Many wise comments in that post and djn too.
When you (actually) think about it, why distress about any seat but one? Superficially sounds egocentric but that's a superficial matter of conscience. Only a problem if you have more than one audiophile visiting your house for a test listen.
When repainting my music room, tried 14 sub locations all at the working-end of the room. With the furnishings (other than big carpet with underlayer) out, a good test. Big differences even with small location movements. Ditto for seat location, as anybody who does REW testing knows.
What's really needed is a study of adaptation (learning) to a room. Just as we adapt visually to a room with reddish illumination and it seems normal, and we certainly learn how to accommodate room reflections in speech (and music?). What about eigentone accommodation? Must take place.
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Well, we like a challenge don't we? We're not gonna settle for anything less than superb fat low end that you can lean into at all listening positions.
It can be done, only it takes resources and some of spare time
.While absorption could theoretically lead to adequate results as well, i've never seen any proper examples of it apart from one person who combined a front array of 4 (or 16?) subs horizontally and vertically positions at 1/4 distance, with a meter or so of absorption in the back of the listening position. That worked really well but is not a realistic option for most users. At least not for me, with my european style (small) house
.In reality you won't be able to dampen all modes, and dampening only some modes won't improve the situation. Thanks god for multisub
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Hi Jag. I agree. I'm not shooting for perfect here, but I do have the time and materials to do a bang up job of it. One issue I want to avoid is overdamping the room with too many bass traps. As far as all frequencies above subs, I am starting with minimal absorption at the first reflection points on the side walls, ceiling, and floor. At the back of the room I will have bass traps in each corner from floor to ceiling and also bass traps across the top of the wall. However, I am building a large fractal diffuser to cover the record shelf that is surrounded by bass traps.
This project has taken on a life of its own and I will play with it until I'm satisfied. I have a good mic and REW on my laptop so many measurements to follow.
This project has taken on a life of its own and I will play with it until I'm satisfied. I have a good mic and REW on my laptop so many measurements to follow.
As below, so above?
This seems like a perfect place to jump in with what seems like an obvious question: if multiple (and different) subs are a possible way to even-out the FR in the bass department, why not multiple speakers in the treble as well? I’ve played around with this a number of times and have gotten interesting results. For example, a pair of JBL L40’s with a pair of Magneplanar SMGa’s. That was not a structured experiment at all, actually kind of accidental, but the sound was not bad. Different. I’ve never seen this recommended though, which is why I’m surprised to see it recommended or even discussed for subwoofers.
This seems like a perfect place to jump in with what seems like an obvious question: if multiple (and different) subs are a possible way to even-out the FR in the bass department, why not multiple speakers in the treble as well? I’ve played around with this a number of times and have gotten interesting results. For example, a pair of JBL L40’s with a pair of Magneplanar SMGa’s. That was not a structured experiment at all, actually kind of accidental, but the sound was not bad. Different. I’ve never seen this recommended though, which is why I’m surprised to see it recommended or even discussed for subwoofers.
Bass wavelengths are longer than the boundary dimensions; bass waves reflect between boundaries before we can perceive such waves, hence the boundaries make an indelible "fingerprint" on the bass that can not be removed after the fact. Properly setup multiple subs to a great extent eliminate that fingerprint. Each sub acts as a new random "bass mode" source in the room, added to the boundary's fixed modal effects: the modes are eliminated at their source instead of attempting to deal with them later after the fact (every other method except the dual bass array which costs about 5-10x more than multiple subs.)
Absolutely not the case above the bass range. See "Schroeder Frequency."
Multiple early arriving sources above the bass range, each with different radiation pattern and spectral content and from different sources degrades performance; the ear perceives this as noise/distortion (see Dr. David Greisinger, Dr. Earl Geddes; Floyd Toole disagrees to a certain extent.) Above the bass we want one "clean" undistorted wave of early arriving energy followed by a minimum of about 10ms of silence. See all the effort to avoid diffraction.
One early/clean signal followed about a minimum of 10ms later by spectrally correct energy is a completely different kettle of fish and can improve performance (e.g. dipoles 5.5 feet from the front wall to meet the 10ms target which is 11.25 feet.) Based on your posts that's not what you describe. (My post here ignores spectral caveats.)
Many differences.
Treble speakers are set up to handle their entire band and can do so with good FR, low distortion, and proper directional efforts, none of which woofers can do.
And the room interaction relates to entirely different factors, eigentones in one case (the room, the speaker location(s), and the chair) and tone balance of reflections in the other (I am assuming that comb filtering is nonsense).
There are good reasons for some speakers to have multiple treble drivers to address deficiencies of single drivers.
A study of Toole's book can illuminate lots about what makes a speaker good by attention to the whole package of sound produced by the full range of speaker. Hint: proper directional output.
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