Can Anyone Tell Me Details About The Demo Room At Ascend?

[FirstReflect]

Hi, folks!

As most of you already know, I ordered 11 custom speakers from Ascend. Dave's service and willingness to take on this project were exemplary. I know he'll likely see this thread, so I don't want to give too much away, but I'd like to send him something of a gift as a proper "thank you", and I figured I might be able to add a little something to the Ascend demo room for everyone to enjoy!

But, I've never been in Ascend's demo room, so I don't know what's already in there! Can anyone help me out?

What gear is Dave using? I know there's a new Samsung flat panel in there, but what else has he got going on? Receiver model? Amps? Sources?

What content is being used for demos? Are customers just bringing their own discs? Blu-rays? CDs? SACDs? Playing stuff off their iPod? Or does Dave have stuff on hand? In what formats?

Anywho, just wanted to send Dave something that he might find useful, or just plain enjoyable, but I don't want to outright say what I've got in mind. I'd like to keep it a little bit of a surprise

Thanks for any help, everyone!

[curtis]

The last time I was there, the room was using a Rotel pre/pro (older model...no new codecs), and an ADA power amp, with a Samsung Bluray player. I think Dave is looking into setting up a music server of some sort...but not sure.

[FirstReflect]

Thanks, Curtis!

If anyone has any further details or updates, please share those, as well

[davef]

The last time I was there, the room was using a Rotel pre/pro (older model...no new codecs), and an ADA power amp, with a Samsung Bluray player. I think Dave is looking into setting up a music server of some sort...but not sure.

We updated the Samsung Bluray player to an OPPO BDP-93 sometime last year. Right now, we have a Rotel 1066 (using multi-channel pass through), an ADA PTM-6150 amp, a few different CD players + the OPPO. We also have some Virtue Audio Ice Power mono-blocks and a Virtue 2 T-amp.

[FirstReflect]

Awesome!

Thanks for the reply, Dave.

Ok, well, I think you'll enjoy what I have in mind. Truthfully, you might end up preferring to use it at home, or heck, you can sell it or re-gift it if you don't like it -- haha. I was just trying to think of an appropriate "thank you", and something that might enhance your demo room popped to mind, so I ran with the idea.

Anywho, I believe it will all work out nicely. And thanks again!

[petmotel]

As long as the subject of the demo room has been brought up, I've often wondered about the acoustic characteristics of the room. Is it treated as a two channel space, or a surround space, or somewhere in between? First reflection points, and some bass trapping?

I'm about to embark on my first effort at treating a room, and have been researching the subject fairly heavily as of late. Short of a professional design, this seems to be a somewhat daunting task.

I will be aiming at surround duty for multi channel music, and movies. This will likely be less than ideal for two channel music, but would be more in line with the majority of my system's usage.

Anyway, a bit of detail about the acoustics of the demo room, and it's suitability for the tasks for which it serves, would be interesting.

Jay

[FirstReflect]

Hi, Jay

I can't speak to Ascend's demo room. In the photos and YouTube videos I've seen of it, it appears to have some studio-grade foam absorptive treatments. But I've really only seen the front wall in those images.

In regards to acoustic treatments in general, though, I think I might be able to offer you some guidance there

Since you've been researching this for yourself already, you most likely already know all of this. But sometimes, I think it helps to just hear confirmation, and a direct description of what you're after to help sort through all of the confusion.

For certain, there are some competing theories out there. But what I am going to recommend falls in line with the most widely accepted "best practices" for acoustic room treatment, and it is also what has, in my own first-hand experience, provided the best results -- both measured and in subjective listening.

Just so you're aware of what I consider "good" measurements: I think it makes logical sense to aim for a relatively flat frequency response as measured by a calibrated microphone at the primary listening position. That essentially means that sounds are arriving at the seat at the volume level intended by the recording artists and engineers. Some deviation from "flat" will always be present in a real room. But I do not think that wild 20db+ swings are desirable

Next, I also think it makes sense to have the decay times of the entire frequency range be relatively similar, meaning that no particular note or group of notes is "ringing" for a much greater or lesser length of time than all the other sounds.

Basically, I think that a "good" measurement is fairly uniform across the entire audible frequency range. We're never expecting "perfect" flat frequency response, or for all decay times to be literally identical. But wild swings in either measurement are, IMO, not desirable. And without acoustic treatment, huge swings are very common in almost any room!

So, when it comes to surround sound, specifically, the idea is to essentially mimic a dubbing stage, or a really excellent commercial movie theater. In those settings, the goal is to have very clear and distinct sound coming from the front of the room. You should be able to pinpoint the source location of sounds across the entire front soundstage. Voices should be very clear and easy to understand.

That basically means making the front of your room more "dead", with weaker reflections so that the ratio of direct sound coming from the speakers to reflected sound is high. I will typically make the front wall (the wall behind your front speakers) fairly absorptive, with a 2 foot wide panel directly behind each speaker (Front Left, Center & Right) of 4" thickness, or 2" with a 1.5" air gap behind it. And I will use those same absorptive panels on the side walls and ceiling at the first reflection points, typically with a 4 foot width.

The sound coming from the front of the room is meant to "wash over you", and then "disappear" behind you. You are also typically closer to the back wall than the front wall. And, for surround sound setups (as opposed to 2 channel), you still want some level of reflectivity behind you in order to keep the envelopment effect.

All of that results in using bass traps (4" thick with an air gap or 6" with an air gap) on the back wall directly behind your seating positions, but with some diffusion in front of those bass traps, such as a "scatter plate" that allows much of the reflections and most of the bass to be absorbed, but still diffuses some of the higher frequency sound waves to keep that sense of envelopment and physical space.

Naturally, the corners are bass trapped, as well as potentially the wall-to-ceiling edges, and even the wall-to-floor edges if you really want to go whole hog.

Everywhere else can have diffusion. The more diffusion you add, the closer all of the decay times for the entire frequency range will be. But if budget doesn't allow for it right away, just having the bare walls and ceiling is not the end of the world The absorption at the first reflection points, corner bass traps, bass traps with scatter plates on the back wall behind the listening positions, , and absorption on the front wall directly behind each of the front speakers -- those are the priorities, and pretty much in that order.

You can see a couple of nicely illustrative YouTube videos here:

RealTraps small room video: http://youtu.be/dB8H0HFMylo

GiK/Zolan Schuster high-end room video (subtitled): http://youtu.be/D66v5JC0eVk

In those, you can see the treatments, where they're positioned, the before and after measurements, and listen to before and after music demonstrations. Both rooms are showing 2-channel setups, but they're using the same acoustic treatment approach that I've just described to great effect

I will strongly suggest that you listen to those before and after music demos twice: once, on headphones or speakers that can reproduce the deep bass, but then a second time on headphones or speakers that are not producing any bass below about 200Hz (such as crappy laptop speakers ). The difference in the bass is staggering, but it is also overwhelming. It's very helpful to listen to those before and after demos with the bass removed so that you can clearly hear the substantial difference that is made in the midrange and treble, as well!

To wrap up, I highly recommend that you get in touch with the good folks over at GiK Acoustics. They offer free room analysis and advice , so there's no financial risk with them

Hope that's of some help!

[davef]

As long as the subject of the demo room has been brought up, I've often wondered about the acoustic characteristics of the room. Is it treated as a two channel space, or a surround space, or somewhere in between? First reflection points, and some bass trapping?

I'm about to embark on my first effort at treating a room, and have been researching the subject fairly heavily as of late. Short of a professional design, this seems to be a somewhat daunting task.

I will be aiming at surround duty for multi channel music, and movies. This will likely be less than ideal for two channel music, but would be more in line with the majority of my system's usage.

Anyway, a bit of detail about the acoustics of the demo room, and it's suitability for the tasks for which it serves, would be interesting.

Jay

Hi Jay,

We treat both 1st and 2nd reflections in the room -- as well as reflections off both the front and rear walls. We also have bass traps at the front corners. This is an extremely well damped room as it is a dual use listening room. We use it for customer demos and I also use it for various in-room measurements and for my own listening tests. We use very thick acoustic foam, that is mounted on hangars so we can remove various treatments to simulate a variety of different room types -- from extremely well damped to highly reflective.

For typical customer listener rooms, I generally recommend treating just the first reflections as you do not want a room that is highly damped.