Your room has a profound influence on your experience of sound quality. In fact, the listening room is the MOST INFLUENCIAL contributor to your sound. We have witnessed many occasions where a music enthusiast has made a significant investment into a hi-fi system, them embarked on a journey of trying to ‘fix’ the sound by replacing the speakers, the amplifier, etc, never quite achieving a satisfying sound… when the source of their issues all along was simply their room. In these cases, some changes were made to their room which completely transformed the sound quality, removing any need to upgrade equipment.
When your speaker system produces sound waves, those waves emanate into the room according to certain principles. A proportion of them will often interact with side walls, the ceiling, the floor and furniture before arriving at your ear. Others will propagate behind your speakers then bounce off the rear wall and move back towards you and some will bounce off the wall behind your listening position before reaching your ears. Most of these waves will bounce into each other, sometimes cancelling each other, sometimes compounding, or combining their energy. Although we are not conscious of it, our brain has to work very hard to compensate for the chaotic nature of sound arriving to our ears at different times and at different levels of quality & intensity. The way that your speakers interact with your room and the shape, size, orientation, texture and energy profile of your room (we refer to those elements as your room acoustics)… these considerations are the GREATEST INFLUENCERS of how you experience and enjoy your music.
Preparing and correcting your room acoustics is the very best investment you can make in your long-term music enjoyment. You may be surprised to know that this can often be achieved with great advice and very affordable, cost-effective solutions. You do not need to turn your room into a recording studio or sound-proof bunker! Often those rooms are ugly, expensive, way over-damped and unnecessary to enjoy music. Over-damping is a common problem that people experience, especially when taking advice online or from many acoustic engineers who normally prepare recording studios. An over-damped room is acoustically dead, robbing the music of its life and vitality.
How can Nirvana Sound help
Our team provides a service where we can advise you on room acoustics and how to optimise your sound quality. This begins by physically measuring your room in three dimensions, mapping the floor plan and observing the construction materials of the floor & walls. Next is to observe the surfaces of the room and the layout & style of furniture being used. We then do a room sweep using two types of specialist software which gives us valuable data about how sound waves across all audible frequency bands behave in the space. The software allows us to construct a 3D image of the room, be able to make hypothetical changes to the room and observe the effects on the sonics. We can input various speaker designs because a panel speaker projects sound differently to a horn speaker system or omni-directional speaker for example.
We then study the data and then produce a report with a proposed design configuration that we feel would optimise the enjoyment of a music system. We make recommendations about possible room treatment materials and technologies if required, ultimate positioning of room elements and any recommendations that will lead to an optimum sonic performance. We can also help you source some of the items that you may need to optimise the space.
Please contact the team at Nirvana Sound for further information about this service.
