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RE: It's not that simple…

Posted by josh358 (P) on August 22, 2010 at 11:14:58

In Reply to: RE: It's not that simple… posted by David Aiken on August 20, 2010 at 13:26:37:

What did you use for ambiance recovery? I'm curious because it's something I haven't experimented with since I tried Dynaquad as a kid, and I've read conflicting things about it. On the positive side, I've heard it said that it can sound 80% as good as discrete surround. On the negative, that it's too tweaky and that as you pointed out, it doesn't work well with all recordings.

I've never read Floyd Toole's book, just a couple of his papers. I use dipoles, which seem to do best with diffusion on the speaker wall, perhaps just at the first reflection points. On the rear wall, I think I need absorption, since my room is so small that I have to sit right in front of it. I'm guessing that my room's HF absorption budget will mostly be eaten up by that. Which I think pretty much boxes me into a live end/dead end approach.

I'm curious about Toole's recommendation regarding the first reflection points on the sides. That would certainly seem to go against conventional wisdom. It's not much of an issue in my case because of the dipole null. But I've experimented with "tuning it out" by toeing in the dipoles so they were edge on using a mirror and I heard a significant improvement in clarity at the sweet point, which is what I would have expected.

I've been having an ongoing discussion about this issue with Klaus R in another forum, he's looking for some solid research on the audible effects of room reflections and I wasn't able to come up with anything other than Haas and the other fusion experiments. I'm wondering who made the judgment call in the paper to which Toole refers -- skilled listeners who are familiar with live acoustical music, or a random assortment of listeners? Also, how far the speakers were from the side walls, whether they were close enough for the reflection to fuse with the direct sound and alter timbre. Also, how good the speakers were . . .

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