damped room kills imaging

[colin.hepburn]

Hi All
Can an over damped room kill stereo imaging I have all the use stuff i.e. Soft furnishings book cases fitted carpet large sheepskin rug wood floorboards but fairly sturdy the room is well dead should I remove some furnishings to get a more alive room has anyone got any suggestions on getting the best mix on this

[Richard]

Hi Colin,

The single biggest thing I've found that influences imaging is getting the speakers away from the back wall and preferably a little way at least from side walls.

Why I think this happens is that the ear needs to hear a dominance of direct sound and it is this image that is laid upon weaker ambient sound reflected from back and side walls.

If the speakers are too close to the walls the reflected and direct sounds arrive too close together time-wise and the image is not clear.

However, it is a balance and we need the reflections to flesh out the illusion. If there is no/little reflected sound (over damped room) then the soundseems dead/flat. If there is too much (under damped) we get poor image and that "singing in the bath" sound which might work on one or two recordings but is generally brash and confused.

[Cobblers]

I think an overdamped room is much better than an underdamped one, especially small rooms.

My listening rooms are fairly heavily damped and I get damn fine imaging now with WD25. WD25 is a typical Petercom design for use against the back wall.
Wd25 sounded very similar even when I had taken much of the furnishing out and curtains down a few months back and had a much livelier room.

I think it will be immediately obvious if you have overdone it. The room will sound stark with an overly dead claustrophobic acoustic.

Studio control rooms are typically heavily damped and they are used to assess recording quality and for mixing.
How much of the recording and how much of the room should we be listening to?

[colin.hepburn]

Hi All
my speakers are firing across the room i think ill try pooling then out more from back wall not got much to play with thou room size is about 15.06ftx10,06ftx 7.06ft see layout plan http://www.wduk.worldomain.net/forum...2&d=1179402508

[Cycleallday]

Colin,
Lucky you, a sheepskin rug (fact) in front of a lovely raging fire (my imagination) with your girlfriend/wife/both next to you and you are thinking about the quality of the music!!! - just try reducing the damping by stripping her cloth.... - sorry back to the point.

I think I have the opposite of an over dampded room in a 3x4m conservatory which houses a Linn Classic with Spendor speakers and the set up sounds absolutley great. The conservatory wall is about 2ft high and the rest is a tile floor with typical three piece bamboo suite and glass walls and roof. I tried moving the components it into my music room and it sounds totally bland/dead.

Its not only the room you need to consider but also what the sources are you are putting into it. In my conservatroy I find the quality of music way above what I get out in my music room where I have somethink like £8k worth of kit - needless to say the conservatory is well used - (no raging fire but there is is a nice setting sun on a summers evening!

Mel

[Ianm2]

hi all, at the risk of repeating, studios are the experts in this field.

the bbc use the live end, dead end principle, where the speaker end is the live end, and the listener end is the absorbent end, I have a rug of sorts on the wall behind me, and that improved things.

even speakers are mounted in soffits, sunk into the wall, I suppose strictly, we should all be measuring and calculating our speakers, correct height and position, based upon wavelengths of sound, but in households, its a big compromise anyway, and you can't be too fussy unless you have a dedicated room.

obviously the further away you are, the more reflected sound you get, I used to like near field, but sometimes, mid field gets a more coherent/diffuse sound with all the elements gelling and can be easier to listen to.

the ceiling ideally needs to diffuse sound, too. and things in the middle between you obviously make the direct sound bounce and mess things up, ideally, I like an unpimpeded path.

not sure about side walls, instinct would tell me to damp them, as you don't want reflected sound messing things up there, but you can go to the other extreme, and I suspect a dead room is as bad as a live one.

I;m a bit of a novice at rooms, but the theory is out there, and I know a fair bit about reverberation, but its another thing doing it.

[Guy Pettigrew]

Hi

Have you ever had good imaging with the set up you use?

If you have, then can you remember what you have changed?

Sorry to have to ask this, but have you checked phasing? In other words, try reversing the +/- wires on one speaker and see what happens.

What speakers do you have?

Guy

[colin.hepburn]

Hi Guy
Good imaging Well no not really it is a bit one sided i.e. too the left the inner left centre right works well right outer imaging is odd seems to come of the right corner up at ceiling height this is likely down to my not so ideal room and the space between left side wall to speaker ? Perhaps if I build a false corner wall to match the space to the same as the right side wall I have checked the wiring all ok I have the speakers bi wired as well speakers are wharfdale 8.2 floorstanders soon to be changes to fostex 126E BLH this winter see other thread on my speaker placement
http://www.wduk.worldomain.net/forum/showthread.php?t=2947&highlight=speaker+placement

[JerryT]

Hi

I'd ask a different question.

Do we agree what we mean by imaging? A friend and I discovered that we disagreed what we meant by imaging. He wanted to hear the instrument and player precisely located. I wanted to hear the image as a concert with all the reverberant soundfield and a fair idea of where the soloists were.

We tried some experiments. I liked rooms with some damping and reflective walls. He liked very well damped rooms. Interestingly we both preferred the area around the speakers to be more lightly damped than the rest of the room.

Once you've worked out what you want adjusting the room accordingly is fairly easy. (Interestingly neither of us liked the effect of a very reflective floor, though we used very different words- brash, hazy, diffuse, cloudy- to describe the effect)

As an aside I go to live performances he doesn't - so it probably isn't any surprise we disagree on our reference points.

Hope this helps.

Jerry

[colin.hepburn]

Hi Jerry
you have a good point i think i would like precisely located imaging and depth