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I can prove your room is bad

So you want to upgrade?  You want to know what the next big thing is you can do for a better sounding experience?

Try this.  Pull up a chair 2' in front of your speakers.  If you can't move the speakers, put it up to just 1, and listen for yourself.

The difference between what you hear sitting in front of the speaker like this, and what you hear at your normal location is all in the speaker dispersion and room acoustics. If you feel mesmerized, entranced, and wowed by your speaker at 2' but not 8' you really should consider improving the room, and if you can't, consider getting speakers with alternative room coupling, like ESL's, line arrays, bi-polars, etc.

That is all,


Erik
erik_squires
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,787 posts
 
My original point was to help audiophiles figure out if the direct speaker signal was making it well enough to their seat, without tools. Your question is, literally and figuratively, orthogonal to my own. ;-)
Actually its spot on. Speakers radiate in three ways- on axis, off axis (whose response should be smooth) and total room energy. The latter is probably the least understood, and is where many speakers fall flat on their front baffles.

For more on this, here is Dr. Floyd Toole, using Science to show how this works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrpUDuUtxPM
The relevant information relating to this topic starts at 23 minutes. Pay attention to the comments about Sound Power. If in a hurry, skip to 31 minutes and you can see that the total energy in the room is the dominant factor but is actually to a large degree a function of the speaker rather than the room!
erik_squires OP
16,042 posts
 
Actually its spot on.

Buddy, I was making a joke and giving Duke a platform to make the point.

daledeee1's avatar
daledeee1
562 posts
 
I rekindled my hobby.  I first of all got it all hooked up.  A buzz in the preamp.  Got rid of it.  Bought a new amp.  Plugged my new streamer right into it.  Walla!  It worked.  Then bought new speakers.  Oh what a chore to set up.  Large Crites speakers like Cornwalls.  I have always had subs.  Run in stereo from an amp.  New wires and cords.  I was lucky every step made an improvement in sound.  My room is about a foot from being the Golden Rule room.  Then I ordered 6 first reflection panels , two bass traps and 3 diffusion panels.  And this was one of my biggest improvements.  I am in a good place now!
teo_audio
2,197 posts
 
humans are designed, from the ground up, to have the space intrude on and integrate with the sound source.

It’s the native environment of the human hearing system, in situ.

The question... is...: to what level, should that environment intrude and integrate. To what level is the intrusion found or felt to be best - for an audio set up, for the individual/group involved?
douglas_schroeder
3,281 posts
 
The advice of the OP is good, as long as you don't take into consideration the preferences of other audiophiles.  :(

mijostyn, you are incorrect in your statement that Sound Lab is the only line source dipole. I reviewed for Dagogo.com two models of the Kingsound King line (the original and King III). Both are what I termed, LSESL, or "Line Source ESL," with an array of ESL panels. Quad also uses a concentric series of ESL drivers, I believe. 

Technically, the Sound Lab is not an array, per se, but Roger at Sound Lab took pains to explain that the driver is a single sheet with a dampening system. When I reviewed the Sound Lab Ultimate 545 (at the time called the U4iA) for Dagogo.com, this was reinforced by Sound Lab several times such that I would get it correct for the article. 

Has the technology of Sound Lab changed since then? Are some other models different? I do not know. I am not interested in arguing the point, however.  

The use of an array for ESL does seem to be rare, but, imo is tremendously satisfying form of panel sound.  :)
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