This hi-fi UPGRADE changes EVERYTHING (yes, really)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ก.พ. 2023
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🎥 Camera: John Darko
🎬 Editor: John Darko
🌈 Colour: Olaf von Voss
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🎵 Song IDs? Playlists of all music heard in this video - and other videos - can be found on PATREON: / johndarko
MORE INFORMATION:
Vicoustic
📖 vicoustic.com/
👉🏻 As seen in this video...
Samsung 'The Frame' 2022 55"
🛒 howl.me/ci7quVt0TS2
Cambridge Audio EVO 150
🛒 howl.me/cjebDJgi33F
Cambridge Audio Alva TT2
🛒 howl.me/cjebELQ4sI3
Zu Soul 6
📖 darko.audio/2021/04/zu-audio-...
Buchardt A700
📺 darko.audio/2022/12/buchardt-...
Veritasium on Clickbait
📺 • Clickbait is Unreasona...
Steve Guttenberg 'The Audiophilliac'
📺 / steveguttenbergaudioph...
👉🏻 What I use to measure the loudspeakers in the room...
Room EQ Wizard
📖 www.roomeqwizard.com/
Umik-1 microphone
🛒 (US) amzn.to/3Zjg6qC
🛒 (UK) amzn.to/3m9lyhs
👉🏻 More Darko.Audio coverage of room acoustics...
A new city, a new home and a new listening room
📺 darko.audio/2023/02/a-new-cit...
10 more thoughts on my new listening room ✍🏻 (‘Dear John’)
📺 darko.audio/2023/02/10-more-t...
Your ROOM is messing up your SOUND (again):
📺 darko.audio/2022/08/a-long-fi...
Room to roam: from empty space to Vicoustic makeover
📖 darko.audio/2021/11/room-to-r...
Vicoustic room makeover: installation day (as a short film)
📺 darko.audio/2021/11/vicoustic...
Jesco Lohan (Acoustics Insider) explains WHY the room is critical to good sound
📺 darko.audio/2019/08/a-long-fi...
👉🏻 My sofa and rug...
IKEA Vindum rug
📖 www.ikea.com/pt/pt/p/vindum-t...
IKEA Vimle sofa
📖 www.ikea.com/pt/pt/p/vimle-so...
#listening #hifi #reverb
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Those who cannot afford professional acoustic treatment of the room can try this with shelves full of books, carpeting and curtains. This is also more accepted by the partner.
This was the most amazing transformation. Just your voice alone while recording was remarkably different. Stunning upgrade. Regarding price: I was prepared for you to say this cost 3x as much. 5 grand seems like a bargain given the dramatic improvement in the sound. My ancient and mid-level audio system might actually sound decent in your space! Thanks for doing what you do. I am always fascinated by your videos. Be well.
As soon as you spoke I heard a dramatic improvement. The series of video on your new space stresses how important room treatments are and their effects on the sound we hear in a particular room. Like everything in HiFi, if your budget allows and you get buy in with others, it just makes sense. Fun to watch and follow.
Nice makeover, thanks for the shout out!
Curtains and carpet have always made a huge difference in my experience, relatively cheap too !
Acoustic treatment, imho, need to be well balanced and done by experts like Vicoustic. A room with unbalanced treatment will typically be too boomy as you tend to absorb a lot more hi and mid's with curtain and heavy textiles in my experience.
You are absolutly right. I saw people spending thousands of dollars for cables or amplifiers, but didn‘t care much about their room. 5000€ for this result is much, but absolutly worth it.
Do you want a $250,000 hifi sound but only have 2,500?!… Read the end of this post! 😊
12 years ago I did this room treatment myself in my last home. The hifi-trade wasn’t there yet so I had to do the research and studying myself. I even tore down a wall, moved it, and in the corner left a big opening (only covered with a colour matched fabric) in which the really low frequencies (low frequencies LOVE corners! Corners work like 9 dbA amplifiers) could sneak out into “reversed organ pipes” (built in wood) length tuned to the different resonance frequencies I had problems with. A resonance wave would bounce inside at the end of the tube and on its way out meet its next wave peak but reversed a half wave length - cancelling it!
In the ceiling I installed wood “ribbons” wider than yours behind your telly, yet very good looking and a bit wider with rounded profiles. With the goal of keeping the sound energy but dispersing all the resonance sound waves the room dimensions created.
Not to dig too deep into my wallet I worked with “distance to wall” behind my dampers (normal house insulation mtrl - stone wool). Here’s a hint - 5 cm (two inch) stone wool 5 cm out from the wall is practically identical to 10 cm thickness of stone wool as regards damping effect. Moved out further, each cm of distance equals cm of stone wool not needed to buy.. you get the point..
Now to the 1/4 million hifi tips 😎
When choosing a hifi amplifier or loudspeaker people tend to scrutinise spec sheets chasing fractions of decimals in dbA in THD or flatness in frequency response curves. And yet, your listening room amplifies a number of frequencies by hundreds of percentages in volume!… and some frequencies are even cancelled out at your listening position 🤥🤣🤣🤣 ..filtering out mosquitoes but swallowing camels (Swedish saying..) 😂
Here are the free tips:
1) place your loudspeakers with EXACTLY 1/3 of the room width between and on each outside of the speakers! This eliminates up to the seventh degree of resonance the room width causes. (The brain can perceive up to 10’th grade but for each order of resonance grade the energy in the sound wave is lesser and lesser so the brain ignores it as irrelevant (thus you don’t “hear it” or perceive to be correct). Inches won’t do here. It’s ~ 1/4-1/2” accuracy!
2) move your listening position out from the wall behind you some 30 cm (12”). Early (in milliseconds) reflections creates sound porridge. There is a magic threshold in milliseconds where the brain no longer bothers with reflection as a disturbance. It’s only perceived as reverb. Not porridge! This secondary -indirect- sound comes to your ears from a direct bounce from the wall behind you but also from the floor and ceiling. Imagine the room as covered in mirrors. Your ears “sees” the direct sound from your loudspeakers but also all mirror reflections when the sound bounces towards your ears. A carpet on the floor takes care of the floor problem. The ceiling requires some hanging of either damping pads (on the spot where you would se the mirror reflections of your speakers) but rather diffusers in the ceiling not to get a too dead sound. Side walls the same but probably unnecessary as the reflection delay time in milliseconds is long enough to cause reverb instead of porridge (with my 1/3-1/3-1/3 trick).
3) Now to the last, very important hifi-refining tip!.. but most difficult WAF! wife acceptance factor! Distance between speakers and wall behind. By pulling out the speakers into the room. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. From the top of my head I think it was approx 38% of the room depth from back wall to speaker positions. This measure very efficiently eliminates porridge reflections!
You now have a $250,000 sound gear in your home! Congrats!
With all the three measures done, this will change the way you perceive tunes you have heard thousands of times to an entirely new level of experience - now you are sitting in the mixing studio with the band. Or present at that precious concert moment. There is no going back now!
Kind regards
Anders
Sweden
HiFi nerd and physics nerd and just in general nerd.. 🤓
PS. 4) Frosting on the cake… put a bath towel or thicker yoga mat under your speakers. With step 1-3 already done, this silly little thing will change the bass sound of big floor standing speakers in particular. You will now hear that “wow, it is not an electric base guitar, it is a synth base!” The fluffiness of low frequencies are dried up! No joke! 😎😁
Addition.. the sad part is that you now also hear the crappy sound of bad recordings or worse - your gear. The latter will cost.
The good part - it doesn’t cost a fortune. There are loudspeakers for $200 that sound exquisite when following my easy recommendations although they sound mediocre when incorrectly positioned. 😉
John, this series of videos regarding how absolutely vital a tame(d) listening room is to the enjoyment of music through the hardware we buy has been excellent. The evolution of your Lisbon listening room from terrible sound to terrific sound, or "life-changing" sound, as you put it, has taught me a lot. I've had the wall behind my rig, as well as the first reflection points on my side walls treated, but not the ceiling, though I've wondered for years if I should go for it. Your positively gushing enthusiasm for the wonderfully positive effect that all of Vicoustics treatments have made, especially that massive ceiling absorber/diffuser, has me motivated to pull the trigger on a ceiling treatment for my listening room. I hope my venture is as successful as yours. Thank you.
The clap test showed huge results. I think the wood look behind the TV looks really cool.
I'm sure spending $5K for room treatments is better than many other hi fi purchases. I would do this if I had the funds. Thanks for an informative video.
5k for such a significant result really isn't expensive at all. especially consider the aesthetics these bring (that wood and dark green combo just works brilliantly, looking so elegant and premium). love it
I can’t see one person grumble about your room. You presented the facts in a way, why wouldn’t you condition the room? It was like night and day obvious. Great video John.
I see Portugal, I like. 🇵🇹
This was probably my favourite video to date made by John. I work in professional studios as I record my own albums there and I know the importance of room acoustics and room treatments. For those who can’t afford such treatments, the best way to get great audio is to either use cheaper materials DIY or if that’s just not an option, use quality headphones with a dac and something like the RME ADI-2 FS so that one could slightly EQ the sound and get the most neutral freq. response if that is desired. Love seeing those guys install the panels. The sound of John speaking in the room now is so much better.
A combination of the two makes sense as well. Room treatment and slight correction of the frequency response, e.g. via the RME ADI 2 DAC. This is how I got rid of the most prominent room mode, excited by the left speaker. Real world rooms are often asymmetrical, as in my case. Room correction DSP is quite popular in these days, but I think, even a simple parametric EQ can be very effective, in conjunction with some room treatment.
Absorption isn't too expensive. Some pink acoustic batts, bit of wood length, cloth and your elbow. Hold it up with alien tape or else proper wall sticker hooks .
Or make a stand and lean it against the wall.
I think there is an overload of speaker, dac, amp options etc..on the market but very few separate eq systems. That's one of the reasons the ADI-2 solved most of my issues. For those of us who don't play audio from a computer, we need to eq further down the audio signal. I thought of the Lokius but really it's not specific enough for what I needed.
Problem is, folks don't know where to being with what goes where, how room geometry changes that, flat ceilings vs pitched, etc etc etc.
If this has already been explained, I'd love to read/view!
Tip: The dust on the ceiling acoustic panels can easily be removed by listening to Florence Foster Jenkins occasionally...
The clap test was a great demonstration of the effects of the upgrades on an empty room. I just wonder how it sounded prior to you removing all the furniture, media and electronics. The normal listen environment that we all use in this leisure activity or so to speak reality.
That’s a valid point. One challenge with the furniture is that they typically impact only the lower part of the room. There can be up to 2/3 of the wall height and the whole ceiling acoustically untreated.
Love this video. I can only dream of spending that kind of money on room treatment, but what I enjoy is that the aesthetic matters to you and I don't find the treatment obtrusive. It is very designed and almost art like, my partner would definitely approve.
I find the 'audiophiles' who do nothing but dump a system on an 'audio' stand in a corner, wires trailing everywhere, no room treatment and then bang on about spending £10k on a cartridge very odd, surely the first place to begin is placement, room, setup basics.
A fabulous series on acoustics! You put so much work into making this a rich resource of scientific information. I do have one tiny nitpick however. I am a fledgling audiophile and I am a woman. As one of three women in an audiophile group of over 300 members in the San Francisco Bay Area, I am aware we might be in the minority. However, there is a common reference to "the wife" as the limiter on audio expenditures. Can we please grow beyond these stereotypes? In my case, it is "the husband" who need convincing, though good for you for mentioning your enthusiastic girlfriend who is all in on your treatments. By the way, I think those treatments are beautiful and tasteful.
Spill your woke propaganda somewhere else
🙄
So you're aware that you are in a minority of less than 1% of audiophiles but you can't find it within you to shut up and respect the experiences of the more-than-99% majority?
And you can't find it within you to use that brain of yours to translate the word "wife" to "spouse" to accurately interpret the information freely offered by strangers to fit your own highly exceptional situation?
You only find it within you to express offense and resentment?
That mindset and behaviour are toxic. Grow the F up.
Well personally, I think the acoustic kit looks excellent and really adds to the style of the room - if an architect came in and designed that, no-one would bat an eyelid. Plus, for anyone who's managed to already smuggle in a pair of those massive f-off speakers past their other half, then I think the acoustic treatment should be a walk in the park... 🙂
Phil, you made me laugh out loud. However, my Mrs. now has the attitude of, "Once bitten, twice shy." I can't sneak anything past her.
I think it is aesthetically gorgeous. As a reviewer, you need it.
If I could afford these treatments, I would do it in a heartbeat. Not only do they improve the sound, they are aesthetically really nice. Great bachelor pad vibe!
And I think you’ve hit the nail on the head right there with ‘bachelor pad vibe’. John is very lucky to have a partner who has no problem with these panels. I do not think most peoples wives or girlfriends (and occasionally boyfriends) would be happy with it as John mentions in the video. My wife most definitely would not.
Charts be damned. That clap test is the real test. What a difference.
2 things:
1. It's no doubt a big improvement
2. You're a lucky guy ;-)
Very interesting series of videos John and I learnt plenty. So I think I see the Cambridge Audio Alva TT turntable, you got it! I bought one too and interested to hear your review in due course. Final thought to include the (granted very few) women like me following your channel, maybe terms like partner or significant other may be a little better. I’m sure there are plenty of wives, husbands, girlfriends or boyfriends who would both love or hate the room treatments. Personally I think it both looks and sounds great! Thanks again!
John, I couldn't agree more.
I have never come across a monitoring system that made a bad room sound good.
I cannot recall how many times I have seen people spend way more than €50,000 (ten times more) in a bad room and magically expect "good sound"!
Acoustics are grossly underrated in this HiFi world and more so in the Pro Audio world!
Happy listening!
I feel you man. That’s an actual upgrade. Money well spent. Really beautiful panels. It’s curious how much most audiophiles focus on gear and totally neglect acoustics.
The final link in your audio chain befor the signal hits your ears is the air in your room - it is also one big instrument. You are in effect listening to the interface between you and the room and the speakers and the room. The acoustics of the room will inevitably be a crucial. Clearly shows here…
To be honest, John, the dark wood panels with the green absorbers look really classy. 👌 I can't think of a greater way to show the difference between being treated and untreated than the test the Vicoustic chap did. Wow just amazing.
Never been a fan of that deep red colour of the Zu’s. But it looks fantastic together with that dark wood and deep green 👍
You can tell how much better it is by just listening to you - there is zero reverb... or at least it sounds like it in the video. That in itself is proof positive.
It truly is night and day, and while the cost is significant I would say the treatment is essential for you or anyone serious about their music. As a layman I was surprised that the front wall treatment was above speaker level. Congratulations on having a listening room - that looks very nice too!
I spent £1700 with GIK Acoustic about 3 years ago. I sent them a place of my room.....spare bedroom 3 x 4m...and they came up with a plan. The acoustic panels I bought from them were free standing, so no fixing necessary. They made the same difference as John. You will not hear how good your system is unless you treat your room......If you can.
I don't think you're damned if you do. This is, part of what you do. This is the first step. A review of your room. You can't possibly hear differences or improvements in gear the way your room sounded before. Now your room is ready to properly evaluate everything that you bring in to evaluate for us.
Also, step into any hifi shop and you'll no doubt listen to gear in a, wait for it, treated room!
@Jim Gardner That's just good business. I mean, what are they going to say? Hold on while we put this high end gear in the bathroom so you can hear how it will sound in your office.
I'm in the middle of a gut rehab. We had the ceiling and walls sprayed with closed cell spray foam insulation. You can hear a difference after they sprayed, and as a bonus we're well-insulated from the elements.
top video, every word true. I learned acoustics a few years ago and treated two (very different from each other) rooms and things went from the worst sounding rooms I ever lived in to -really (really) - good. Never go back...
Very good video. As an engineer I appreciate that you can clearly demonstrate the benefit of the treatment. Like you indicated, not many other changes to the equipment will have such a dramatic effect.
Yes this video is important, informative and entertaining! Bravo!
What an amazing improvement. You never need to apologize for doing what you want for your own space. You owe nobody anything. Enjoy your music and space with your girlfriend.
You've achieved a jaw-dropping and remarkable result at a price point that is more than reasonable and was noticeable immediately as you began to speak. Well done 👍🏻
The clap test difference is astonishing.
€5k?!? That seems/sounds like an absolute steal to me for that level of improvement. I’m about to email Vicoustic now for a quote.
For it's aesthetic style perspective alone, it's worth the money.
Thank you, John. Your Lisbon room series is very important. You explain to a very wide audience the key concepts in room acoustic and what you need to do about it. There have been others who have tried, but your series gets the message across for everyone. Top notch!
Excellent video series, thank you. Hi-fi enthusiasts and home studio hobbyists who have any doubt as to the utility of room treatment would benefit greatly from watching this.
That TV is USA high now!
In a rectangular room, such as JD's, placing your system on one of the short walls is preferred so as to be able to bring out the speakers further out into the room, as well as attenuate the low frequency reverb. In the old days (70'-90's) thick rugs, wall to wall thick pleaded curtains, and tons of fluffy padded furniture did the job. Sadly, that meant you were likely to remain single, or be kicked down to the basement by your spouse. Thanks JD.
Very nice indeed. Good for you. As a now solo widowed, empty nest, retiree (a.k.a. U. S. Government certified Old Far..., ehr, Dude), I down-sized from a large house to a 3 room apartment in a nice old neighborhood. After signing the lease and setting up my relatively modest, but still quite good stereo system, I discovered that the main room has a very nasty bass resonance problem. This particularly upsets my turntable (Rega RP1 with Bias 2 MM cartridge). I had never experienced anything like this before. I had to sideline my venerable and beloved ADS L520 loudspeakers which simply overpower the room. Trying to fix the room is beyond my finite resources and I'm not sure how the landlady would react to any major modifications anyway. But all is not lost. I now use a pair of Wonder Puppies (Pioneer SP-BS22-LRs*) on tall stands with the rear ports plugged with rolled up wool socks and the bass rolled off a bit at the integrated amp [Yaayyy, tone controls!]. This has tamed the resonance as long as I don't play the system too loudly when playing CDs and SACDs. Bass shy music is still infinitely better than no music. Vinyl playback is still affected, though. For this and for critical listening, the solution is to take the room out of the equation with headphones (Irish made Sennheiser HD 600s). I remain a decidedly loudspeaker kind of guy, but I have come to terms with this reality. And I still enjoy the music. -- ✌🙂
*All hail Andrew Jones, hero of audiophiles of all socio-economic strata!
Heck Ya Brother, so glad you treated this place. I would have been upset if you tried to review gear in that room the way it was. Horrified really. The Room is literally half of the sound system.
Hi John,
it looks great, the effect is great. Congratulations. After your first video from this room I was shocked and thought "poor John, such a bad listening room". Now everything is fine. To me all these panels have a good WAF (even the ceiling).
Thumbs up and best regards from Germany.
Impressed and to my ears, worth the cost. The clap test alone impressed.
One of the videos I couldn't wait to watch. And was awed! "VERKLARUNG"!!!
Man, if only I could invest on such treatment on my living room! Understand this is your studio/listening/test area and afterwards cinema...But surely room is No1 to audio nirvana, before any machine! Thank you for this video and wish you happy/healthy/careless life and work in Lisbon! Greetings!
P.S.#1: Aesthetically your new room kicks the butt of previous one! It's probably 5 times prettier (I must admit that new one was at first a meh!). Totally loved the green, wenge details. And the ceiling!! 😍
P.s.#2: Your TV looks smaller on this wooden panel. And I think it's a little higher than eye level? (Don't know, I guess...)
Anyway, the whole setup was glorious, I liked so much and believe no one that will tell you 'you spent a lot'. IT WAS WORTH IT, sound-wise & aesthetic-wise'!
Love it. Great stuff John! 👌🏻
Wow! what a difference. I didn’t have to see your test results, it was in your voice as soon as you spoke. Incredible. Enjoy!
Yes to the room, money well spent.
Looks gorgeous. Sounds great. Incredible difference.
It looks amazing John. Congrats.
Absolutely enjoy these videos and I learn a lot. Thank you!
Amazing episode. Great work.
Absolutely love this video series thank you so much John for doing this!
Fantastic series of videos. Thank you for taking us on the whole process.
Love this series. Love your attitude. Thank you for putting this together in such great detail.
looks great, congrats
Sounds and looks great 👍🏻
fantastic breakdown/video. well done
Great video John, I would never moan that you got your room treated, as it shows us the importance of why we should get this done
I think I can afford to place some dropped ceiling tiles around my room.
Great video, certainly one of your best!
Looks and sounds amazing. Brilliant video John.
This is my favourite episode so far and I love the way you made it sound. Congrats and really looking forward to hearing more on this subject!
Thanks John. Great video.
Amazing results!!! The install looks beautiful too!!!!
It looks awesome! Not only does it help acoustically, it is decorative as well.
Great video. Thank you!!
Awesome video and congratulations on the results! Enjoy!
Love it! All of it.
perfect! really good info!!! thanks!!!
Absolutely fantastic video! a must watch for any audio lover.
It is simple. Room treatment shall be accounted as part of the audio chain and equipment. Jolly nice to see such a tremendous difference. The question is if they can tailor the sound to your liking.
Job well done, mate! 👍👍👍😎
Great video John! The clapping demo is quite astonishing!
This is fantastic. Congratulations.
Superb, very interesting!
Great video and description of what took place. Nicely done.
Excellent video again and congrats on the results of the treatment!
Great video John, definitely going to look into some treatments
Dear John, I have been a big fan of your channel for the last couple of months (I am close to buying a NAD M10 v2 for our basement flat thanks to your informative reviews of the gear). This video of the acoustic treatment was really impressive. I watched the last three videos about your new room and wondered where this will end up. Thank you so much for putting all this together. Very impressive and what a great job of the guys from Vicoustic.
Congratulations on the results John. And thanks for a very informative video.
Wow, this is really awesome! Thanks for this great video, really a result I would love to obtain in my room.
Thank you rasta for making the case for room treatments so emphatically and clearly
Darko, thanks for another enlightening and enjoyable video.
Amazing! Congratulations on your new listening space. I think it looks amazing and the results are better than good. Vicoustics did a great job.
Brilliant, as always 💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼
Thanks for this. Very interesting and informative. Also, I think your room treatments look great.
brilliant videos (both this and the before - for my part amongst the most interesting pieces you have done John, so many thanks!
This was excellent. I have loved your whole series on room acoustics from the Johan interview, your Dirac ones and these on Vicoustic. And the flat looks amazing - happy house warming and best wishes.
Nicely done. Very helpful and entertaining. ViCoustics is already in the works for our theatre.
I was really impressed on the change in audio quality. Thanks for covering this subject.
Probably the best video I’ve seen on showing how much the room contributes to the sound of any hi-fi set up.
And yeah, if you’re willing and able to spend $5k on upgrading a piece of equipment that that money is spent on treating the room
Nice job. Agreed, room treatment is far more important than we realize!
Looks amazing, I'm sure it also sounds amazing in person - the clap test made me actually Lol at the difference. Just incredible.