Is the perfect room treatment to be in a open field?

[2manyrocks]

Practically speaking, I'm not sure where you'd find an open field that would work unless you go to Montana or some similarly isolated environment. Even in rural areas, you have remote traffic noise, animals, aircraft, sound reflecting off hills, the neighbor's tractor...

So some kind of indoor environment is practically necessary.

Several times the term "small room" has been used in this forum. Would anyone care to help me understand the basic acoustical difference between a small room versus a large room? Are most rooms/basements in residences going to fall in the small room category? Are there some rules of thumb for what you can except in them and what needs to be looked at to make them useable? Is there a certain point when one should just forget about residential space and start looking at larger space? Is there some common level of $ that one would typically spend treating residential space? How much do commercial studios typically spend?

[AwwDeOhh]

I believe i've read in Everest and other places, that you need at minimum 1,500 cubic feet of volume [LxWxH] for a chance at decent acoustics. i'll try to find the direct quote.

[rock thomas]

Originally Posted by Tashez

So what makes a big room sound ' big" . Is it the reflections . If you take away the reflections then what . Would a large anechoic chamber sound the same as a small anechoic chamber ? Isn't it only the reflections that make it sound big ?

Sound reflects on particles, a bigger room will have more particles. Also, sound pressure shouldn't be changed in a 'perfect environment', only the perception of the sound. I wish I could say I have been in several different anechoic environments, but I have not ever experienced a fairly large room of this type.

[Lycoferas]

Theoretically, a person suspended atleast 20 ft from the ground level in an open field (pfa) with consistent air density and relative humidity, having a monitoring setup at his listening position(equilateral apex) with no type of reflecting surfaces nearby, can be considered ideal for monitoring only.

Such a setup is absurd for practical purposes, but can serve as an excellent control for factoring out the effects of the monitoring setup while learning about the anomalies in your control room.

Do a room analyses procedure at the listening position with a measurement microphone, and 'subtract' its result from the one obtained in your control room. This way you'll have more data to work with in order to understand the effects introduced by rooms.

Every scientific study needs a control.

In simple words, the benefits of a well treated control room outweigh the ideal monitoring setup.

-Lycoferas