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How NOT to set up speakers and room treatment ( Goldensound)
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Yep. It took almost 40 years until some genius pops up to enlighten us all.
tuga
Major Contributor
I'm really sorry to say this, @tuga, but your comments truly annoy me. I started having a lot of sympathy for your position regarding "data not analyzed well enough". For perspective, I've had some publications on reanalysis of certain clinical trials and working on new "models" to test compounds, so I can relate to what you say. I totally get the point that data may not be sufficient for you. I took the time to figure out that certain data were not explained appropriately, developed a model, sent it for review and publication in peer review journals. I stuck my neck out.
HOWEVER, you have to state your position on WHAT you suggest should be done. Just poo-pooing the work of others is not enough. You have to propose a method and even if you don't conduct the research, at least provide your template or model for others to comment.
You are just being difficult for its own sake.
You either be more specific on what and how it should be done or basically, you become a gnat or an ant at a picnic.
Be productive, cooperate and contribute. It is up to you. I personally, don't care as much of this discussion goes above my head anyway.
You have no control over what comes out each speaker. Stuff gets mixed into each channel as well as both.
He has been this way since he joined the forum. Always complaining about anything Floyd Toole, Harman, etc. As far as I can tell, he has not moved an inch from his position no matter how many times one answers his complaints.
No "pull"? I'll bet no "beer" either. What a shite book, why are you reading it?
Are you talking about the mixing/production here, or in-room acoustic crosstalk, etc?
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I am talking about music that is published that we consume. You can't assume everything is coming out of two speakers. Often things are mixed for one or heavily biased to one speaker. Certainly if you are a fan of Beatles this is what you have with hard pans. Having these come out of one focused speaker is not natural.
Well said Amirm, also companies like GIK Acoustics or Vicoustics don’t help since they make money by selling you acoustic treatment!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.
Oh yes I agree recordings and production choices are highly variable, especially if you are thinking historically. Upthread I noted (and quoted) Toole discussing preference wrt hard pans and his thinking that worked to disadvantage the ESL63 in his seminal speaker preference study.
But (a lot of) modern music is made using DAWs with a range of more sophisticated tools now. Sometimes hard pans have their place in a mix, but it's a basic technique, and lazy if it dominates. We often pan past the outside speaker of course, and that requires both speakers to do the phase thing. I find very good assembly of the artificial stereo image in a lot of music I enjoy. We may not listen to the same things (but I see a good range and some overlap in your playlist in another thread) so our perspectives can be a bit different there.
Deficiencies in some program material doesn’t mean stereo techniques don’t support good stereo imaging, that’s crazy. Even if some people don’t prioritise it, or prefer more channels, etc.
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thecheapseats
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great vid and interviews... the discussion of acoustic edge effects was hilarious, as well as informative...
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Galliardist
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The same applies today with classical duet recordings. The instruments may be placed "in" each speaker, or very close to the edge of any stereo image. Sometimes they are two "stereo images", close miked as if for a solo recording, then panned to either side of the image. These can be quite difficult to reproduce well in practice in my untreated room, and I suspect that some examples need a dead room to play back correctly, while others that are more like dual mono or recorded with a more traditional crossed pair approach need the opposite.
I'm sort of forming the opinion from this that there would be mileage in having reconfigurable acoustic treatments in dedicated rooms, at least for stereo. Motorised panels and curtains, anyone?
theREALdotnet
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This only applies when you have the luxury of a dedicated listening room, of course. I have that luxury now, too, but this hasn’t always been the case. I know too well the compromises a shared living space requires.
theREALdotnet
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I don’t find it surprising, though. I have long suspected (from seeing all the quotes and snippets that are being weaponised in debates like this one, not from reading his publications in their entirety) that Toole prefers the “Bose sound”.
Yes, I've been thinking that.
Also, thinking about Amir's position that lateral reflections are generally preferred and thus desirable in a listening room, and my disagreement with that: I am relying on a large body of modern music mixed with modern stereo effects including (but not limited to) extra wide panning. I often lose interest in an album or even an artist/group's body of work because they don't do that. Comparing FKA twigs (modern mixing/effects) to Godspeed You! Black Emperor (anachronistic narrow soundstage) for example.
Imagining if I listened to a whole lot more of the latter category, I would likely want a room with (stronger) lateral reflections to make things fun again.
But I liken it to the 'permanent effects factory' argument often deployed (not always accurately) against vintage gear by the sinad-inistas. I prefer the stereo image done properly in the mix, so we can have both wide soundstage and highly focused sonic elements. Using the room as a soft-focus filter is nice for some things, but it's a kludge.
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Nobody said they don't work - we said they have to be massively thick to work. For most rooms, they take up too much space for it to be reasonable when a pressure trap arguably does a better job in a shallower form factor.I totally disagree with you and those who say that wideband porous absorber panels do not work well at 100 Hz or less.
What happens is that the panels have to have a greater thickness and located in the places that are more effective (maximum velocity).
People with a dedicated room will have no problem to put thick and concealed panels.
And for thicknesses of 60-80 cm for use as bass traps type soffit for example, there is nothing like the wadding (so it is called in Spain) and you know it by wadding polyester.
And if the excuse is to put resonators or those active traps, I have to tell you that with a multisub configuration there is no need to put any resonator.
If he wants to put them, fine, but he should know that there are more possibilities to achieve the same thing. to achieve the same thing
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I have the same reaction! If a recording is "too much like mono" I lose interest. It's not that I don't like the music. I can still listen to it. But if it's just going to be mono I don't find anything requiring that I sit in the sweet spot and listen. I tend to listen to any mono recordings I have more as background music.
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That's close to what I have, as described in my earlier post. My sidewall curtains (which I can move anywhere along the wall) aren't motorized, but the reflectivity of the front wall (behind the speakers) has remote controllable black velvet panels, so I can open and close them to get the reflectivity I desire.
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