On Dec 10, 11:29*am, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:
Almost 30 years ago, Jon Dahlquist accidentally discovered that painting a
speaker cabinet with 3M "fuzzy" paint (I forget the trade name)
significantly improved the sound, apparently because it dampened the
surface, preventing it from becoming a secondary radiator.
I heard a demo of this, and was surprised.
William,
There is a bizarre effect that most people are unaware of. High
frequencies travel along a surface or boundary differently than they
move through the air. In effect the sound travels along the surface of
the box and where ever a corner, screw or surface deformity exists the
sound re-radiates making a more complex sound field. Since the ideal
speaker is a singular point source anything you can do to reduce this
re-radiation will help clarify the imaging. Rounded edges on a speaker
box also helps.
The notion of a single point source being ideal may also help
explain the importance of decoupling your speakers from the
workstation.
Someone pointed out on this thread the location, location, location
'truism' This may be true, but primarily it is due to the fact that
most speakers are awful and interact with the room poorly. In other
words, with most speakers as you move the speaker in relation to the
walls the room's acoustical issues are stimulated variously by the
problems of the speaker. If the rooms and the speakers weren't so
awful the location, location, location axiom wouldn't be true. Take
it all the way out of the room... think of it in free space. location
only matters as it relates to the relationship between you and the
speakers. And you can move. The degree to which the location model is
true relates entirely to the flaws of listening through boxes inside
of boxes. And those can to some extent be fixed. Do you need an
acoustician?
http://www.blackmersound.com.
Sorry,
Eric Blackmer