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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
erik_squires OP
16,668 posts
 
Gang, of course my post was a thought experiment.  It was meant to invoke some cheap (as in free) experimentation we could all try, and some of us could learn from.

Of course there's no one answer.  EQ, room tuning and speaker dispersion all matter and affect what we hear. :)

Hope those of you who have tried this found out something new.

Best,
E
erik_squires OP
16,668 posts
 
I have umteen acoustical panels and bass traps, but until I bought a DBX Rackdrive 360, I could never get the bass balanced the way it should be.

Absolutely common.  Room tuning + EQ can be miraculous. 

If you can't have both, do what you can.

asvjerry's avatar
asvjerry
4,936 posts
 
@handymann ....+1, but here a Behringer 8024....since the late '90s'. *G*  Steep learning curve, but the $ then (and certainly now) made the improbable possible. *S*

Always helped make 'miserable' into tolerable...;)

"Bad Room!  BAD room!  Go to your.....corners...😒....oh, forget it..."


jandewitt
25 posts
 
The fact that you can diminish the influence of the room by close listening does not mean your room is bad. It means your room is influencing your sound. And the further away you sit the more the room comes into play. And as you can't have a room without acoustics (an echoic chambers don't count) it is worth paying attention to the acoustics of the room. Creativity and DIY can be your wallets friend here by the way.
audiokinesis
2,764 posts
 
Here’s an interesting perspective from acoustician Matt Poes, who does room design and installs acoustic treatments for home audio and professional studios and venues:

"A speaker that has controlled dispersion does basically the same thing you’d expect an acoustic panel to do, but it does a better job.”

Interesting coming from an expert in the field whose commercial interest is in acoustic panel sales, but not in  speaker sales.  [Disclaimer: I have a commercial interest in speaker sales.] 

Duke
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