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Is the significance of room acoustics overrated?

Don't get me wrong as I realize just how important room acoustics are (I think).

However, let me share some recent experiences:

In our previous home, an audio reviewer/columnist evaulated my system. Very positively I might add. Anyway, upon telling him that my family and I were preparing to relocate to the West coast after his 3 hour evaulation, he responded with "good luck trying to find another room with these acoustics." And I knew exactly what he meant.

Well, we found a home that may have had even better room acoustics but it failed the home inspections. I'm still bummed about that one, but it was on to the next...

We settled on another home and it was either the living room or the family room for my listening room. Because of it's isolation from other rooms (very open floor plan) I selected the family room even though the living room had better acoustics and immediately had an electrician install the dedicated lines there. But this family room has no where near the level of acoustics of my previous room.

Although the same basic sonic characteristics where there in the new room, the bass had peaks and valleys like a rollercoaster. And off-and-on over the next 7 months, I'd move the speakers around trying to locate the best position for overall best performance/best compromise.

Lo and behold about a month ago, I located a position in which the bass peaks and valleys have all but disappearded and overall and in some ways the absolute bass control and response as well as the overall presentation is even better than my previous room.

Of course I can't help but wonder what if I had devoted this kind of attention to speaker placement in my previuos room with better acoustics?

But at the same time, I find it difficult to believe that simply relocating the speakers to an 'optimal' location could cause the interactions with the room's poor acoustics could be minimalized to such a degree.

Therefore, I ask:

Aside from ensuring basic room treatments i.e. thick wall-to-wall carpeting and padding and generally good room demensions/symmetry, etc. is not speaker placement far, far more important?

And lastly, I suppose this thread may offer hope for some that there very well be a better speaker placement to cover a multitude of sins in what should be deemed an otherwise acoustically poor room.
stehno
ohlala
1,236 posts
 
While my primary reaction is against the dim, mediocre ponderance of relative importance of anything audio, especially variables that don't compete against each other, I also automatically thought about the slew of confounds that were dismissed in Stehno's bold conclusion based on a single experience. Then I think about how one can compare the degree of room goodness with the degree of speaker placement goodness and how one can compare rooms when "optimal" placement was not achieved in one, which got me to my own experience. A half-dozen rooms and god knows how many spots for the Revelations, I have to conclude the differences between rooms were not fully made up for by placement and vice versa. With the best place I could find in each room, which is easy because my speakers are very predictable in placement, the better room sounded better.

Without being concerned about the problems in Stehno's comparison, his conclusion could be reversed, or could be called a tie between room and placement by using a different logic, a logic that includes the amount of effort he put in to placement.
onhwy61's avatar
onhwy61
5,229 posts
 
Loudspeaker/listener placement primarily effects bass room response and stereo/imaging information. The room directly effects these factors plus reverb decay which is critical for clarity and detail. Obviously both speaker placement and the overall room design are important to achieving quality music reproduction. Perhaps a better way to look at the issue is to consider whether you would prefer listening to a $50,000 loudspeaker ideally positioned in a poor acoustic environment or a $5,000 loudspeaker in a professionally design and built room? To me it's a no-brainer, the $5k speaker will produce far better results.

Has anyone ever listened to a high quality speaker outdoors?
gregm
3,405 posts
 
Has anyone ever listened to a high quality speaker outdoors?

Yep. Interesting /surprising sound. Lack of reflections by far made up for the lack of room reinforcement! Ambient noise was low, fortunately.
stehno OP
1,453 posts
 
Ohlala, stop trying to pretend you are educated beyond your intelligence. Based on your verbiage above and elsewhere, it's quite evident that you already are.

For the last two years you've been like a little butt rash that flares up every three months or so, even though I've no idea who you are.

And now that that's out in the open, I'll address your post above.

Where do you get this "bold conclusion" from? It was a simple obervation. I had one interesting experience that I wanted to share that indicates to me a possible kink in the logic of those that espouse room acoustics over everything else and therefore I posed my question.

But since you bring it up, I perhaps came to some conclusion that room acoustics may not be quite the end-all 80% of a system's performance as some to many may have thought and preached. Or perhaps speaker placement can sometimes substitute for a portion of that 80%. But obviously the final answer is most likely based on the individual's room, system, treatments, speaker placement, and one's listening preferences.

As for my one experience to your vast experiences with room acoustics? College dorm rooms really don't count.

-IMO
warnerwh
539 posts
 
Room acoustics are huge. But I don't think they are overrated. I can tell that many people have no idea how important an good acoustical environment is. At least there are many who have little or no room treatment yet spend hundreds or more on cables or upgrading gear. I suspect the odds of having a great acoustic environment with out some room treatment is at least extremely unlikely.
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