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Acoustics of room for setup?

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wosborne

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Acoustics of room for setup?

PostThu Jan 08, 2015 6:23 pm

Hello everyone.. I previously had my 4 manual Paramount theater Organ setup in a basement which has insulated ceiling tiles, plus a loop shag carpet. I removed the carpet thinking the room would be less "Flat".

Well it's still very flat and I realize it's got to be the 2x4' ceiling panels that are hung on the suspended ceiling rails.

Recently my elder mother died 11/22/14 and now I have her bedroom 12x12' upstairs which would work nicely for guests now to come over. That room has plenty of reverb with very little fabric material to absorb sounds.

So my question is: I have 8 studio Alesis speakers, plus two 350 watt Roland KC550 keyboard amp speaker cabinets. For me to get a good quality sound... which room would work better? The very "FLAT" room, or the one "WET" and "REVERBY"? Previously I only played my system via headphones as to not disturb a very ill elder mother upstairs.

Now I would like to tonally balance my system so I and others can appreciate this awesome system. I use Reaper for my VST addition of some reverb and EQ. I have 4 separate stereo amps for my 8 Alesis speakers, and the other two Roland Keyboard speakers contain their own amps. Way overkill for a very small house.

I wanted to ask those who have more audio experience than I before I rebuild my Classic Organ Works Console desk and haul the organ upstairs to a new environment. From my own previous minimalistic attempt before... the basement (cellar's) FLAT room just sounded like I was inside a box. It wasn't realistic at all unless listened to thru headphones. Now.. I'd like to utilize all my speakers to get a nice rounded full sound experience.

Previously I had as configured: Pair 1 = Main, Pair 2 = Solo, Pair 3 = Percussion tuned, Pair 4 = Percussion un-tuned, and finally the two Roland Keyboard amps = lowest actives, tympani, bass, piano etc...

I use a Motu 10 channel interface (Asio) to feed the 4 amps and 2 keyboard amps.

With such small foot space... it might be more beneficial for me to just output into a simple 2 stereo channel output and divide the speakers just for better coverage. My goal is realistic sound vs. literal chamber simulation. Any thoughts of what might work best? Thanks.. Wm. Oz.
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B. Milan

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Re: Acoustics of room for setup?

PostThu Jan 08, 2015 6:39 pm

[Topic moved]
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amun

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Re: Acoustics of room for setup?

PostSat Jan 10, 2015 1:01 pm

I'd like to utilize all my speakers to get a nice rounded full sound experience.


This issue has many important aspects. They all have been discussed on a high level and en detail in this forum. Repeating them here would be carrying coal to Newcastle and by far too voluminous. :shock: IMHO there is no other possibility than research in the forum or experimenting. :shock:

As a beginning You might like to have a look at: :roll:
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=11213&hilit=Reetze

Rgds,
Amun
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sonar11

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Re: Acoustics of room for setup?

PostSat Jan 10, 2015 3:29 pm

My guess would be a flat room. You can't have it both ways; either the recording is flat (no reverb) and you put that in a reverberant room, or your recording is reverbant and you put that in a flat room. Chances are your room is far too small to make a dry recording sound good, so the only alternative is wet recording in a dry room.

If you mix recorded reverb with reverb in a room, you no longer have an authentic sound. Then you have the reverb in the recording mixing and interfering with a (often poor) room reverb. It might sound OK to your ears, and that's fine, but it's no longer accurate.

A great audio system that is properly configured can reproduce a recording with a large sound stage; which means when you're listening, you can't detect where the speakers are; if you were blind folded you couldn't point to the direction of the speaker. This is because the speakers and the audio system will produce sound that appears to come from all directions; up / down, left / center / right, near / far (depth) etc. The depth is probably hard to hear with organ music and is less important (movies it's very nice).

Anyway, in the high end audio world, most people try to flatten the room. Bass traps etc., many try to make it as dead as possible.
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TheOrganDoc

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Re: Acoustics of room for setup?

PostSun Jan 11, 2015 1:14 pm

I personally always wanted to modify say a 10 X 12 room, by installing ceramic tiles (Need not be perfect's),
all around the room, including 4 walls, floor and ceiling. (say, Giant Shower Stall) :roll:
In order to get lots of reverb in a small space.

The outcome of this would be most interesting, ? ? ? :lol:

I am sure Wiffey would have something to say about this,
so one better reserve this idea for Single Hauptwerkers.

>>>What say Hauptwerkians ?<<<
_____RSVP____
Mel..............TheOrganDoc...............
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wosborne

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Re: Acoustics of room for setup?

PostSun Jan 11, 2015 2:13 pm

I got talking to a theater tech person, and he said sound waves need a space over 55' for the original fundamental harmonics to resonate properly. Then like radio waves, 1/2, 1/3rd, 1/4rd, etc. wave lengths can work, but with diminished quality. He also said a 12 x 12 room has way too much "bounce". Ie: any room reverb of a room that small would bounce extremely fast. That would mash up and sound into a big mess.

So his recommendation was for me to use the FLAT space I had before, and artificially add EQ and reverb to compenstate as well as anybody can for such a small room. Ofcourse that being said... finding the sweet listening spot also is going to be quite the challenge.

I really don't think a digital organ setup in a room sounding like a shower would work too pleasingly. Then again... everybody has ways to make rooms work. Often $$ and lots of it, is needed to prep. the room for whatever audio output is desired. Home theater, TV, CD music listening, or acoustical instruments are so very different in how to reproduce their sound pleasingly. I'll get this figured out eventually. I'm waiting upon a 9 x 13 foot oriental rug to lay down before I begin to rebuild the speaker arrays. I'll have ulcers before I get it done correctly I know this already. :?
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1961TC4ME

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Re: Acoustics of room for setup?

PostMon Jan 12, 2015 1:30 pm

You've probably already read this but take a look if you haven't. viewtopic.php?f=17&t=13679

I have tinkered with speaker placement, speaker aim, organ loading options and on and on. What I detail here is pretty revealing and makes quite a difference depending on how you may be doing things now.

Marc
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murph

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Re: Acoustics of room for setup?

PostMon Jan 12, 2015 3:40 pm

The rug may be of more use on the wall behind you than the floor.......
(Abstract modern designs work quite well as "art" on a wall while removing reflections that muck up sound fields. This is most noticeable with surround sets/set-ups, especially in smaller rooms with parallel walls).


Try it!!!!!
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1961TC4ME

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Re: Acoustics of room for setup?

PostMon Jan 12, 2015 5:25 pm

And get those speakers up off the floor. Mine sit with the drivers at a minimum of head height when seated at the console, this alone was a huge difference maker.

Marc
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Romanos

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Re: Acoustics of room for setup?

PostThu Jan 22, 2015 1:21 pm

sonar11 wrote:My guess would be a flat room. You can't have it both ways; either the recording is flat (no reverb) and you put that in a reverberant room, or your recording is reverbant and you put that in a flat room. Chances are your room is far too small to make a dry recording sound good, so the only alternative is wet recording in a dry room.


I have to say that I question this sentiment. First off, without acoustical analysis of your rooms, It really depends on what you are going for. For sheer listening enjoyment, perhaps sonar11 is right. I, for my part, use certain dry sets and LOVE them. Here's the catch: for me, they are my bread and butter as practice instruments. This also means that I am emulating the acoustic I know from college practice rooms (ie- completely dry, simple flutes in very nearfield listening for the sake of learning and clarity.) For most of us, this is how we [should] spend the vast majority of time....practicing. :wink: For this type of purpose, dry sets in small rooms are utterly perfect.

As I understand it, we often pretend that we are getting the original organ in our room but in actuality, we are getting a mere representation of the organ in our room. What does that really mean? Unless you are using headphones to truly immerse yourself in the original acoustic as exactly heard by the mics themselves, the reality is that most organs are actually well served to be voiced to your room and your speakers (and to your taste) anyway. :| It's tedious but it's reality. That means you have something close, but ultimately new in your space. That also means that there is in fact a fair amount of latitude with where you place your organ. We simply cant expect the same results in all of our respective locations in different sized/shaped/furnished rooms with different soundcards and speakers.

I will offer, too, that there is very likely a negligible amount of reverb in a 12x12 room. You might just be splitting hairs.
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Re: Acoustics of room for setup?

PostThu Jan 22, 2015 6:00 pm

Romanos wrote:
sonar11 wrote:My guess would be a flat room. You can't have it both ways; either the recording is flat (no reverb) and you put that in a reverberant room, or your recording is reverbant and you put that in a flat room. Chances are your room is far too small to make a dry recording sound good, so the only alternative is wet recording in a dry room.


I have to say that I question this sentiment. First off, without acoustical analysis of your rooms, It really depends on what you are going for. For sheer listening enjoyment, perhaps sonar11 is right. I, for my part, use certain dry sets and LOVE them. Here's the catch: for me, they are my bread and butter as practice instruments. This also means that I am emulating the acoustic I know from college practice rooms (ie- completely dry, simple flutes in very nearfield listening for the sake of learning and clarity.) For most of us, this is how we [should] spend the vast majority of time....practicing. :wink: For this type of purpose, dry sets in small rooms are utterly perfect.

As I understand it, we often pretend that we are getting the original organ in our room but in actuality, we are getting a mere representation of the organ in our room. What does that really mean? Unless you are using headphones to truly immerse yourself in the original acoustic as exactly heard by the mics themselves, the reality is that most organs are actually well served to be voiced to your room and your speakers (and to your taste) anyway. :| It's tedious but it's reality. That means you have something close, but ultimately new in your space. That also means that there is in fact a fair amount of latitude with where you place your organ. We simply cant expect the same results in all of our respective locations in different sized/shaped/furnished rooms with different soundcards and speakers.

I will offer, too, that there is very likely a negligible amount of reverb in a 12x12 room. You might just be splitting hairs.


I respectfully disagree :D

1: Yes, it depends on "what you are going for"; I mean if you want to make everything dry as possible "for practice" then there is no point in the original question... which was, what sounds better?

2: You don't need a "dry as possible" organ for practice, just as long as your touch and release is clearly heard without the reverb smoothing over any mistakes or timing issues etc. Something like St Eucaire from MDA works well as a pratice organ, for example. With this set, you would still want to put it in a dry room with as least amount of extra room noise, because the sample has enough on it's own.

3: I definitely don't spend most of my time in "practice mode". I play mainly for my own personal pleasure, I'm not a concert organist nor do I have any misplaced goals in that direction. I do practice, but again, St Eucaire (and even Tholen if you're careful) have reverb that works well enough without getting in the way of practising. So not everybody is terribly interested in "practice mode", nor was that part of the original question; in fact, he explicity mentioned wanting his system to "sound good to others".

3: If you read any high end / audiophile forums, they are basically doing what I tried to explain in my first post. Deaden the room as much as possible, then let the recording speak as close as possible to what was recorded, using expensive electronics and speakers. You definitely do NOT see them putting in hardwood floors, concrete walls, wooden ceilings etc to "enhance" the recording in their home; those are all things you do in a church or public building that is big enough to create it's own reverberant sound, at which point the hardwood / concrete enhances the reverb. Your room contributes far more to what you hear than you realize. Take the carpet out of your room and replace it with hardwood or laminate, you will notice a huge difference (I certainly did).

4: Your mention of headphones sort of proves my point though. Why? Because they give you accurate playback of the recording without any added room interference. The room does not add it's own reverb or echos or any other nasty feedback of that sort, because the sound goes directly into your ears.

5: Virtually placing the organ in my room is not my goal; I'm not kidding myself into thinking I'm playing in a cathedral; I disable all the extra things like keyboard, stop, and blower noise, because I don't care about that aspect, at all. I assume the recording guys know what they're doing, and record the organ with the mics in the best spot to make the recordings sound as good as possible; I simply want to playback and hear, as closely and as accurately as possible, what the mics recorded.

Different people prefer different things; but at the end of the day, I prefer acurracy; ie, how close can I make what I hear, match with what was actually recorded. A dead room, (semi)pro audio soundcard, and properly placed studio monitor speakers are the best way to go here.
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Re: Acoustics of room for setup?

PostThu Jan 22, 2015 10:11 pm

Hi all.. My goal is not recording at all, but for inviting guests and fellow organists to come over & experience the Hauptwerk system. So many locally have heard of it, but have never seen a 3-4 manual system setup. I am a tech person generally, and only a hobby organist who plays by ear. Thus my goal is to have others come over to enjoy some of the nice rich Cathedral sample sets, as well as offer those who love theater organ with all it's bells and whistles. I've ended up keeping it in the basement which is very flat. (But has more flexibility for speaker placement and seating.) My difficulty there (aging eyes) is that if I had it upstairs I'd get better lighting options which is almost difficult in the basement. I've worked re-building the console and am now about ready to add the pedals tomorrow. (Totally revamped the room last month.) I think I've come up with a solution using a couple MR16's halogens for the music rack, beaming down off my suspended ceiling. Before I had no way to get lighting onto the music rack without causing major shadows. Not good when playing. I've followed many suggestions to have 6 speakers at "ear level" in front of the organ. I then have placed two Roland KC550's (keyboard amps) for Subwoofers on the back wall 12 feet behind the bench with two more studio speakers on that side of the room. 8 channels thru studio monitors, and 2 channels for the subwoofers. I've only listened to my sample sets via headphones and it gives the truest sense of how it was picked up via the mics. Now I'll have to try to "tonally finish" and balance the clusters and add slight reverb when necessary. My theater organ sample is dry so it needs some. My Cathedral samples are wet so those I have more focus on keeping things less muddy as possible. I'm now beginning to get excited to see what my theoretical speaker arrangement will sound like. My Roland KC550's are so low end, they easily can over take the "highs". I hope using the DAW software with EQ's, I can find a happy sweet sound. I'll get back in about a month when I figure I might have this figured out. I'm not good with DAW's being I have a good deal of dyslexia and sends/returns mess me up.
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Re: Acoustics of room for setup?

PostThu Jan 22, 2015 10:52 pm

A little off topic but... I have a lighting idea for you-- it worked really well for me:
ImageIMG_0721_640 by romanos401, on Flickr

I simply went to the local hardware store and got this suspendable light fixture. I think it's meant for dorm rooms but all it is is a light socket with a 15-20' long chord and a hook and wall anchor. You hang it wherever you want and plug it in. Super easy and you can hang it right above the console as I did.

ImageIMG_0722_640 by romanos401, on Flickr
It was made even better by this super nifty lightbulb I found. It's a LED bulb that's a 100w equivalent and better still, you can tilt it to aim the light just how you like it (it's meant for recessed light fixtures). I have it tilted forward so that the strongest light hits the music rack directly and it has been the best solution yet for me (I tried all manner of lamps and music rack lights and nothing ever felt good as I'm very sensitive to light quality.)
Last edited by Romanos on Thu Jan 22, 2015 11:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Acoustics of room for setup?

PostThu Jan 22, 2015 11:03 pm

sonar11 wrote:1: Yes, it depends on "what you are going for"; I mean if you want to make everything dry as possible "for practice" then there is no point in the original question... which was, what sounds better?

(but sounds better for which purpose! :lol: ) :wink:

2: You don't need a "dry as possible" organ for practice, just as long as your touch and release is clearly heard without the reverb smoothing over any mistakes or timing issues etc.

-- for this I agree with you however, as it is for you, and it is for me, a matter of taste. In this regard, I don't think either one of us is right or wrong. We just prefer different things which is perfectly fair.

3: I definitely don't spend most of my time in "practice mode". I play mainly for my own personal pleasure, I'm not a concert organist nor do I have any misplaced goals in that direction. I do practice, but again, St Eucaire (and even Tholen if you're careful) have reverb that works well enough without getting in the way of practising. So not everybody is terribly interested in "practice mode", nor was that part of the original question; in fact, he explicity mentioned wanting his system to "sound good to others".

Fair enough. (Although I can assure you my dry sets sound good in addition to St. Eucaire!)

3: If you read any high end / audiophile forums, they are basically doing what I tried to explain in my first post. Deaden the room as much as possible, then let the recording speak as close as possible to what was recorded, using expensive electronics and speakers. You definitely do NOT see them putting in hardwood floors, concrete walls, wooden ceilings etc to "enhance" the recording in their home; those are all things you do in a church or public building that is big enough to create it's own reverberant sound, at which point the hardwood / concrete enhances the reverb. Your room contributes far more to what you hear than you realize. Take the carpet out of your room and replace it with hardwood or laminate, you will notice a huge difference (I certainly did).

---I do have to eat my words a bit with this one. You make a very good point!

4: Your mention of headphones sort of proves my point though. Why? Because they give you accurate playback of the recording without any added room interference. The room does not add it's own reverb or echos or any other nasty feedback of that sort, because the sound goes directly into your ears.

---true, however, you also know as well as I do that unless you are using a $500+ sub and a 1k pair of studio monitors, external speakers don't tend to approach nearly the amount of fidelity of a good pair of headphones do.

5: Virtually placing the organ in my room is not my goal; I'm not kidding myself into thinking I'm playing in a cathedral; I disable all the extra things like keyboard, stop, and blower noise, because I don't care about that aspect, at all. I assume the recording guys know what they're doing, and record the organ with the mics in the best spot to make the recordings sound as good as possible; I simply want to playback and hear, as closely and as accurately as possible, what the mics recorded.

(I'm the exact same way)

Different people prefer different things; but at the end of the day, I prefer acurracy; ie, how close can I make what I hear, match with what was actually recorded. A dead room, (semi)pro audio soundcard, and properly placed studio monitor speakers are the best way to go here.
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Re: Acoustics of room for setup?

PostFri Jan 23, 2015 6:50 am

My speaker setup "monitors" will and are similar to what is shown in your pic. I will have 2 additional monitors behind me plus two keyboard amp/speakers that I initially bought for my Roland Fantom keyboard. They have ton's of bass. A little bit too bass'y if not careful in the small room. I do like your LED overhead light setup for the music rack. I have extremely sensitive eyes and a progressive deteriorating eye disease as did my elder mother who went blind from it. Right now my challenge is finding a way to enlarge sheet music so I can actually even read the notes now. I have been lucky in that I generally learn to play by ear my popular and musicals type tunes. Thanks all for the creative feedback. Bill
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