The Room Effect

By titling this article "The Room Effect", you might think this is going to be an article about room acoustics. Actually, it's an article about psycho-acoustics and how much our mind plays into our sound and how sound is either a reality or not. There are several different industries to understand when you are talking about The Room Effect and it's important to realize the different functions between these industries. If we can somehow begin to visualize how the mind works with sound and how it works with our belief system, we can uncover perhaps some of the truths of creating good sound.

Let me give you an example. It doesn't take much time to realize that if you spend time with a person who is fairly proficient at playing an instrument, they have a tendency to listen to their home audio system differently than a person that is simply a home audio or home surround sound listener. Last week I participated in an Internet talk forum as a special guest. At the same time, I was in and out of recording studios. The amazing part, during the week, was the difference between these two worlds. Even more amazing is how I realized how young and naive this industry of music reproduction and listening really is. Sometimes we have to give ourselves a break. I spent last week talking about system methods instead of pointing my finger at particular products. Yet at times, it was hard to stay focused because my mind was drifting back and forth between two worlds that were really the same world. They just don't know it.

This week I had the privilege of spending time with one of the world's greatest mastering engineers. I will be redesigning his old mastering facility and then designing his new facility. While having conversations with him, I was paying attention to how his sense of "referencing" was so amazingly different than the audiophile sense of "referencing". Now see if you can follow me on this. Here is a man who's mixing and talking to me about making his environment sound somewhat like a living room and not one piece of his equipment was a home piece of equipment. If I named off the tools that he had, the home person would probably not recognize any one of them. And, the most interesting part was when we visited a small break room that almost looked like a listening preview room, I of course became excited because immediately I wanted to make this break room sound good. I became very dismayed when he said, "Right now, it wouldn't matter" because the person making the decisions on these recordings would not be making them in a break room nor a listening room nor even a home theater surround sound environment. The decisions would be made in a car, for the car is where the promoter (I'm assuming that's the right title) spends most of his time and occasionally he'll play the system on a portable setup or sometimes at home.
I'm sure, by this time, those of you reading this article are appalled and may be feeling neglected. Now, let me tell you about another side of the story. At the same time that I was meeting with this engineer (Keep in mind that this guy is GOOD and really understands soundstaging cues!), our entire focus was on rooms. Yes, this fellow had his pet equipment and I could tell, in common with the audiophile, it was going to take some prying of his fingers from the face plates of his prize possessions. That's nothing new for me because I know that will come in time. But, what was interesting, is when he took me on the tour of this extremely well known studio (I would venture to say one of the top twenty studios in the world), that every room I walked in was completely different and even though these were all somewhat designed by the same type and/or by the same acoustical designer, they were all dramatically different. These rooms were doing basically the same functions, which break down to two functions. The first function is where the instrument is and the second is where the engineer is. Here's what I'm trying to say. This huge facility looked like one big prototype. Nothing in this facility fit. Part way through our tour, I said to the engineer "Wouldn't it be easier for you if every room in this facility had the same method and this method had the ability to adapt to any desired function or result?". For a moment, he looked at me and then said "Yeah, that makes a lot of sense! I don't think that's ever been done before." One of the reasons why is probably because of the richness of history that this building produced. The recordings that have come from this facility are recordings that you all know and own. Now, let's look into the logistics of this problem. This studio operates like any other business -- on cash flow, even sometimes above performance. One part of the building is shut down for remodeling. It has five weeks to get remodeled. Ten years later another part of the building gets shut down for remodeling and gets five weeks for the remodeling. Well, as you know, in ten years ideas on acoustics can change dramatically from one designer to the next. Another observation that I made was that not one room sounded consistent with any other room. There is no way you could play the same instrument or the same system in any two rooms in that building and have it sound the same. It reminded me so much of the audiophile world.

The audiophile world and the videophile world have setup their own rules without any basis, without any foundation and without any continuity between any of the equipment that they are using. The one thing they have in common is the pride and ego that they are the ones doing it "correct". This almost sounds like a presidential campaign, doesn't it? Therefore, what we have decided to do, with much excitement on the part of the engineers who we have become friends with, is to build a studio based on the philosophy of tunability and variability. Every room will be built to reference every other room. We are now preparing a facility at Yale University in this fashion. We are also in the process of building a facility, using this philosophy, just outside of Seattle. This 14,000 square foot recording facility will be THE state of the art in tunability, yet it is only stage one as the owners of this facility have committed to bring the level of quality to new heights from the concert to the living room. This is the boldest and most advanced endeavor in the entire music industry. For the first time, a true reference will be able to be established. The signal path will be maintained at the height of purity. This will in no doubt set the standards for the new world in sound reproduction.

In some ways, this article may seem a little over your head. I guarantee you that it is not. Allow me to show you why it is not. Go to your music collection and randomly pick five different music labels. Make sure to read the liner notes to be sure that none of these musical pieces were done in the same facilities with the same engineers. Play them on your system. Notice that these musical pieces sound shockingly different from each other. Even the volume levels are shockingly different. In order to make these five musical pieces sound good in your home, you would have to have, in many cases, five different audiophile systems. Better yet, take this experiment one more step and let a friend of yours pick out from his/her collection five pieces of music and play them on your system. The next phase in the music reproduction and playback world is going to be one of reference and synergism. In talking to my new found engineering friends, I asked them if these systems were put in place, how long would it take the mentality of the current hobbyists and professionals to accept the ingrained patterns of the way that we have always done it versus seeking a musical reference based on achieving "like" reference rooms. This is simply to say, when will you in your home listening rooms and theaters be able to hear what was really recorded? For the last forty years, we've been taking a stab in the dark at "What does it really sound like?" And, the walls that separate the different worlds of the music industry are as big as the walls that separate the countries of the world and, even more so, the oceans that divide the continents. There are now truly great engineers. These engineers have access to the tools that can create anything, but who and what they are creating it for is yet to be seen. Expect, over the next few years, dramatic changes to take place in these technologies. Your system in your home will undoubtedly be changed dramatically.

Now that you understand the direction in which we are going, expect dramatic changes in the interaction between your room and your system. The component matching game does not work. These aren't even the same components that the people making the music are using. The people making the music are just now discovering the interaction between instrument, room, microphone and playback let alone what the mastering engineers are doing. Then after you put that together, you are faced with the entire home industry (which, by the way, many decisions for which are being made in some producer's automobile). This world will undoubtedly change. One of the major things that will change will be "The Room Effect" . "How do my speakers not only react with my system and also how do they react with my room?" Does anyone really know this answer? Yale University doesn't believe that the answers have been properly given and is dedicating a recording studio, completely variably tunable, for the studies of "The Room Effect". Many challenges will be made against "old school" philosophies and how they are incorrect. For example, measuring acoustics outside and developing particular lengths of waves as opposed to measuring that same wave in an enclosed room as well as how sound waves affect the function of the ear and brain perception of that wave. Another interesting falsehood in the acoustical world is the size of matter and it's particular value of controlling a particular size of wave. In the studies we have already done, we have already determined that 20 Hz can be affected and controlled inside of an enclosed space with acoustical devices no bigger than 10" x 12" and one inch thick. This defies the "wisdom" in all conventional acoustical handbooks and yet is easily demonstrated. Conventional acoustics have not been studied as thoroughly as they should have been to make the statements that they have made.

As this proof and series of studies are documented, the design of loudspeakers will be dramatically influenced. In the high end industry, whether it be recording studios or listening environments, there will be much more emphasis placed on the room being part of the loudspeaker. This may seem like quite an obstacle, but really is not as we have been developing and testing loudspeakers built to be used in their acoustical environments rather than work against their acoustical environments. This is why we have been producing what we call "free resonant" loudspeakers. Our study has been based on how acoustical instruments work, how rooms work mechanically and acoustically and how the ear and brain work. The studies in the old conventional school have been based on trying to remove the effects of the room or in trying to remove the effects of the speaker cabinet based on the documentation of acoustics in conventional handbooks. The free resonance approach is the idea of making physics, as it has to do with electronics, mechanics and acoustics, able to relate in a manner of synergism instead of the conventional studies of isolation and treating these three principles as if they were not interlinked. It is now believed that it is not a reality that the acoustical, mechanical and electrical effects should be removed from one another, but should be brought together. In studies in both the medical and energy fields, when using the elements as all one part in an efficient manner, the results show a "gain" as opposed to the results shown when separating one of these elements from the entire group.