-ins for mixing and mastering engineers. It uses acoustic samples from actual performance venues rather than synthetic reverb.

http://www.audioease.com/Pages/Altiverb/

i think you've again confused the definition or intent of the word 'accuracy' within the context of this thread -- what is being discussed here with respect to the direct signal and the speaker-room interactions (minimizing the reproduction rooms masking on the direct signal - eg, hearing more of the room within the recording before your room has a chance to impose its sound on top).

If that is your definition of accuracy, then by all means take it to the logical conclusion - to be truly "accurate" would mean no sound imposed by your room whatsoever = anechoic room response.

Since we can assume this is not desirable, I submit the definition of accuracy must change. My definition of accuracy is "What the artist intended the recording to sound like to the listener".

The implications of that statement are complex, but I don't think it means that you should necessarily hear the "reality" of the recording, any more than a foley engineer wants you to hear he is really shaking a metal plate instead of conjuring thunder

What the artist intended the recording to sound like to the listener is what the artist approved when the music was played back for him in the mastering studio. To replicate that, you would need to hear the music played back using the same or similar speakers in the same or similar acoustic space (which is probably not your average untreated living room).

Of course, you may prefer the sound of something other than what the artist intended the recording to sound like, in which case listening in an average untreated living room would be an option.

the poorly guided assumptions continue -
you do not need an anechoic room to have an anechoic speaker-listener response.

are you characterizing blackbird C as a non-accurate room? do the room's reflections contribute destructively to intelligibility, localization, and imaging of the direct signal?



is the artist also the mixing and mastering engineer?


if given the chance, would you rather have a smaller or larger room than your existing setup?

I don't agree that how the music sounded in the mastering studio is definitively how the artist wants it to sound for the end listener, but even if that were true I agree with your second point - its unattainable anyways.

Using your definition of accuracy ("minimizing the reproduction rooms masking on the direct signal") then I would have to conclude that that room is less accurate than an anechoic room, yes. Less pleasing to listen to music in? certainly not!


Sometimes yes, sometimes no - but the artist is the final arbiter on how the recording should sound.


Larger - but not necessarily for acoustical reasons. I'd like a larger screen and more rows of seating

it's about utilizing a neutral environment in order to make critical mixing decisions such that the source material translates well into a variety of acoustical environments and reproduction systems --- and NOT making mixing decisions based on how the room is modifying the response at the listening position (transfer function of room).

the most simplistic example - if LF is not addressed in the control room and there is a 20dB peak at 80hz, the engineer will compensate for this by cutting 80hz in the source. take the source material to another reproduction system, environment, room etc of which the 80hz anomaly is not present at the new room's listening position, and there will be a massive hole of 80hz content missing...

now think about making critical panning decisions during the mix phase with respect to having accurate localization and imaging ...

you ignored my commentary - do you acknowledge that you do not need an anechoic room to achieve an anechoic speaker-listener response?

and do you or do you not feel blackbird C is an accurate room to make such critical mixing decisions, even though it is not an "anechoic room"?

What are you basing this on, interview with number of artists, stats somewhere, your opinion...etc?

Such a broad brush. Why? Did someone tell you that it's supposed to be 100% match?
High fidelity is judged on the degree of its faithfulness to the reference. Closer the better.

Yes, and that speaks to why you would want to attain a certain kind of room response in order to make mixing decisions. IMO it says surprisingly little about how the artist wants the recording to sound to the listener. It also says little about whether or not the mixing room used by a particular recording actually attained those goals in the first place...

Can you define "anechoic speaker-listener response" for me, and whether or not that would imply accuracy?


Clearly mixing engineers do not feel it is an accurate room to make critical mixing decisions, because they have thrown heavy curtains over the diffusion Indeed, that sort of encapsulates my point above - what you might need to do a mixing job accurately is not necessarily how you might want to listen for enjoyment sake.

Similarly, someone who does a lot of Photoshop work might have different requirements for a display device (for example an exaggerated gamma curve) than someone who simply wants to view the results of that work.

From your perspective, how (and where) does an artist make decisions about the way he wants the recording to sound to the listener?

Often they will take the recording home, or listen to it in the car, or on an iPod, or in the club - ie. listen to it the way most people would listen to it. It makes some intuitive sense - you want it to sound good to the wider audience, not just on high end systems.

They will? How did you find this out?

do you know what an anechoic speaker-listener response is? because it should be pretty straight-forward from the terminology alone...what is there to describe?

Hey, maybe you're right about quad? I guess there woulda been lots of instances of 'let's really wow the audience wuth all sorts of weird ****' eh. Ulitmately unreal, displeasing and effects foir effects sake.

I can't quite remember what in your post made me respond, too lazy to check, but I am pretty sure I was NOT trying to make the point we should all listen to music 'with gimmicky effects'....so let's be clear on that.

But what I am saying is that a system that CAN reproduce things such as the above (and they are great when you find them, not good for the solo viola in the chamber orhcestra to come and circle your head but fanatastic when a synth line in a crazy mix does it) can ALSO reproduce any and all ambience in the recording, THAT is what sorts the men from the boys and something which I think you say later is very desirable ('big sound, ambience etc) and we all crave.

That sense of space is very present on most recordings in my experience.

Hmmm. I thought you asked me why I had labeled the graphs as such and I explained. Here it is again:


Since we know the graphs were by Allan Devantier and Dr. Toole, is your new question whether they know what a modal region is? Really?


I am not writing a book here but did explain. The above graphs were part of it as was the text that went with it. If it didn't suffice, I apologize. More to come in the detailed article.


Schroeder did not come up with the measurements above. Nor the fact that we can mostly predict the response of the speaker in room above transition frequency based on its anechoic measurements. That is the insight above. It leads to the answer of "why use a good speaker." And why focus on low frequencies.

I think the confusion continues to be that you think this is just a simple observation of what is a modal region and what is not. It is not at all. It is the next major step toward understanding what is going on between our speakers and rooms. This is another major distinction in how Dr. Toole talks about it in that he starts with the device that excites the room: the speaker. If you don't understand what that device does and how it accomplishes it, how can you ever understand room acoustics? It is not like the room makes sound by itself!

Some quick poking around:

http://news.qthemusic.com/2012/04/gu...sic_sound.html


http://www.dmackinnon.com/2012/01/ti...tes-on-the-go/


http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/ar.../t-211218.html


(Yes this last is a thread criticizing the process! But the point is that its fairly common)

Where did you learn to build panels?

So you assumed that "artists" mean Rock and Pop musicians only? No Jazz, classical ... the rest?

Beck, D' MacKinnon, Krista Detor, a member of SH forum named "Cassiel", John Fogerty (if "Cassiel" can recall) and "Cassiel" says it's not uncommon. In your knowledge, what percentage would that account for in the grand scheme of the entire music album industry?