Speakers The single most critical component

@mahgister --

The room is the cake, you must design a room with all the passive and active acoustical controls necessary to help your speakers...

I would go so far to say the room is certainly part of the cake as the main dish - in conjunction with the speakers, that is. The predominant focus on acoustics potentially fails to take into account their being relative to the speakers and their dispersive nature. That is, below the Schroeder frequency (seeing the room here as a resonator) a multitude of bass sources is the acoustic measure to at least partially alleviate the need for absorbers/bass traps/PEQ, while above the Schroeder frequency narrower dispersive characteristics from the likes of line sources, large coned drivers and horns will limit the influence of the room.

That is to say: generally speaking a smaller, direct radiating coned speaker will be more dependent on acoustic measures, or certainly for the listening room to natively better suit it for it to perform closer to its fuller potential, compared to earlier mentioned more narrowly dispersive, larger speakers.

My listening room is on the livelier side of neutral, and the recent addition of a (much) larger MF/HF Constant Directivity horn (replacing its smaller CD horn sibling) - controlling dispersion better and also lower in frequency - has seen a welcome indifference to the acoustics at higher SPL’s in particular; the sound is now more focused, physical, relaxed and better saturated.

My main gripe with absorption (in contrast to diffusion) is that used too extensively it simply kills the soundstage and natural life of the presentation. Indeed, usually I find the fine line here to be easily crossed with just a limited amount of absorption. That’s why earlier I left the acoustics of my listening room on the slightly livelier side, a compromise for sure, whereas now (with the bigger horns) it feels closer to being ideal.

The predominant focus on acoustics potentially fails to take into account their being relative to the speakers and their dispersive nature. That is, below the Schroeder frequency (seeing the room here as a resonator) a multitude of bass sources is the acoustic measure to at least partially alleviate the need for absorbers/bass traps/PEQ, while above the Schroeder frequency narrower dispersive characteristics from the likes of line sources, large coned drivers and horns will limit the influence of the room.

You remark is sound and wise....😊
😁
BUT you forget something not me.....

You forgot that the room is not ONLY AND MAINLY made of directions where the waves bounce on the 6 walls but if the room is like you said a resonator, the room is constituted by different pressure zones, and these zones are modified in my small room by a grid of 32 resonators which i used like a "mechanical equalizer"...( by the way the cost is zero because it is recycled pipes and tubes and straws)

Then this tool which is not less powerful than the passive material treatment and complement it, constitute what i called an active control of the room...

---Passive material treatment: reflection-absorption-diffusion in balance..

--- Active control: distributed finely tuned resonators which work with the wavefronts coming from each speaker to each ear in a precise timing treshold that will produce not only imaging and a better soundstage but more importantly a "listener envelopment" Or LEV experience which is the sensation when timing of the frontwaves are under control to be in the room where are the musician and not the musicians being in your room...For example, in some recording the voices of the singers come from behind me and the orchestra sound come from the opposite wall where are the speakers, then i am in the midst of the opera scene....In active control i used also a grid of connected Schumann generators with success they contribute but less powerfully than my "mechanical equalizer"....

Give me any relatively good speakers and i will be happy AFTER my installment of acoustic control not before ....

The room is way more important than the speakers, if they are relatively good one to begins with for sure.... Like my Tannoy was or my actual Mission Cyrus....It is unbelievable but this is my experience...

Because most people have never experience it and will never experience it, this will stay unbelievable...

We never listen to our speakers, we listen to our room, EVEN in nearfield listening, contrary to a false belief in audio threads...

The sound waves speed made them crossing my 13 square feet "bad" room 80 times in one second.... Meditate about this....And our brain work in approx. 80 millisecond treshold slices to create the sound 3-d presence impression correlating each ear first frontwaves cues with one another....

This is the meditation about this fact that inspired me to create my "mechanical equalizer" after reading some acoustical paper research about timing thresholds importance for the LEV experience...

No speakers, nevermind his specs sheets, could replace by only itself  the room controls for the sound recreation in all characteristic,  natural timbre experience, imaging, lev, asw, soundstage etc.... 

Most people ignoring this speak about speakers like they speak about "tastes".... This is only ignorance of acoustic....

Amen...

All what you say after miss the essential point...

The room is the cake, you must design a room with all the passive and active acoustical controls necessary to help your speakers...“

No , I nailed the essential point, which I stated very clearly,.... you have to pick speakers that work in the room. Crap speakers in a great room still sound like crap. Great speakers in a crap room will still sound pretty good just like great speakers with entry level electronics will still sound pretty good

soooooo

it all comes back to the most important thing to get right ... speakers, which are therefore the cake...... a great room can’t fix bad speakers so you start with speakers

everything else is icing

Although not ideal, you can mitigate a lot about a bad room by listening in the near field , there is nothing you can do to overcome bad speakers 


i’ve had the same speakers for 20 years because they work for me in my room

No , I nailed the essential point, which I stated very clearly,.... you have to pick speakers that work in the room

Nobody will argue that we must choose first a relatively good speaker set...If the essential point is what we must do first, you win....😁 But for me it is NOT the essential part at all....

This is EASY to buy a relatively good pair of speakers, very easy.... BUT Controls of the room are NOT so easy to install...

Second you have not understood my point:

The comparative change and upgrading value of a room BEFORE and AFTER controls installation EXCEED the difference between the choice of two relatively good speakers....

Think a minute about the number of people owning already a relatively good pair of speakers versus the number of people owning a relatively rightfully controlled room...

There is no COMPARISON between the 2 numbers...the first number is huge compared to the second one.... I dont speak about the number of people here who would say that their room is good.... I speak about a room REALLY under controls...

But you missed my point because you cannot imagine what is a controlled room and how powerful it is....

Most people think that they own a good room already....It is an illusion...

How can you know the effect of acoustical control when you never lived through it?

I speak about controls of the room not only room with some bass traps and some passive materials treatment...I speak about an ACTIVATED room versus a passive room...

Anyway keep your illusion...

But here is a test:

If you want to know if your room is under controls, listen to The Three penny opera 1958 by Kurt Weill with Lotte Lenya and if you could listen the orchestra playing in front of you, seating in front of your speakers, but the singers voices coming from your back wall where there is no speakers, your room is under acoustic controls....Acoustic is the cake and timing tresholds of the first frontwaves are the key....Anybody could buy a good pair of speakers but it is the room controls which will decide what you will hearing or not....

I bet that if you pass the test all orchestra+singers will be in front of you but who knows?....This the difference between the musicians in your room and you being in the scene "enveloped" by the sound experience....

I use this exceptional recording of Kurt Weill because the sound engineer make possible this test so good his recording tech. was....

By the way the acoustical characteristic or concept i described in this test is called the "listener envelopment" or LEV... No speakers will give you this experience of the " listener envelopment" at any price in a bad room....

Then in a word: speakers are REPLACEABLE, room are not, especially a room under controls......

And most people claim the opposite: their beloved speakers and costly one are irreplaceable, and their room is replaceable or secondary and their room is always OK anyway in their mind, so much the importance of the speakers design weight more than acoustical laws.......

The truth is ANY speakers must be adapted first to the geometry and size of the room where it will work for sure, but a room without controls will not create miracles even with speakers well chosen for it .... This is the meaning of my affirmation....