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In Reply to: RE: Suggestions-- treatments vs. changing set-up?? posted by naimie2000@yahoo.com on December 24, 2007 at 19:24:27
Hu,
There are certainly a lot of different speaker and listening placement systems and I suspect all o them work under the right circumstances. The Audio Physic method is not a true near field setup unless the front to back room length is quite short placing you very near to the speakers. The true acoustic near field probably ends about 5' to at most 6' from most speakers and most Audio Physic style setups would have the speakers further away than that. It's really a quasi near field setup.
Ethan's method would be a near field setup in a small to medium room because most of the room ends up behind you and that means there's only a small part of the room in front of you in which to place the speakers. In bigger rooms it also would be a quasi near field setup. I think you need a bigger room for Ethan's approach than for the Audio Physic approach since the Audio Physic approach only 'loses' 50% of the room space in the area behind the speakers. The rest of the room is between you and the speakers. Ethan's approach 'loses' more—62% behind you plus some proportion behind the speakers as well. You would really need to use professional near field monitor speakers that let you listen at very close distances in order to use Ethan's approach in a small room. I put 'loses' in quotes simply because the space isn't really lost and it is actually serving a very vital purpose in both cases, but it's not space that you can use 'inside' the setup. It's space that you give up in a way when you choose where to put the speakers and the listening position.
Having said that, both of those approaches share a major feature in common: they maximise speaker distance to some room boundaries though they do it in different ways. That increases the delay before the arrival of the earliest reflections from the walls (neither can do anything about speaker to floor/speaker to ceiling distances) which maximises the effect of the direct sound from the speaker and minimises to some degree the impact the earliest reflections will have.
I personally would not want to try Ethan's approach in my room because it would place me closer to my speakers than the Audio Physic approach does and I would not want that nor would I want the speakers as close together as they would then have to be. It would also place the speakers closer to the wall behind them than the manufacturer recommends, and it would cause me problems with a archway entrance in the wall behind the speakers and a need to step over cables as you entered and left the room by that entrance. I don't have those problems if I use the Audio Physic approach in my room. Proof, if you like, that not every placement method will be equally practicable with every system, every room, and with every audiophile's preferences.
I don't know about Gik traps. I'm in Australia and most of the acoustic products available in the US are not available here. I'm in the process of ordering some of Ethan's RealTraps to replace my DIY treatments since there is a local distributor for RealTraps in Australia.
The reason absorption works is simple and surprisingly obvious when you think about it. What we hear is comprised of 2 elements, the direct sound which travels directly from the speaker to you, and the reflected sound which reaches you indirectly and only after having been reflected from at least one, and usually more than one, room surface. All of the room acoustic problems that exist—room modes or standing waves (different terms for the same thing), cancellations, comb filtering, tonal shifts, overlong reverberation time, imaging problems, etc—arise because of reflections. Absorption reduces the strength of reflections and can totally eliminate or reduce some reflections to inaudibility. That reduces the size of all of those problems. We definitely don't want to absorb and eliminate all reflections but appropriate reduction of the amount of reflected sound we hear is capable of addressing all acoustic problems to some degree. Absorption is the simplest and most effective way of reducing the strength of reflections.
There seems to be some debate about treatment behind the head when you sit close to the wall. Audio Physic claim it's not necessary provided your head is extremely close to the wall. Ethan claims it's always necessary. Like you, I've never noticed a problem but Ethan may be right and I may simply not have heard what can be achieved if you do treat that area. I certainly can't see doing so causing any harm and it may well do some good. I've never tried it so I can't really comment.
If by 'front wall' you mean the wall behind the speakers, I have some absorption in front of most of that wall in my room because much of the space there is tall windows. I also have free standing absorbing panels in front of the early reflection points on that wall and I find both both beneficial. In my particular room with my setup, I think the side wall first reflection points are more critical but that depends in part on the fact that the side walls are closer to the speaker and the first reflection path from the side walls is shorter than the path from the front wall.
Ethan and I vary on some points, and we seem to like different speaker placement methods (note: his room is set up for a HT surround system whereas my listening room is a 2 channel setup and that makes a few important differences as well) but we seem to be in agreement on a lot more overall than we vary and I think a fair bit of our variance relates to preference rather than a real difference of opinion. Ask any 2 different people about room treatment and you will find some differences in approach and preference. When it comes to setup you have to find one that works for you in the room you have and the same thing goes to some degree for approaches to treatment. Rives, for example, prefer to have the area at the speaker end of the room more lively and the other end of the room more dead in comparison to each other. In some ways I prefer to go the other way but a large part of that is because I like a detailed and precise soundstage. Many other people don't.
There are 2 aspects to successfully treating a room. The first is knowing what sort of sound and presentation you like and are aiming for. The second is knowing what to do to get it. A lot of what gets talked about in discussions about the type and placement of treatment relates to the second aspect. That part is quite precise and you'll see little argument about that aspect of things provided the discussion is between people who are aiming for the same sort of result in terms of sound quality and presentation. There are lots of differences regarding the first aspect and that's because there are strong areas of personal preference tied up in it and different people have different tastes which means that they want to hear different sorts of sound quality and presentation than other people. What counts in relation to the first aspect in my view is what gives YOU pleasure. It's your system and your room and there has to be something wrong if the result does not please you since you're the person who's going to spend the most time listening to your system. Your system and setup does not have to satisfy everyone but it should definitely satisfy you. That's one of the genuinely inarguable points in my view and I don't think Ethan would disagree about that point in the slightest.
David Aiken
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