About the importance of the room vs the electronics


https://positive-feedback.com/audio-discourse/acoustics-and-critical-listening/
Acoustics and Critical Listening.

As @ erik_squires and others have often mentioned ;  the room is often forgotten  . We  put too much amphasis
on electronics.
maxwave

Showing 9 responses by mahgister

The main source of sound quality is the air. No air, no sound. That simple.
This is why i use 2 ionizers, and 24 Helmhotz tubes they change the "air", they change the normal pressure zones of the room....

And this is called acoustic....

😊😊😊😊😊😊😊

What about water ?Wales can hear for miles .
Good observation...

Waves need a support....Air or water or ether....





«Fire speak, water cry, air smile, matter dance»-Groucho Marx

Are they ´´ Room treatment ´´ . They are not ´´ Electronics ´´ . Often called ´´Tweaks ´´ Are they in a particular
category ?



There exist 3 working  embedding dimensions controls for any audio system:

Mechanical: all that pertain to vibrations and resonance control....

Electrical and acoustical are the 2 others...

I hate the word "tweaks" because it suggest "snake oils" to half people here because of their cost relatively to the gear and "tweaks" are considered like secondary addition ONLY to the SUPPOSEDLY main source of S.Q. in audio experience: electronic design and gear...

This is not all the truth...

Only an half truth....

The main source of S.Q. is not the upgrading process nor the purchase of a miraculous tweak...

It is the controls achieved in the 3 working embeddings dimension of any audio system...

Unbeknownst to most, Acoustic control is at the end the main key between these very important other 2 keys....

This is my only important discovery in audio....
The first "logical" intuition so to speak is : this map is not the reality...

The last " logical" intution is : but the reality is not another map either..

Anyway the reality and the map interact and it is more akin to "sex" than to logic...

Translation for some:

The electronic equalizer is not the room and even not a true representation of the room..

My mechanical equalizer did not reflect only an arbitrary  "taste" like your prefered settings choices because he fill also the room itself and modify it , it is a map which is also at the same time part of the real territory, my specific EARS included...


At the end the only important thing, is it not how do we use our "faulty" ears?






«Logic is to sex at best a mute witness, what a chemical formula is to water "wetness"»- Groucho Marx chemist

Maxwave, I’m sitting here now calibrating new speakers looking at graphs of exactly what the room is doing. I’m gonna die laughing:-)))
You are looking at graphs not about what your room is doing because you dont use your ears to analyse the frontwaves crossing the room , but you use a mic to analyse only a selection of the tested frequencies response of your speakers in the room...Then you cannot know what the room is doing really to your ears...You adapt your ears to your electronic equalizer and say to your own ears," listen now it is better".... And you believe him yourself because your graphs said so...But the room could do way better if your ears would have open directly to the wavefronts instead of a tested frequency... But no way for you, because for you, science is a manual with a costly product not a real acoustic experiment....


A first frontwave is not a tested frequency or a bunch of tested frequencies, it is a finely timing set of complex musical events in the room for your ears, not for a microphone coupled to a computer...

You can improve an already very good room with electronic Eq., this is true yes, BUT NEVER transform a bad room in a good room, and most room are bad anyway, unbeknownst to the listener, but the real problem of electronic equalization is that all is fine tuned ONLY for an extraordinarily precise location in millimeter and ANY change in the room put your selection of frequencies off the chart you have already choosen WITH YOUR EYES convincing your ears that it is the best choice and it is not true at all...

Try at no cost a mechanical equalizer with none of these negative defects... And learn how to train your ears in real experiments tuning the speakers/room for your specific ears...Or stay voluntarily deaf, your eyes looking at chart and you ears closed....And call that "science" like boy scout call science their little pre-choosen chemistry box selected experimental sets...


A mechanical equalizer cost nothing, what is the price of a good electronical equalizer?

And you dare to call audiophile like me gullible?

I am gonna laugh till i die....

Some remarks here :
https://www.roomeqwizard.com/help/help_en-GB/html/iseqtheanswer.html
I will give an example of the LISTENER ENVELOPMENT concept and acoustical experience (LEV) for any audio system to test yourself...

It take a great control of the room to hear this :

Threepenny opera of Kurt Weill with Lotte Lenya 1958 version :

https://www.amazon.com/Weill-Threepenny-Opera-Kurt/dp/B0000026HI/ref=pd_sbs_2?pd_rd_w=6koxC&pf_r...

listen side no 15, The procurer ballad, 4minute 38 seconds:

In my room the male voice sound in my left ear like with an headphone, same for the feminine voice singing in my right ear at the same moment, the 2 voices seems coming from behind me, opposite to the speakers location and the orchestra seems in front of me behind the actual speakers location, at 8 feet distance, filling all my front wall between the speakers but the sound coming from behind the wall that is behind them.... i have also the impression of 2 other virtual speakers behind me on each side of my ears.... Like if there are 4 speakers in my room... There are many sides of this cd that give the same effect not only this 15th side...But this one is particularly spectacular...You will undestand why i trashed my 7 headphones in a drawer and will never bought none other....

This is in my regular sitting position...

It is no more true in nearfield listening... On this same side the 2 voices seems now coming with the orchestra and no more separately from the orchestra, in opposite direction, like in my regular listening position....In near listening the sound seems a "bit" more detailed but is less livelier or less natural and sound exactly like in an headphone but better with my speakers/room... Passive and active room controls work EVEN for near listening,but at a lesser degree for sure but work very audibly also, contrary to a false popular misunderstanding of the way the extraordinary speed of sound cross the room and affect it, in relation with the 80 milliseconds of critical analysis time treatment from the brain to make sense of these wavefronts travelling near 80 times per second in my room...Each wavefront is a bunch of frequencies travelling together and coming from slightly different pressure zones of the room meet in each ears differently for the brain timing analysis...

It is an example of ACTIVE room control of the "listener envelopment" factor called LEV Listener envelopment ...LEV is the degree to which the reverberant sound, of the first main 2 wavefronts coming from the right and left speakers to the 2 ears directly but also indirectly from early and late reflections encounter themselves for each one of the ears and seems to surround the listener—to come from all directions, thanks to the active controls of the Helmholtz method...


This listener envelopment factor in relation with the source width factor (ASW) put you on the scene of the past recording live event and make you able to live anew the live event like the recording engineer choice of microphones and location choices of these same microphones make it possible, it is a specific perspective take on the real event created by the engineer because the real event CANNOT be reproduced exactly but could be recreated FROM this perspective if your room is well controlled...

The original event is not only in your room now, but you are actually there also....All recording are not on the same level of 3 dimensionnality it is the reason i choose this recording for a clear example....

With this example you will understand that nevermind the price an electronic design cannot make miracle in spite of the room lacks.... The room on the other hand CAN MAKE MIRACLE with any relatively good piece of gear able to do a decent job...

Gear are replaceable, rooms are not.....
Usual electronic design of dac or amplifier and even of speakers cannot replace the room nor compensate for the lack of controls in the room zone pressures and reflections....

We will need A.I. for that job....In the years coming tough...
What would be reasonable, intelligent, and defensible is to say the room is as worthy an element of a sound system as anything else. No more important than the AC line, the speaker cables, the cartridge, or any other component in the chain. But that for some reason is the last thing certain people will admit.
Your remark point to a TRUTH a very important one: all matters in audio experience, all details, working with an audio system...

BUT, there is a BUT, most if not all ordinary room even those dedicated to audio, if they lack passive adequate treatment and ESPECIALLY active controls , unbeknownst to the owner, ESPECIALLY if his electronic gear is very good and costly, all ordinary room will give only a fraction of the S.Q. the audio system could have given...

I listened to hugely costly gear that sound horrible in what seems a minimally treated room.... And trust me i know that the problem is NOT the piece of gear at all.... It is not normal that my 500 bucks system sound more musical for me and on par with details.... The problem is the room unbeknownst to the owner is not up to the task, and my room is....It is the reason why i am proud of my room, not so of my gear even it is well chosen one and even if i love them....

Past a certain point in quality, which is NOT at all very high in dollars, few thousand perhaps, ALMOST ALL, if not ALL upgrade will never rival or compare with a very effective passive AND active room treatment in S.Q. increase...

You said it yourself visiting Mike Lavigne Room, almost anything will sound good there...

For people owning an AVERAGE good system like mine, the room acoustic control is the royal road to S.Q. without necessarily investing money, thanks to the fact that in a small room active controls, using many tools but especially Helmholtz method, can transform totally all system in a better one.... But i will repeat for the slow learner that nothing will make a bad system a good one, nor transform my average system in the best in the world....

But i prefer my actual system in my room, to a 100,000 dollars one in a bad room....

It takes me 2 years full time to get my room right.... Nobody teach me how.... Sellers of acoustic treatment sells too costly for my purse then i was in the obligation to improvise all passive treatment using my ears and what is at hand.... But the greatest upgrade come one month ago with the Helmholtz method which i developed designing my own mechanical equalizer with 24 discarded pipes and tubes and various types of Straws.... It take me 50 hours to tune it relatively well, fine tuning the speakers response of the tweeter wavefront in one speaker with the bass wavefront in the other speaker making the two ears synchronizing  able to better locate the FIRST wavefront in the room...The mechanical equalizer did not work like an electronic equalizer with a tested response frequency for a microphone andfor ONLY a very smal location in millimeters but with a relative large bandwidth of sound for all the room, 2 main wavefront from the  left speaker driver and right speaker tweeter, to each one of the ears by direct wave and a  reflected different one for each single ears...The timing of the early and late reflections and their reverberation time is the key.... The tubes and pipes created an ACTIVE room, or activate the room so to speak, adding to it more different pressure zones which are designed for some frequencies and modify then  the resultant timing  and content of the wavefronts for each ears...

This method make me able to balance these 2 acoustic factor, the ASW the source sound width and the listener envelopment factor LEV... these 2 factors are related by some tresholds in the timing wavefronts....This make me able after that to experiment with the Schumann generator grid effect on the LEV factor....Disconnecting completely or partly the S.G. grid decrease the LEV factor...This with my experiment with shungite and quartz on the capacitors reveal to me the physicality of the effect induce by the Schumann generator grid....


Without active controls i will have never been able to test that acoustic aspect of the S.G....


My best to you and to all.....






Taking a truth and an evident experience for the few who experience it, that is to say an  adequate PASSIVE and ACTIVE room treatment AND controls will make all sound system works at their peak working level of S.Q. better than any upgrade of gear, and mocking it because someone dont understand that what we listen to is NEVER mainly  the electronic gear but the speakers/room where the gear is embedded is only revealing your own lack of experiments listening...

Nobody will contest than a bose system is less than some costlier gear, but at the end PICK one system, any of them, this will be night and day diffrence before the acoustical controls and after.... I know it firsthand.... Not by reading review magazine.... This is TRUE nevermind the cost of the system....
There's also the absolute truth that getting a good room often ends a lot of gear swapping and that you may end up with smaller, less expensive, but not less performing, gear as your room now behaves very well with a wide variety of gear.
You said it more wisely than me....

You are probably wiser than me.... But anyway we think the same....

My best to you...
The room is the most important upgrade, the only one that matter in fact...

Sorry for those who cannot afford an audio room... 😁😊😁

Electronic design is NOT the most important factor in S.Q. increase... It is only conditioning market social conformity to think otherwise...

Ask any acoustician what they want to choose for great sound : the brand name of some speakers or the room acoustic control?


It is the only factor that exceed almost any upgrades...

All the story is in my thread...I created my room at peanuts costs.... Dont fall for costly acoustic products especially if you have a room dedicated to audio.... My solution are not esthetical perhaps but cost NOTHING at all...

Contrary to the saying of some sunday skeptics and "scientists" our ears are the real tool....I used them with  my own "no cost" mechanical equalizer.....

My best to you....