Acoustical improvement for wireless home theater systems
Did you know that your wireless home theater system is only partly responsible for the sound quality that you experience? It has been said that the speaker system and electronics contribute only 50% of the sound quality of a wireless home theater system, and the other 50% relies on room acoustics.
Luckily for you, Audioholics has just posted a great review article that covers how the acoustics of your listening room affects sound quality. They will teach you about the all-important concept of critical distance, and how various acoustical phenomena occur, and what you can do to battle them.
“The ‘critical distance’, measured from the speaker, is reached when the reverberant sound level equals the direct sound level. The direct sound is the sound that comes directly from the speakers, without any reflections. So, at that distance, 50% of the sound is the result of the reflections on the room’s boundaries.“
In the typical home theater, the critical distance can be as little as 6 feet! If your listening position is further away than this, then you may be getting a sub-optimal listening experience. The best way to improve your critical distance is to modify the acoustics of the listening room, by absorbing or diffusing the reflected sound ways. While this sounds expensive, it doesn’t have to be.
“…acoustical improvement constitutes one of the most efficient and economical ways to enhance the performance of a sound system, since all the various listening parameters can be improved in a very significant way. For the DIY, it is possible to treat a room with affordable semi-rigid fibreglass panels.”
Even if you aren’t all that DIY minded, acoustical improvement can be as simple as covering your windows with curtains, or putting a big fluffy rug on your wooden floor. It sounds simple but it can give a big boost to your wireless home theater system. Of course, you could just hire a consultant to do it all for you, but where is the fun in that?
How Does Listening Room Acoustics Affect Sound Quality? At Audioholics
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