In Reply to: I don't agree or disagree - just have a more insightful, maybe even more useful comment... posted by villastrangiato on July 14, 2012 at 10:20:47:
Well yes, if the room is absorptive enough that there is little energy delivered to the ears via reflections, then obviously the direct sound matters the most. But unless you have a highly damped room or a nearfield setup, that is unlikely to be the case. In most home listening rooms, once you are beyond about 5 feet back from the speakers (this distance of course varies with speaker characteristics and room acoustics), more energy arrives at the ears via reflections than via the direct sound.Toole notes that the following factors all correlate well with subjective preference:
1.The first-arrival sound’s frequency response at the listening position;
2.The spatially-averaged response across a window plus or minus 30 degrees horizontal and plus or minus 10 degrees vertical;
3.The spatially-averaged response of the early reflections from the four walls, ceiling, and floor;
4.The sound power, or the sum total of the speaker’s acoustic energy radiation; and
5.The directivity index, which looks at the difference between the first-arrival sound’s frequency response and the sound power (summed omnidirectional response).
Note that four of the five have more to do with what's happening off-axis than with what's happening on-axis.
I have no problem with taking the room and setup and listener positions into account when choosing speakers, but without such specific information it makes sense to look at what is likely to matter in most rooms. The direct sound matters and so does the reverberant sound, and in general the role of the latter is greatly under-appreciated in part because it is generally under-reported.
Duke
Me being a dealer makes you leery?? It gets worse... I'm a manufacturer too.
Edits: 07/14/12
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Follow Ups
- insights - Duke 11:21:17 07/14/12 (1)
- RE: insights - villastrangiato 12:05:54 07/14/12 (0)