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Best reference on room acoustics?


owlsplace

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Anyone know the best reference works or where to start reading on room acoustic theory? I'm presuming Roy Allison's work is a good place to start.

Is there anything more recent or definitive that would be required reading for someone interested in coming up to speed on theory and application?

Roger

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Roy's work is a good starting point. He work led him to design speakers with intent to take advantage of room interactions though it is highly promotional of a very spacious soundstage as opposed to a room set up focused on speaker's directivity. Both of these soundfields have their followings amongst audiophiles..

Perhaps the best ref. book overall you could have that does give a good deal of attention to room acoustics is Floyd Toole's "Sound Reproduction, The acoustics and psychoacoustics of loudspeakers and rooms". It's available in softbound.

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Anyone know the best reference works or where to start reading on room acoustic theory? I'm presuming Roy Allison's work is a good place to start.

Is there anything more recent or definitive that would be required reading for someone interested in coming up to speed on theory and application?

Roger

Roger,

There are many excellent articles on room acoustics and boundary influence and so forth. As Carl stated, Floyd Toole's book, Sound Reproduction, which I own, is an excellent place to begin. Dr. Toole covers most of the bases, but he tends to be somewhat opinionated (and arguably less objective) as to what constitutes the most important aspects of listening rooms—and what we actually hear in those rooms—and most of his test rooms for subjective evaluation tend to be acoustically treated rooms with listeners seated approximately one-half way into the room (see images) even though most people don't listen to music in that fashion; nevertheless, Toole is one of the noted experts in acoustics, so his work is very important. Toole, who worked for Harmon Industries for many years before retiring, reflects some of their design philosophies, such as specific high-frequency "controlled" directivity and so forth. Toole therefore tends to play down somewhat the importance of wide-dispersion tweeters and wide power response.

On the other hand, other acousticians do place much credence in the importance of reverberant energy as most of what we hear in normal rooms, and experts such as Leo Baranek, Frederick Hunt and Harry Olson—not to mention Villchur and Allison—have written extensively on this subject. A few articles (and there are many others) by Villchur and Allison are great places to start, but you'll have to do a little digging:

Edgar Villchur, "How to Get the Most From Your Loudspeakers," HiFi/Stereo Review, October 1961

Edgar Villchur, "What's Wrong With Loudspeakers," HiFi/Stereo Review, August 1967

R.F. Allison and Robert Berkovitz, "The Sound Field in Home Listening Rooms," J. Audio Eng. Society, Octover 12, 1970.

R.F. Allison, "The Influence of Room Boundaries on Loudspeaker Power Output," J. Audio Eng. Soc., May 7, 1974

R.F. Allison, "The Sound Field in Home Listening Rooms, II, J. Audio Eng. Soc., November 3, 1975.

R.F. Allison, "Imaging and Loudspeaker Directivity, To Beam or Not to Beam," J. Audio Eng. Soc., October 6, 1995

—Tom Tyson

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Roger,

As a distllation of his research into room boundary effects, and a practical guide to speaker placement, Roy Allison's article in the August 1976 Stereo Review is a superb reference:

http://www.classicspeakerpages.net/library/allison/other/technical_articles_by_roy_f/technical_articles_by_roy_f_10.html

Rich W

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The room tends to be the toughest part of the audio equation to resolve.

How many of us have that "extra" space to devote to a dedicated listening room?

Or, how many of us have a properly acoustically treated space whose main function is a living room, rec-room, bed room, etc.?

I am at the point where changing speakers, amps and preamps doesn't make much sense anymore if the system will always be at war with the room.

So I'll be following this thread with more than just a casual interest.

I offer the link below as an additional document which might help in this quest:

http://ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html

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  • 4 weeks later...

Owlspace,

I have been trying to optimize my listening room for the past 2 decades with limited success. I then read an article in the April 2015 issue of Stereophile titled "Quantizing Hanson Hsu". The article gave me a few ideas so I picked up some inexpensive sound treatment squares (Ultrasonic Acoustic Panels) at my local big box home improvement store. I attached the 12" square panels on wall behind the speakers. The result was

outstanding - like a major system upgrade. My AR9s were much clearer and holographic. The best part was listening to recordings I'm familiar with and hearing instruments I had never heard before.

As everyone's room is different in size, reflectivity etc., results will vary greatly. Maybe I was just lucky - who knows? But I'll say that the $30 I spent on the panels was the best investment I had made in a long time. Best of luck.

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Owlspace,

I have been trying to optimize my listening room for the past 2 decades with limited success. I then read an article in the April 2015 issue of Stereophile titled "Quantizing Hanson Hsu". The article gave me a few ideas so I picked up some inexpensive sound treatment squares (Ultrasonic Acoustic Panels) at my local big box home improvement store. I attached the 12" square panels on wall behind the speakers. The result was

outstanding - like a major system upgrade. My AR9s were much clearer and holographic. The best part was listening to recordings I'm familiar with and hearing instruments I had never heard before.

As everyone's room is different in size, reflectivity etc., results will vary greatly. Maybe I was just lucky - who knows? But I'll say that the $30 I spent on the panels was the best investment I had made in a long time. Best of luck.

Sounds good, no pun intended :)

Photo of panels, wall, placement would be of interest.

All I'm finding is this article on a quick search: http://www.stereophile.com/content/acoustic-geometry-curve-system-room-treatments#YU343gkxj7VPdP7u.97

Roger

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  • 2 months later...

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