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[Gabriel F]

Very interesting reading, Bill.

[Larrchild]

Clever link, Bill. Like matter and antimatter.

[RSettee]

I'm not sure that a totally perfect room exists. I'd studied acoustics for awhile, and i'd got into the absolute audiophile purists' version of a perfect listening room--nothing...I mean, no stereo even in the room, just speakers and a perfectly measured listening chair that's exactly the right angle and distance from the walls and speakers. With all the reflective surfaces in a console room, I think that there's ways to minimize the problems, but considering that racks of gear are sometimes being moved around, and that you've got various people in a room (let's say 10 people which includes a band and maybe some girlfriends in the console room, some moving around at various times), and that's bound to change the directions of the waves at times. Not to say that you can't aim for the most  perfect room that you can imagine....I just don't think that a console room will ever be totally perfect. It's just acoustical logic--you get more surfaces, you get more possible variables in the room, and it changes something slightly.

[zmix]

Anechoic environments can be unnerving.. many people experience vertigo or nausea when spending too much time there..

..however, a "ZR" room sounds like the perfect environment for a pair of JOLY monitors...!!

[Bill Mueller]

zmix wrote on Sat, 30 January 2010 14:27

Anechoic environments can be unnerving.. many people experience vertigo or nausea when spending too much time there.. ..however, a "ZR" room sounds like the perfect environment for a pair of JOLY monitors...!!

And we were doing so well too.

Bill

[wwittman]

I have to agree that ultra dead, or approaching anechoic, rooms are uncomfortable

on the other hand, Hidley (who created Westlake, which spawned, eventually, this man as well) described (pioneered?) the idea of no REFLECTION, meaning that a wave passes the listener and doesn't roll back off the rear walls

but Hidley rooms don't feel dead, and have a god bit of reflection and dispersion in FRONT. (kind of the opposite of LEDE)


I haven't heard this concept, described here yet, but from the glowing reports I certainly would WANT to before I pass judgement

[MDM,]

I wonder how early reflections and reverbs would be percieved in such a room

[Barry Hufker]

I can understand how one could master in a room like that but possibly not mix.  I would think the inclination would be to add too much reverb (or at least what would be perceived as too much reverb when heard in a typical home).

[Jay Kadis]

The reason we use dead rooms for playback is so that the point of origin of the sounds is not confused by reflections.  This allows the spatialization of sounds to be controlled by the software - we use Ambisonics as one way of placing sounds into an arbitrary sound field and controlling the apparent movement of these sounds.  I haven't tried to mix in such an environment, but it might well be somewhat like mixing in headphones as there's no room contribution diffusing the sound beyond what comes out of the speakers, although the "inside the head" effect wouldn't be the same.

[Bob Olhsson]

Barry Hufker wrote on Sun, 31 January 2010 10:49

...I would think the inclination would be to add too much reverb (or at least what would be perceived as too much reverb when heard in a typical home)...

It actually creates the opposite problem. The reverb effect needs to overcome that already in the listening room.

You're basically talking about creating a room that sounds like headphones.

[littlehat]

I would think mastering in a dead room would lead to perceiving too much stereo separation and making things a little too mono and not wide enough.

[wwittman]

I don't actually think mastering is where stereo-ness is determined in 99% of cases.

[Bob Olhsson]

True, in mastering it's about avoiding screwing up "stereo-ness."

[littlehat]

I respectfully, but totally, disagree.

[jetbase]

littlehat wrote on Tue, 02 February 2010 10:04

I respectfully, but totally, disagree.

How do you mean?

In regards to speculating about how ZR works, since it's not fully isolating I wonder how putting this treatment, or approach, into an isolated room effects the results and/or implementation. Logic tells me that the bottom end would be different, or that if it made no difference to the ZR treatment then the treatment surely must be fully isolating... but perhaps logic doesn't quite apply to acoustics.