If starting from scratch with an existing room, I would first try to set up the system with no or minimal acoustic treatment in the room listening for flattest and most natural sound and only then very slowly and deliberately add in acoustic treatment to the room. This way the acoustic treatment does not act as a bandaid to "heal" improperly positioned speakers or listening chair which should be located for smoothest response based on existing, and fixed, room nodes. So for me, it is gear first, set up second, room treatment third. Perhaps this is because I don't have a dedicated listening room, and aesthetics play a role, so I want to avoid as much room treatment as possible.
Proper Set Up Required for GREAT Sound. Agreed by All! But is it Improper Setup or Wrong Taste?
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If starting from scratch with an existing room, I would first try to set up the system with no or minimal acoustic treatment in the room listening for flattest and most natural sound and only then very slowly and deliberately add in acoustic treatment to the room. This way the acoustic treatment does not act as a bandaid to "heal" improperly positioned speakers or listening chair which should be located for smoothest response based on existing, and fixed, room nodes. So for me, it is gear first, set up second, room treatment third. Perhaps this is because I don't have a dedicated listening room, and aesthetics play a role, so I want to avoid as much room treatment as possible.
Well said micro. The book is a wealth of information and a valuable reference for anyone who is interested in sound, acoustical environments, and audio. I find it hard to believe anyone can dismiss it out of hand when they know nothing about it and haven't read any of it, but maybe that's just me....
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I would take this even further that the biggest destroyer of realism is not the room or the speakers but electronic artifacts (i.e. distortion and noise). Minimizing AUDIBLE distortion and the pernicious effects of noise minimizes the cues that you are listening to reproduction. This is why using electronic EQs and active speakers, especially if they are using Class D amps, will fix the frequency response and perhaps dispersion in the room but will completely fail to convince because of our Ear/brain sensitivity to subtle (or not so subtle) electronic distortions.
Am I saying that more can't be had from better speakers or proper setup and room treatment? No, but I am saying that greater overall realism can be had by focusing on the elimination of electronic distortions and it is possible with a moderate setup from a speaker/room perspective to have a more convincing sound with great electronics and power consideration. You cannot get realistic sound from mediocre electronics/source and great speakers/room treatment but you can get fairly close the other way around.
I agree that minimizing electronic noise is extremely important. Yet the effect of this remains limited as long as the sound remains polluted by acoustic noise from undesirable room reflections. More than once I discovered that distortions that I previously had attributed to electronic noise, e.g., perceived digital 'harshness', were in fact mainly caused by acoustic noise from the room.
Elliot,
I find your words disturbing. Are you saying that you feel no one else could do the installation and tuning the way you would approve? Or that the equipment you sell is specially particular?
When you experience a great amount of noise reduction,the result is less compression of the audio signal. Speakers become less directional and the soundfield expands as the system becomes more efficient. Dynamics and realism are greatly improved a long with clarity. Room acoustics could mask the improvement in uncompression of the recording, but this gain in overal system efficiency will lessen the need for acoustic treatment.
Uncompressing will enable the recording to produce a realistic reproduction of time and space a facsimile of the real event..a greater and extremely natural illusion. Signal purity is more important than the electronics themselves.
To the contrary. The cleaner and more resolving your system inherently is, the more you need to take care of room acoustics in order to make these traits audible.
A boombox sounds almost as good in a bathroom as in a nice living room (ok, I exaggerate). A highly resolving system with very low inherent electronic noise needs an environment with low acoustic noise to match in order to show its full potential.
Al ,when the soundfield is at infinity I really don’t think the room acoustics effect what the listener hears. My room is three sided though, not a closed environment. As far as room ambient noise level in my system it is inconsequential.
I say the soundfield is at infinity because that is what one experiences,similar to a live event,multi dimensional,with great clarity,and realism. Maybe some of the star grounding adherents experience a similar SQ, I don’t know.
Yes Al, you have trotted this personal anecdote out many times. However, let's be clear, just because you could not distinguish between electronic (distortion and effects of noise) and acoustic doesn't mean it is generally applicable to the rest of us. Once one knows clearly what the effects of the electronic issues are, which can be observed by their absence once addressed, then there is no doubt when they are heard in other systems. I used to think of these measures as a final step towards getting a system right and now I think it is the first steps one should take. Obviously, one should take as much care in positioning speakers in a room and if one has serious acoustic issues then treat them; however, I would argue that most people who haven't properly addressed the impact of electronic signature in their system (gear and power) have never been able to tell if they have a really good system or not.
It is my current thinking that we are much more tolerant of mechanical based distortions in audio (the kind caused by speakers and rooms) than by electronic ones. Afterall, if you hear a live string quartet in a great room or a crap room it will sound different BUT, and this is a big but, it will in both cases still sound like a live string quartet...the room acoustics do not destroy this impression and suddenly make the live quartet sound like a poor recording. It is the tolerance and discrimination that tells me that room acoustics are not the limiting factor in realism. Electronic distortion and noise are IMO.
This has been my experience as well and in multiple systems where the principles of getting the electronics and power right have been implemented. That freedom from the speakers is one that is particularly interesting...and surprising. It guess it has to do with high frequency hash and the sonic cues that it provides to the location of the tweeter since it is uncorrelated to the signal. If room acoustics does hinder this to some extent I haven't heard a room bad enough to kill it.
Like RogerD, I have found the opposite. The room doesn't kill the gains made from the electronics and power, in fact the sound becomes so much more satisfying that one then debates the need to go much further.
A boombox has so many electronic distortions that it will sound poor almost anywhere...this just proves the point.
Obviously, no one is saying stick a high end stereo in a bathroom...there are limits to what can be tolerated. Also, a room made entirely of glass or tile will be far to reverberant to get a clean sound...this would be true of a live performance as well most likely.
For me, it is about realistic sound and I have found that room acoustics are not the ultimate killer of this, within limits of normal rooms but electronics and power are most definitely the killer of realisitic sound.
FWIW, I have my own anecdote to throw out. I was asked by a female friend of mine to help them build a home theater for the princely sum of 5K. I was thinking this might be about doable but I said first we should buy some speakers as they had none. We settled on a nice pair of AudioPlan Kontrast III but they already blew about 2K of the budget. Then my friend came back and said the she and her partner wanted a good 2-channel stereo instead of a home theater...I said ok and that we would need a good amplifier and source. We demoed several (used) amps in the 2K range and found all of the lacking in one way or another. Then I said, I am selling a pair of SET monos (Cary CAD-572SE) and a tube preamp (Transcendent Sound GG) for 3K, let's try them out. They said ok and the result was phenomenal. My friend said "WOW"...this is a non-audiophile and her non-audiophile partner, remember. However, they were not quite ready yet to part with 3K so they asked if they could just keep their old Denon integrated amp for now and use it with the speakers. I said let's try it. The result was one of the worst sounds I have heard from a proper pair of speakers and the look of disgust on my friend's face said it all. A week later they called me and bought the Cary + Transcendent and went from zero to proper high end system in one go and have had it ever since (more than 10 years now). It only became musical and fulfilling once the right electronics were in place...the room could have been totally different (we tried it in a couple rooms with similar results) and probably the speakers too and gotten a much more positive result than that speaker in a perfect room with that horrid Denon integrated. Speakers first? Room Acoustic first? Nah...
I notice you are using NBS power cables. I am using NBS Omega Extreme at home and our demo room is all NBS Black Label II cables. These play a larger role in the overall improvement in sound than I would care to admit sometimes. Maybe NBS is no longer the end all, be all of power cables anymore but there is no doubt that they work very well in supressing or eliminating the impacts of various noise in the system.
You must not have read my posts carefully, Brad. I never claimed that acoustics come first. I specifically said gear comes first:
http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...or-Wrong-Taste&p=520835&viewfull=1#post520835
I read this totally different. I think he is saying that a dealer, who carries many products, will not have the expertise in the one brand needed to get an optimal setup. Also, most customers will not have or do not care to have the expertise needed to do the job right. Maybe he is wrong about this but I am not sure what would be disturbing about this assessment. I have the experience as well that most customers just want good sound and don't care about the details that we do on this forum and so need a good setup guy. Most dealers are woefully incompetent at setting up systems as well, IME.
I read your posts carefully and you have been banging your, "I thought it was electronic but now i realize it was acoustics" story for quite some time now.
" I don't think one of these two takes precedence over the other in importance, one depends on the other."
This is where I disagree. They don't depend on each other...at all...they are two different realms, one acoustic and the other electronic.
Now, obviously to get the max you need to deal with both but if budget and room are limited then I would argue they are not equal and dealing with electronic issues will result in a far more realistic sound.
"These two" are set-up and room acoustics. And speaker set-up deals with the interaction of the speaker with the room -- an acoustic interaction.
Yeah, good one, Brad. You are the expert and I am the nitwit. I just love the armchair expertise when you haven't heard the phenomena that I have heard during years of experimenting with my room. On a related note, if I am not mistaken you also claim that you can clearly hear the electronic signature or artifacts of a DAC in isolation from the electronics of the rest of a system, even if you don't know that system and even under show conditions. Patently ridiculous.
IMO Acoustics come first. We just have to make it clear that acoustics does not automatically mean room treatments. Why in my mind shouldn't the source come first? To me it should be a constant rather than a variable. We want the best sources wether we are listening to headphones, in a car, in a living room or a dedicated space. It is a given. Acoustics however, dictate the speakers which in turn dictate the appropriate amplifier. Power quality is also a constant in my mind.
Yes, but for 99% of people in audio forums acoustics in this type of debate means refers to room treatments, not just speaker set up or choosing a speaker that is adequate to the room.
Anyway IMHO the important is not ranking, but the why's - thanks for being so clear.
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