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Two audio components no one really talks about

1. The room

2. Your hearing

First the room. I have bookshelf speakers in the living room with a sub and I love the sound it all creates (won’t go into detail about specs, not the point here). It’s beautiful and I love it. Then I have a system in the basement and the sound is completely different. The living room gives an open and spacious sound and moving the same system to the basement gives it a focused and not spacious sound. The tones and detail is good just not as grand a sound as in the LR. Secondly, the sound was horrible in the basement until I put the speakers against the long wall. My point is the same system in two rooms sounds completely different and a choosing a different wall made a monumental difference but still can’t match an open room. I’m a Vandersteen owner (basement system) and i know all about speaker positioning and optimization. There has got to be diminishing returns on a sound system when your room is limited in what it can do with the acoustics. 
 

Hearing. I recently had a hearing test and found I had hearing loss (a couple of decibels) in the mid frequencies (low and high were fine) and that it wasn’t due to age or damage but rather something I was born with. So what I hear and what you hear is different. I’m sure most of us have variations in our frequency responses. So when someone gives their endorsement on a amp or speaker or whatever, that sounds good to them and might not sound good to you. There is something to be said for tonal adjustments and for me in the 1kHz range. The point here is you need to decide what sounds good to you and you might not like that component someone swears is the best. 
 

I’m always amazed and the amount of money people drop on systems and maybe they don’t need to spend that much money due to limitations mentioned above. 
 

It’s not a fun topic but you have to admit there could be a lot you can do with the room to make the sound better. But maybe there is nothing you can do and no amount of money on equipment will change that. 

doogabayne

Showing 1 response by theaudioamp

theaudioamp
221 posts
 

Rooms are frequently discussed on audio forums I assume this one is no different, but no one ever accused philes of being good listeners.

Big room, reflections farther from the side, feels spacious. Small rooms, reflections arriving close enough to main sound, more focused. If you want spacious, put a 2nd pair of speakers closer but along the wall (wider angle to you) and feed them a delayed version of the main signal (get rid of the bass). If that is starting to sound like one of those spatial modes on your home theater AVR, it is. It is fake, but so is your spacious setup. If that is your enjoyment, then make the most of it.

The first rule of phile club is no one talks about wasted money. Of course most of the money spent is a waste due to limitations mentioned. You are not supposed to say it out loud, no more than you are supposed to say a lot of the money is spent on very expensive single function equalizers. They often come packaged looking just like other pieces of audio equipment.

 

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