Hi everyone Dennis Foley from acoustic fields.
I get a lot of emails from customers who say they cannot hear certain things or they cannot
hear differences in sounds within their room and they think or believe or have been told
that they need a special skillset, a special hearing skillset to recognize things and they
get frustrated and disappointed.
The term for that is golden ears, not golden years, but golden ears.
People have a misconception or misunderstanding that you have to have special hearing skills
to hear differences in room acoustic treatments, sounds that occur in your room and your high
fi systems and it is just simply not true.
There's all kinds of impacts that can be made that are quite audible and quite noticeable.
The lows attack and definition is a very good thing to look at for low frequency energy
in your room.
The middles definition and separation, that's what you want in your middle frequencies.
With harmonies, background vocals, rhythm instruments and things like that, you want
them separate and distinct, and you can hear those, it is just a matter of training yourself
to recognize what those are.
The highs, we like to call it in our studio sparkle and shine, but air is another quality
that people use when they talk about highs.
Very noticeable with today's digital technologies, in fact, too noticeable.
So absorption is a good room treatment that we can use for that, but really is no special
skillset required you do not need proper training.
You do need to recognize the difference between low middle and high frequencies, and start
becoming more of a critical listener.
And the term golden ears is not something that really applies.
Let us forget about the term golden ears because it is not a very descriptive term and it is
misleading and it has limitations placed up it.
Let us focus on room sound.
This is the most difficult part for people to really understand.
How much the room contributes to what they are hearing.
All kinds of percentages out there, 50, 60, 70 percent, who knows.
Let us just use 50 as our guideline.
So if we use 50 percent of the total sound that's being contributed by the room, then
any change that we do in low middle or high frequencies should be noticeable because it
represents 50 percent of what we are hearing.
I hear a lot of people say well I do not like the low end of my room but I am troubled on
how to figure out how to improve upon it.
And maybe it does not matter that much.
Maybe it is really not that big of a deal, so the kind of talk themselves into believing
that since I do not know what to do and how to treat it, then maybe it is not necessarily
a big deal, well it is a big deal because the price we pay for amplifiers, speakers,
cables today, I do not know if you have your system price all up and the amount of wattage
your amplifier has, but it is quite expensive.
So we have to use that equipment in our rooms.
The room you are using it in is contributing 50 60 70 percent to the sound quality you
are hearing, even a slight modification will do a lot.
Let us take low frequencies for example.
Two well-placed pressure activated absorbers in high pressure areas behind the speakers
in a 2 channel system will make a huge difference in definition, attack and decay.
Obviously there's many more areas in the room that need treating, but 2 simple units, 2
foot by 4 foot by 12 inches deep will produce a dramatic difference in attack and decay
at the low frequencies.
What else can we do.
Middle frequencies, where all of our emotional connectivity to the music lies.
What we can do there is treat the side wall reflections and just keep it simple, use absorption.
That simple process of treating side wall reflections with absorption will drastically
improve your soundstage.
You'll have more focus in the middle, you'll have more definition and separation, you'll
have more layers to your music, and that's what the mid-range should be about.
High frequencies are something that need to be managed because they do contribute to what
we hear and they need to be managed even more so today with the digital technologies, absorption
is a good way, diffusion is a good way, absorption is a good way for middle and high frequencies
both.
So with your room sound being 50 60 70 percent, whatever value you want to put upon it, and
your equipment speakers amplifiers and cables being the other 50 percent, a small change
in room treatment, any octave band that you want to talk about let us start with lows,
that can have a big impact.
So you change an amplifier, you change a speaker, you know the difference in sound there.
Well your room is basically the same thing.
So a small amount of treatment in your room will create a big improvement in sound quality.
And what we find is that once people understand that, once they try and take the first step,
it is all great from that point, they want to improve more, if they start with the low
frequencies which is where you should start, because that provides the foundation for your
music.
They automatically want to treat the side walls and go to the middle frequency area.
And then when they get that tamed and the soundstage focused, then diffusion comes into
play for the rear wall and the front wall listening positions and rear wall and control
room.
Your room contributes a lot.
You do not have to have golden ears, it is kind of a myth.
Most people's hearing is more than adequate.
If you have good enough hearing to select an amplifier and a speaker, you definitely
have good enough hearing to treat your room and hear those differences also.
Thank you.