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

[FrankW]

Also, his 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 which will overlap with the listening room's and make a mash of it.

Your hands are waving but no blind listening tests to support your specious conjecture as always. Just pot shots at real scientists

 

[FrankW]

The preference testing is flawed.

Your conjecture is baseless

 

[FrankW]

A 26-strong sample, that's almost 4x larger than Toole's 'Quad 63 vs. Kef 105.2 vs. Rega Model 3' effects of directivity sample.
Still, is that statistically significant?

Another hilarious post. That paper was done by McGill to follow up on Tooles research that had your fellow Studio believers in a tizzy. It further confirmed all the previous science, including Tooles cited works.

0.2 Historical Context
The impetus for this research was provided by research conducted by F. E. Toole. In his recent book Sound Reproduction, he concludes that the listener can adapt to reflections in a room and can also clearly distinguish between acoustic comb filtering in the listening room (caused by differences of arrival between the direct and reflected sound) from the direct sound itself [1].

To what extent does the mixing engineer’s listening environment influence the final experience of the home listener, especially regarding the role of reflections? A pilot study explores the effect of specular and diffuse lateral reflection on the perception of trained listeners. Reflections may strongly influence balance, equalization, dynamics, and reverberation. In contrast to earlier studies that used normal listeners, this study uses trained audio engineers to perform selected tasks in a variety of acoustic settings. A correlation was observed between the presence of strong lateral energy and an initial reduction of speed for performing a task. However, adaptation soon occurs, thereby restoring the subjects to normal accuracy and response time.

Yet another piece of scientific evidence showing studio believers sighted beliefs conflict with what their 2 ears betray them actually preferring.
Comedy gold

 

[tuga]

Your hands are waving but no blind listening tests to support your specious conjecture as always. Just pot shots at real scientists

Perhaps because the existing research is poor/flawed.

 

[tuga]

Your conjecture is baseless

Only if you don't take is as gospel.

 

[tuga]

Another hilarious post. That paper was done by McGill to follow up on Tooles research that had your fellow Studio believers in a tizzy. It further confirmed all the previous science, including Tooles cited works.


Yet another piece of scientific evidence showing studio believers sighted beliefs conflict with what their 2 ears betray them actually preferring.
Comedy gold

A handful of studio believers. Not conclusive.

 

[FrankW]

Perhaps because the existing research is poor/flawed.

Wishful thinking fallacy

 

[isostasy]

Could we move on from the age discussion? There are some interesting concepts being debated here I'd like to know more about, which I don't think anyone's age has any relation to. I think we all already have an internal sense of age milestones and where exceptions occur? Of course we can all think up situations where someone was older/younger than expected or did a good job qualified/unqualified. The surgeon comparison is particularly irrelevant as you need both qualifications and a huge amount of experience, and it's, yknow, actual surgery.

I couldn't care less what age goldensound is because he talks utter unsubstantiated rubbish about things like 'holographic presentation' and 'timbre' of amps and DACs, many of them ludicrously expensive. I'm simply not going to trust him in a video on anything, let alone how to treat my room. I can fully appreciate that some of the things he says are going to be correct or useful, but I'm not going to wade through all the crap to get to it.

I'm in the ballpark of goldensound's age so I'm not saying this as a jealous old fogey.

 

[FrankW]

Not conclusive.

More evidence vs zero

 

[FrankW]

Yes... he states same @1:12;

View attachment 288961


JSmith

Goldensound is George Santos???

 

[tuga]

More evidence vs zero

Indeed. a 5- or 25-strong sample is not statistically significant.

 

[FrankW]

Indeed. a 5- or 25-strong sample is not statistically significant.

Vs Zero
And of course you citing it, only to blow up in face

 

[isostasy]

Indeed. a 5- or 25-strong sample is not statistically significant.

Statistical significance is defined by more than just sample size. Statistical significance can be misleading due to large sample sizes being more likely to show statistically significant results which might be much smaller in real scenarios.

I'm interested in your viewpoint and would like to hear more because I'm new to many of these concepts. However, I'm not sure a critique of methods is the best way about this, especially in reference to peer reviewed articles in which limitations are made transparent already.

 

[Eetu]

I find GS & especially DMS quite annoying but honestly I think the video was nicely done. I would've picked different speakers though for sure. Floyd Toole's research showed most people prefer a more spacious sound? Leave the sidewalls untreated then, not a huge deal.

The main thing about treatment is not that the decay's exactly x or y ms but that it's constant throughout the freq range. The room sounds dead if there's more absorption in higher freqs than the mids. And frankly they seemed to do a good job here.

He also mentioned there's another video coming on subs so maybe he'll add them to the same setup later on. That should address some of the remaining low bass issues.

 

[IAtaman]

This is not how NOT to setup speakers and room treatment. Not even close. He is recommending UMIK and REW and EQ. "Go buy bunch of expensive absorbers, change all your cables and judge with your ears - after all that is all that matters" would be how NOT to setup speakers.

I am glad the new generation of audio reviewers are recommending measurement mics and software and not ears and money.

One would think a community such as ASR would be glad to see such a review. One would be mistaken it seems.

 

[Dj7675]

I will chime in.

1. Bass traps don't fix bass modes. As Dr. Toole says in one of his private presentations, "the only thing bass traps do is trap your money!" Wavelengths are way too large for any traditional velocity absorbers to do much good. Often people put a ton of them in there to get results and with it, make their room too dead. In general, few if any people are in a position to use velocity absorbers to make effective changes in their room. Pressure absorbers work better but they are expensive and require skill to design and use (they are very frequency selective).

2. He is optimizing for his eyes, not ears. Two ears and a brain don't work like a single microphone and a graph as Dr. Toole would again say. The notion that reflections are "bad" is folklore as comprehensive peer reviewed has repeatedly shown. Yet, it has become one of the "internet rules" to chase them using measurements. Doing so will lead to a completely dead room when you are done. Ask any high-end acoustician what the #1 problem with DIY acoustic is and they tell you people creating dead rooms because of this mistake.

2A. Use speakers with proper directivity and you will not need to fear reflections. Indeed, this is your #1 tool for good sound in a room.

3. Rooms are never ideal. The calculators for room modes and such for the most part generate incorrect results because your walls are not perfect reflectors. Ditto then for golden ratios, and this and that dimensions not being good. Read Dr. Toole's book for example measurements showing this. For this reason, you can actually fill nulls a bit because cancellation unlike what he claims are way away from ideal (or they would not be down just a few dB).

4. Reflectors need to be broadband. Those skyline diffusers are not. And neither are a lot of what you folks slap on walls. Minimum depth should be 4 inches.

5. DSP is extremely powerful. Get the right speakers, put them more or less where you like, and set your seating position the same. Then measure and apply DSP to pull down peaks. This is the formula which will give you 90% of the results with minimum expense and uglification factor (slapping panels everywhere in the room).

Sadly the folklore has gotten so bad that if you don't have a room full of acoustic panels, folks think something wrong with your room. What is really wrong is that people haven't spend $35 on Dr. Toole's book and a few days of reading and learning about real sound acoustics. Please, please do not follow the Internet consensus on this. They are just wrong.

It seems much of the discussion is regarding two channel audio in living room type of spaces. In dedicated home theater spaces, there are no furnishings to speak of besides seating. At least in this type of bare walled space some 4 inch absorption was very beneficial to the overall sound.
Also in home theater spaces where there are for example 9 bed layer speakers and 4-6 atmos speakers, it would seem beneficial to have some treatments of some sort with so many sources of sound.
In our living room with 2 Revel F226be speakers I didn’t find any need for anything in regards to room treatment besides furnishings, but I can’t say that is the case in a dedicated home theater setting where furnishings are minimal and there are quite a lot of speakers.
In regards to low frequencies, I had 18inch x 18inch absorption material hidden in 4 columns in the corners… they helped a very small amount. Removed them, installed 4 subs and with the use of Dirac DLBC, the results were night and day better In regards to frequency response and seat to seat variation.

 

[d3l]

A lot of missinfo on this thread…

Simply put, there is no replacement for a proper room treatmeat and even a small effort is vastly better than none at all.

DSP will absolutely not correct nulls, reflections, phasing and a bunch of other anomalies from bad acoustics.
Its meant to smooth things out on top of the treatment.

Even the best systems on the market, W371 and trinnov work properly only when the basics are right.

 

[Galliardist]

A lot of missinfo on this thread…

Simply put, there is no replacement for a proper room treatmeat and even a small effort is vastly better than none at all.

DSP will absolutely not correct nulls, reflections, phasing and a bunch of other anomalies from bad acoustics.
Its meant to smooth things out on top of the treatment.

Even the best systems on the market, W371 and trinnov work properly only when the basics are right.

That’s enough. I’m finally fully enlightened.

Since I will never have a dedicated room, I’ll just have to give up, It’s obviously impossible for me ever to have anything approaching good sound. Guess I’ll sell up and get a cheap soundbar.

Bye!

 

[tmtomh]

You read what I wrote wrong. I said the same thing. Than a thin absorber only acts on reflected high frequencies. So it has an effect of just EQing the signal and taking out some of the highs. So in that sense the filtering it does is leaning toward high frequencies. Not that the effect is that.

Ah, I see. Okay, makes total sense then. Thanks for the clarification!

Last night after reading through this thread, I tried removing the panels I have on my side walls at roughly the first reflection points. The soundstage width seemed to immediately increase. Of course it was by definition not a blind comparison, but I think the perceived effect is consistent with what acoustic principles dictate, so I’m confident the effect is real.

One interesting - and positive - side effect seems to be that some prominent sibilance and “P” and “F” popping on some recordings seems to stand out less now. These sounds were not distorted in my perception (except on recordings where listening with headphones confirmed there’s distortion in the recording) - just a little too prominent for my taste. I also am noticing a little more ambient sound around cymbals and some snare hits. Again, sighted comparison, but seemingly consistent with what one might expect given the frequencies that would be affected by this change.

 

[Purité Audio]

A lot of missinfo on this thread…

Simply put, there is no replacement for a proper room treatmeat and even a small effort is vastly better than none at all.

DSP will absolutely not correct nulls, reflections, phasing and a bunch of other anomalies from bad acoustics.
Its meant to smooth things out on top of the treatment.

Even the best systems on the market, W371 and trinnov work properly only when the basics are right.

I don’t think one should make blanket statements, DSP will not correct low bass nulls but neither will the stuff many manufacturers sell as ‘bass’ traps, partial FR traps may actually make constant directivity designs worse, so case by case is best.
Keith