What's the worst shape for a room?
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- Опубліковано 5 вер 2024
- Of all the hundreds of rooms you've visited and setup systems in what's the absolute worst you've seen or could imagine? Have a question you want to ask Paul? www.psaudio.com...
I am getting close to publishing my memoir! It's called 99% True and it is chock full of adventures, debauchery, struggles, heartwarming stories, triumphs and failures, great belly laughs, and a peek inside the high-end audio industry you've never known before.
I plan a few surprises for early adopters, so go to www.paulmcgowa... and add your name to the list of interested readers. There's an entire gallery of never before seen photos too.
I was blown away how important speaker placement was to getting a good sound.
My living room. Makes excellent speakers sound like those little ones they put in greeting cards.
you might want to turn the volume down a bit.
Some of the best acoustic spaces for concerts that I have experienced have had ceilings that were at least somewhat domed. When I was at Musé L’Orangerie , I noticed the sound character of the main exhibit rooms where Monet’s Lillies are displayed. The walls are curved and as I recall the ceiling is domed. While there was no music playing, the sonic environment was wonderful; voices were natural and conversations were clear and pleasant. It was really remarkable.
My neighbor had a dome shaped house. It was like talking into your own ear on the inside. Drove him to build a new house!
lol
A hypercube (tesseract). I find it's far too easy to get lost in one...
My room is 16'4" L x 10'11" W x 8' H and no 4th wall Patio doors on right side and dinning room, kitchen on left and concrete ceiling
My friend’s master bedroom was designed with a ceiling that was a French Curve (think wave) and that was !!!FANTASTIC!!!. The damping imparted by that ceiling was a real eye opener. So, too (eye opener) was Frank Lloyd-Wright’s Oak Park home. What he did with light and acoustic steering and shaping is worth the tour (if ever you go to Chicago it’s a must do tour).
The octagon shaped bar with its pointy high ceiling my dad built beside our house is perfect for reverb and echo lovers. If you love drowning in sound, then that's the room you want. It's the exact opposite of an anechoic chamber.
No bullshit. It's Paul's passion for sound excellence and transparency that is pushing me to build my next rig around PS Audio.
Having lived with a pair of Spica TC50i speakers in a geodesic dome living room about 20' across and 14' high ceiling at the peak I can attest it sounds wonderful. Best soundstage I've ever experienced, esp the layered depth.
my bedroom is totally a square and small, and yes the acustics sucks, but some years ago when i was a hardcore audiophile I put acustic foam everywhere, walls, celling, and i make the speakers point at me and OMG it cames very pleasent, the spakers dissapear, and the sound came everywhere.
It's good to turn it around, give you another perspective, like feeling your body on Ketamine
Pretty much every time I have had to deal with a room that had a curved wall or ceiling, it has been a disaster. It's great for live music spaces where the sound comes from a many widely spaced points in the room, but not so much with two point sources.
the biggest cinema in norway (the biggest in the world at one point i believe) is called the colosseum and it has an enormous domed ceiling, the sound in there will take your breath away.
I remember watching Star Wars The Phantom Menace there when the THX certification was brand new. It sounded like one giant mono speaker the whole time. Never went back, since it's a pretty far trip from where I live. Hopefully they've made some changes.
After years of dealing with and hearing about these sort of problems, I decided it wasn't worth worrying about. If you want a perfect listening experience with speakers, build a custom listening room designed for it. Otherwise, just get decent gear (locally made if possible) that wont break your wallet or disturb your marriage, and just frickin enjoy some music. It's funny I read something about audiophiles when I was a kid: "most audiophiles spend more time listening to their gear than listening to the music playing through it". I love gear but IMO it seems a lot of people forget that the music is what it's all about. The quality of the performance of say, the moonlight sonata for example, has more impact on the listener than the quality of the audio setup playing it.
Thanks for answering my question Paul! And thanks to all the commenters for their insights too.
Had a tiny 7.5’ cube study. Very pronounced standing wave that turned up on all impedance sweeps when tinkering with guitar amps.
Short answer - my living room - LoL. It is almost exactly 16 x 32 with an 8' ceiling. Worse yet, there is no corner suitable for a sub, most of the back wall is glass and one side of the only feasible listening space is also glass. It is really awful sounding...
I’ll be attending AXPONA for the fourth year. I really hope you those speakers get done for the show. I’m really looking forward to seeing and hear your speaker line.
Hi Paul, I have a question, if money wasn't an issue, and you could have made the corners curved what would the dimensions be?
In other words how far would you start the curve from the beginning of the wall and where would it end. Thank you! By the way I do enjoy your side comments they're very informative and helpful, please continue.
I'm researching putting together a new component stereo system. I discovered your UA-cam channel and Wow! I am learning a lot. I didn't know there was so much to know about different amps, integrated amps, speakers and even speaker wires and interconnects. I'd like to thank you for the education by purchasing a PS Audio component but you are just to high end for my budget. And I can't find a dealer here on Vancouver Island that sells PS Audio products. You should look into that. You'd think Victoria would have a population size large enough to be of interest to your high end products. Again, thanks for the education.
There is no worse shape except a cube, It's all about speaker placement and figuring out how to avoid reflection points without isolation. Image will be louder then the reflection if you do it right...Equilateral speaker setup only works in empty rooms...
I am semi-regularly involved in putting on concerts in an almost cubed sports hall c.60x60ft - the ceiling has 2 vaults going up to c.50ft and the floor is mildly squidgy. walls are mostly bare block. In rehearsal it is dreadful, though get raised tiers of seating and stuff with humans and it actually sounds like a pretty good concert hall. Recordings made from a crossed pair from the lower roof area sound surprisingly dry. (Bass presence does vary where you are as you might expect... ) so there's your ideal room treatment - humans!!
Look at the size of those transformers. OMG I guess that’s one reason why they weigh 83 pounds each.
I was thinking he same thing, they are ginormous.
It's called product placement... The same way just about every computer shown in a movie is a Mac. Paul is no fool and does it deliberately to market to you while you're listening. He also "drifts" off topic to do the same. Just smart marketing to pitch a product at someone who doesn't even realise they are being sold to.
This whole audio thing he does, is just to get people to his cooking shows.
Classic bait and switch.
@@DodgyBrothersEngineering The product placement model I believe, only works for a potential buyer who already knows what they want. Everyone on TV has an Apple product, but I have used them enough to know I don’t want one. Seeing those big BHK transformers may convince me to buy a PS Audio amp though, since I have already been lusting after one.
@@juliaset751 the question you have to ask yourself is how much more market share has Mac grabbed as a result of people subliminally seeing them in movies. Mac had an extremely small market share dominated by PCs, which has only grown with movie exposure. Moths are drawn to a light... Audiophiles will be drawn to PS Audio even though they may not be aware of their specific products (I was aware of many of their products). As a viewer and as a person with roughly equivalent value / quality equipment, some properly placed product could get someone like me to a thinking if I was in the market (I was on the edge of buying some several times, and did actually buy one of their Dectect powerboards). While the audience that can afford the higher end products are somewhat limited, the customer base is still watching.
my rom is 2.2 x 2.3 x 2.4 meters
that is pretty close to cube, maybe that's why i like to overdo the sound absorbers in here. doing sound sweep its easy to eq to flat by ear at least. i wonder how it measures....
im in the only usable rom in the apartment, its office room. bedroom in oddly shaped and is the only room that can fit my bed, living room is merged with kitchen and i hate that so much....
@room-ten-oh-nine ! blub🐡
A domed ceiling could have very bad spots depending on source and listener location but I think this could be overcome by creative placement. A cube room would seem to be something that would be bad no matter the placement. I have worked around a lot of professional P.A. systems as a video projectionist in the past and many ballrooms have domed ceilings in places, but not 1 large dome. These have some spots that will transmit very soft sounds to the other side of the dome very efficiently, but overall the room sounds fine.
I didn’t think a cubed room would be that bad. Shows what I know. Lol
"What's the worst room"
Paul describes my room almost exactly.
Me ....😭😭😭😭😭
it's not just about the room. if the volume is not very loud, any room should be fine. my room is almost cubic and my system sounds pretty neutral.
Can't wait to listen to the PS Audio speaker line!
A singularity; any room in a black hole will suck.
here is my idea. make the shipping container padding an acoustical panel that the customer can reuse to improve the sound.
Monoprice RCA’s and Stock Power Cables..🤔
Square is absolutely the worst! Agreed. Haha
Thanks Paul.
I think a spherical room with it's perfect antipoles everywhere would be the worst. I would think everything would sound mono.
Sleep well , thanks Paul
Well Paul, if you want the speakers to really wow people you might need to have crack acoustics people ready to go out and fix customers rooms. (me?)
Worst shape is like a pipe with two feet diameter where you can stand up only and speakers are in the circular door placed at the end of the pipe being 10 miles long. Well, I could still think of worse than that.
isn't there a pipe simulator on the windows media player?
Square base, semi-spherical or domed ceiling. (Good for church and for choral singing, not for concerts, gigs and audio playback.)
I'm gonna give it a try anyway. 😃
Wats the best room?
Great topic! We are moving soon..... I was thinking about using one of the rooms in the finished basement for the stereo. However it's long and narrow, 11ft × 24. Actually 2 rooms in basement with those dimensions and 14 ft hall inbetween. It has 8ft ceilings. Kinda scared how it's gonna sound, worried it will sound very dead. Please help.... anyone!
I'm wondering about mine also a bit. I'm in the middle of building my room in the basement. It's going to be 15 x 25.
Noob:
Can you get rid of one wall between the room and hall?
Make the room 14ft wide?
@@Badazz08
Nice dimensions.
Go for it
@@20CycleMonger thanks
Y. Keep speakers4-6 ft off front wall and as ffrom side walls as practical. Absorb first reflections. Put broadband bass traps in all corners. Put diffusers on rear walls.
The worst room shape is the hexaflexagon.
It’s not even close
Let's wire up some Wilson XLF's or some Focal Grand Utopia EM's or IRSV's to a flat power amp... It's gonna sound bad.. No bass no treble! No system on Earth sounds good 'Flat' with every recording!
Wouldn't be an Open Plan living area with half level mezzanine. Similar but more extreme version of this thumbnail.
Neojhun my previous house was like that, half of the room 3x6x3 meters, other half 3x8x6. Subwoofer placement took some time but the Audyssey system (digital 100 channel Eq per speaker, which also took some time to get right) from Marantz made a night and day difference. All of my friends interested in hifi were impressed. Great imaging despite the room
"dome ceiling"... how about try one... no they aren't whatever... they are total suck. stand in one and play the flute... doghouse bass... yeah trip out and it is really fun... hifi? ok....
The worst room(s) I'm most familiar with are older New England Colonials where they have converted ( some of ) the attic space to a leisure space. These old homes have high peaked roofs so inside the attic you get a very tall room with steep angles from the peak and not always to the floor. You end up with 2 or 3 feet of vertical wall sometimes with windows. Almost always these are long and narrow and finished off with wallboard. 20ft long x 15ft wide and even 12ft tall with the peak running the long length of the room.. I've seen people hang sheets of sound absorbent material from the ceilings to tame these things. They're awful.
I know of someone here that has exactly what you described, upstate ny.
One where there is no...
...room...
escuhad mi ep en bandcamp for the love of charles mingus ep :G
I remember they made a big deal about the cinema in Oslo here in Norway becoming the biggest THX certified movie theater in the world. The entire ceiling is one giant dome. Went to see Star Wars in there and it was...like mono and....pretty awful.
yours.
A computer generated impulse response might give you the answer.
Or for a more old school approach you can play with a room mode calculator.
Sometimes you gotta wonder whether McGowan knows anything at all about acoustics. He always skips this kind of questions.
You're forgetting the title Paul 99% true 1% bulshit.
Would of thought it be too difficult to set up your speakers perfectly for your room using an app on your phone.
If you get a pink Noise generated file and played in Mono on one side of the speaker use the microphone from the phone at your sitting level position have a chat on the screen to show you how the sound is reflected off the wall ceiling by algorithms sent back to a mainframe to be calculated just place your speaker in it's optimal position do the same on the other side
yeah I was such a theorist myself until i started dealing with setting up mid-size PA Systems... the thing is with measuring... most of the time you only get some hints and never the whole picture. The most sensitive measuring apparat we have is in our ears... we can hear things, that even the fastest oscilloscopes cant measure. So measuring helps a bit with finding dips and peaks... in the end you really need to set everything up by ear. Completely equalized by measurement often sound horrible to the ears!
@@andreasmuller5693 I think you're right really but the measurement is to give you a ballpark place for your speakers should only need a little bit of fine tuning from that point
Andreas, I agree with you too. I think that measurement stuff killed SQ car audio here in the USA. That's the point in time that I sold my system to my friend and focused on a different sport.
But I never stopped thinking about "out doing" myself.