Did Amir Change Your Mind About Anything?

@prof-

     Your opinions on Richard Feynman's philosophies are irrelevant to me.

     What are your objections to the references, facts and history, regarding electromagnetism and Physics/QED, posted by moi, that you've so easily dismissed, "prof"?

     Just in the spirit of discussing things that might make our systems sound better.

@prof-

RELAX, Sheldon: we’re not splitting any atoms, here

And yet you posted this as relevant to the thread:

https://forum.audiogon.com/posts/2582812

And told us you revered Feynman!

Look, I tried to engage you on Feynman and the relevance of the scientific method, but it’s clear now you can’t answer the question I posed.

If you want to just continue only answering with insults...you do you. I’m out.

@amir_asr ,

Quick, tell me what frequencies in this graph are room modes, and which are boundary issues? Hint, there are some obvious ones that the Lyngdorf was not able to do anything with that are the boundary issues and those absolutely can be improved significantly with proper use of acoustic panels. That is simple physics. You are correct that multiple subs won’t get rid of your room modes completely, but they will soften them considerably and present more consistent bass across a larger listening space whereas room correction improvements will be more localized.

As a point of information, what Ansi-CTA-2034 uses for Front Wall and Rear wall is opposite what most audiophiles will call the front and rear wall. In 2034, for instance, the front wall bounce is the spatially average 0º, ± 10º, ± 20º, ± 30º horizontal responses and 0 degrees is pointing forward from the speaker, so when looking at the speaker, it is what most would consider the back wall. The Rear Wall Bounce is what most audiophiles call the front wall reflection, hence why it declines rapidly at high frequencies due to the directional nature of the speaker at higher frequencies. The rear wall bounces is the spatially average horizontal responses at ± 90°, ± 100°, ± 110°, ± 120°, ± 130°, ± 140°, ± 150°, ± 160°, ± 170°, 180°.

Due to precedence effect, the on-axis sound, and not the reflections rule predominantly what you hear. And this is naturally not impacted by the room (above transition frequencies). What reflection there is, gets attenuated due to much longer path length of that front wall.

This is of course correct.

Also correct is that the early reflection graphs are spatially averaged over a large number of angles and hence both masks acoustic interference, both constructive and destructive and provides no weighting for angles that may be more or less relevant in a given room, speaker position, listener environment which can impact acoustic interference as well as timing and intensity as it relates to early arrival reflections that may interference with the precedence of the direct sound.

A case in point is the room response curve you posted which has clear boundary interference, however, that would not show in a 2034 report. Nevertheless it occurs, it is audible, and it can be addressed.

The second issue not readily evident in the room response though there are some indications is the strong reflections from the very close side walls that will arrive both close in time and relatively high in power compared to the direct response. Yes it is correct that your speakers are well designed with smooth off axis response hence this won’t cause any weird tonal issues making assumptions about your wall materials, but back to the precedence effect, it will affect imaging, and while side wall reflections can make the image seem more expansive and the result pleasurable, when the wall is that close the result is invariably negative. You may not trust audiophile listening reports, but in similar situations, almost without exception where an audiophile was required to place their speakers near side walls, the addition of appropriate acoustic panels resulted in a significant perceived improvement. Anecdotally, you will not find a large professional studio with speakers placed that close to a side wall without use of acoustic treatments.

I won’t say it is universal, but it is almost universal that treatment of first reflections in a small rooms is recommended by professionals. Unfortunately, there has not been extensive research on this topic to draw on and what does exist is mainly around speech intelligibility, however, Brett Leonard in his PhD dissertation did some excellent work showing effects of a rather early intense reflections on perception and even the variability of that perception across music genres. Your position does not appear to be based on the fundamental science, available research, or professional recommendation.

Quick, tell me what frequencies in this graph are room modes, and which are boundary issues?

The mere question indicates you don't know what you are looking at.  Hint: look at the measurement again.  It says right there.

I won’t say it is universal, but it is almost universal that treatment of first reflections in a small rooms is recommended by professionals.

Those are the professionals you want to stay the heck away from.  That is old school thinking invalidated by a ton of research into what makes a pleasant listening environment..  The advice persists because people don't bother reading any research in this area and really learning the topic.

Unfortunately, there has not been extensive research on this topic to draw on and what does exist is mainly around speech intelligibility, however, Brett Leonard in his PhD dissertation did some excellent work showing effects of a rather early intense reflections on perception and even the variability of that perception across music genres. 

His thesis is excellent but you are completely misrepresenting it.  That work was completely focused on ability of professionals to get *work* done in different acoustic environments.  It had zero to do with listening for enjoyment.  If you had just looked at the abstract you would have realized that:

"This new methodology involved constant interaction with the test, and provided highly trained recording engineers a set of tasks and controls similar to their normal work."

Testers were given some common tasks in mixing content and they were timed in their ability to get them done.  Subjective results were also captured on their preference.  This subset was published in Journal of AES in paper, he Practical Effects of Lateral Energy in Critical Listening Environments

I cover a synopsis of it in this post. In a nutshell, the most preferred treatment was no treatment (reflective):

Back to thesis paper, in an experiment related to dialing in the right amount of reverb under different acoustic conditions, this was found:

"If consistency and repeatability are desirable characteristics for an engineer in a given environment (which they most assuredly are), the reflective environment may in fact be a better mixing environment. This could in turn contradict the idea that an acoustically untreated facility is inferior, at least in this one regard."

So even in conditions that "everyone thought" absorption was the answer, i.e. studio work, your own cited research indicates the assumption is false.