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RE: Room treatments...

Posted by KlausR. (A) on October 25, 2009 at 00:05:28

In Reply to: Room treatments... posted by AudioDoctor on October 24, 2009 at 10:01:12:

Having read a lot of the relevant scientific/technical literature my conclusion with regard to room acoustics is the following:

Too high a reverberation time is no good and requires treatment. There is no research relating to what the reverberation time in small listening rooms should be, so let your ears be the judge. If you feel comfortable and speech intelligibility is good, then it's ok.

Room resonances: only apply treatment when resonances are excited by the music material you are playing. Resonances can and will be excited by broad band test signals but so what?

Bass: Bass quality and room resonances depend a lot on placement of speakers (distance to room boundaries) and listening chair. Bass quality further depends a lot on the loudspeakers themselves. Try to get a cumulative spectral-decay (waterfall) plot of your speakers that'll tell you a lot about bass behaviour. If your speakers in the selected listening position provide tight, well controlled bass, then it's ok.

Early reflections: the common approach and advice is to absorb those, regardless of circumstances. The literature clearly does not provide any evidence for the alleged negative effects of early reflections. On the contrary, the overall message is that the effects are rather positive. There are cases where treatment might be required:

1. high right-left acoustical asymmetry such as one loudspeaker very close to the wall, the other very far from the wall, or one loudspeaker close to a wall, no wall on the other side
2. on-axis response of the loudspeakers very good, off-axis response very bad
3. room has very low reverberation time

So the answer to your question "Are they worthwhile?" is a definite maybe.

Klaus

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