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Is the significance of room acoustics overrated?

Don't get me wrong as I realize just how important room acoustics are (I think).

However, let me share some recent experiences:

In our previous home, an audio reviewer/columnist evaulated my system. Very positively I might add. Anyway, upon telling him that my family and I were preparing to relocate to the West coast after his 3 hour evaulation, he responded with "good luck trying to find another room with these acoustics." And I knew exactly what he meant.

Well, we found a home that may have had even better room acoustics but it failed the home inspections. I'm still bummed about that one, but it was on to the next...

We settled on another home and it was either the living room or the family room for my listening room. Because of it's isolation from other rooms (very open floor plan) I selected the family room even though the living room had better acoustics and immediately had an electrician install the dedicated lines there. But this family room has no where near the level of acoustics of my previous room.

Although the same basic sonic characteristics where there in the new room, the bass had peaks and valleys like a rollercoaster. And off-and-on over the next 7 months, I'd move the speakers around trying to locate the best position for overall best performance/best compromise.

Lo and behold about a month ago, I located a position in which the bass peaks and valleys have all but disappearded and overall and in some ways the absolute bass control and response as well as the overall presentation is even better than my previous room.

Of course I can't help but wonder what if I had devoted this kind of attention to speaker placement in my previuos room with better acoustics?

But at the same time, I find it difficult to believe that simply relocating the speakers to an 'optimal' location could cause the interactions with the room's poor acoustics could be minimalized to such a degree.

Therefore, I ask:

Aside from ensuring basic room treatments i.e. thick wall-to-wall carpeting and padding and generally good room demensions/symmetry, etc. is not speaker placement far, far more important?

And lastly, I suppose this thread may offer hope for some that there very well be a better speaker placement to cover a multitude of sins in what should be deemed an otherwise acoustically poor room.
stehno

Showing 2 responses by ohlala

ohlala
1,234 posts
 
While my primary reaction is against the dim, mediocre ponderance of relative importance of anything audio, especially variables that don't compete against each other, I also automatically thought about the slew of confounds that were dismissed in Stehno's bold conclusion based on a single experience. Then I think about how one can compare the degree of room goodness with the degree of speaker placement goodness and how one can compare rooms when "optimal" placement was not achieved in one, which got me to my own experience. A half-dozen rooms and god knows how many spots for the Revelations, I have to conclude the differences between rooms were not fully made up for by placement and vice versa. With the best place I could find in each room, which is easy because my speakers are very predictable in placement, the better room sounded better.

Without being concerned about the problems in Stehno's comparison, his conclusion could be reversed, or could be called a tie between room and placement by using a different logic, a logic that includes the amount of effort he put in to placement.
ohlala
1,234 posts
 
"Ohlala, stop trying to pretend you are educated beyond your intelligence. Based on your verbiage above and elsewhere, it's quite evident that you already are."

My post was economic, not an attempt to be eloquent. Out of laziness, instead of writing a longer post, I used the diction I did in order to shorten it. I am also fine with the pointed adornments. If you want to judge my intelligence, try deferring to my post's content.

"For the last two years you've been like a little butt rash that flares up every three months or so, even though I've no idea who you are."

Not as a slight, you know more about me than I would be interested in knowing about you. I don't get personal, you do.

"Where do you get this "bold conclusion" from?"

You had to make a conclusion about your experience to question the logic of others. As I posted, I found your conclusions to be too week to even begin questioning the experiences of others. Even though "bold" could be dropped from my post w/out changing any of my points, that's where I was coming from when I wrote "bold conclusion".

"Or perhaps speaker placement can sometimes substitute for a portion of that 80%."

The proportion game is mediocre audio, and I don't think 80% is the mainstream thought (but whatever), but I can only take what you state as you finding your poorer room to be more difficult for speakers placement. Maybe there is something else, but I'm sleepy. At this point of this post I just have to circle back to my first. Even if I bought in to ##%, your conclusion is beyond your experience.

"As for my one experience to your vast experiences with room acoustics? College dorm rooms really don't count."

The Revelations have never been in a dorm room, but comparing bad rooms and good rooms, I don't see the point in dismissing a dorm. I don't consider my room acoustic experience to be "vast". My experience pertaining to the topic of this thread is greater than yourÂ’s, so I felt obligated to state my findings within a post that debunks your's.
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