Unfriendly people lurking about.
It’s about a really nice system in a room and you should be able to discern the qualities of a really nice system in room. And then you have all the furniture in the room and often times all the bookshelves and sofas and rugs make the room sound amazing and lots of peoples rooms are like this.
There’s a lot of people with really nice rooms who have really amazing sounding systems all the acoustical stuff and that’s a wonderful thing
I imagine there’s a lot of people out there with complicated furniture set ups and maybe they throw on some acoustical panels and most of us have no clue if it sounds any better or not we just do it. How many people really do a good job with acoustical panels and then choosing between absorption and diffusing who knows if people are getting it right and most times they probably aren’t and after all there is no right answer is there?
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@ghdprentice
Absolutely right I should provide details on my system. I think it would look OK if I took a picture of it but there’s certain things I wanna move around and I lack the energy and physical abilities to do it since my health is challenging right now. Further, id like to provide a decent listing of all the gear but since I have trouble typing and have to dictate everything it would be a major major project. Editing is really uncomfortable to do. I’m very grateful so many other people do it because it’s one of the best things about this forum to see all those amazing Systems set up incredibly well. I bought the system I have without listening to it before I bought it and since I’m not able to leave the house very easily I have not heard any other system except my own for really long time. When I’m better I really want to visit a decent room to hear what it sounds like. I have played in a number of bands in the past so I know Live music. I played in a 21 piece jazz Group in the World Trade Centre lobby back in 1976. Got a free trip to the Observatory and a free meal at the restaurant way up close to the top.
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@tvad
I’ll give it some thought thanks for the encouragement. Keep in mind every time I touch an iPad screen to do this it creates a lot of discomfort that continues to get worse and if I touch the screen more than four or five times while I do this it’s too much I’m able to get by with limited touching of the screen. I appreciate your comments
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@tvad
For your info I voice control my iPad I can get by with minimal touching. I also control what I watch on TV using voice control for the Apple TV box. Unfortunately the remote is too difficult to use and every time I am using an app i have have to scroll through it by repeating a number over and over again until I find what I’m wanting to find it I can’t through things by swiping my finger across the screen. Is it very frustrating way to search for something. I have my limitations but many people have a whole lot worse and the awful development of voice control technology for desktop and even watching TV is horrible. Although I’m very grateful for what has been done it’s like they should’ve spent more effort in the final 10% of the journey and because of that not as good as it should be. People take for granted the ease which they use computers and they’re smart phones. It’s absolutely remarkable how complicated the process is and all the pressure going on with very delicate tissues in your arm to Press and swipe a device.
Especially controlling a mouse on a computer it’s incredibly awkward and should be a hell of a lot easier than it is it’s clear that Microsoft and Apple really could give a crap about people with disability. Windows 11 is awful. Technologically it’s not very difficult to do but they choose not to devote much effort to improving it.
As far as me getting by with all my audio equipment I certainly don’t do it myself.
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@thecarpathian
I dictate I could not possibly type all the words I share. But dictation is not a perfect science so it's very frustrating to use it
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@ozzy62
Thank you for that, that was sweet😍
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My belief is that you should be able to discern the quality system regardless of acoustical treatments. The problem is it's very difficult to play around with things given the massive weight of all the equipment. Once you get everything in place it's very difficult for you to swap in and out different options and you're pretty much stuck with what you've got.
It's not rocket science, if you have an echo room get a rug, buy some furniture and maybe stick an absorption panel on one of the walls and corners. Unfortunately most people are hard-pressed to put acoustical crap on their ceilings. Getting rid of reverbs is important and size of the room is important. If you've got a very large room you're gonna need a lot of power to fill it with sound and of course speakers can handle it. Again it's not rocket science. And if you need special gear to test the environment so you can feel more confident that's a problem, you should be able to discern it all by yourself.
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I'm not the smartest chip on the block and tend to be very slow at learning things but this thread has really been enlightening. Fortunately I have a really nice wool rug and that's very helpful if I could only put it on the ceiling. Maybe I need one of these diffusers although I may have to get a lot of them to be something meaningful since one or two probably don't do much. All I read about acoustical measurements involved dedicated rooms that don't have furniture and that's not very helpful I like to see rooms that have lots of furniture stuff going on and then hear about decisions made to do some sound panels
There are so many really smart people contributing on this website. I was able to create this lovely comment through dictation and only touching the screen a couple times. You learn to speak more clearly and consider more carefully what you're saying when you dictate because if you screw up it's a bitch to edit
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@milpai
I like your room, lots of interesting stuff. We have something in common, I also have a salamander rack just like yours, except mines on casters.
Also I have a salamander rack that's 25 years old and it's wide enough for two components and deep enough to handle an amplifier without sticking out in the back. It's three levels and built like a tank. Bought it originally for a tube TV for the top. Unfortunately they don't make it anymore which really sucks. But it's an awesome awesome rack. New ones are OK.
Do you need an album from the Carpenters in your collection. Nothing wrong with Karen Carpenter. Glad to see you have plenty of Eric Clapton hope you have Van Morrison somewhere.
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@milpai
Big fan of Karen Carpenter, especially a live concert from 1974 performed in Japan. Remarkably entertaining and sound quality is pretty darn good. Video is called carpenters Live at budokan 1974 one hour and seven minutes, has some pre-concert footage too which is interesting. She was doing like 150 performances a year and overworked very sad situation
Treatments consist of corner base traps extending up to the ceiling, a couple absorption panels throughout the room, a 20 x 20 thick wool rug and an assortment of furniture. Not much more I can do with the room other than throw some panels on the ceiling which is 8 feet high, room size of 20 x 18. My system includes A McIntosh MC 901, Conrad Johnsen gat2 preamplifier, a lumin x one streamer dac, BMW speaker from 800 series and transparent speaker cables and interconnects. network switch from english eight, a nad av processor and a five channel mcIntosh solid state amplifier for centre and rear speakers.
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@immatthewj
Is there a question? You probably do know most people just buy absorption panels and corner base traps and just stick them in their room. Because everybody else does it. They already have lots of furniture already in the room and that does enormous improvements to transmission of sound. some chairs and a sofa and a bookcase is extremely helpful to sound. The bookcase serves as a diffuser.
Most people don't need all this acoustical stuff in their room.
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Using dirac, I did acoustical measurements and the original curve versus DSP were very similar. It got a bit smoother. The original subwoofer curve looked normal.
These measurements were done in a room that had virtually no acoustical treatments other than corner bass traps it was a normal living room with furniture.
I wish I could attached the curve pictures but this forum don't allow photos to be attached I guess.
Would love to know if other people test their rooms before and after doing acoustical panels and how the curve changes. Lots of the acoustical treatments are voodoo science with results that may not do very much most of the time and actually served to dampen the room sound quality
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@texbychoice
I did post some details within this thread about my system. You don’t have any details on your system and I’m not really interested.
I have a bass trap in the corner otherwise minimally treated room .
I’m a big fan of getting rid of reverbs so one absorption panel is on the far wall but so hard to determine what it really does in the scheme of everything else in the room. Speakers are pulled forward quite a bit and I do know this really helps.
All I’m saying is that lots of people just throw around a few acoustical panels in their rooms and because it’s a furnished room for most people I would guess most people are hard pressed to discern a difference. For those who have dedicated listening rooms that’s a whole Nother animal since furniture is minimal. If I had a decent looking diffuser panel I’ll probably put it on the damn wall. But I’ve never seen anything I really like looking at because most of them are pretty ugly and you need a lot of them.
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Why is everybody so dependent upon what dirac says? Adding an additional absorption panel in a 20 x 18 room that’s furnished is extremely hard to discern. Maybe Superman hearing would do it.
Maybe on the dirac curve they’ll be a slight change but in all fairness I think people go a bit neurotic when it comes to sound treating their rooms especially when they are furnished.
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I hardly feel that corner bass traps and very modest absorption panels in a furnished room is a serious effort to acoustically treat the room.
If the room was more open, and lots of rooms aren't, it would be helpful to put all kinds of panels in a room otherwise it would be an echo chamber. The best thing I have in the room is a very thick wool rug and the couch. And other clutter that provides good diffuser relief although I wish I had a couple bookcases but I hate bookcases in a room. Everybody has bookcases and most people don't even read the books.
The point of the entire thread was to better understand whether there's a benefit in doing room treatments given a furnished room which already inherently does a lot of this. And for those who still feel inclined to put acoustical treatments in a furnished room I'm not sure it would really be helpful and actually maybe harmful. Openess of a room is a wonderful thing as long as you don't screw it up with all kinds of acoustical stuff on the wall.
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Somehow I think if you have a good system in a furnished room somehow you have to validate yourself as a true audio connoisseur by putting stylish acoustical panels throughout the room. Somehow not having them makes a room seem unfinished even though it may sound perfectly fine. I think people are hooked on getting acoustical panels in their furnished rooms and may just live with them after they get them because removing them is something they probably just wouldn’t do. A diffuser panel of 3 x 5 in a furnished room room hardly does much of anything, but it can look really really cool. I would have one but I’ve never found anything that I’ve really want to put up on the wall.
I think everyone’s been conditioned to assume they should pursue acoustical panels even though many can never really discern a difference in a room that’s furnished. . Walking into a room with a nice audio system without acoustical panels and someone will say oh you need acoustical treatment.
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I hardly think of a room filled with furniture is considered a treated room. Certainly it offers acoustical benefits.
The title of the thread does not suggest the system would be placed inside an empty room. It merely suggests that good systems, or really good systems, may do an excellent job regardless of acoustical panels, or‘treatments’ placed about the room.
Reaching to a textbook to help figure out whether a situation sounds good or not may be helpful to some but I trust my ears to tell me what’s going on. I just feel people go nutty with acoustical treatments sometimes and somehow people are inclined to put a lot of acoustical panels all over the place. And gradually the room changes it may not always be for the better and people may not really recognize this. I’m tempted to remove the corner bass traps to see how things might change but that’s a pain to do, so for now I’m hopeful they benefit things. My curve for the subs seems perfect, I guess you could say this is a helpful confirmation but I really didn’t need to see it based on what I was hearing. I’ve learned to trust what I can hear. I still would like to find a nice diffuser panel but having trouble finding one I like, and I'm not sure how much it will really do.
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So I guess treating a room with acoustical panels Will provide a benefit. This is news. So many great enthusiastic people have led me to rethink my position. I thank everyone for helping me overcome my fear of adopting a more liberal view about acoustical treatments.
Now if only someone could help me deal with Leaf blower noise throughout the day from neighbours who are too lazy to deal with lawn issues with a rake. And just why are we using leaf blowers in the middle of the summer when there’s no leaves? Because blades of grass somehow have taken over. Proliferating use of leaf blower noise is a serious problem. Ever noticed bird populations have declined quite a bit and a lot of it has to do with leaf blower noise throughout a community. Further if you have allergies they are probably a lot worse because of all the leaf blowers kicking up so many particles. I’d mention the environment because of the gas powered Leaf blower engines but people don’t care about the environment much anymore. They can't use mufflers because it would impact the flow of air and we wouldn't want that to happen.
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@audition__audio
do you not recognize that use of a leaf blower which can be easily heard within someone's home is terribly disruptive to listening.
Thankfully no one uses them at night. People have no idea how awful it is to listen to these things all the time and yet they use their leaf blowers to pristinely clear away grass blades from their driveways because they're too lazy to use a broom.
It's a huge problem that's driving away birds and increasing pollen count.
My family talks about putting me away all the time. But I won't go.
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@immatthewj
You are so funny. Isn't it clear I love attention as well as learning so much wisdom offered by so many talented people who participate on this forum.
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@audition__audio
During the fall they make sense otherwise a lot of people would probably be dying from heart attacks. However during the summer when there’s no leaves it makes more sense to use a broom to quickly disperse errant leaf blades.
I believe it’s terribly inconsiderate to be revving leaf blowers sometimes two or three of them at the same time and serenading your neighbours with disturbing noise. It may not bother the person using it but it certainly bothers the people who have to listen to it.
I find people generally pretty inconsiderate a lot of times. We’re only here for like 70 years while being gradually replaced by others so why not make it somewhat pleasurable for other people while here.
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@audition__audio
Well this is enlightening. My family can complain to me about playing my hi-fi too loud and maybe they have no right to do this. My neighbour plays a leaf blower too loud and it interferes with my phone calls inside my house I have no right to complain about that.
Further I have no right to complain about how wrong it is not to be able to complain about something.
The world according to those who use leaf blowers. Tom Hanks needs a new movie and I think this is a perfect fit.
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@immatthewj
When you're famous you have to use aliases. I'm not famous, I'm just another nobody. I think we've all gotten used to leaf blowers and no one cares anymore.
I'm in a room right now and all the tested curves look fine and I've done it all with out acoustical stuff except for corner bass traps.
Funny thing is, I've had people over and they say how come you don't have any acoustical panels and then they look at me really strange when I say I don't really need them. I think we've just gotten used to assuming you need acoustical panels all over the place so it looks like everybody else.
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@mapman
Outstanding comment above.
I have an AV processor and I use that for DSP that seemed helpful for all the various speakers.
For two channel listening I have roon and it’s tougher to use the AV processor to facilitate and measure the room and I guess I could insert mini DSP to do two channel listening measurements when I use my preamp but it’s very cumbersome.
Overall the original curve I got when I use the AV processor didn’t seem bad at all and then to use the DSP function within roon the concern is it would degrade the quality of sound. And then every single recording and music you listen to has different characteristics and there’s no way you’re gonna do a perfect DSP set up.
Just wish the user interface to test the room and provide curves for all those various tools was a hell of a lot easier to use
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