Here's the link to my vlog about GIK Acoustics, • How to improve your ro... Here's a picture gallery of GIK Acoustics panels I did on my CNET blog, www.cnet.com/pictures/how-to-...
Very cool. You have caused me to start listening intently again, like when I was young. I bought a pair of Pioneer fs52s' which you recommended and got out my old and dusty Pioneer VSX-5600 receiver and Im looking at other components...I have this new interest, Hi-Fi, thanks to you and your channel. I feel lucky somehow.
Yes, closing your eyes is a must, assuming you have reasonably good imaging, speaker placement, etc. It really helps. It gets you into the "zone". If you have the holy grail of imaging, then even with your eyes open, you will almost see the performers (and your eyes and ears battle for who is correct). I heard such a setup with Vandersteen Seven speakers, M7-HPA amps, Sub Nine sub-woofers, Audioquest interconnects, Aesthetix Metis pre-amp, and cherry picked source material, etc, in a treated room at an audio store. It was hard to turn on my car's stereo for my trip home.
Spent $82 on 2 2x2 and 4 1x1 acoustic foam...best investment ever. Built 2x3 cover for tv as well. Tamed the small room significantly. As always, Steve...your guidance and encouragement pays great dividends. Thank you!
With 2 young kids, closing my eyes usually means falling asleep. I know I need an area rug it's on the list but so are many other things for the house.
Used to turn out the lights all the time. Turning off sensory input for one or more senses leaves available a lot of processing capacity for the ones that still have a 'workload' to perform - in this case hearing. Maybe more importantly, there are fewer interrupts being comingled with the results of the other sensors, when the results of that processing is passed to you. For testing or on the cheap, you can get some 2'x4' acoustic ceiling panels, and wrap the outside with fabric from a fabric store. They are light in weight and easy to hang on a wall or move around and prop up to hear how they change the sound in the room. They are both absorptive and help to break up the sound. Different panels and fabrics have different characteristics, so result vary. You can get flat panels used commercially that will absorb 90% or so of the sound that hits them. Also, you can throw a lot of things on the floor, like cheap movers blankets, and see what happens before investing in a nice area carpet. Ditto the panels cheap panels and fabrics. In the 70's I used regular ceiling panels and material with graphic designs from Pier One - used a staple gun to put the material on, and lightweight picture hanging wire to hang them, and they worked and sounded great. Ah, to be young and single.
Yes, great idea ceiling panels and fabric! Would doubling the panels increasing thickness increase absorption? You could get pretty creative for little money. Neat and simple, brilliant idea! Not young but single again, thanks!
Frank Gesarek From what I remember, acoustic tiles don’t really ABSORB sound, they diffuse. Absorption, especially of lower frequencies takes a lot more mass and the right material.
@@PanAmStyle You're right. That's the reason because if your walls and doors are too thin (low mass) your neighbors can be bothered by, say, the rithmics (bass guitar and drums) of a song you're playing back with your equipment but cannot distinguish the melodic lines. Low mass walls can act and resonate as drum's skins, both from inside to the exterior as in the interior of the room itself.
Really simplisitic review... Getting your speakers closer may make things worse s you could put your woofer right in the middle of a "node" amplifying bass / low midrange frquencies leading to "tunnel sound" or boomy sound, or, au contraire, cancel some very important frequencies. Furthermore, trying to treat any room only with diffusers could be completely useleess if your room has equal dimensions for instance. The solution to get "your romm disappeared" are far more complexed and evolved than a carpet, 2 curtains and a few bass traps or diffusers. It has to do with understanding acoustics, just avoid triyng any music listening in "impossible rooms", then acoustic treatments of the room (indeed) and finally apply room electronic correction.
Even when listening to headphones it helps to close your eyes. Spacial awareness from visual cues, ontop of hearing something conflicting really confuses the brain and it can be tiring. Dampening reflections is great, but you can't overlook the importance of speaker positioning, the 'ideal' distance from eachother and toe-in. It's worth exploring what works, given the space available to you. You can start by setting up an equilateral triangle (depending on listening volume and your room, you can obviously move further/wider) and toeing out your speakers. Make sure you maintain a strong phantom center (imaging and volume wise) and the soundstage doesn't break apart. All speakers have different dispersion patterns and off-axis roll off, so listen and experiment to make your room dissapear and transport yourself into a different space entirely!
I agree that closing your eyes - or better, in my view, darkening the room - improves the illusion that you're listening to live music, but I have a different theory (admittedly without a scientific basis) about why. It's not just eliminating distraction. It's that there's a disconnect, an inconsistency, between the space we're seeing and the space we're hearing. With our eyes open or lights on we're continually conscious that there are no musicians sitting in front of us. Eyes closed or lights off, all we perceive is what our ears tell us, and with a decent recording and decent playback equipment, our ears tell us we and the musicians are in the same space.
i often listen in the dark, and it's so hard to get a room dark because so many things have lights on it. The PC, the dac, the Poweramp, the Preamp, the TV, the Clock, Lights everywhere.
Maybe because your first observation is why I enjoy the most, at the end of my daily jorney, hearing to music with... headphones! Good ones (normally I use AKG K1000 driven with a Luxman MQ 360 tube power amp) gives me a lot of focus and concentration on music itself, taking into account that in those hours environmental noise is quite low (these phones cannot be, as you know, more open as they are). Cheers. Ventura.
Spouse-approved side wall diffusers include oil paintings (not behind glass) and tapestries. Not all rooms should be deadened. I prefer the acoustics of our living room for two channel because, I’m guessing, of its tall ceiling and golden rectangle dimensions.
My cousin some years back had his speakers mounted on shelves near the ceiling in the corners. It sounded impressive almost didn't know they were there. I don't recall what they were. Maybe JBL 3 ways? I did not care for his choice of music , but to each his own.
I'm OK with some reflected sound. I can't handle rugs and carpet though. They bother me to the point of distraction. Tile or concrete might prompt me to get a rug, but as long as I have wood floors with books and and records along adjacent walls (drywall, not plaster, fwiw), I'm good.
Hey Steve, try this variation. Keep your eyes open, listen in a darkened room and remove your glasses. Is it possible you eyes respond to more than just visible light frequencies?
Diffuser in first reflection point. You do not mention absorbent panels at the first reflection point. How come? Is defusers the way to go in your opinion?
@Optimize Here's the difference: Diffusers reflect and disperse soundwaves. Absorbers eliminate (or mute) soundwaves. Therefore, you will always hear the entire frequency spectrum with diffusers, and you will always remove (or dull) part of the frequency spectrum with absorbers.
@@HareDeLune Yes, but every body else say exactly the opposite. On for example on the side walls for the first reflection point, absorbent panels. And further away from you diffusers. And you do not want to sit to close to a diffuser. Just wanted to know if one tool in sound treatment, was forgotten or it is diffusers "everywhere". For some reason? :)
@@AmazonasBiotop I understand, and I will agree that some things I will recommend go completely against conventional wisdom. It is easy to forget that stereo sound and the concept of 'High-Fidelity' have only been around since the nineteen fifties. That's only about sixty some odd years. With the rapid development of technology, it is also easy to believe that in the span of sixty years, we should know everything there is to know about a given branch of technology. This is simply not true, although progress is constantly being made. Therefore, my best advice is to remember that Hi-Fi is still in it's infancy, and we don't know everything about it yet. This is one reason there is so much misinformation about it, and also why some of the conventional wisdom about it is wrong. Doing your own research and experimentation is often best, and keeping an open mind while using your best judgement also helps. You may think this is just generic good advice, and it is to some degree; but it would take too long to go into more detail here. I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors to improve your system. You might like to read The Complete Guide to High End Audio by Robert Harley, and check out the advice of Pierre Sprey at Mapleshade Records for some good basic information; although again, these sources will also conflict with each other in some areas. Thanks for the reply. : )
The best and only way to make a room disappear is to put on a pair of closed back headphones or IEMs. You can never get rid of the room listening to speakers in a room. You can only minimize the effect of the room with nearfield placement.
If I want to get that personal with my music, Good headphones will do that job very well for me with my eyes close. Very simple. I really feel that I'am there in that studio with the artists or band.
I find it paradox that in speaker technology lot of effort was put to disperse higher tones with sphere drivers and then next effort is put to kill that radiation reflected. For my private use I never gave up conical speakers delivering sound where is awaited by me.
Why is it? When listening alone you do not realize how loud the music is until another person walks in and then it suddenly the music feels louder?? even if they do not speak..Or is it just me ?? Probably just me...
Ok ... We close our eyes, the room disappears ... But what's happening when we open our eyes? Or the answer to the crucial question: what is a good system ?! And the answer is: when we open our eyes, the (illusion of) musicians and their (alive) music and their playing are still there, in our rooms! Or... nearby... it's more certain.
Yes surprisingly I have found this to be true. I switch on my system and tuner first on a low level and find I am sometimes focused more at this lower level
ARgggg. All diffusers and no absorbing panels????? Ouch. No, seriously, OUCH. I could make this post roughly 50000 words long, but I won't. I disagree with your plan. For me the first thing to do is to MEASURE your room and do some calculations for room modes, there are websites with calculators for it, just enter the room dimensions. 2nd. This is the hardest thing to accomplish. Deal with the room modes. Kill them. Kill them dead. But that is almost impossible. I have dealt with my room modes 100% down to 50hz and about 50% down below that, the rest is done with subwoofer placement and tuning. 3rd- side wall first reflection ABSORBER panels. Not diffusion. 4th... the list goes on for some length.... and it's not easy to get the room right, but when you do your system will leap whole new heights of excellence in sound. It is worth it.
Yes, measurement is key. Until one measures they are flying blind. * A room's modal resonances are a function of it's acoustic dimensions, thus they are fixed. * Loudspeaker placement determines which modes are excited. * Listener position determines which modes are experienced. Although it can be enormously helpful to damp a room's modal resonances, I'd say addressing SBIR peaks and nulls is likely more impactful. So employing selective mode excitation via sub placement, in whatever room axis is most a problem.
The problem is most people look into REW and getting a Mic etc then feel overwhelmed and give up. I would say start with absorbing the 4 primary reflection points and any comb filtering from behind the listening position and that will at least get you a rock solid soundstage. If you want to really go deep from there you can but at least its a start that is easy to do with a mirror, laser pointer and a buddy.
ACHTUNG! ALLES LOOKENPEEPERS! Das musikmashine ist nicht fur der gerfingerpoken und mittengraben! Oderwuse ist easy to schnappen der springenwek, blowenfusen und poppencorken mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht fur gewerken bie dummkopfen. Der rubbernecken sightseeren keepen das cottenpicken hander in das pockets muss; zo relaxen und -watshen der blinkenlichen- closen der eyesen.
Do you know any manufacturers doing this on headphones, to get away of the feeling of wearing headphones, you feed the left channel into the right channel and right channel into left channel at a perceived given distance, and of 5 nanoseconds delay between the two ears of the two channels, is what is needed. I would of thought that the brain would be tricked into believing their space and the music is coming out in front of them not in your head. A bit like surround sound but in reverse. But the speakers can be designed for a normal room's this is the problem manufactures are not designing it for a normal rooms, they should design there speaker for two types of room with a switch for a the room a solid brick or a partition plasterboard room is all that's needed. I think it's laziness on this speaker manufacturer. Take PS audio and their nonsense with the demo rooms point proven, it will sound great in his room specially built but will sound mediocre in the average household, don't forget a speaker and a room or part of the same thing, the room is the speaker cabinet. The only real way to correct this is ASP or DSP adjustable active crossover, multiple amps, where it can be tuned in to the size of the room without losing anything.
Very cool. You have caused me to start listening intently again, like when I was young.
I bought a pair of Pioneer fs52s' which you recommended and got out my old and dusty Pioneer VSX-5600 receiver and Im looking at other components...I have this new interest, Hi-Fi, thanks to you and your channel. I feel lucky somehow.
Yes, closing your eyes is a must, assuming you have reasonably good imaging, speaker placement, etc. It really helps. It gets you into the "zone".
If you have the holy grail of imaging, then even with your eyes open, you will almost see the performers (and your eyes and ears battle for who is correct).
I heard such a setup with Vandersteen Seven speakers, M7-HPA amps, Sub Nine sub-woofers, Audioquest interconnects, Aesthetix Metis pre-amp, and cherry picked source material, etc, in a treated room at an audio store. It was hard to turn on my car's stereo for my trip home.
Spent $82 on 2 2x2 and 4 1x1 acoustic foam...best investment ever. Built 2x3 cover for tv as well. Tamed the small room significantly. As always, Steve...your guidance and encouragement pays great dividends. Thank you!
With 2 young kids, closing my eyes usually means falling asleep. I know I need an area rug it's on the list but so are many other things for the house.
Best room I had incorporated all this. Amazing
Used to turn out the lights all the time. Turning off sensory input for one or more senses leaves available a lot of processing capacity for the ones that still have a 'workload' to perform - in this case hearing. Maybe more importantly, there are fewer interrupts being comingled with the results of the other sensors, when the results of that processing is passed to you. For testing or on the cheap, you can get some 2'x4' acoustic ceiling panels, and wrap the outside with fabric from a fabric store. They are light in weight and easy to hang on a wall or move around and prop up to hear how they change the sound in the room. They are both absorptive and help to break up the sound. Different panels and fabrics have different characteristics, so result vary. You can get flat panels used commercially that will absorb 90% or so of the sound that hits them. Also, you can throw a lot of things on the floor, like cheap movers blankets, and see what happens before investing in a nice area carpet. Ditto the panels cheap panels and fabrics. In the 70's I used regular ceiling panels and material with graphic designs from Pier One - used a staple gun to put the material on, and lightweight picture hanging wire to hang them, and they worked and sounded great. Ah, to be young and single.
Yes, great idea ceiling panels and fabric! Would doubling the panels increasing thickness increase absorption? You could get pretty creative for little money. Neat and simple, brilliant idea! Not young but single again, thanks!
Frank Gesarek . Young is also not so bad :). I wish I could have today capabilities and young dreams . They are gone because most came true.
@@Mikexception Then you're a happy man!
My congratulations.
(I haven't been so lucky). 😇
Frank Gesarek From what I remember, acoustic tiles don’t really ABSORB sound, they diffuse. Absorption, especially of lower frequencies takes a lot more mass and the right material.
@@PanAmStyle You're right.
That's the reason because if your walls and doors are too thin (low mass) your neighbors can be bothered by, say, the rithmics (bass guitar and drums) of a song you're playing back with your equipment but cannot distinguish the melodic lines. Low mass walls can act and resonate as drum's skins, both from inside to the exterior as in the interior of the room itself.
Really simplisitic review... Getting your speakers closer may make things worse s you could put your woofer right in the middle of a "node" amplifying bass / low midrange frquencies leading to "tunnel sound" or boomy sound, or, au contraire, cancel some very important frequencies.
Furthermore, trying to treat any room only with diffusers could be completely useleess if your room has equal dimensions for instance.
The solution to get "your romm disappeared" are far more complexed and evolved than a carpet, 2 curtains and a few bass traps or diffusers.
It has to do with understanding acoustics, just avoid triyng any music listening in "impossible rooms", then acoustic treatments of the room (indeed) and finally apply room electronic correction.
Even when listening to headphones it helps to close your eyes. Spacial awareness from visual cues, ontop of hearing something conflicting really confuses the brain and it can be tiring.
Dampening reflections is great, but you can't overlook the importance of speaker positioning, the 'ideal' distance from eachother and toe-in. It's worth exploring what works, given the space available to you.
You can start by setting up an equilateral triangle (depending on listening volume and your room, you can obviously move further/wider) and toeing out your speakers. Make sure you maintain a strong phantom center (imaging and volume wise) and the soundstage doesn't break apart.
All speakers have different dispersion patterns and off-axis roll off, so listen and experiment to make your room dissapear and transport yourself into a different space entirely!
I agree that closing your eyes - or better, in my view, darkening the room - improves the illusion that you're listening to live music, but I have a different theory (admittedly without a scientific basis) about why. It's not just eliminating distraction. It's that there's a disconnect, an inconsistency, between the space we're seeing and the space we're hearing. With our eyes open or lights on we're continually conscious that there are no musicians sitting in front of us. Eyes closed or lights off, all we perceive is what our ears tell us, and with a decent recording and decent playback equipment, our ears tell us we and the musicians are in the same space.
i often listen in the dark, and it's so hard to get a room dark because so many things have lights on it. The PC, the dac, the Poweramp, the Preamp, the TV, the Clock, Lights everywhere.
LED lights will/are the cause of many health problems. Blue light is hard on your eyes and screws with your circadian rhythm.
SchiebetürTV
cover them over. A blob of Blu-Tak works
@@adotopp1865
+1
I use black gaff tape.
It's non reflective, no residue etc.
Maybe because your first observation is why I enjoy the most, at the end of my daily jorney, hearing to music with... headphones!
Good ones (normally I use AKG K1000 driven with a Luxman MQ 360 tube power amp) gives me a lot of focus and concentration on music itself, taking into account that in those hours environmental noise is quite low (these phones cannot be, as you know, more open as they are).
Cheers. Ventura.
ALso, I've noticed that moving the speakers out from the back wall and out into the room improves depth imaging (or the sensation of depth imaging).
Spouse-approved side wall diffusers include oil paintings (not behind glass) and tapestries. Not all rooms should be deadened. I prefer the acoustics of our living room for two channel because, I’m guessing, of its tall ceiling and golden rectangle dimensions.
I glued 1/8" cork board on to my walls half way up to the ceiling helps reduce Reflections from tweeters
My cousin some years back had his speakers mounted on shelves near the ceiling in the corners. It sounded impressive almost didn't know they were there. I don't recall what they were. Maybe JBL 3 ways? I did not care for his choice of music , but to each his own.
I'm OK with some reflected sound. I can't handle rugs and carpet though. They bother me to the point of distraction. Tile or concrete might prompt me to get a rug, but as long as I have wood floors with books and and records along adjacent walls (drywall, not plaster, fwiw), I'm good.
What headphones do you have in your collection? I like the headphone tree.
Very, very true! Closing our eyes is not that easy to do.
Hey Steve, try this variation. Keep your eyes open, listen in a darkened room and remove your glasses. Is it possible you eyes respond to more than just visible light frequencies?
I had once an experienced listener at home who got scared listening at my system, because he had the feeling the walls were dissolving.... Really!
Use Kii Three or Eikon active digital cardiod dispersion speakers.
Steve is really channeling Winslow Leach in this vid.
#phantomoftheparadise #faust
If you want to make the room disappear...for real. Have you tried Larsen Speakers?
Steve's the man
Diffuser in first reflection point.
You do not mention absorbent panels at the first reflection point.
How come? Is defusers the way to go in your opinion?
@Optimize
Here's the difference:
Diffusers reflect and disperse soundwaves. Absorbers eliminate (or mute) soundwaves.
Therefore, you will always hear the entire frequency spectrum with diffusers, and you will always remove (or dull) part of the frequency spectrum with absorbers.
@@HareDeLune Yes, but every body else say exactly the opposite. On for example on the side walls for the first reflection point, absorbent panels. And further away from you diffusers. And you do not want to sit to close to a diffuser.
Just wanted to know if one tool in sound treatment, was forgotten or it is diffusers "everywhere". For some reason? :)
@@AmazonasBiotop
I understand, and I will agree that some things I will recommend go completely against conventional wisdom.
It is easy to forget that stereo sound and the concept of 'High-Fidelity' have only been around since the nineteen fifties. That's only about sixty some odd years. With the rapid development of technology, it is also easy to believe that in the span of sixty years, we should know everything there is to know about a given branch of technology. This is simply not true, although progress is constantly being made.
Therefore, my best advice is to remember that Hi-Fi is still in it's infancy, and we don't know everything about it yet.
This is one reason there is so much misinformation about it, and also why some of the conventional wisdom about it is wrong.
Doing your own research and experimentation is often best, and keeping an open mind while using your best judgement also helps.
You may think this is just generic good advice, and it is to some degree; but it would take too long to go into more detail here.
I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors to improve your system.
You might like to read The Complete Guide to High End Audio by Robert Harley, and check out the advice of Pierre Sprey at Mapleshade Records for some good basic information; although again, these sources will also conflict with each other in some areas.
Thanks for the reply. : )
The best and only way to make a room disappear is to put on a pair of closed back headphones or IEMs. You can never get rid of the room listening to speakers in a room. You can only minimize the effect of the room with nearfield placement.
I am beginning to wonder if that ‘cans stand’ shows just a small fraction of the headphones that you own. I’m easily distracted like that.
More like a large fraction of my full size headphones, but there are tons more in-ear 'phones.
If I want to get that personal with my music, Good headphones will do that job very well for me with my eyes close. Very simple. I really feel that I'am there in that studio with the artists or band.
This was perhaps the first time I've seen the daily audiophiliac show and I didn't hear, "Hey, friends!!"
I find it paradox that in speaker technology lot of effort was put to disperse higher tones with sphere drivers and then next effort is put to kill that radiation reflected. For my private use I never gave up conical speakers delivering sound where is awaited by me.
if you can put your spks at 3 feet from you 3 feet apart
Why is it? When listening alone you do not realize how loud the music is until another person walks in and then it suddenly the music feels louder?? even if they do not speak..Or is it just me ?? Probably just me...
I heard you can get egg crate foam that you use on your bed and hang it on your walls to absorbed the sound.
Ok ... We close our eyes, the room disappears ... But what's happening when we open our eyes? Or the answer to the crucial question: what is a good system ?! And the answer is: when we open our eyes, the (illusion of) musicians and their (alive) music and their playing are still there, in our rooms! Or... nearby... it's more certain.
Swivel chair. Turn 180° lean back. THIS IS another aspect of YOUR BRAIN ON MUSIC.
Try listening at much lower level.
When listening to certain types of music, you can only go so low. Less light equals less concentration on things other than the music.
Yes surprisingly I have found this to be true. I switch on my system and tuner first on a low level and find I am sometimes focused more at this lower level
@@adotopp1865
Yep, more cerebral and involving, however less visceral and fun.
ARgggg. All diffusers and no absorbing panels????? Ouch. No, seriously, OUCH. I could make this post roughly 50000 words long, but I won't. I disagree with your plan. For me the first thing to do is to MEASURE your room and do some calculations for room modes, there are websites with calculators for it, just enter the room dimensions. 2nd. This is the hardest thing to accomplish. Deal with the room modes. Kill them. Kill them dead. But that is almost impossible. I have dealt with my room modes 100% down to 50hz and about 50% down below that, the rest is done with subwoofer placement and tuning. 3rd- side wall first reflection ABSORBER panels. Not diffusion. 4th... the list goes on for some length.... and it's not easy to get the room right, but when you do your system will leap whole new heights of excellence in sound. It is worth it.
Yes, measurement is key. Until one measures they are flying blind.
* A room's modal resonances are a function of it's acoustic dimensions, thus they are fixed.
* Loudspeaker placement determines which modes are excited.
* Listener position determines which modes are experienced.
Although it can be enormously helpful to damp a room's modal resonances, I'd say addressing SBIR peaks and nulls is likely more impactful.
So employing selective mode excitation via sub placement, in whatever room axis is most a problem.
The problem is most people look into REW and getting a Mic etc then feel overwhelmed and give up. I would say start with absorbing the 4 primary reflection points and any comb filtering from behind the listening position and that will at least get you a rock solid soundstage. If you want to really go deep from there you can but at least its a start that is easy to do with a mirror, laser pointer and a buddy.
Audyssey
Or buy some Larsen speakers..
Some joker will say 'use headphones'.
I hate to disappoint, but ... all I can muster is a lighthearted F/U 🤠
@@fredpasta6488 That's okay. I understand. :)
Closing you eyes... snake oil?
Falukrop ezra
Yeah Those audiophile fools
@@adotopp1865 He he he, but this time the cost is minimal
ACHTUNG! ALLES LOOKENPEEPERS! Das musikmashine ist nicht fur der gerfingerpoken und mittengraben! Oderwuse ist easy to schnappen der springenwek, blowenfusen und poppencorken mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht fur gewerken bie dummkopfen. Der rubbernecken sightseeren keepen das cottenpicken hander in das pockets muss; zo relaxen und -watshen der blinkenlichen- closen der eyesen.
Do you know any manufacturers doing this on headphones, to get away of the feeling of wearing headphones, you feed the left channel into the right channel and right channel into left channel at a perceived given distance, and of 5 nanoseconds delay between the two ears of the two channels, is what is needed. I would of thought that the brain would be tricked into believing their space and the music is coming out in front of them not in your head. A bit like surround sound but in reverse.
But the speakers can be designed for a normal room's this is the problem manufactures are not designing it for a normal rooms, they should design there speaker for two types of room with a switch for a the room a solid brick or a partition plasterboard room is all that's needed. I think it's laziness on this speaker manufacturer. Take PS audio and their nonsense with the demo rooms point proven, it will sound great in his room specially built but will sound mediocre in the average household, don't forget a speaker and a room or part of the same thing, the room is the speaker cabinet. The only real way to correct this is ASP or DSP adjustable active crossover, multiple amps, where it can be tuned in to the size of the room without losing anything.