The 'Dark' Art Of Room Acoustics!

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Thank You guys!

Nice ideas. I was contemplating a simple,wooden design made by my carpenter. But your suggestions have inspired me to look for something more effective and esoteric. After I have collected a few designs, I will approach some industrial units who manufacturer gates and grills for houses. If they are open to esoteric hifivision ideas, I may find my audiophile rack!

A little OT ruminations :)

Currently there is a reconstruction boom happening in Chandigarh. With real estate prices hitting stratospheric levels, a lot of home owners, new ones and old ones, are renovating or rebuilding their homes. These new look homes sport a breathtaking variety of materials. Wood,glass,metals,stones,tiles are being used in very imaginative ways.

It has become extremely difficult to find good workmen, because all of them are inundated with work. The really good carpenters/electricians/plumbers/masons have graduated from bicycles to two wheelers and Marutis. None of them is buying a Nano :). Maruti Alto seems to be the car for them. Sensible. In their first foray into middle class respectability they are opting for something tried and tested.

As a caterer, I was associated with a lot of contractors,cooks,waiters and the service staff of the wedding industry. All the smart, hardworking guys seem to be moving up the social and monetary ladder. Many of them wisely invested in small plots of rural land in the peripheries of the city. These peripheries have now been gobbled up by our 'hungry' city, and are worth a small fortune. I am extremely happy with the way the smarter,hardworking lower classes are discovering their place in the sun.THIS IS REAL PROGRESS! NOT THE PHONY, HYPED UP TICKERS OF THE STOCK MARKET.
 
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Hydra
Did you manage to source the spikes? Looks like you will need quite a few of them :)

Sixteen of them! But I also like the designs posted by Hiten and Arj. Especially the first one, in the post by Arj.
 
There are three major changes in the room from earlier times. The floor is semi glossy vitrified tile instead of marble, the opening in one of the sidewalls has been closed, which has resulted in 'enclosing' all the sound reflections within the room, the dining table in the middle of the room has been removed, leading to possibly less absorption of sound. I need a fairly big, thick rug in front of the speakers, which I will be buying soon.

I have been listening from a distance of 10-12 feet from the speakers. Obviously there is plenty of 'interaction' from the four walls,floor and ceiling. Because I sit far back, I need to keep the volume higher ( 11 o clock ) and I also get a lot of indirect sound from the wall behind my listening position.

My satisfaction levels with the SQ are hovering at around 75% of the 'nirvana' levels, I had achieved earlier :sad: Getting back to my ' mountain abode' of perfect sound is going to be a hard climb. All the more frustrating, because if I had held on to my earlier room settings, then it would not have been neccessary. But there is no use in crying over paradise lost. I have to keep looking for it one more time! The room is aesthetically far more pleasing to the eye, which is some consolation.

I am contemplating moving my listening position, closer to the speakers. Will 'near field' listening reduce the effect of indirect sound? Lowering the volume definitely brings a quiter,less reverberating quality to the sound.
AudiogoN Forums: Near field listening and speaker placement
 
Ajay
I went through the same agony while replacing the Deftechs with the Usher mini Dancer1.Let me say that yes, near field was the only solution for me at that time and frankly Im liking it more and more as the time passes.My experience is documented in:
http://www.hifivision.com/av-enhanc...-speaker-placement-experience.html#post215681
The main advantages of near field:
Less distortion due to amp operating well within itself :Ushers MD1(85-87db) are reputed to be power hungry but my denon (PMA2000ivr) was easily driving them sweetly at around 9o clock.So much for paper specs- but my near field really helped in this.
Fatigue free listening: My warmish denon also helped since near field generally requires slight roll off at the top end.
Less room issues : The near field triangle almost at the centre of the room eliminated most of the room issues and you are left with sound which has everything except for extreme dynamics in certain recordings.
Cheers
Himadri
 
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myriad

The room size is 14x25 feet. Speakers are positioned in front of the short walll, firing down the 25 feet length of the room. They are 6 feet from the back wall, 3 feet from the side wall. Distance between speakers is 8 feet and my listening position is 12 feet away. Distance from the sweet spot to the wall behind is 6 feet. The only exit from the room is in the corner behind my listening position.

himadri

For the past one year my listening position has always been between 10-14 feet away from the speakers. I took it for granted that I should make use of the large dimensions of the room to achieve a wide and expansive soundstage. Because I was sitting so far away, I kept the volume fairly high, which added to the sound pressures in the room.

The dining table in the center of the room may have been acting like a giant sponge soaking up a lot of unwanted reflections.Removing the dining table 'hollowed' out the sound. The tight,focused and refined edge to the music was gone. There was no distortion as the 4B SST with 500 WPC at 4 ohms on tap can easily handle the Vienna Acoustics, but the the sound was less polished. It had a slightly ragged edge.

Yesterday I tried out the rule of the 'thirds', and positioned the speakers 8 feet into the room with my listening position 8 feet from the speakers and with roughly 8 feet distance behind me. The reverb in the room and the 'hollowness' in the sound was still there.

What had worked for me in the past, was the dining table in the center of the room. Today I will be placing my 'listening' sofa, a solid block of wood, foam and tapestry in the center of the room as a replacement for the dining table. The 25x14 dimensions of the room will effectively get divided into two sections. A 12x14 'living room' section and a 12x14 ' music room' section.
Speakers will have to be pushed back. Distance from the back wall of 4 feet and from the side walls of 3 feet. My new listening position in the center of the room, will be roughly 7-8 feet away from the speakers. Comparitively 'near field', if we consider that my earlier sweet spots was 12 feet away from the speakers.

I will experiment with lower volume too. With the 4B SST even at low volumes SQ is superb, it retains it's weight. The soundstage remains deep and wide. Even a whispered vocal or the softest passages in a musical performance is clearly audible. It's good to have power, but perhaps the power should be used wisely and sparingly :)
 
Ajay,
My room is somewhat similar to yours. It is a 24x17 room used as living cum dining. My speakers are placed along the 17 feet wall.
See if cutting the distance between the speakers to 7.5 ft with your listening spot at 8 to 8.5ft helps (all measurements taken from the centre of the woofer). I recently cut the distance of my speakers from 8.5 ft to 7.5 ft and it made a dramatic improvement. Further, you have to damp the room with non reflective furniture. I also want you to put something behind the speakers, a wall carpet or curtains whichever you like. You can also diy some acoustic panels but they don't look good in a living room.
Regards
Vasu
 
As suggested by Vasu Experiment with the placement keeping the back/front wall ratio in mind. My guess also the same , considering the immense power of your amp,it can only be the room that is adding the hollowness/reverb (low /low mids) that you mention and needs some absorption. Damping that helped me are -light under carpet foam padding , sound absorbing furniture ,especially the listening couch and at corners behind the speakers apart from curtains to absorb back wall reflections.
Cheers
 
himadri

I have gradually filtered out all the things which are NOT wrong, in order to discover what could be wrong.

There is nothing wrong with the hifi set up. (The Esoteric cdp, when it comes, is the only upgrade I am contemplating ).

There is nothing wrong with the speaker placement. 6 feet from the back wall, 3 feet from the side walls, 8 feet separation, hint of a toe in....everything gels.

There is nothing wrong with the curtains on the back wall, the solid 'home made' furniture, the dimensions of the room.

What IS, sorry, WAS :) wrong was, that I needed a solid wooden object in the central area of the room, to replace the dining table and act as a 'sponge', absorbing the indirect sounds. Last night, after I placed my listening seat at the exact center of the room, I found the sweet spot and the perfect sound absorber at one go. The transformation was magical ( black magical : ).

The precise moment when everything locks into place, when the hardware and the room becomes hushed and silent, when a deep and wide soundstage, far behind the speakers, starts oozing a liquid,sensual river of sound, is what makes all the blood,sweat and tears of audiophilia worthwhile.

Finally, it took an instant to set things right. I wound up my red wine/you tube/hifivision session past midnight in order to retire to my bedroom. A divine light guided me into the 'music room'. I pushed the solid wood single seater into the center of the room, switched off the lights, powered on the system, and placed THE reference cd in the loading tray. Gustav Mahler's second symphony (Resurrection ) conducted by Otto Klemperer/Philharmonia Orchestra.

Heaven :)
 
If such is your belief, then you should exit your holdings in stock market and go short on index/scrips by which you will make large monies sooner then later. ;)

I am neutral so i invest on regular basis in mutual funds, by doing this i benefit with the fall and rise of market. :yahoo:

V.

ajay124 said:
NOT THE PHONY, HYPED UP TICKERS OF THE STOCK MARKET.
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vinay said:
If such is your belief, then you should exit your holdings in stock market and go short on index/scrips by which you will make large monies sooner then later. ;)

I am neutral so i invest on regular basis in mutual funds, by doing this i benefit with the fall and rise of market. :yahoo:

V.
Click to expand...

vinay

The daily 'volatiliy' of the stock/commodity/currency market's, ensures that the retail trader's long and short positions, usually get squared of at the wrong time. Unlike the bankers, the retail trader does not have access to 'easy money' at close to zero % interest rates. It's been an expensive lesson, but I have come to realize, that dipping one's toes into the derivative's ocean, with the puny amounts of cash, which retail investor's/traders have, is an invitation to disaster. It is not safe for a small fish to swim in shark infested waters.

As far as retail investing is concerned, there are diverse opinions. Most of these opinions, as far as the general investing public is concerned, are shaped by the 'cheerleading' local business dailies and television channels. They always play the same song over and over again. "Markets may dip or remain rangebound for a while, but ultimately they will keep going up, up, up" :) No bubble can ever keep going up up and up. Ultimately it has to fall to the ground with an almighty crash.

If one goes beyond the cheerleading, and tries to understand where the global economy is heading, then the scenario is entirely different. The global economic meltdown which began in 2008 has not been averted. It has simply been pushed into the future. By doing what many nations have been doing for decades, simply borrowing money and wracking up more debt. Well, the taps are running dry, and some of these nations are already facing a 'back to the stone ages' future. They may be on the verge of debt default as they are slowly being shut out of the financial markets.

If these nations are allowed to go down, then the solvent nations, banks and hedge fund who have exposure to these nations, will also get hammered by the bond and stock markets. A default by the LTCM hedge fund in the 90's, and recently the Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers crash, almost destroyed the financial markets. The impact of nations defaulting on their debt would be far more deadly.

The Japanese financial markets may be a beacon, heralding the future. Because the Japanese have already been there done that, what several other economies are now replicating. On 29.12.1989 the Japanese stock index, the Nikkei 225, hit an all time high of 38,957. In recent years it has struggled to hold on to the 10,000 levels. An investor who took a direct exposure to Nikkei stocks, or invested in the same through Mutual Funds or any other systematic investment plan would be sitting on huge losses today, which would probably never be recovered.

***I don't have any pretensions of being an economist or a stock market analyst. This is simply stuff I have picked up by reading the international financial news and blogs. It is entirely possible that I am wrong/have misread/do not understand, the implications, of what went wrong in 2008. Ultimately there are as many opinions as there are investors, traders and financial pundits. But I am not impressed by 'tips', 'systems', fund managers, or recommendations from analysts and media pundits. I have earlier tried to follow 'technical' and 'fundamental' cues, but I don't anymore. The only fundamental cue for me is, that too many nations of the world are in the sick bay or ICU, and that cannot be good for the global economy or the financial markets. What I have read and understood has made me a 'perma bear'. It is possible that stocks may go on to make new highs in the short run, but I believe that sooner or later, we will be witnessing a long winter of 'historic' lows. I have a small holding in beaten down real estate stocks, but do not actively trade anymore. I am more interested in understanding the stock/commodity/currency markets, than in trading,investing or making money out of them.
 
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The Dark World Of Stock & Other Markets

Ajay,

As usual such a detailed writing, thanks. :yahoo:

If one is a pure day trader and is completely focused and cut out from the outside world backed with proper risk management, his survival is miles better then others, one falls into the disaster when they are not able to control their fear, greed, and what not.

There is no question about access to easy money making the things better, be assured this is a myth, too many individuals have a lot of money, but still they fail for their wrong handling etc.


About in-direct fraud which the media and others do, is no issue to me because i have a counter plan that buy in piece meals and sell in one go and also use other methods to exit, even if that means a in-direct loss but still often with no adverse impact.


As far as bubble goes, we as a breed of intraday animals would care no less because our relation with the market is only for a day, often for a few minutes or hours.


On the other hand about assorted crisis which you are talking about, it can be tackled with risk management, at times we will have to take a hit, which can happen in all sort of business.


Well the way you wrote in the earlier post, it was very clear that it was your opinion that the market is not rosy as it looks like, so i suggested you to short the market and exit your longs while now you are saying that you picked up those writings from sources.


If you are not impressed by tips, charts, fundamentals etc, then you should have your own course plan. In my case as said earlier for me the middle ground is pure by investing in piece meals and tracking every move.


Well now in your own words, it is clear that you are bearish with the market, then what stops you from shorting the market at one go or in a phased manner.


It is very often many of them say that so and so is bottom or top of the market, i think this is not enough, one needs to stop being a vacuumed puppet kid, one needs to prove their point, go short or long, i do not advocate the culture of gossip in such a dangerous business.


Since you are so bearish with the market, i think you should book your losses in the stocks you hold, you can always buy them at a dirt price when the market falls like nine pins, that could be a another story, it may take 1 day or upto 100 years for the fall to surface.

While for me the factor is very clear, ride with the wave, exit gradually and withdraw if need be, especially when the choppers land to eliminate us at market place in terms of stocks falling like a sword, after all who wants a burial at Arabian sea.


On the other hand, i remember in the recent past you were very bullish on the real estate stocks, you were talking about that you will not exit till you achieve 500% profit. I think one has to ride the profit wave and back it with stop profit/loss, i have learnt this the hard way.

In 2008 i was holding large quantities of Apollo Hospital, at one point i was making a profit of 47 lacs, i did not pick these sacks of monies, because i had a profit target of 1 crore, eventually what happened is unbelievable. :sad:


V.
 
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ahh..now we are being treated with a treatise on the real dark arts...hope it isn't all 'sound' and fury signifying nothing..
 
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