Anechoic listening room?

Not sure if this is the right place.
appologies if so.

But if you could make an anechoic or close too room as a listening room (for loudspeakers naturally)
would that be recommended?
i cant seem to find anything, or even any "reviews" of listening to loudspeakers in an anechoic chamber?
(granted it was a limited search, easier to go to the sauce!)

have any of you experienced this?

im just really curious, music from a linear projection, with Thumpy bass?
seems very interesting.
numerous channels?

things could get weird!
 
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if you could make an anechoic or close too room as a listening room (for loudspeakers naturally)
would that be recommended? i cant seem to find anything, or even any "reviews" of listening to
loudspeakers in an anechoic chamber?

Listening to music in an anechoic environment is very interesting. You easily hear ALL the flaws
in the recording and equipment, without the room acoustics obscuring them. Many people hate this,
but I think it's great. The outdoors is a perfect anechoic chamber, though the ground relative to the
speakers still affects the bass region. A number of loudspeaker mfrs have used outdoor testing.
 
Listening to music in an anechoic environment is very interesting. You easily hear ALL the flaws
in the recording and equipment, without the room acoustics obscuring them. Many people hate this,
but I think it's great. The outdoors is a perfect anechoic chamber, though the ground relative to the
speakers still affects the bass region. A number of loudspeaker mfrs have used outdoor testing.


that would be really intersting for sure!
digitally generated music would be..?! (no recording flaws )
agreed outside is pritty good at anechoic!
BUT i dont have Aussie bush doof style sound setups to drown out every other source!
i do like my music immersive. its somewhat of a therapy for me!
 
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that would be really intersting for sure!
digitally generated music would be..?! (no recording flaws )
agreed outside is pritty good at anechoic!
BUT i dont have Aussie bush doof style sound setups to drown out every other source!
i do like my music immersive. its somewhat of a therapy for me!

I've listened to a variety of speakers, amps, etc. in a 100Hz anechoic chamber, and it's very educational
about equipment and recording flaws. This experience helps you tune room acoustics, too.
 

ra7

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Listening in anechoic chambers would be very uncomfortable because of the lack of reflections. I recall in Toole's book he mentions that listening to stereo in an anechoic chamber is like listening through headphones. The image forms in your head, not outside. What else would you expect? Because there are no reflections, there are no distance cues. You could try moving your head to gauge distance using amplitude variations and using the ear pinnae.

We like reflections, we've evovled that way. But this is a very complex issue. If the reflections are too early, like the ones from floors and ceilings in typical listening rooms, then they tend to color the sound. In my limited experience, eliminating the floor and ceiling reflections and also the front wall reflection has been highly beneficial. Other than that, you just want a room in which you can easily converse -- not too lively, not too dead.
 
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listening to stereo in an anechoic chamber is like listening through headphones. The image forms in your head, not outside.

Not at all, in my experience. The sound seems localized right in the plane of the speakers, as normal.
Do sounds that you hear outdoors seem to be inside your head? Of course not. We would not have survived
as a species, if that were the case.
 
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Agree with Rayma. Had some experience with listening in anechoic rooms and stereo imaging is point sharp, as is detail. You still experience crosstalk, i.e. sound from the left speaker reaches your right ear and vice versa. So no in your head-experience. The 'unpleasant' experience rather emerges from the lack of reflected sound whereas one sees the walls. Just closing your eyes is enough...
 
I've read a lot about sound recording over the years, and the question reminds me of various recording and control (mixdown) rooms and their evolution. The live-end-dead-end approach (where the speakers are placed in the 'dead' or sound-absorbing half of the room) has been popular in recent decades:
Early Sound Scattering & Control Room Design

I have a lot of books on bookshelves (which makes for pretty good diffusers - each book is a different size) along the walls, and putting my speakers on stands a couple of feet front of the bookshelves has given results I like, even in a too-small room. I've seen the photograph of Steve Jobs in an almost-empty room with a stereo system and a lamp, and I cannot image that sounded good.
 

ra7

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Hmm... interesting. Thanks for sharing rayma and markbakk. I haven't ever been in an anechoic chamber for any extended period of time, so I do not know. But I was going on what Toole said. It also makes sense. Outside there is always a ground reflection to tell you the distance. If there are no reflections, what auditory mechanism would lead to localization? I'd imagine we can tell the location in the azimuth plane because of the timing difference from one ear to the other. But how would you perceive depth?
 
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But if you could make an anechoic or close too room as a listening room (for loudspeakers naturally)
would that be recommended?
Yes, in a manner of speaking. You make your speakers do the work of avoiding the room not the other way around.

is like listening through headphones.
..where ..
The sound seems localized right in the plane of the speakers, as normal.

Except that you get your speakers to exclude early reflections and encourage late reflections so a background ambience remains but the heavy reflections are avoided.
 
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It's been decades since I was in an anechoic chamber, I mostly remember it as being very calm and peaceful.

The cave where I now do my listening is not anechoic in the strict sense, it does not absorb sound - but the reflections are so random and uncorrelated that it almost sounds anechoic. There are NO parallel surfaces at all, and very few flat ones. It's rough and random. It does seem to eat up sound with the subjective result being very matte.

And that makes for lovely acoustics. I can really hear the acoustics recorded, whatever they are. Not headphone like at all, except perhaps for the level of detail. Imaging is surprisingly good. Fade outs are given full value (not always a good thing), piano sounds decay wonderfully.

Having been a been fan of diffusion in listening spaces for many years, the happy accident of getting a cave for listening space makes me feel very lucky - and confirms my like of diffusion. Absorption can be good and serves a purpose, but massive diffusion, IMO, is king. Not easy, not cheap, but King.
 
very interesting,
im really upset that ive only recently discovered a passion for audio.
i had the PERFECT den to make into a listening room at my previous place! (would have been something similar to what you are describing.
oh well!


regarding room optimization questions, where would be the appropriate place to post?
im living for 6 months in brisbane, and would like to make some temporary improvements.
im thinking of drawing up a Cad version of the room so others can easily see it. ceiling and floor are not parallel and there is a small room coming off the side of the main room, so the acoustics are rather odd to figure out with my humble knowledge!
 
I tried a listening room with sound absorbers all over... I mean everywhere. I could hear the blood in my ears.
The speakers was corrected with FIR and everything was clean as can be.
It simply felt wrong and a bit alien. Cause first off - it's not cozy or pleasant. There's missing a bit of room-sense and you kind of feel part of an experiment, rather than listening to music for pleasure.
I much prefer a normal room with a bit of carpet, furniture and damped sealing. When things become too correct.... then it just becomes to much - in an unexplained way...
 
I think anechoic chamber listening really can reveal flaws in a system. It really help verify the direction of design criteria I thought was reasonable. Truly proved to me that looking at the data the way I feel adequate to guide design issues were in the right direction.