Wasted Youth

• Acoustic Panels
• Bass Traps
• Acoustic Foam Panels
• DIY Acoustic Panels
• Church Acoustics
• Studio Acoustics
• Home Theater Acoustics
• Restaurant Acoustics
• Acoustic Insulation
• Room Acoustic Treatments

I spent nearly twenty years in the audio industry with two major consumer electronics companies. The bulk of that time was spent in new product development and product management. I worked on a variety of products, but the majority of them were loudspeakers. Loudspeakers, of course, need to sound good in the customer’s home, but unfortunately, the room in which they are placed can have a profound effect upon the sound of any loudspeaker.

In our loudspeaker development efforts we tried to compensate for the effects of different rooms in several ways. First, our instruction manuals advised the customer on speaker placement. We gave them instructions against placing the speakers inside cabinets or deep shelves and advised them on the frequency reinforcement that could take place by placing the speakers near corners or intersecting walls and ceilings.

One of the other ways we tried to make sure we were designing speaker that would sound good when the customer took them home was to test them in a variety of listening rooms. The listening rooms were designed with different shapes and sizes designed to run the gamut of what one might expect to find in the customer’s home. They had furniture, floor coverings, and everything else you might find in a home that would effect the sound quality of a home audio system. Every speaker was evaluated against competitive products in all of these listening rooms to make sure that it was not benefitting from the particular acoustic properties of one particular room or set-up.

Every speaker was tested in a double-blind set-up against a range of top competitors. Dozens of listeners would listen to each speaker and rate it according to a number of specific acoustic attributes without knowing which speaker they were listening to. If our speaker didn’t exhibit a statistically significant superiority when we tabulated the results of the tests, then it didn’t go out the door. Instead the engineering team would make adjustments and continue working until the test results showed that our speaker would be judged superior by a majority of listeners in a variety of room types.

Once that was done, speakers would be demonstrated to buyers from various retail stores to convince them to buy the speakers for their showrooms and store shelves. Unfortunately these demonstrations often took place in hotel rooms which usually seemed to be designed for the worst possible acoustics. Large expanses of glass, loose and rattling duct work, and a whole host of audio challenges did their best to erase the good work we had done in front of our resellers.

To compensate, we would always set up several days in advance and audition the room. We would then apply acoustic treatments to correct for the distortions caused by the room. This might be installing heavy drapes in front of the windows, adding absorptive panels at various places within the room, or even stuffing the AC ducts to stop them from resonating along with the bass notes.

Even with the best speakers in the world, a bad room can cause bad sound unless it is properly treated to eliminate acoustic problems.