Friday, August 22, 2014

Linkwitz on Room Acoustics

Linkwitz has an in depth discussion of room acoustics.

His take is that generally room acoustic treatments aren't worth bothering with.  Instead, choose ordinary furniture and decorations wisely.  So this is not Ethan Winer's advice…

Generally Linkwitz believes lively rooms sound better.  This is very much like my friend George Louis, who eschews both bass traps and EQ.  OTOH, it is not like my friend Tim, who feels that all reflected sound is distortion.  I believe it is correct that lively rooms, though not too lively, sound better.  Rooms where I have replaced carpet with vinyl plank flooring with acoustical underlayment sound much better for that reason.  Old carpet has an old carpet sound, and it is wonderful to be rid of it.  Vinyl plank flooring with acoustical underlayment is the best I have heard.

For technical reasons, room mode calculation is worthless, and it may not help much to build rooms to acoustic dimensions either.  There are simply too many variables.

The closed box bass radiator design inherently excites room modes several times more than dipolar bass radiator.  Dipole bass should be used when possible.

WRT bass modes, attempts to treat room with absorbers can make only marginal differences.  It is best to attenuate peaks with EQ, but holes cannot be filled in.

Like Winer, Linkwitz also believes that response away from the optimal listening position matters:

The response should not be optimized merely at the listening position. Few commercial products deal with this adequately.

On another page, he praises the Lyngdorf TDA2200 amplifier and correction module, which has correction algorithm by Jan Abildgaard Pedersen--which samples from random points in the room!




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