Room response - it really matters

[bentoronto]

This is just some speculation.

A lot of music has notes sustained long enough to activate room resonances.

The perturbations arising from room resonances are very large. Not easy to address these by room treatments. The ordinary logic is to activate all you can rather than live with a system in which only a few are prominent.

Toole has shown that a "statistical" treatment of around four scattered woofers will do the trick. Not obvious to me that wave-length analyzed and planned locations are better than just cannily scattered speakers.

Recently, I added an open baffle sub and posted some details. Do I hear people laughing?

Link

With some EQ, it has some output north of 50 and doesn't sound bad by itself. I play it with a mixed-bass signal from 110 Hz down in parallel with a Klipschorn. It has a mid-wall location and propels the sound from a circle 5 feet in diameter. That should tickle a whole bunch of room resonances and be complementary to the corner horn.

Sorry if I lapse into "golden-eared" language and I am not sure if I'm really hearing stuff or just "hearing" theory and some measurements. There is a smoothness to the sound and that is quite clear also on my 50 year old sweep tone recording.

The interesting sound for me is something like, "all the keys on the organ seem to be working." That sentiment means than on a run down the keys on the manual, all the keys play with comparable loudness and nothing is missing. And I am talking about recordings I've heard many many times before. It is very nice quality to have in a woofer.

There's a comparable experience on all bass music but not as easy to describe as with organ music notes. The bass is quite attractive.

I'd say "total system response" including consideration of room resonances deserves more attention in this subwoofer forum than whether you are using 12 or 18 mm MDF.