List of most important


List of most important factors setting up audio listening room

This is all I have for now suggestion thoughts or comments will be appreciated and may even revise my way of thinking to update the list later.

# 1 The room. Pick best room in house or build room. According to w.a.f? a quiet room insulated from out side noise. a 40 DB noise level or lower. The outlay of the room, The ideal triangle of speaker layout. Common sense no interference with furniture or knick knacks.

 

# 2 pick best speaker according room size and to listening taste more important low end driver size. A driver that moves to much air in a small room can’t be tamed no matter how much acoustic treatment or DSP correction. This doesn’t mean you can’t have a large speaker it means you can’t have a large bass driver that moves to much air for the room.

 

# 3 The source, get the best source you can afford or garbage in garbage out

 

# 4 EQ wizard the room get your reverb time or time delay to 15ms to 20ms

With room treatment according to your liking. Next work on your bass

Get your bass as flat as possible with bass traps for your problem areas.

Example if you have a 40 Hz bump work on that to get it down. You will never get it perfectly flat especially if you have a large DB bump it’s just not physically possible when working with frequency’s that low. Once you get that as good you can I would DSP the system in my system I like to do it from 400 Hz down. Many variables when doing this trial and error then success

 

# 5 Yes I know. Where is the components ?Well do your research to see what interfaces and is recommended With your speakers if you don’t use the exact pre or amp then see what they have in common class a, tube, solid state etc. Maybe you will find a set that interfaces better. To me pre or amps are nothing more than a tuning instrument one might have a better tonal quality , one might have a better sound stage ,one might have a better punch etc. the same goes for speaker cable and interconnects . To me the analogy is like a race car you have to spend a lot to get a little more performance or not. If the product is over rated or you implement it wrong or it just doesn’t interface.

 

# 6 fine tuning not in any order high quality 20 amp dedicated circuit supply .

Vibration, dampening, isolation or decoupling. You want to hear the music not the floor resonance or vibration into your component’s to distort the signal especially turntable.

�wq �
hemihorn
I agree with the OP. For akg, I would agree that for equally bad (or good) rooms a "better" set of components will generally be "better"... But a "good" room with a properly set up system of competent components will always sound better than a "poor" acoustic environment, You can't compensate by throwing money for components at the problem. You may want to search out Charles Hansen's comments on this subject in a manufacturer's response in Stereophile.
@akg_ca I must admit I've had exactly the opposite experience to you at shows. In my experience the systems that often sound best at shows are those that have taken the room into consideration - often the most modest systems using cheaper components sound best in show settings. The cost no object systems often sound terrible. 

My own domestic experience is that until I optimized my room I had no idea what my equipment was capable of. Having fixed the room I could then fine tune the sound with tweaks and only having done that am I finding any desire to upgrade the components
Highly recommend Jim Smiths' book DVD combo "Getting Better Sound"
Made a huge difference in my room.
Enjoy the music