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From time to time I noticed my system didn't sound right. Some material, particularly steel string acoustic guitar and piano, had a quality that faintly reminded me of a flutter issue with old open reel.At first I thought it was just me. I've always been aware my listening experience can vary with how tired I am and where my mind is, but this seemed a bit more.
It finally hit me. I'd moved a ceiling fan into the room and with the onset of Spring had started using it here and there on warmer days. After some experimentation, there is a direct correlation between the speed of the fan and the interference I hear. High is the worst but medium is still quite noticeable, depending on material. The effect on low is barely present but still there. Had only low speed been used, I might never have put two and two together; I would have just figured some listening days are better than others.
The room is not terribly big (13X15 with 10' ceilings) and the fan is a 5 bladed 48" one if anyone else has noticed this issue in their listening room and wants to compare notes.
Follow Ups:
Posted about this a few years ago. Still haven't changed anything, but it has got to change.
I need fans to sleep, not to listen to music.
I've heard GE, KitchenAid, & Thermador are fairly quite.
We listen to music in the kitchen a lot. It's connected and open to the main listening room so we spend a lot of time out here.
Quiet is important.
Any new news on quiet refrigerators?Thanks
> Any new news on quiet refrigerators?You could always consider a commercial fridge where the compressors are mounted outside the house (or in a basement/utility area.) Probably not cheap but would put the noise somewhere else.
I have a similar Hunter ceiling fan. I have 11.5 ' ceilings, maybe that makes the difference. Generally I run it on low speed as we use air conditioning probably eight months of the year.
I could see a number of variables that would impact whether a fan would affect your sound. This could include: number of blades, blade pitch and design, fan diameter, fan speed, ceiling height, room size, location of fan relative to speakers & listening position. I think the key is whether the moving air is still in pulsed waves in the sound field or the air flow has blended well enough to act as a continuous stream at that point.As noted before, I probably would not have noticed if my fan was only run on low speed, though I do think there is still a small effect. A slightly different room configuration or a different model of fan and the results may have been different.
As with many situations like this, each person is going to have to do their own experiments to see if it is an issue for them.
My fan blades are about 17 feet from the speakers and over my head. I suspect the difusion or reflection off the blades would largely change sound behind me.
;~)!take off some clothes and turn the fan OFF!
WarmestTimbo in Oz
The Skyptical Mensurer and Audio ScroungerAnd gladly would he learn and gladly teach - Chaucer. ;-)!
'Still not saluting.'
the ceiling fan in the room I take my violin lessons in makes the B natural on the A string sound like it has tremolo on it. very weird sound. The fan is mostly off during lessons.... It's a wavelength thing- coming close enough but not exactly on frequency so there's a warble differential.
Removing the fan altogether would be the better thing to do, but I can imagine the problems with heat in St. Louis.
Actually I do have a switching amp (Bel Canto S300) and now that the issue has been identified it is certainly no big deal to turn the fan off when listening. The HVAC doesn't directly bother the sound the way the ceiling fan does.
Does your room have windows that open? Do they affect the sound quality? Finally, do you prefer to listen when the A/C is on?
We don't open the windows much in the listening room. As far as the central HVAC system, it doesn't affect the sound in the same way. It adds a little background white noise when running, but as a steady ambient sound, is not distracting to me.The ceiling fan is disturbing because it adds a fluttering sound that is especially noticeable with certain types of music and instruments.
just about, I think. Ceiling fans, air conditioning, white good appliances, humidity, lighting, carpet, rugs, walls, furniture, time of day, stress level, moon phase, solar flares, smells, you name it. Try an remove as many negative external factors as you can and see if the sound gets better. Works for me.
and thus the velocity of sound through the air.A large relatively slow moving ceiling fan will produce cyclic waves of this.
Especially the wind instruments.
...the time I placed a dictionary under my CDP and got a noticeable increase in definition. It sounded like the word length of CD's were increased as well.
I noticed that recently as well, especially piano sounds with long sustains in the midrange and treble.
Actually, I'm glad I connected the fan with the sound problem. It saved me a lot of worry about a piece of equipment going bad or some harder-to-locate issue that would have driven me nuts.I know we all did the trick as kids of warbling our voice by speaking directly into the fan, but there is a good 8 or 10 feet between the speakers and the fan blades, so it wasn't the first thing that popped into my mind. I'd also never had a setup before where a ceiling fan was in the listening room.
Apparently one doesn't have to speak directly into the fan to get the effect, LOL.
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...that was both funny AND on point. So phhhfftttt. :)
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Put down the schwartz, and back away slowly.LOL...
: P
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...and enjoyed it more than the first time. My youngest son watched with me and thought it was hilarious too.
I would think the ceiling fan effect would be worst if the fan was in the first reflection zone. I had two ceiling fans in my room in New Orleans, one over the equipment rack and one over the listening position. I never heard any problems unless I was using point source speakers and standing somewhere that placed a fan in the first reflection zone.With a line source speaker, the radiation pattern pretty much avoids early ceiling reflections altogether.
With big tube amps in the summer in New Orleans, a ceiling fan roughly tripled my listening time before I had to take a break and run the air conditioner full blast for a while.
* flip flops!?'Thong Thung BLUE!'
;-)!
WarmestTimbo in Oz
The Skyptical Mensurer and Audio ScroungerAnd gladly would he learn and gladly teach - Chaucer. ;-)!
'Still not saluting.'
Mainly concerts at large outdoor venues, seated far away. A gust of wind, and kind of a brief "Doppler shift" in the music.
Yes, can't stand it. I took it out of the room.
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