You know, truthfully, I don't really complain about my room. My Axioms sound great. I just wonder if they wouldn't sound even better in a better room!

I like acting like I hate my room because it's fun fodder here!

I think Ken hates your room Mark.

Says the man with my favorite room!

I seem to remember Ian being quoted as calling this "cascading rooms" in an article on Audioholics, but some brief searching doesn't yield anything, so I could be remembering wrong.

Hi CV, TomTuttle, Mark, and Ken,

Yes, the notion of "cascading rooms" or doubling ambiance in the playback of a recording that already contains natural ambiance is valid, however, for virtually most domestic rooms (except those with many hard surfaces and no absorption, the actual reverb time of the room is very short, so any contribution of room ambience becomes largely insignificant.

Just try clapping your hands in your listening room and listen for any reverberation. There's almost none in normally furnished rooms. Which is why I advise against special acoustical treatments of rooms except for really problematic setups (Mark?). . .joke.

And to address Ken's point, it's true, the goal of all this equipment and loudspeakers is a "plausible illusion", which Axiom speakers and decent electronics (I'm not talking of any of the tweaky tube gear) are able to do much of the time. The more neutral the speakers and the electronics, and the better the source recording is, the better the illusion.

Regards,
Alan

I clapped once in my room last night and today when I walk in, it's like, just a bunch of ongoing applause.

So that's a little toward the "live" side?

Ha, ha, ha!

Alan

I find that having piles of toys, kid's clothes, and blankets scattered randomly around my listening room improves the acoustics greatly. Maybe a riding toy or two in front of the bottom drivers, and it's perfect!

Yeah, Mark; that's a live one. But to put some numbers to Alan's comment, a typically sized and furnished home room has an R60 reverberation time of around a half-second. R60 is the usual standard applied and represents the time in seconds(thousands for Mark's room)for the sound level to diminish 60dB after it's stopped playing. 60dB is used because it's about the difference between the loudest orchestral peaks around 100dB and room background noise levels around 40db. 60dB is therefore also about the widest practical dynamic range for a recording intended to be listened to at home.

In contrast to the half-second or so R60 at home, the finest concert halls have R60 times on the order of two seconds. Hence the difference that Alan notes.

thats just your room show'n some love.