Welcome to Acoustic Frontiers Blog

Recently I stumbled upon the great 'Home Theater Geeks' Podcast series by Scott Wilkinson of UltimateAV and Home Theater Magazines. They take the form of 1 on 1 interviews with notable individuals from the audiophile and home theater world.

Much confusion still exists about what a room correction product does, what problems it can (and cannot) solve and therefore its 'place' in a modern high quality sound reproduction system. Part of the challenge of understanding room correction is that it requires a reasonable level of understanding of sound quality, acoustic science, acoustic measurement and psychoacoustics (how humans perceive sound). By the end of this article I hope that you will have learnt enough to judge for yourself what room correction can and cannot do and how best to apply it in the context of a world class music or home theater system.

Since I have been offering acoustic design consulting I have come to the conclusion that there are three different levels available to the end consumer. Each level offers a certain quality and cost level. By quality I am referring to how good the room sounds at the end of whatever design process is undertaken.

I've summarized this relationship in the chart that follows.

• Quality refers to the sound quality improvement realized from acoustic design and treatment with 0 being no improvement and 100 being substantial improvement.
• Price refers to the cost of the combined services plus acoustic treatment

You will see by following the red line (the 'value curve') that a good level of quality is realized at quite low cost from the acoustic treatment companies. As the curve enters the second level, where the new-breed of acoustical designers operate a small cost increase leads to a significant increase in quality. At the top you enter the realm of the specialist design companies. There are still quality gains to be had but they come at significant cost.