Does sound sounds better in a room full of furniture and stuff or without ? - Page 24

Already this is again off in the ditch.

First, the distinction between stereo and surround is fundamental to Toole's approach. It is not a trivial distinction.

Secondly the issue is NOT inadequate treatment versus no treatment. Nor is it inadequate treatment versus treatment. Neither Toole nor anyone else of prominence has any significant disagreement there - both issues of which are already at odds with the preponderance of the status quo of this forum simply based upon classic complaint of the forum as to how such expectations are impractical, unreasonable, too expensive, and/or that their wife won’t allow them..

Third, there is another variable that is conveniently left out of most of the discussion - including where it has morphed yet again.
And that is the necessarily predicated upon the use of UNIFORM POWER RESPONSE speakers.

Toole is not talking about rooms or treatment independent of this! And Toole (as well other prominent acousticians) ASSUMES broadband treatment.
It is no surprise that inadequate treatment that is arbitrarily applied that results in coloration and less precise imaging may be perceived as detrimental and DESERVES to be removed - nor is that the proper topic at hand..

And so, of those wanting to debate and share personal impressions, how many here have uniform power response speakers? Right...

If not, you are NOT discussing the ideas presented by Toole. And the use of treatment to control such non-uniform behavior is not at issue.

The issue is NOT about treatment or no treatment as is incorrectly posited. And it certainly is not about measurements or no measurements used to quantify physical behavior in conjunction wit subjective perception, as one continues to misframe it.

Unless you have uniform power response speakers, then Toole himself would not allow you the luxury of treatment or no treatments (assuming a near ideally configured room lacking any focused sparse reflections).

Toole's position is predicated FIRST upon the proper choice of a UNIFORM POWER RESPONSE speaker.
To my knowledge, no one cited debates the issue of treatment required to correct for the effects of real world non uniform power response speakers.

Unfortunately, much of what has taken place in this parody of a debate has been the willy nilly running to hide behind one aspect considered, not in context with, but independently of the other necessary contributory factors. And to the degree that this is done, the arguments are specious.

So, if you want to debate issues of treatment, first examine the prerequisite final response of any model desired, and the presumed per-requisite base configuration that necessarily provides a causal basis for any results.In other words, stop making erroneous assumptions and frame the debate properly.
Edited by dragonfyr - 7/25/12 at 10:06am

Toole certainly did talk about treatment and non uniform response speakers at the Cedia course I took. Certainly he recommends that they be uniform, but as he has said, you get more information on tires than you do on speakers.

Again, the point is missed.

No one says he 'does not talk about' it.

Treatment with non-uniform power response speakers is properly used to control aspects of the non-uniform power repose. And to this end, he objects maintaining that the proper solution is to USE uniform power response speakers.

Fine dragon, so let's start here. It is your assertion that treatments must be broadband to be effective. I asked you this in another thread and you answered in the affirmative - that non-broadband treatments do more harm than good.

It further is your assertion that Toole also maintains this to be true (and yes we have all seen that paragraph from the one Toole paper, no need to repost).

It appears that Amir's reference room contains treatments that are non-broadband. So, I am curious to know from Amir whether or not he agrees they are non-broadband, whether or not he agrees that Toole maintains that any treatments must be broadband to be a net benefit, and if so how he reconciles these two positions.
Edited by kromkamp - 7/25/12 at 10:58am

Oh, trust me, Amir is a name-caller too, he's just typically passive-aggressive about it.

While we're on the topic of speaker power response, maybe someone would offer some opinion on the following with that data being available. I was able to get some data from Axiom Audio on my M22's (although I believe the data is for V2 and I have V3 speakers which is eluded to being improved). Here is original reply to my request and then two graphs showing response up to 75 degrees off axis:

The published curve for the M22 on the Axiom M22 specs page is a composite curve of the on-axis and "listening window" off-axis curves, so we aren't able to separate out the off-axis curves for you.

However, here are the independent M22 anechoic on- and off-axis measurements of the M22 performed at the National REsearch Council for Soundstage.com. You will see the off-axis curves in separate plots.

http://www.soundstagenetwork.com/measurements/axiom_m22ti_se/

Since these curves were measured, the M22s have been further improved with better off-axis performance (a new titanium dome tweeter).

By the way, unless you have an unusually reflective room, I'd suggest you do not treat the first reflection points. In tests performed at the NRC, doing so tends to diminish the soundstage width and the spatial presence of speakers like the M22s, which have excellent off-axis response.


Interesting comment in the last sentence.

Graphs:



So, assuming there is some improvement in my V3 speakers, what would you do with this elusive performance information?

kromkamp, you are not seeing through amirm's smoke screen, either by choice (personal bias) or unable to. If you soak up his words posted on this forum, his forum and his store website, you will develop a belief that THE way to improve your audio system's sound quality is to buy those overpriced equipments he sells. This forum is his outlet for advertisement of his store. When someone exposes it, he immediately goes into damage control mode and he will try to smear and discredit those who exposed him. Why? Because he is financially vested on selling those overpriced equipments plus he already established his internet credential as founder of M... Digital and some audiophile forum called What's Beast or something like that and Contributing Editor of W... Review Magazine. He even claimed that his employees and friends routinely read his posts ( http://www.avsforum.com/t/1413173/does-sound-sounds-better-in-a-room-full-of-furniture-and-stuff-or-without/600#post_22240484 ). As you can see, he has a lot to loose by admitting his errors and deceptions.

I have never read his forum or his website, but I have seen zero evidence on AVSForum that suggests he is trying to sell anything here. I have no idea what he sells, or why it would make sense to buy it from him instead of someone else more local. Further, even if he *did* have a commercial agenda - who cares? So does Ethan, so does Ted, so does Dennis. It matters not to me - the information is either useful or not. I just don't care, and I find any attempt to discredit him based on it to be disingenuous at best.

You mean these:

Here's an explanation for that: http://www.avsforum.com/t/1369578/i-was-wondering-can-anyone-explain-t-me-how-a-upgraded-power-cord-can-help/240#post_21167277 That will be a problem down the road for you.

What 'name' is amir calling in the statement "At least what I sell makes music. Yours only makes noise."? I'm confused

Also that link is referring to upgraded power cords and double blind tests - neither of which seems to be relevant here, nor does it seem to contain any actual words from amir? I'm similarly confused

As I said - there's lots of good advice on AVS from forum members who are trying to sell you their product. Many of them probably devote dozens or hundreds of hours worth of time for not many additional sales. Most of them fully deserve the added business they derive here. I have no problem with this whatsoever, and neither do the forum owners.

Though I object to amirm (and other vendors) including a link to his store in his signature, I do not think he posts here to drum up business. Frankly, I think if potential customers read his posts, they would seek out another dealer. He is his own worst enemy. I believe he posts here purely for the purpose of self-aggrandizement.

I believe linking is an AVS rule.

Is that the only quote showing on your screen? Post #267 There are many bad advices as well. Just look up speaker cable threads where the vendor/s of boutique cables chime in with their snake oil sales pitch.


Perhaps it would be more productive for you to hold off your opinion about amirm until you've read sufficient amount of what he puts out on the web:

He did at least in April of 2011 http://www.avsforum.com/t/1326576/usb-vs-hdmi-for-2ch-audio-to-receiver but he's been on defensive / offensive mode depending on who he replies to. He is a businessman after all so he knows he can't keep posting sanke oil sales pitch day after day which would make it obvious for others to see him for what he is. He throws in some technical info once in a while to keep the suspicion down from the newbies. Possibly he may have been blinded by his own ego. Believe it or not, I did try to help him a bit: http://www.avsforum.com/t/1340051/seeking-education-about-those-ultra-expensive-interconnects/600#post_20607480

Agreed. I can't believe his primary or even a distant secondary purpose for the posting he does is to drum up business, as I can't imagine that this would be a net positive from a marketing perspective. I think you're also at least partially right about why Amir posts.

I believe however he also probably genuinely wants to help people. And he often does. He makes many posts here, speaks a lot of truth, posts many references where people can learn more on their own, and in doing so helps plenty of people. Unfortunately he can't admit to a single mistake or mispoken word and would rather take a hundred innocent bystanders down looking for guidance than tell them perhaps they should listen to anyone else. This is why find him to be potentially quite damaging, as it is hard for many to know when he has crossed that line.

Perhaps I don't give other forum goers enough credit to sort this out for themselves. I could surely help more people if I worried about those needing help than the few I feel are misleading them. It is difficult to ignore however when one bills himself as a trained professional, highly experienced, a savior, or whatever else he has called himself.

Not as much listening as I would like, and limited to bare ceiling vs absorbtion (will try diffusion at some point in the future to see if I like it). Here's what I've found so far: I don't much care for the front soundstage (including vocals) reflecting off the ceiling, but I do like the height imaging I occasionally get from my surrounds speakers (placed higher than and slightly forward of my listening position). If you've watched the movie 'Master & Commander' at home and heard the wooden deck creeking above you, then you know what I mean. So it looks like I might be a good candidate for height speakers down the road. Break up or absorb the ceiling reflections of the front soundstage but still have subtle ambient information from up there to create a buble of sound around me.

Interesting sanjay especially that you prefer the bare walls with good surround processing. I wonder if the addition of wides and the ability to control their behavior would provide the effect you were expecting to achieve from surrounds? This is an area where I'm going to have to spend a lot of time listening as well.

I'm not too sure what you mean by "comical", or "not too long ago", but people have been using time domain software on AVSForum for at least 10 years (before Room EQ Wizard was the software called ETF). It's nothing new here. And using a mirror is still a pretty good way to estimate the obvious spots for someone who doesn't want to drag out a mic and laptop to measure.

Are you suggesting that there's no such thing a a room that is too large, acoustically speaking? I would tend to doubt that. The sound of a band in a small club venue is superior (IMO) to that of listening to one in a massive auditorium....

All the "fuss" is coming from you!

It might be easier not to breeze by words if you employed some paragraph breaks. I have no idea what you mean by "relatively large (wide)" - could you be more specific? I suspect the answer is that very few people are blessed with a room wide enough to even bother considering reducing the size, acoustically speaking. And those that are are usually not interested in DIY, or discussing it on AVSForum....

Agreed.

I suspect that he thinks that he is on a search for truth. It seems like he has a means for selecting truth that runs along the lines of "proof by authority".

He seems to get star struck. Fielder, Toole, and Dunn pretty well cover the last six or more months. Stars are often from the distant past, one is dead.

Once he finds his star it becomes very difficult to actually discuss any other ideas with him. It is his way and his often highly erroneous personal interpretation of his star's way, or the highway.

His twisting of the obvious meaning of the posts he replies to is only matched by how he twists the meaning of the sacred writings of his stars.

Reason, logic, and actual real world experimentation are strangers to his menu of tools.

If someone took cut and paste off of his computer, he would have very little to post. ;-)

How could you forget his deification of Ingvar Öhman?

So what happened to all the "Stars" of the thread.....seems like the shows over and everyone is just waxing philosophic at this point Maybe it's just a case of audio burn out.

This would appear to be the denouement.

The only wides I've spent enough time listening to were fed by Audyssey DSX processing, which generates early reflections based on concert hall acoustics. Not my cup o'tea, since I prefer to extract ambience from the recording itself rather than generate ambience for the purpose of room simulation. To that end, wide speakers fed by DTS Neo:X would suit me more, since they simply create a centre output between your front and side speakers for smoother/more stable pans from the front soundstage to the surround field. Sounded good at the handful of demos I've heard, but would still like to spend more time with Neo, though it's not high on my priority list (more intersted in opening up the vertical dimension with height speakers). In any case, neither one those approaches to wide speakers replaces the reflections I mentioned, nor their benefits.

Conceptually, should not a pair of speakers at the sidewall early reflection point fed by a delayed attenuated copy of the respective left or right channel reconstruct the effect of a purely reflective sidewall? I suppose you could mix in an even more delayed and attenuated copy of the contralateral channel to be more complete. Spatially the contralatetal reflection has a bit different location of course.

Pretty sure I read of this being done in the past in a paper. I'll have to search for it. Neither dsx nor Neo do this but it could be accomplished with simple studio processors. If you tried to make the reflection simulate a more diffused return eventually you get the dsx solution. Perhaps somewhere between hard reflection and dsx concert hall would be ideal. Haven't had the chance to play with any dsx equipped pieces in my home so I'm not sure how much adjustability is there nor whether I'd like the effect either. Thanks for your impressions though.

Sure, that's how research is done on reflections, where one speaker acts as the source and the other speaker acts as the reflection; usually done in an anechoic chamber (or the roof of a building if you're Haas). Real reflections usually aren't perfect copies of the source, since the source they're reflecting is the side of the speaker (off axis response) and what they're bouncing off can change the spectra (depending on what the wall is made of). So a delayed/attenuated copy of the source signal may not sound like the reflection you're hearing. Plus, if you're using 3 speakers up front, then that's 3 pairs of wides you'd need. And even though people call them first reflection points, they're more like first reflection areas, especially when you take into account more than one listener. Considering all that, it's easier for me to let the wall handle it. At that point you're dabbling in room simulation for a solitary listener, which is fine, but it is different and more complex than what I'm trying to do: figure out what treatments I need for a home theatre with multiple seats.

I'm thinking it might be a really handy way to investigate ones preferences.