Good room acoustic treatment has often been impressed on people to be expensive and the privilege of only high-end studios. There is an inherent irony to this in itself, which is that considering that real estate (i.e. square footage) is often an expensive factor, the very physics of small room acoustics stress that the smaller a room is, the MORE PROBLEMATIC it is with regard to its acoustics. And with the prices of real estate only escalating, it is simply logical that good room acoustic treatment is indispensable to the serious and uncompromising producer and audiophile.
So, the two fundamental questions that arise are:
How small, is a small room so much that it becomes problematic?
How expensive is good room acoustic treatment? And where in the chain of investment should room acoustic treatment be prioritized into?
To gain perspective on what a small room is, one must understand the influence of room modes, in any room. A room mode is simply a resonance, a build-up of sound energy independent of the sound source, which takes time to increase and time to decrease, after the sound source has ceased. There are three types modes.
Axial mode: A mode caused by a frequency whose wavelength is that of a dimension that involves two parallel surfaces of the room (wavelength would be the distance between 2 parallel walls, or the ceiling and floor). These modes are the strongest.
Tangential mode: A mode caused by a frequency whose wavelength is that of a dimension that involves 4 parallel surfaces of the room. They are half a strong as an axial mode.
Oblique modes: A mode caused by a frequency whose wavelength is that of a dimension that involves 6 parallel surfaces of the room. They are a quarter as strong as an axial mode.
Now conventionally, axial modes have been attributed most always to being the only cause for concern, but truth be told, as the room gets smaller, tangential and oblique modes become problematic as well. That being said, room dimensions that equate to size can be divided into large rooms (> 5000 cu. ft), medium sized rooms (2500 – 5000 cu. ft) and small rooms (< 2500 cu. ft). In large rooms, the Schroeder frequency (the frequency that divides the spectrum below it into resonant frequencies and the spectrum above it into reflective frequencies) is usually comparatively lower such that only axials become problematic and tangential and oblique modes causing resonances diffuse and can be treated with porous absorption (acoustic panels). In medium size rooms, axials and tangentials become problematic.
But in small rooms, that is smaller than 2500 cu. ft, all three types of modes cause havoc. An example of this size of small room, is a room of dimensions 15 ft x 14 ft x 12 ft. Now most rooms that have studios or home theatres set up in them, don’t even come close to as big as this! Now in reality, and this is undisputable, because its all the laws of physics, no matter what tier of unfathomably expensive or high-end gear you have, you are not going to be able to experience it at its best, because your small room’s contribution undesirably smears the pristine quality of your audio gear. Think of this way. Its like saving up for an unbelievable experience of a two-month long Europe trip, but getting there and not experiencing the sheer majesty of it all, say the Alps for this instance, BECAUSE YOU DIDN’T HAVE YOUR SPECTACLES. And in the comparison of the different high-fidelity components that go into the studios of today, good room acoustics could cost you only as much as good quality spectacles would in comparison to your entire Euro trip. And the best part? You’d never to change them unless your need for them increases! If you'd like to hear the difference that good acoustics brings to a room, CLICK HERE for a Before-&-After experience between playback in an Empty room, and the same room with E Flat Acoustics.
So how expensive is it really? And where in the chain of your studio’s investment should it be prioritized into?
What does it take to equip a good studio? Monitors, reference monitors, sub-woofer, power conditioning systems, power back up systems, audio interfaces, digital audio workstations, controllers, synths, plugins, monitor control systems, analog gear like compressors, eqs, summing gear, the list goes on! I imagine one doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist to realize that it gets expensive. And all the more so because, most of this equipment will be rendered obsolete as time goes by and technology improves. The simplest example would be how audio interfaces have gone from usb 1.1 to usb 2 to thunderbolt 1, and then 3 and how we are now in the era of thunderbolt 3 and USB 3. All in the span of a couple of decades! This effectively means that should you intend to upgrade your gear by selling your older gear away, you’re quite likely to not be able to because your older gear would have become obsolete in the scheme of things.
Now, although technology is improving and is upgrading and changing at a frequency faster than any other time in human history, you know what doesn’t change, and isn’t likely to? The laws of physics. And room acoustic treatment devices like acoustic panels and diffusion systems work on the principles of the laws of physics! What this implies that any investment toward your studio or home theaters room acoustic treatment is most always a one-time investment, subject only to the quality of build and fidelity of these devices. And what’s more, should you ever need to upgrade to a more extensive requirement, good quality acoustic devices are not only compatible to upgrades, but have excellent resale value as well!
So where in your chain of gear acquisition should room acoustic devices fit in?
To answer this, one must delve into the basic reason why studio gear is upgraded. In the pursuit of better! Better sound, better analog to digital conversion, better headroom, better quality gear and plugins and a whole other list of betters that effectively make this an endless pursuit sometimes. But what if you were to get all this and more, but were not able to get the most of your investment, because your room acoustics didn’t allow for it? Would it not be prudent, if not simply logical, to realize that a prioritized investment in good quality room acoustic treatment devices would not only have you be able to get the most out of current gear, and your future acquisitions, and perhaps even delay your requirement for them, if not question the need for them at all?
I encourage you to google this. Almost all professional mix and mastering engineers stress that they only wish they were made aware earlier in their careers, the unparalleled benefits of good room acoustic treatment devices. That they hadn’t realised how important it was and how much more value it could have added to their productions if they had acquired it sooner. And that being said, with improvements in the designs of room acoustic treatment devices in the last two decades, a small home studio that might have needed about $40,000 in investment 10 years ago to come to “professional-tier” standards, can meet the same standards for just a QUARTER of the price today! And for what is most likely a one-time investment, for the shrewd and sceptical producer or audiophile, is going to be a wise one.
And that being said, a word to the wise. There are a few alternatives being pushed in the market that claim to give you the benefits that room acoustic treatment equipment does, enough to do away with it. Room correction software is one of them. Unfortunately, this is not true, because these softwares can only make changes the to frequency domain of the speaker’s response (which does make the listening experience better at the listening position but can make it worse in other parts of the room, and still does not negate the room’s presence). But they cannot address the time domain. What this effectively means is that the difference in quality that one can expect from room correction to actual room treatment, is the difference you can expect from going from an older generation of free software plugin to pristine analog gear. The difference quite literally can be, digital to analog!
A 1-Dimensional Quadriatic Residue Diffuser Array From E Flat Acoustical Solutions
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