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Other room, better sound
Ideally elsewhere
By John Paul
September 2000
An excellent guidebook for understanding acoustics and doing something
about them is Acoustics by F Alton Everest from TAB Books. In easy-to-understand
text and many diagrams he covers facts and fallacies about the science
of sound and hearing, and gives tons of relevant audiophile facts.
The Elsewhere Phenomena
But the fun part that can come out in any discussion about good sounding rooms is the bit where we admit “it sounds better out in the kitchen, than in here!”.
We’ve probably all experienced this seemingly strange phenomena
at one time or another. So before we go spending a quarter million or
so like Mark Levinson did on his over the top perfect Cello listening
room, maybe we should just thrash the alternate listening environs notion
around. Just to save a few quid, eh?
The one thing I’ve noticed about the other room better sound (ORBS) notion is that non-resonant cabinet, clean transient speakers like Quads, Magneplanars and Martin-Logans consistently sound absolutely wonderful in the next room.
Maybe it’s because they’re linear phase radiators, and there’s very little nonsense happening between the woof and tweet sections. No, that matters up close. Or maybe it’s because they’re dipoles and they’re not exciting as many nasty room nodes. No, the room is actually the speaker box if we’re listening through a doorway and hallways etc.
Or maybe as big surfaces they’re just moving the air more evenly.
Or since there are no cabinet nasties, the reproduced sound is simply
better. But why appreciate that more from elsewhere instead of up close.
Weird!?!
The ORBS dinner
What got me going on this topic was a surprising little incident while we had a home dinner with good friends. They are not “into hi-fi”, but have a modest little NAD system through which they often enjoy classical selections and some 60–70s oldies.
“So on the night in question”, said inspector Jacques Clousseu, “precisely, what did you hear?” I put on the perfectly recorded Michael Houston Beethoven Last Sonatas CD and wound up the wick a bit too much for dinner background music on the Plinius SA50 into my old Tannoys as we shifted back into our rear dining room.
Moments after settling in to our feed, my friends were exclaiming “how wonderful the sound is” and “it’s just like he’s playing in the next room!”
I nearly choked on my mashed potatoes because to my ears, it all frankly
sounded like shit as Michael’s music bounced through a hardwood floor
kitchen with all reflecting surfaces, then dog-legged past a fridge on
through a doorway into a roughly two metre cubical glass and more hardwood
area going into the near square heavily windowed dining room itself. An
ugly acoustic path that.
No bass gets through that doorway and the adjacent fridge does plenty
of damage with midrange bumps and bounces to create a dismal cacophony
of clangs and clonks with no acoustic coherence or musical balance. Forget
about the highs and please don’t even ask about the upper mids!
I’ll put in a small separate “tuned” music system back
there eventually. But on this night in question my friends, who were not
goofing with me, and were being totally natural and honest, insisted that
the music sounded great!
I didn’t overreact and force their opinion or contradict them and
I didn’t lead them on fishing for compliments that my gear that they
never worried about in the main lounge room was suddenly magical back
here in slop echo city. I just politely choked on my spuds, nodded along,
and self-administered several Heineken manoeuvres as I pondered that old
mystery again of “what is good sound?” Maybe my friends just
like fire hall sound.
Likely Suspects
Right now I’m becoming seriously suspicious of the whole notion
of stereo as manufactured via multi-mic and multi-track recordings. Particularly
the way our ears may process pan-potted information, as amplitude changed
but not corrected phase difference presentation in the sound stage. This
opens up that fine can of worms about true multi-channel reproduction
again.
And there’s the not implausible idea that stereo as we know it,
has done its dash. Human hearing doesn’t quite really work like the
stereos we set-up so there’s a lot at stake to consider what does
work and what doesn’t.
I’m essentially partial to purist binaural recordings via headphone replay as the preferred two channel medium, but there’s no catalogue of music to enjoy. So theory shines, but reality sucks.
In favour of few microphones again, I’ve noticed that minimally
mic’d recordings such as old Mercurys and new Cheskys can really
become quite lifelike auditioned from other rooms. Does ambient and phase
correct but compromised stereo playback work? Everywhere except my nasty
dining room, thank you very much!
Expert Evidence
If you’ve found yourself really enjoying some reproduced music at a far from the sweet spot location, we’d all be happy to hear about them in consideration of defining what’s involved in creating pure listening pleasure.
Especially if we can save ourselves a small fortune on creating our own “ideal” listening environments. Wherever they may be!
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