The "conventional wisdom" is that totally dead rooms are terrible, and I used to subscribe to that. These days I think it's more a matter of unbalanced deadness, as was already mentioned where using thin foam absorbs only higher frequencies.
Earlier this year I tried to organize a loudspeaker test in an anechoic chamber, but that fell through because not enough people offered to loan me speakers to measure. If that test had happened, one of the things I had planned was for all attending to hear music played in the anechoic chamber. I still would like to try that!
I'm not convinced that a totally dead room needs that much more power to get a usable volume level. Let's say a speaker is putting out 90 dB SPL for a given music track. If you put that speaker in a live room, how much louder could the reflections make the sound? 6 dB maybe? My living room is not totally dead, but it's got an awful lot of treatment. Using only Mackie 624 speakers and one killer subwoofer, I can play music at live-concert levels with no noticeable distortion.
--Ethan |