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What's more important in a difficult room, room correction or higher, clean, power?

My listening space is a 13 x 10 former spare bedroom that is used as my hobby space and office and is a really difficult space because of the contents in the room. My speakers are parallel to the long wall.

My current rig includes a Peachtree Nova 150 integrated, Elac Debut B6.2 speakers, U-Turn Orbit turntable with Ortofon red cartridge running through the Peachtree's phono input, Music Hall C-DAC 15.3 and a Furman Elite 15 power conditioner.

I have an Elac subwoofer on order that I purchased during what must have been an unadvertised flash sale on their website at a great price and it includes room correction. I purchased this particular sub because of the room correction feature in the hopes that it will result in a better, smoother, fuller, sound.

The sub got me thinking that perhaps an amp that also supports room correction might be helpful in my space and one that I'm considering in the Elac EA101EQ-G integrated amp. However, the specs on this amp aren't as good as my Peachtree and, frankly, I like the Peachtree but I'm thinking that there could be something better out there.

I'd be interested to hear from those of you that have take the room correction plunge and what you think. Also, given the choice between more power/better specs or room correction with less power, is there a preferred path?
rfross
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,841 posts
 
I'm not a fan of room correction. The reason is most often what is going on is a standing wave which no amount of correction will fix.

You can kill a standing wave by using a distributed bass array. The best example of this is the Swarm made by Audiokinesis. The Swarm is four subs designed to sit right against the walls. You place them asymmetrically about the room; in this way they produce consistent bass across the spectrum regardless of where you are in the room.


mesch
3,509 posts
 
I usually think of room treatment not room correction. It might be of help on the sub, if not don't use the correction feature. If you like the Peachtree you should keep it. 


pragmasi
212 posts
 

The problem with room treatment is the amount of it you need to treat low frequencies, that's where I think DSP can be useful. For example 1/4 wavelength of 80Hz is over a metre... it's going to take a big bass trap to deal with that. The multiple sub approach seems like the best solution in a small room but you need to have space in the right places in the room.

If you take a 'no compromise' approach then I guess you'd go for plenty of absorption and diffraction and an array of subs. This is unrealistic for many people so DSP (with its limitations) is a useful tool but not a panacea.

atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,841 posts
 
The problem with room treatment is the amount of it you need to treat low frequencies, that's where I think DSP can be useful.
This is also where a distributed bass array like the Swarm is helpful.
earthtones
110 posts
 
In my 12 * 22 * 7 foot room, with an additional space under the basement stairs that makes the room L shaped, I got pretty good bass definition with my Vandersteen 5A Carbons. But there were some bad dips between 72 and 120 hz that I could not sufficiently smooth out, up to at least 10 dB below 70, the middle point on my meter. So I purchased three GIK Acoustics Soffit bass traps that I placed at the two corners on either side of the speakers, arranged on the long wall, and one directly behind my chair, in the nook under the basement stairs, where there was a lot of bass buildup. A few weeks later when I had some free time, I readjusted the bass on the speakers. The results showed some smoothing in the measured frequencies, but there were still some dips in that 72 to 120 hz range that I could not correct, which remained down 8 to 10 dB. However, I was not prepared for how dramatic the improvement was in terms of slam. The lower bass is dramatically more powerful and cleaner. Even with the equalized bass, that was not good enough to achieve what I’m hearing now. So, I can definitely vouch for room treatment! Aesthetically speaking, I’m done. I could probably get even better results with more traps, but I don’t want any more traps in my room.
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