How NOT to set up speakers and room treatment ( Goldensound)

[voodooless]

No you don't. You still find some flavors to be much more popular than others. It is not at all free for all that everyone likes one of 2000 flavors.

That's exactly the point. Also here, you'll probably find regional correlations. Do a small sample test in the US, vs any other place, and you'll get vastly different results.

In the case of side reflections, the image starts to shift toward the sidewalls, providing a more spacious sound. This is what is liked by majority of listeners. There is no research indicating the opposite, or random preference.

I'm not debating whether the conclusions are necessarily wrong. I'm just debating that you can't just extrapolate them without some pretty large caveats.

I said you can tease out whether there are common factors or not. If such preference is truly random, then 20 person trial wouldn't show any trends but they do.

It's not about being random, it's about what it correlates to.

That aside, many studies have been performed as this area also has interest from educational sector (wanting to improve classroom teacher intelligibility).

Do we have a collection of these somewhere on the forum? Would like to see more of these.

 

[Wesayso]

In the case of side reflections, the image starts to shift toward the sidewalls, providing a more spacious sound.

Exactly, it is much like the same "sauce" on every meal. It gets tiresome quickly. Yet if you absorb that side wall energy and introduce late diffuse and laterally arriving reflections you get a spacious sound that changes with the content of the song. Big when it's in the recording and small when the recording captured it like that. Not to mention it presents a much more clean and clear sound, thoroughly enjoyable.

I tried both and it wasn't hard to pick my own preference. I'd rather follow David Griesinger on the subjects of room acoustics. He has the research to back it up too (just scroll down on his page).

I'm so glad I get to pick my own preference, just by experimenting, it's actually not that hard to do. I pick my own music that I like too! I would hate to have to live with popular music only.

 

[Andysu]

the moment goldensound mentions audio luxury i switch the video off

 

[IAtaman]

That's exactly the point. Also here, you'll probably find regional correlations. Do a small sample test in the US, vs any other place, and you'll get vastly different results.

I'm not debating whether the conclusions are necessarily wrong. I'm just debating that you can't just extrapolate them without some pretty large caveats.

It's not about being random, it's about what it correlates to.

Do we have a collection of these somewhere on the forum? Would like to see more of these.

I am not an expert, and I do suspect subjective part of the research is probably its soft belly as well, but from what I gather, what has been done is a lot more than just asking people what kind of ice cream flavour they like and saying if all ice cream tastes like chocolate people will prefer it. Research asks people which ice cream they like, then they do a multiple regression and find out there are 4 parameters that combined correlate with preference very strongly - a bit like finding people prefer milk and sugar in ice cream, and they say "ok, if you want ice cream people like, make it with milk and sugar". In my mind that is very different than saying people like chocolate ice cream because it is less about preference but mroe about what drives preference, which is a lot more fundemantal, if that makes sense.

 

[goat76]

The main reason for using acoustic treatments is not to fix the frequency response curve, the main goal is the get an even decay time over a large portion of the frequency range as possible and get that to a level that suits your preferences the best, which is most usually somewhere between 200 to 500 ms depending on the room size. If you after adding the acoustic treatment have "won" a more even response curve in the process, that should probably mostly be seen as a bonus and less is left to fix with EQ.



I have a standard apartment living room here in Sweden with concrete walls. With normal furniture, a thick rug, thick curtains, a large sofa, two thin absorption panels and corner bass traps, and a bunch of other things in the room, the decay times from 100 Hz and up were in the region of 500 to 600 ms. By looking at the RT60 Decay graph in REW it was clear that the decay times were a bit high from the upper bass region and throughout the midrange. So I bought 3 more panels that are effective for that range, and the decay times are now down to around 400 ms over that frequency range, and overall more even as can be seen in the "before and after" gif below.

 

[hemiutut]

^^^^^^^^
CONSUMER *RE-PRODUCTION environment

If you watch the video you will notice that although the room has a lot of acoustic treatment, it has a lot of room for improvement.

Written with translations

Greetings

 

[tuga]

I like a dead room aka headphone sound, so won't even bother to read middle 20 pages of likely same old back and forth. Apparently we are already talking about drugs.

In the context of testing and statistically significant samples.

 

[tuga]

oversimplifying

A lot of that kind of cience being bandied around.

 

[tuga]

I said you can tease out whether there are common factors or not. If such preference is truly random, then 20 person trial wouldn't show any trends but they do. That aside, many studies have been performed as this area also has interest from educational sector (wanting to improve classroom teacher intelligibility).

The use of speech intelligibility to justify the need for reflection in music reproduction is nonsensical because recordings, even studio mixes, already have spatial cues embedded... Room-generated distortions (e.g. reflections) will ovelap with the recorded spatial cues and make a mess of the stereo.

But if you listen to a single speaker then the problem goes away.

 

[kemmler3D]

I don't know what to say other than after seeing Cameron's face on the video, my first thought was, "this kid hasn't even gotten old enough to shave yet he wants to tell us how it is done when it comes to acoustics!" As I explained, it was a proof point by the OP that likely this person hasn't put in the miles to know what he is talking about.

I sometimes get attacked for being too old to hear well. I counter that with providing controlled blind tests I have run that show my hearing acuity. I don't just flippantly say don't bring up my age. And will admit to loss of high frequencies. Likewise, if you look like you are still in high-school, then be up front about what makes you an expert in the field.

I was watching a video a couple of nights ago of a woodworker testing shop vacs. He bought a particulate meter from Amazon and measured the dust produced in the air while the vacuum was running. To his surprise, his fancy and expensive Festool shopvac produced more particulate in the air than $99 Rigid vacuum. He was very upfront that he had no idea what he was doing and in no way wanted to to represent that this meter showed the right things. It is this type of transparency that I expect someone like your youtuber putting forward.

I should be clear that the youtuber clearly is smart to have learned what he learned and quickly so.

Fair points, I guess. A little humility goes a long way. However, OP was not as fair in his assessment and the overemphasis on age, without having many specific critiques of the content rather than the author, was very off-putting to me.

 

[symphara]

What?

Well, you started with the 25kHz hearing test... I merely upgraded it, for fun. Physiological reasons aren't preferences.

Once more, you are assuming that preference is random. It is not. Decades of research performed by multiple researchers shows that we are remarkably alike. This is why we aspire for flat on-axis and smooth off-axis response in a speaker. If you were right, then it would be wild west when it comes to frequency response and it is not. This is no different than majority of people in the world liking ice cream, chocolate, popular singers, etc.

You keep saying that, but I'm not assuming it's random. It could be that 60% of the general population likes no reflections, just to make something up, but your 20-person preference test might not show that at all. It could show 80% the inverse. These studies have too few participants and they aren't geographically, ethnically etc. anywhere near diverse enough to draw solid conclusions.

Then I'm really confused in respect to cardioid, wave guides etc. Aren't these generally pretty good (even some of the best) products? The whole thing seems to be about minimizing reflections, unless my understanding is completely faulty here.

To be clear, while my *personal experience* shows that *I* like the sound more when the side reflections are minimized - and I have 3 surround sound systems that I experimented with, including with Gik room treatment - it's far from me to suggest this is the "correct" way of doing it. To each their own.

 

[Zensō]

Anyone with a camera, some lights, a convincing on-camera presence, and just enough knowledge to be dangerous, can come across as an expert on YouTube. I think this was in essence the OP’s complaint about the Goldensound video, and I don’t disagree (though OP could have been more diplomatic in his approach). It doesn’t have anything to do with age, but everything to do with qualifications (or lack thereof) in my opinion. Of course, people are free to do whatever they want on the internet, but they should also expect to receive some push back if what they’re selling doesn’t pass the smell test.

 

[tuga]

Anyone with a camera, some lights, a convincing on-camera presence, and just enough knowledge to be dangerous, can come across as an expert on YouTube. I think this was in essence the OP’s complaint about the Goldensound video, and I don’t disagree (though OP could have been more diplomatic in his approach). It doesn’t have anything to do with age, but everything to do with qualifications (or lack thereof) in my opinion. Of course, people are free to do whatever they want on the internet, but they should also expect to receive some push back if what they’re selling doesn’t pass the smell test.

Can you provide a systematic and well supported critical assessment to the video?
Or are you just smell-testing (and hopeffuly wearing a blindfold)?

 

[Zensō]

Can you provide a systematic and well supported critical assessment to the video?
Or are you just smell-testing (and hopeffuly wearing a blindfold)?

Why bother?

 

[gnarly]

With regards to room side-treatments to reduce lateral reflections,
I think it's fair to say studies have shown the majority of folks tend to prefer spaciousness and side reflections may aid that preference.
And past advice to universally avoid direct lateral reflections may well be misplaced.

But that advice still holds for a significant minority I think.
Personally, I don't care what the majority prefers.....
and don't like to see majority preferences becoming some form of accepted norm for how things work or how things are best done.

I'm also in the camp that thinks type of music preference has a lot to do with lateral reflections.
I don't care much for classical, nor for a reverberant sound. Give me studio pop, rock, blues, country, electronic, folk, hip-hop, dub, etc etc with tons of clarity and dynamics.

My favorite sound is a small live venue with good acoustics, where instruments are either unamplified, or if amplified, each has its own speaker stack.
Leaving the PA to handle vocals only. I love the sound of a backline, rather than a mic'd backline fed into the PA.

This is the sound I try to achieve in home, and squelching early reflections helps achieve it.

In fact, the best "at home" sound I've heard, comes from fully minimizing reflections ....setting up outdoors.
When conditions are right, with low outdoor noise and no wind...this is often preferable sonically to anything other than an excellent live performance.

So like i say, to heck with majority preferences in audio
We can all have what we want, eh?

 

[JPA]

The majority of forum posters are room treatments believers. Some actually sell. Yeah, threads like this are going to be contentious, because next to zero scientific evidence supports their beliefs. That really angers and frustrates them. Subsequent lash outs are normal.

On the contrary, the science behind acoustics and room treatments is clear, simple, and easy to understand for anyone who can deal with basic algebra.

 

[JPA]

In theory resistive absorbers placed against a wall don't work (or are inefficient). That's what you'll find in Toole's book. However, in the last 20 years there's a growing concensus that they work better than expected. Especially large corner bass traps can be very effective. (For really low frequencies larger than the ones shown in Goldensound's video). In a small room there's the additional benefit that they can also help with early reflections. And yes, putting a membrane in front of them increases low end absorption efficiency.

This is news to me. Would you please post some links to studies that show that resistive absorbers are effective at low frequencies?

 

[dfuller]

This is news to me. Would you please post some links to studies that show that resistive absorbers are effective at low frequencies?

I would also like to see this as it flies in the face of every established fact I know about this stuff.

 

[tuga]

The majority of forum posters are room treatments believers. Some actually sell. Yeah, threads like this are going to be contentious, because next to zero scientific evidence supports their beliefs. That really angers and frustrates them. Subsequent lash outs are normal.

Says the angriest poster on ASR. The OP on the other hand was definietly not an angry lash out.

 

[Pudik]

Just as harsh as you read OP's posts, I read your comments as such. He made an excellent point which was backed up by the youtuber being young as backup evidence. That a guy who heretofore had just done a few measurements of DACs and headphone amps, all of a sudden stands up as a professor telling you how it is done as far as room acoustics. This is a field that is NOT learned overnight. It takes years of learning and experience to know what you are doing. In that sense, age does come into play unless the person stipulated exactly how they learned all this and come to teach it to others. No such intro was made. This is just wrong. And as someone said, has become the norm on youtube.

Put another way, if the youtuber was a student of Dr. Toole since he was 16, then sure, no one would hold his age against him.

There was also a contrast presented by OP: that we have a young person with no known experience going against the advice from a world class researcher with decades of experience. That Dr. Toole has such long and distinguished experience I am sure is appreciated by all of you. If so, then the inverse should also be true. That if you are young and with no qualifications in the field, you likely don't have credibility here.

Really, this is a land grab by the youtuber and headphones .com. "Lets jump from headphones to speakers and declare ourselves the authority overnight." That would be cool and dandy if folks were put on notice the qualifications of the actors involved. But that is not what was done.

Finally, we have a youtuber here that like a few others, use measurements to backup nonsense subjectively. In other words, he has a history of not caring what real science and engineering says about sound reproduction. Given this baggage, folks need to be on guard on who they are watching and where he comes from. This again is something that set off our OP.

OK. Here's what this all boils down for me. My little note may raise controversy, nevertheless, here 'tis:

I am pushing 77, a long life with lots of different experiences.

I don't know how many of you know about Hector Berlioz, but he wrote his "Symphony Phantastique" at the age of 30, only three years after Beethoven's death. He turned music upside down with his symphony.

If, of course, that is not enough, Einstein was 26 when he turned science upside down with his general theory of relativity. He was little known at the time. I could cite more cases, for they are quite a few (James Watt, if memory serves).

As for one, maybe I'd try the guy's method and then have an opinion. Needless to say, I am NOT talking about him for I am not involved in the controversy.

What I am trying to say is that youth has nothing to do with inventiveness, handiness or, above all, innate capabilities.

SOLELY my two cents. P.