GA misinformations (was Re: triphop, garggggg)

[Jeremy David]

On 2/23/06, TERROR FIRMA SKY <terror_firma_sky at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Any decent artist can compensate for bad acoustics or at
> least figure out how to use them to their advantage.

Speaking as an audio artist with 20 years of experience, I have to
disagree. A poorly shaped room, if it's shaped poorly enough, can
generate feedback, standing waves, or even canceled waves.

Feedback is a noise I'm sure we're all familiar with. Standing waves
are usually bass frequencies that are generated by a certain shaped
room, among other things. They often create a sound that's not unlike
what you'd hear if the band were playing in a long tunnel. Canceled
waves are rare, but do occur. In a room that is shaped poorly, waves
can bounce off of each other and cancel each other out, totally
disappearing. There is often simply no physical way to fix that other
than improving the acoustical situation of the room.

Sure, there are steps you can take to arrange the PAs differently, but
sometimes that's not an option either, and sometimes it doesn't make
any difference anyway, depending on the space.

Listening to music in an improper space is like watching a movie
projected onto a bed sheet billowing in the wind on a clothesline.
Sure, that might create a kind of a cool effect, but it's hardly what
the person who made the movie intended, and you're going to miss a
good deal of what's in the film that way. If you like that sort of
thing, then great, but you can't disagree that there are important
parts of the presentation that you're not getting the chance to
evaluate, and that the person who made it wanted something different.