Last month I briefly mentioned a new book by Jim Smith titled "Get Better Sound", however I really did not go into much detail.
First, it's no surprise that speaker and room interaction are perhaps the single biggest issue in achieving good sound. This is the majority of what our acoustical designs are all about. Designing the room right and having the speaker appropriately function within that space. If you can do those 2 things you are well on your way to achieving not just good sound--but great sound.
For those that do not know Jim Smith, he has been in this industry for years. He was previously the Avant Garde US distributor. I first met Jim when he requested a Rives PARC for one of his show demos. He had a great room with big Avant Garde trios and bass horns. Those horns can overload just about any room and the dimensions at the show were very unfavorable (10 x 20 x 30). The PARC really helped.
Jim knew he was going to have an issue in that room and took necessary steps to insure it would not result in a bad sounding room. In fact, every room I've ever been in that Jim was associated with sounded good. He was one of the consistent people in setting up a room properly.
His book, "Get Better Sound" is a plethora of tips on how to do what Jim did on a regular basis. These tips are practical, easy to follow, and most of all--they work. Many of them are the basics of what we do when designing a room. While we may use mathmatical caculations to predict results, the basic goal and issues remain the same. Jim has put together very approachable and useable methods to help just about anyone achieve better performance of their system.
This is highly recommended.
www.getbettersound.com
