Robert Peirce wrote:
In article ,
Andrew Haley wrote:
I have a suggestion to make: Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and
Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms by Floyd Toole. Beware of
anyone who tells you of easy solutions to this problem, but being
well-informed won't hurt.
http://www.amazon.com/Sound-Reproduc...dp/0240520092/
The room dimensions are unknown at this point, but they will be fairly
small. I will be forced to have only two (or four with separate woofers)
fairly small speakers near the front of the room and limited room
treatment beyond furniture and rugs. Yet I want to be able to hear a
decent soundstage from just about anywhere in the room. Given those
constraints, actual experience in solving this problem is likely to
prove more helpful.
Do you really think that actual experience from a few here will be
more helpful than Toole's book, which addresses this issue, and is
based on the largest body of research in this area? You may get
information about someone's room, but with no guarantee that it
applies to yours.
Regardless of room constructions and shape, there are speakers that
work well if you are in a single position but not so well if you are
not, and speakers that possibly aren't the best for a fixed location
but provide good sound throughout the space.
This is to do with the directivity of a loudspeaker and the way that
it interacts with a room. Many loudspeakers that have an excellent
frequency response on axis are very ragged off-axis. The most
desirable trait, from your point of view, is that the directivity of
your loudspeakers should be constant, or at least only gradually
changing, over most of the frequency range. Loudspeakers with higher
off-axis radiation will help. But -- and this is only my subjective
experience, based on a few examples -- some rooms will never sound
very good, no matter what you do.
I'm not going to find that out from a book.
But, strangely, you will find it out from Usenet!
Andrew.