In Reply to: RE: It's not that simple… posted by David Aiken on August 23, 2010 at 13:40:40:
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I agree that Klaus's attempt to place everything in audio on an objective footing is overoptimistic given the current state of the art. I'm all in favor of objectivity, and as an engineer, I'm always eager to see measurements and studies, but in many areas of audio, science just hasn't caught up with practical knowledge.
In fact, I even have some of the same objections to Toole's papers. So it seems does Siegfried Linkwitz, who gave Toole's book a glowing review on Amazon but added "My only regret is that the potential of 2-channel playback in doing so has not been fully explored. This is understandable because the conventional box loudspeaker with its frequency dependent directivity index has been used for almost all of the observations that are discussed. In fact, the particular interaction of a box loudspeaker with the listening room makes it more difficult for our ear/brain perceptual apparatus to hear the recording venue's space and acoustics, provided that such information has been captured in the recording process."
On the other hand, I've gleaned some very useful information from Toole's papers. Forex, I just found some measurements of the audibilty of the image spreading due to first reflections that you mentioned. The attached illustration will I think be useful as I try to tame my small room.
I agree too that Klaus has gone too far in denying the utility of room treatment. Sure, you can live without, but I don't know anybody who hasn't been delighted with the improvement it produces. I don't plan on going overboard like those people who put tube traps on every available surface, but my room has slap echo and a very audible proximate surface suckout between 100 and 200 Hz, and I have to sit too close to the rear wall. It's also too bright, and asymmetrical.
My current plans are to treat what I can with furnishings, and then add some minimal treatment as necessary. My experience has been more in line with Linkwitz's than Toole's in the sense that I've always found that the farther away from boundaries they are, the better dipoles sound, and discovered the advantages of dipoles many years ago (not to mention line sources, which to the best of my knowledge are still the only speakers that can reproduce image height). I'm hoping to achieve some kind of compromise that leads to a similar effect without deadening the room too much, and targeting the first reflections seems like a reasonable way to go. I'll certainly follow your advice and get Toole's book.
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Follow Ups
- RE: It's not that simple… - josh358 08/30/1016:56:17 08/30/10 (0)