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JWL

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  1. I understand your skepticism toward my point that any room can be improved with bass trapping. It does seem like an oversimplification, however experimentation has shown me otherwise. Can you give me an example of a small room that was not improved by adding broadband bass trapping to the corners? I would be very interested to see it..... and by "improved" I mean "reduced ringing and flattened the frequency response," so I would expect any counterexample you can provide to show authentic "before" and "after" frequency response and waterfall graphs to demonstrate that ringing or frequency response were degraded by adding bass traps (and I'm also assuming bass traps of sufficient quality). Also note that I am talking about bass trapping particularly -- it is VERY easy (and sadly all-too-common) to over-absorb high frequencies in a room, making it too dead. And I was also referring to small rooms, meaning smaller than something like a concert hall, where most of us do our listening and/or recording.
  2. I agree, you don't need to test your room (which is not to say that testing the room can't be interesting or useful). No matter where the problems are in your room (both physical location in the room, and bass frequency), the solution is always the same: bass trapping. The more bass traps you add in the more corners of the room, the flatter the frequency response will get. It really is that simple, although you can do things like optimize placement to maximize results if you only have a few bass traps.
  3. Thanks for your points, Barry. I agree with you in the sense that any form of "room measurement" is imperfect and will only give you a partial sense of what is happening. I find using measurement software to be the least imperfect way to discern what is happening in your room, but as you point out you can only measure one place at a time, and every point in the room will have its own unique frequency response. Averaging responses from multiple locations -- as well as turning on "smoothing" in a response graph from a single location -- will obscure the detail of what you see in the graphs, simply because narrow peaks and nulls are "averaged out." For instance, the following graph shows 2 curves, each generated from the same data, one with 1/3 octave smoothing and the other with 1/12 octave smoothing: As you can see, the 1/12 octave smoothing (with less averaging/smoothing) shows much more detail. For those who don't want to get into measuring software, you can download the RealTraps - Test Tone CD for free from our website. This gives you quite a bit of information about what your room is doing below 400Hz, and when you record the results into a spreadsheet you can generate a crude response graph. This method is time consuming and not as accurate as software, but some prefer it for its simplicity. The point is, a good treatment strategy will improve the sound of the room everywhere, and will result in a much flatter frequency response everywhere. So while the "disease" -- that there is no such thing as a perfect listening room -- cannot be cured, we can certainly make the patient much more comfortable with good treatments. :-D
  4. I usually put the mic where the center of my head would be while listening, with the omnidirectional mic pointing up (this is mostly due to convention, if the mic is truly omni (no mic is perfectly omnidirectional) then it shouldn't matter which way the mic is facing). Yes, if you move the mic even an inch the response will change somewhat, which means the left ear and the right ear hear different sounds. So it's all about compromising and being as accurate as you can. I will also often take separate measurements for the left and the right speakers, as well as together, just to give me maximum info. This is particularly important if your room/setup is asymmetrical.
  5. I would never discourage anyone from measuring their room. It can be useful to demonstrate what's happening, etc. etc. My point is that it's not 100% necessary, and that you can make real and obvious improvements by treating a room (and setting it up correctly, and using the best gear available to you) without measuring.
  6. Anything placed inside the wall cavity will have very little effect on the sound inside the room, though it can definitely help reduce the amount of sound that gets outside the room. To improve the sound inside the room, you need acoustic treatment inside the room. I must respectfully point out that this is false. Our (I work for RealTraps) MicroTraps are flat panels, are a bit over 1" thick, and are effective down to about 250Hz. Thicker panels perform to lower frequencies; our MiniTraps (3" thick) are effective to below 80Hz, and our MondoTraps (4" or 6" thick) offer even more absorption down to below 50Hz. In general our approach (or at least the first 2 and most important steps) is to add as much bass trapping to as many corners (including wall/ceiling and even wall/floor corners) as possible, and to create a Reflection-Free Zone at the listening position. It's important not to over-do high frequency absorption or the room will become too dead, but it's impossible to have too much bass trapping in a small room. The more bass traps you add, the flatter the room's response will get. For details on our general strategies for listening rooms, see: RealTraps - Acoustic Basics Also, we have several articles on room measurement that you might find useful, including a "shoot out" of various measurement microphones (including multi-thousand dollar mics as well as mics below $50): RealTraps - Room Measuring Series RealTraps - How Does That Sound Look? RealTraps - Optimizing Acoustic Treatment using ETF RealTraps - Measuring Microphones Measuring a room is useful to show what YOUR room is doing in terms of the specific frequencies where you are having problems, but no matter where the problems are the solution is always the same. More bass trapping will clean up the frequency response by reducing comb filtering. Absorption at reflection points will clean up clarity and restore the stereo image/soundstage. So while measuring room can be fun if you are interested in such things, it's not really 100% necessary in my experience. James Lindenschmidt General Manager, RealTraps RealTraps - Home
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