Finding a acoustically acceptible room is no easy task.
Normally you can not re-arrange your living room as much as needed, and we have to accept a non optimum sonic performance. Another question is how far you would want to go to achieve pervect sound. Even the most enthusiastic audiophiles have limits for what they might consider doing in the pursuit of the perfect sound.
Example: If theoretical calculations and measurements suggest that a subwoofer should be placed 1,5 m from a wall, probably an awkward place, then we might find it hard to accept this. Then we have to compromise instead.
The influence of the room is a well known fact, but that room influence is very big compared to the audio components quality themselves may not be as well known. The problem isnīt usually brought in focus as itīs not an easy on to solve using conventional products.
All of the acoustic properties in a room, reflex patterns, character, frequency response, modes/nodes, are much more important than most people might think. A modern design livingroom typically lacks absorbing materials (carpets, curtains and fabric), which in turn enhances the problems associated with standing waves and reverb times. The remaining frequencies in the room masks the direct sound and we loose information. The frequency response becomes non linear and you might experience listening fatigue. The room may suffer from a wide range of problems throughout the entire frequency range, but the biggest problems are normally found in the bass region.
Read a very thorough test about the room influence here. Read more >
Luck/bad luck determines the sonic performance
If we donīt know the rooms sonic features initially (which most people donīt) and also does not have the means to do something about the problems, this might lead to pure luck determining the end result. Random placement of the speakers/subwoofers may turn out very well or very bad. To help overcome this problem, we developed the Room Analyzer that can help you analyse your room. Using the program, finding the optimum placement for your speakers is very easy.
Read more about Room Analyzer here >
Does all rooms have standing waves? Yes!
In practice, itīs almost impossible to get rid of all resonances in a room even if we put great effort into it and spend lotīs of money.
Example: We have done numerous measurements at Chalmers in Gothenburg in their anechoic room featuring almost infinite absorbation. Even in this room we found a small resonance at about 50 Hz, a known "feature" that has to be taken into account. This clearly shows that even if we optimize the room, a sure way to better sound, you might still benefit from using DSP technology.
A better room has fewer resonances and is easier to correct. But even in a extremely mediocre room substancial improvements can be achieved using DSP.
You can study a few measurements in different rooms here >
Does the room really matter that much? Yes!
A good way of proving the room influence and get a good sense of its importance is to move your hifi system out in the garden and listen. Outdoors, there is none or very little room influence and therefore this simple test is a good way to determine how much your room affects the sound. The other way around is also a good way to discover room influence: Move your system into a bathroom with nothing but clinker and tile or a room with plane concrete walls. This would mean millions of resonances and extremely long decay times, effectively making the sound impossible to listen to.
How big are the differencies?
A well desiged speaker should remain within +-3 dB throughóut the entire frequency range to be considered good, while a regular room can easily vary up to +- 15 dB. When measureing CD players, amps and the extremely small differencies found in interconnect cables and tweaks such as spikes etc, you quickly realize the huge impact the room has compared to the components themselves.
Everybody knows how big difference there is between speakers, but we claim the room itself to be equally important.
Itīs also well known that even the best system may sound mediocre in a bad room. It the room suffers from severe acoustical problems, we consider it a "sin" buying expensive equipment (unless is uses room correction) just to let the room completely destroy the performance. The other way around, we think that the people selling extremely expensive High End equipment should enlighten their customers what it demands from the room in order to sound optimal. But this is perhaps a risk they are not willing to take as it might close the door to many potential customers when they discover that they donīt have such a room...
Creating an acoustically flawless room takes huge amounts of money and effort as everything from materials, dimensions and so on has to be calculated and precision built. Realizing the importance of the room is an advantage, and a good way to make sure the priority is put the correct way when it comes to upgrading a system.
For example, buying very expensive speaker cables when you still have a room that suffers from big resonances is in our opinion completely wrong. The difference of cables is well known, but itīs nothing compared to what can be done with the room acoustics for the same money.
Size of the room?
Generally large rooms are to be preferred as they usually are not as prone to severe resonance problems.
Placement?
Even in a reasonably good room the end result may be poor if the placement is not done properly. The "total amount" of sonic performance is always a combination of the room and placement. Generally, we can say that finding a good placement in a bad room is harder (sometimes impossible), but in a good room itīs much easier. Read more >
I donīt want to change my living room but still want better sound
In this case a subwoofer using DSP would probably be the best investment. You can place the subwoofer anywhere you like, then use DSP to optimize the performance.
Using DSP makes it possible to improve the performance to near perfect in most rooms, but still - a good room would mean even better reproduction.
The solution
Improvong the room acoustically is a sure way to improve the sound, but even spending large amounts of money you will probably still not get rid of all resonances. This is why DSP (Digital Signal Processing) can be the optimum solution. The sound can be tuned close to perfection in most rooms.
Standard DSP technology often only offers poor resolution and software which might cause mediocre results, while our products use state-of-the-art technology normally only found in proffessional recording studios. This guarantees the advantages of DSP, not having to worry about reduced dynamics, increased noise or more distorsion. The reasoning above shows that you still benefit from using DSP even if the room itself is already very good. Itīs always an advantage, and is a sure way to improved sound quality. A better room causes fewer resonances with lower amplitude, which makes it easier to correct the problems. But even i a very bad room, substancial improvements can be achieved using DSP.
Room Tuning
We have chosen to make our speakers flexible with several tuning options to enable you to optimize them according to your room and personal preference. This is done by mechanical boundary frequency adjustment. We call this concept Room Tuning