Listening in an Anechoic Chamber - a report

[dasdoing]

not very detailed, but intresting

Listening in an Anechoic Chamber

A rare opportunity occurred where we could set p a listening test session in an Anechoic chamber. The experience was very much as I had exp...

augene.blogspot.com

 

[amirm]

It starts with this:

"First we listened to different USB cables between notebook and DAC, and tried using the Jitterbug by AudioQuest. We previously agreed that using one Jitterbug was better than just the USB connection. So we first set out to determine which USB cable was better. Prior to this session, I tried the recommended USB cable for the RTX6001 which I previously felt was better than the 30cm cheap USB cable normally better with other USB sound cards, when one Jitterbug was used, the cheap 30cm USB cable seemed to provide a more focused sound image and improved lower frequency presentation. When we listened in the anechoic room, this improvement was more obvious, so we decided to go with the cheap 30cm USB cable."

Given this, I would not put any trust in his subjective impressions with respect to imaging and such.

He also doesn't say what anechoic chamber was used. Small ones are not anechoic to low frequencies so modal response remains and hence, will be speaker dependent.

 

[dasdoing]

"First we listened to different USB cables between notebook and DAC, and tried using the Jitterbug by AudioQuest. We previously agreed that using one Jitterbug was better than just the USB connection. So we first set out to determine which USB cable was better. Prior to this session, I tried the recommended USB cable for the RTX6001 which I previously felt was better than the 30cm cheap USB cable normally better with other USB sound cards, when one Jitterbug was used, the cheap 30cm USB cable seemed to provide a more focused sound image and improved lower frequency presentation. When we listened in the anechoic room, this improvement was more obvious, so we decided to go with the cheap 30cm USB cable."

that did puzzle me, too....and I totaly understand the hate.
but still his report is more reliable than the arguments of thousand of audiophiles saying it would sound horrible without ever having stepped into a chamber.
I also don't think the imaging is a doubt. there is no doubt that reflections are destrutive to imaging, right?
it's more about answering the question if it would be a desireable listening environment, or if it is fatiguing or too unatural or whatever.
in my experience with my rather dead rooms people get used to the unatural feeling very quickly. my girlfriend would say she felt deaf when entering my room...after a few days it was totaly normal to her.
you feel strange when entering a dark movie theatre during the day, too. but nobody would argue it is better to have windows to make the environment more natural..
with all that beeing said, I would love to have the experience one day. I never miss the reflections of sound systems playing at the beach btw. The beach is probably the most anechoic you can get outside a chamber

 

[puppet]

Looks to be a (6) meter square room.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Would have been nice to listen to either crossed x-y or crossed figure 8 recordings to see how coincident microphone techniques sound.

 

[youngho]

with all that beeing said, I would love to have the experience one day. I never miss the reflections of sound systems playing at the beach btw. The beach is probably the most anechoic you can get outside a chamber

No way. The beach has noise from wind and waves, plus there are ground reflections. Maybe a more comparable experience would be outdoors with snow falling heavily without any wind but with a very thick layer already on the ground.

Toole on listening to speakers in an anechoic chamber: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...al-music-pros-using.12225/page-26#post-950095

Or by contrast: http://www.ohl.to/audio/downloads/Basis_of_stereo_Gradient_design-1.pdf
Also interesting was Salmi's comment: "”Diffractions and discontinuities due to the driver, or the cabinet edges, can be clearly heard in an anechoic chamber, and are worst on-axis. But it’s true that in real rooms they are often masked by other reflections from the room and surrounding surfaces" (https://www.inner-magazines.com/audiophilia/defending-the-objective-approach/), which also contrasts to some extent with how I interpreted Toole and Olive regarding room reflections.

There seem to be a lot of myths about anechoic chambers. Here was a fun video about spending an extended period in one:

 

[dasdoing]

Maybe a more comparable experience would be outdoors with snow falling heavily without any wind but with a very thick layer already on the ground.

yea, that would be it

Toole on listening to speakers in an anechoic chamber: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...al-music-pros-using.12225/page-26#post-950095

that seams a little strange. how could sound be percieved in the head because of lack of reflections? reflections don't seam to be part of primary localization mecanisms. on the contrary, the brains seams to need to filter those out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_localization

Or by contrast: http://www.ohl.to/audio/downloads/Basis_of_stereo_Gradient_design-1.pdf
Also interesting was Salmi's comment: "”Diffractions and discontinuities due to the driver, or the cabinet edges, can be clearly heard in an anechoic chamber, and are worst on-axis. But it’s true that in real rooms they are often masked by other reflections from the room and surrounding surfaces" (https://www.inner-magazines.com/audiophilia/defending-the-objective-approach/), which also contrasts to some extent with how I interpreted Toole and Olive regarding room reflections.

any speaker imperfection must be very audible indeed.

There seem to be a lot of myths about anechoic chambers

yes

Here was a fun video about spending an extended period in one:

and there are others. nobody seams to have had problems. though a person with anxiety problems could probably have a hard time.....on the other hand it perhaps could cure? like a shock-therapy?

 

[youngho]

that seams a little strange. how could sound be percieved in the head because of lack of reflections? reflections don't seam to be part of primary localization mecanisms. on the contrary, the brains seams to need to filter those out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_localization

I think this very much depends on the type of recording, but take a look here:

achieving distance and depth in stereo recordings – one man’s opinion

I had an interesting email from an old recording-engineer friend of mine this week regarding a debate he had with a student concerning the issue of “depth” in recordings (in his specifi…

www.tonmeister.ca

Toole notes a continuum of effect, so perhaps you can imagine that the sound source could seem more and more proximal until it reaches in-head localization? I've never experienced the effect, myself, but Toole and Martin have had ready access to anechoic chambers as part of their professional work.

any speaker imperfection must be very audible indeed.

Actually, I believe that Salmi determined almost the opposite: "Almost all speakers of reasonably high quality performed well in the anechoic chamber" (https://www.goodnewsfinland.com/feature/gradient-delivers-sound-that-takes-you-places/)

 

[Inner Space]

it's more about answering the question if it would be a desireable listening environment, or if it is fatiguing or too unatural or whatever.

Sometimes being in a silent chamber can become weird, but the point is it's not silent if you're listening to music in it. It's full of wonderful unadulterated sound. With decent gear, you're listening to nothing but the incoming signal, with everything completely there. Nothing masked, obscured, blurred or smeared. I find it wonderful and revelatory. I encourage everyone to seriously consider trying to build a room like that. It's pretty easy, if you have enough space.

 

[dasdoing]

Sometimes being in a silent chamber can become weird, but the point is it's not silent if you're listening to music in it. It's full of wonderful unadulterated sound. With decent gear, you're listening to nothing but the incoming signal, with everything completely there. Nothing masked, obscured, blurred or smeared. I find it wonderful and revelatory. I encourage everyone to seriously consider trying to build a room like that. It's pretty easy, if you have enough space.

I posted this in another topic

I don't find it counterintuitive, but just to underline this: I just moved up two floors in the same building. my listening room is basicly the same (ceiling a little lower though). my room in the 3rd floor had a lot of absorbtion, but since I am now starting from scratch I will take my time intrducing the absorbtion slowly. last two days I listened to my speakers in the bare room (after 10 years or so with treated rooms, 2 years in this building). The room actualy seams smaller without the treatment. and the ambience in the recording is strange...it is somehow like I am hearing into this virtual room from the outside. and yea, it is hard to tell what ambience I am hearing, my room, or the room in the recording

I now temporarily introduced a little no-reflection-zone. (this is just to avaliate if I move further from the front-wall; this is closest position).

this is probably 1/10 of the material I have only....man the diference is crazy. I imediatly feel taken away from my room and thrown into the ambience of the recording.
Like I said in the quoted post, I listend to the bare room for a few days so I get used to it and hear the diference. The diference is day and night. the bare room sounds just broken. Notice though that there is no carpet and no couch and other stuff. So without the material it is very reflective

 

[dasdoing]

I think this very much depends on the type of recording, but take a look here:

achieving distance and depth in stereo recordings – one man’s opinion

I had an interesting email from an old recording-engineer friend of mine this week regarding a debate he had with a student concerning the issue of “depth” in recordings (in his specifi…

www.tonmeister.ca

Toole notes a continuum of effect, so perhaps you can imagine that the sound source could seem more and more proximal until it reaches in-head localization? I've never experienced the effect, myself, but Toole and Martin have had ready access to anechoic chambers as part of their professional work.

So earlier today this made no sense to me, but thinking it over again and with the experience I recently had in my room, I think I can make sense of all this:
in my bare room I felt kind of exluded from the ambience. it seamed to be in front of me, and I just didn't felt to be in it.
now I created the no-refection zone most of the sense of distance is probably from the cues included in the recordings. the distance is much more 3d....not trapped in the plane of the speakers

 

[amirm]

Like I said in the quoted post, I listend to the bare room for a few days so I get used to it and hear the diference.

A highly reflective room is not good for most music types. So that is the difference you are perceiving as opposed to effect of front of the room absorption.

 

[Hipper]

As I understand it an anechoic chamber will do two things for your listening experience which a typical listening room cannot: it will prevent sound coming from outside the room, and it will stop any reflections.

The ambient sound in our listening rooms can have quite an impact on what we hear. This ambient sound can come from inside the room - e.g. your equipment, air conditioning - or outside - e.g. noise in the next room, traffic noise. Making efforts to reduce this makes a real difference. I added a third piece of glazing to my double glazed window and it lowered the ambient noise of certain frequencies.

My own experience is that reducing reflections improves my listening experience. As I have a dedicated listening room I'm lucky that I can do what I like and to most people I've probably gone 'over the top'. I've got twenty-one bass traps plus various absorbent panels located to reduce wall reflections. The decay times across the spectrum are around 200ms.

The result is nice but not loud bass and the possibility of hearing the finer details of percussion which would otherwise be smothered by ambient sound or late reflections.

What I do not get is 'deep, high soundstages'. I just get sound between the speakers where, if the information is there, I can place instruments and the vocals clearly. A kind of headphone experience.

Basically what I think I get is all the information in the recording without it being muddied too much. I like it anyway!

 

[BoredErica]

As I understand it an anechoic chamber will do two things for your listening experience which a typical listening room cannot: it will prevent sound coming from outside the room, and it will stop any reflections.

The ambient sound in our listening rooms can have quite an impact on what we hear. This ambient sound can come from inside the room - e.g. your equipment, air conditioning - or outside - e.g. noise in the next room, traffic noise. Making efforts to reduce this makes a real difference. I added a third piece of glazing to my double glazed window and it lowered the ambient noise of certain frequencies.

My own experience is that reducing reflections improves my listening experience. As I have a dedicated listening room I'm lucky that I can do what I like and to most people I've probably gone 'over the top'. I've got twenty-one bass traps plus various absorbent panels located to reduce wall reflections. The decay times across the spectrum are around 200ms.

The result is nice but not loud bass and the possibility of hearing the finer details of percussion which would otherwise be smothered by ambient sound or late reflections.

What I do not get is 'deep, high soundstages'. I just get sound between the speakers where, if the information is there, I can place instruments and the vocals clearly. A kind of headphone experience.

Basically what I think I get is all the information in the recording without it being muddied too much. I like it anyway!

That's why I'm interested in sound-proofing my room in the future. I want all the exterior noise out of here. I'm not sure how expensive of effective it is though.

 

[abdo123]

What a waste of money to rent an anechoic to use it to compare fucking USB cables of all things.

The audiophile privilege is too much.

 

[sarumbear]

I encourage everyone to seriously consider trying to build a room like that. It's pretty easy, if you have enough space.

There is simply no way you can build an anechoic room that works in the musical spectrum in a residential size property. You can at best achieve a "dry" room. Do please look at some examples of anechoic rooms.

 

[dasdoing]

A highly reflective room is not good for most music types

sure, but the extremes show us what is happening. that's why I would love to hear the other extreme, too.
But I think I heard enough over the years (3 diferent rooms I treated). this time I will keep my room a little more alive than last time. since this zone I created actualy sounds better than my last room with much more material (including ceiling and backwall). I think I go with this zone and use the rest of the material in the corners to treat modes only

 

[dasdoing]

That's why I'm interested in sound-proofing my room in the future. I want all the exterior noise out of here. I'm not sure how expensive of effective it is though.

sound-proofing and room-treatment are diferent shoes though. for sound-proofing you need mass....a lot of mass. Most of the time people use the "room within the room" aprouch. Or you could just dubble the existing wall (brick)

EDIT: it's not that the room treatment does nothing for the noise though. It wont avoid the noise coming in, but it avoids that the noise adds up via reflections. this is actualy why my girlfriend had this "feeling deaf" sensation when whe entered my dead-ish room

 

[JJB70]

I have spent a lot of time in anechoic chambers and hated the things, I will be happy never to have to repeat the experience. I experienced vertigo like feeling.

 

[sarumbear]

I have spent a lot of time in anechoic chambers and hated the things, I will be happy never to have to repeat the experience. I experienced vertigo like feeling.

Ditto.

During the development of Silver 5L I spent two days in a 5m x 5m x 2m room (Imperial College, London). I have later tested the Silver 5L at Southampton (UK) University when they refurbished their 9m x 9m x 7m chamber (on of the largest in the UK) back in 1996.

Both were horrible experiences. Very valuable for development but for pleasure, no!