Learn About Acoustics

Listening room and Home Theater acoustics: The biggest barrier to High End Sound Quality

"We believe that one of the major unexplored frontiers for improved sound quality is the acoustics of the listening room or home theater." Nyal Mellor, founder of Acoustic Frontiers.

Frequency response: a simple, but powerful, example of acoustic distortion

Your listening room or home theater is a significant source of acoustic distortion which causes many audible sound quality issues such as one-note bass, poor soundstaging and listener fatigue. To illustrate our point let's look at the typical 'quality' level provided by each major link in the reproduction chain for one simple measure - frequency response. It can be clearly seen that the typical impact on sound quality from the room is an order of magnitude greater than that of both equipment and speakers combined!

How much attention have you given to fixing your listening room?

Let's also look at this another way...think of all the time and money you have spent on equipment and speakers. Most of us will have invested thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars in equipment. But we haven't spent a dime on the acoustic design of our listening room or home theater, despite it being a significant contributor to overall sound quality.

The path to high quality sound reproduction lies in considering the reproduction chain as a system. Putting even a small amount of time and money into room acoustics and appropriate acoustical design will yield significant rewards.

I want to learn more!

Check out these links, which we wrote to try and give more background on sound quality and acoustic measurements.