The importance of your room’s acoustic cannot be overemphasized! In college, I was working part time as a DJ at a local radio station. The studio walls and ceiling were covered in white acoustical tiles with little holes in them. You may have seen them in photos of radio and TV studios of the past. The sound system in this studio was not nearly as good as the one I had in my dorm room. I couldn’t figure out why. The dorm room was not carpeted and in combination with the bare walls sound pretty echoey. One day I brought my speakers into the studio and hooked them up. The difference was night and day!
Since that time I have heard mediocre audio systems in rooms with great acoustical properties and high end systems in terrible acoustical environments. I would always prefer the sound of the mediocre system in the room with better acoustics.
To generalize, items that help a room’s acoustical properties include carpeting, stuffed furniture, wall treatments such as drapes and any other items that absorb sound and keep it from bouncing from wall to wall or ceiling to floor. The shape of the room will also have an effect on acoustics. Parallel walls will increase reverberation.
In the past the only way to improve a room’s acoustics was to change its shape or the way it is furnished or decorated, which for many people wasn’t practical. There really hasn’t been any electronic gadget that could tame a room’s reverberation until now. With the introduction of Audyssey room correction, all that’s changed.
We recently had an unusual situation where a home theater system didn’t sound good due to the room’s bad acoustics. This was a giant room with almost no furniture, a hardwood floor, thin window treatments and a vaulted ceiling. The room opened into another room with similar characteristics. We hooked up an AV receiver that had one of the best versions of Audyssey room correction (This one was an Integra, but Audyssey can be found in several popular brands of AVRs). Our jaws dropped! All of a sudden, this was a great sounding system. It sounded full and three-dimensional.
A good room correction circuit can make all the difference in the world when it comes to sound. There are different brands of room correction that come with different A/V receivers. So far, our favorite has been the Audyssey. Audyssey makes different levels of room correction circuits. Obviously, the more expensive receivers have the better versions. If your room acoustics are very challenging you should consider an AV receiver with a better Audyssey room correction circuit. If you’d like to discuss your acoustics, give us a call at 800-905-5485.
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