Quote:
Originally Posted by 72doug2,2S
I have some vintage polk Audio 5 jrs bookshelf speakers that I absolutely love. Nothing today seems to come close.
This whole field drives me crazy. I have researched the perfect sound room, but my basement home theatre arrangement goes against the conventional wisdom and occupies a long wall. I think it sounds great and looks so much better than the traditional set up.
The only thing I can think of is that the opposing wall is not so much a wall as it is a stairwell to the first floor. So, not much is really being bounced or reflected back.
The best addition for me was a powered sub-woofer.
My system is a mismatched group of speakers and components. I also have plans for whole house audio using an a-bus system, but funds seem to hard to find in the 2009-2012 economy.
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I guess the question is, do you trust your ears to what the original performance was intended? After years listening to digitized sound, I forgot how clean the old analog sounds and thats why I want to experiment with my old stuff again. I listen to a wide range of music, more to classic rock but that doesn't mean I have it right either. I've become accustomed or tuned more to high power at low volumes, ignorantly, artificially expanding range. I don't know if thats correct in my description but in other words - putting out subwoofer-mud or excess treb's is what I often hear. I've listened to others high-end systems and clubs like that. I hate it and tires me. Some of the older first generation CD manufactured conversions from original album era really suck too and that creates another problem.
But there is hope for old and new thanks to the era of budget software, a minimal laptop and lower cost microphones (around $200 for your A/V toolbox) you can
visually see frequencies in the room which are giving you problems. Its called True RTA for real time analyzer.
For example, to fix a subwoofer and you measure an uneveness under 80Hz, you can begin to experiment by moving your listening chair, the sub itself or perhaps adjust the equalizer. Do the test again and compare the graph. One can take it is far as they want and have analyzed spectrums for movies, type of music and now have proper pre-sets, not to what the manufacturer THINKS you should have.
I can't speak from experience yet but since I'm looking at building up some speakers, its the route I'm planning. Somehow with this ingenious stuff from others now very cheap (once costing thousands), I think one could spec out horns, speakers, components for a very reasonable amount, custom build yourself to the very room they will permanantly be used and not some specialized test sound room facility. Fortunately I'm also into woodworking with plenty of MDF to waste, so looks aren't important yet so I'll experiment before spending on some quality species. Now if I could just find my old striped bell bottoms and cool wide belt....