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Listening Through Walls at Show: Vodoo or Valid?

My girlfriend and I visited the NY show on Sunday.

Although I enjoyed it nonetheless, I found it a bit crowded and the rooms a bit cramped to really settle into any particular demo for a relaxed listening session.

This led to a very weird observation: although I am normally opposed to A/B comparisons and snap judgements, thinking that only longer term listening sessions really reveal the subtleties of our hobby, I found myself making judgements about the systems from OUTSIDE the rooms, sometimes standing in the hallways through only a crack in the door or even walking past closed doors.

Pacing down the corridors we felt compelled to enter some and avoid others. My girlfriend is not an audiophile but she is really interested in music and would often say "too bright" before we would even completely enter a room. (This was not about the music, especially as 9 out of 10 demos seemed to be Patricia Barber anyway.)She particularly ran out of the Phillips? home theatre room and also shied away from the pipedreams system.

Two rooms that we liked were the Dynaudio room and the Wilson set up (Innovative Audio?) which both sounded great to our ears from outside AND inside the room -- with different music and with the Dynaudio room actually having us wonder "is it live?" -- here again from down the hall!

Obviously this might not be the most intelligent way to make pricey decisions on purchasing new components but it was quite a surprise to think about and reflect on.

For the record, I didn't have 6 bloody marys at breakfast or anything.

I would be curious to hear what others have had similar experiences or think of this test methodology?!?!?! Maybe there is something to it!
cwlondon

Showing 2 responses by audiokinesis

audiokinesis
2,723 posts
 
L.I.A.R. stands for "Listening in another room", and is a very valuable tool in serious loudspeaker evaluation.

One of the things I do when auditioning speakers (or demoing them for customers) is crank the volume up a bit louder than normal and go into the next room, leaving the door open. From the next room, all you can possibly hear is the reverberant field, and a good reverberant field response is necessary for long-term listening enjoyment. Also, listening from the next room puts a premium on the dynamic contrast - without good dyamic contrast, the music will be lifeless from the hallway.

Note that, from the next room, a live piano sounds totally convincing. A speaker that can pull that off is something special, and is obviously doing something right.

When there is a significant tonal discrepancy between the on-axis and reverberant response, the ear/brain system has to work harder to integrate the events because they are not as closely related as natural sounds are. The eventual result is listening fatigue.

Of course a speaker has to sound good from the normal listening position, but the L.I.A.R test will quickly give you reliable information on whether a speaker that sounds initially impressive will remain enjoyable hour after hour, or will soon wear out its welcome.
audiokinesis
2,723 posts
 
Well, I guess I was kinda askin' for it!

Of course the ideal way to evaluate a system is in your own room, but that's not always possible. I'm not suggesting listening in another room to "equalize the response", but rather to quickly isolate and evaluate a factor that has a significant bearing on long-term listening enjoyment - namely, the reverberant field response. You see, often it simply isn't possible to audition every speaker you might be interested in in your own room, or even to audition in another setting for a long time, and a technique that can quickly reveal a problem that would normally only surface after a long-term audition is worth having in your bag of tricks.

There are quite a few other tricks I suggest for quickly evaluating a speaker in a strange environment, but some of them are even farther out on the tail-end of the wierdness bell curve.

By the way, what is the ball-bearing vaccuum cleaner trick? Just in case I can use that one too...

Cheers,

Duke

PS - Onhwy61 and Drubin, thanks for the vote of confidence!
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