I just got a serious lesson in room acoustics. Please let me explain.
I recently did some remodeling on my house and one of the upgrades was removing all the carpeting on the main floor and replacing it with hardwood flooring. At the same time, my family room (also on the main floor) got new book shelves), coffee table, end tables, etc. There is also a 7′ by 10′ rug on the floor. There is a small dining table and four chairs to one side and one upholstered recliner in the room. We are currently waiting for a small upholstered sofa to be delivered. The overall room size is about 15′ by 16′ with a fireplace. There are also french doors going outside with drapes which can be pulled across them. Needless to say, acoustically speaking, this is a fairly “active” space now without much to absorb sound. What I clearly did not appreciate was how active it was.
So yesterday I wired up a spot on one of the bookshelves for an amplifier and installed the Marblewood amp. I wired in speakers on either side of the fireplace so that we could get some pleasant background music in the space. And this is when the trouble began.
I plugged in an iPod and selected some light contemporary music; and I thought there was something wrong with the amp. The mids and highs were overpowering! On careful consideration I decided that the low end was there, and at an acceptable level, but the upper octaves were almost painful! So I checked out the amp and it seemed fine. Then I swapped in the Lacewood from the other room and suddenly the Lacewood had the same issue. And that’s that’s when my education started. It was the room!
So I played a variety of music from classical, to jazz, to rock. All had the same issue. Then I pulled the drapes over the french doors. That actually helped significantly. When I added a small rug to the room and covered more of the hardwood, it got even better. At his point I began to think about most of my listening areas in the past. In general, wall to wall carpeting was the norm, and lots of textiles in the form of furniture, wall hangings, etc. This past experience had seriously colored my expectations.
Please don’t misunderstand, I understand acoustics and am aware of how the absorptive qualities of materials in a room affect acoustics. But up to this point, it was more an academic understanding. But now that I have a VERY active space, the extent to which room acoustics can color the sound of an amplifier was really driven home. As we finish decorating and filling out this space, we will have to careful to balance the room acoustically as well as visually.
So, has anyone else had an experience like this? I’d be interested to hear.
Hello.This post was really remarkable, particularly since I was browsing for thoughts on this subject last Saturday.
When I was doing the addition on our house in Virginia, I had been doing wiring, plumbing etc. for many months, and had got used to walking around in that very live space. Then is stapled up all the paper backed fiberglass between all the studs, and the big room instantly changed to a close approximation of an anechoic chamber. The only time I’ve ever been in a “deader” space was the big NASA acoustic chamber at Plum Brook. Most spaces people occupy are fairly middle of the road, some soft, some hard surfaces, so they “work”. Going too far either way results in something we perceive as “wrong”.
In my opinion speakers and rooms are what hi fi is all about. The speakers and room must “match up” for good sound. Speaker placement, listening position, and sound level are also critical. I don’t think that the sound of the amplifier gets colored by the room, but how the speakers interact with the room is definitely a function of the room and its acoustics. Keep the system exactly the same, play the same music, but move the speakers around – each speaker position sound different from any other.
What type of speakers are you running in your room?
My personal preference is a sealed box woofer with a dome tweeter that is padded down a tiny bit (maybe about -3 dB). This design sounds the most “neutral” to my ears. I have yet to find a ported box that does not have at least some “boom” at bass frequencies.
And as you have noticed, wall to wall carpeting makes an unbelievable difference. Some years back we had the carpeting in our rec room replaced. For a day or two there was no carpeting, just a hard tile floor on a concrete slab. During that time the room literally became an echo chamber, even normal speaking voices became loud, strident and shrill. after the new carpet went down, the room became acoustically “neutral” again – even though the walls are hard surfaced and sound reflective.