10 Room Acoustics / Speaker Position
Introduction
The listening room forms the final link of the playback system, as important as any other component in the chain. Just as an otherwise superb system is handicapped by an inferior pre-amplifier (for example), so can a well-matched system be hindered by poor room acoustics. It is not necessary to listen to your system in a specially-designed sound chamber in order to enjoy it. In fact, a dedicated listening room usually requires additional sound treatment, only due to a lack of other items in the room that can help provide good acoustics. However, a degree of attention to set-up can greatly increase your listening satisfaction, no matter what your listening situation.
Listening in a properly set-up room can be a startling experience. Perhaps it is best described as if the front half of your listening space has been removed, so that the recording site now occupies this part of your room. This can ideally be an entirely three-dimensional space with dense, palpable instruments that are spatially arrayed.
To optimize your equipment set-up and the listening-room acoustics requires a basic understanding of the principles which affect the propagation of sound in the room. Also, we will discuss the way in which our brain interprets spatial cues, and how the room acoustics can affect our sonic perceptions.
