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Optimizing and Sizing the Perfect Room

Better Sound Through Better Tools – Optimizing Home Theater Performance

RPG, a company well renowned for its acoustical treatments have designed 2 software packages to help the DIY audio enthusiast cure their acoustical problems.


ROOM OPTIMIZER

A new approach to automated optimized listener/loudspeaker placement Room Optimizer™ is a Windows program to help determine the optimum locations for listener and loudspeakers in a rectangular room.

There have been various approaches that suggest room dimensions and the positioning of listeners, loudspeakers, and acoustical treatment within a room. The need for a new optimized approach grows as we move from stereo to 5.1 multi-channel music and home theater digital surround formats. In these new musical delivery formats, the room design and loudspeaker/listener placement become much more complex. For example, in a typical 5.1 or 7.1 home theater you may have to determine the best location for the listener, 5 or more loudspeakers and multiple sub-woofers. Room Optimizer™ is a novel coupling of modern room acoustics prediction techniques with iterative multi-dimensional optimization methods. The program carries out an automated search for the best positions for listener and low-frequency loudspeakers in a rectangular room.

The methods used are complex, but proven over time. If you really want to blow your mind—take a look at the theory behind the program which is detailed in a White Paper available here.

ROOM SIZER

Many audiophiles wonder, “What’s the perfect sized room?” Is it the golden ratio or something else? Room Sizer has been developed to enable the optimization of small room dimensions for improved low frequency performance. The criteria for room size being to minimize the coloration effects of low frequency modes monitored by a predicted modal response. The method is an improvement on previous methods in that the theoretical basis is a more accurate model of the room response than examining the modal spacing in frequency for a rigid box. The system is flexible in that it can search for the best dimensions within constraints set by the designer. Furthermore, the procedure has flexibility in that as better prediction models of rooms become available, they can be used in the general optimization design procedure. Results demonstrate that the new search method produce room sizes that match or improve on the room ratios published in current literature.

Special Offer with the Rives Audio Test CD 2. You may have already read the Audioholics Review of this unique Test CD which compensates for the non-linearities of the Radio Shack SPL meter. With this tool, you can validate the theoretical results of the Optimizer and Sizer inexpensively and effectively. From now until December 31st, 2004, Rives Audio will give all Audioholics members a Test CD 2 for free with the purchase of the Optimizer and Sizer. If you only need either the Optimizer or Sizer, Rives will give you $5 off the price of the CD.

Get the Rives Audio Test CD 2 Free with the Optimizer and Sizer Software Here.

A Special Message from Rives Audio on giving to those less fortunate around the Holidays

Christmas is not only the season when we reach out to friends and family, but also a time when many of us make charitable contributions. This year Rives Audio and several acoustical treatment manufacturers, inlcuding RPG, RealTraps, and Quest AI, will donate generously to a non-profit organization called Vietnam Relief Effort (VRE). We’re writing to ask you to join us help the VRE, which plays a crucial role in helping to rebuild Vietnamese villages ravaged by floods and provides desperately needed medical care and education.

Why do we feel so strongly about the VRE? It started in the spring of 2003, when I first met Chinh Chu, the Director of the Blackstone Group on Wall Street and, incidentally, a passionate audiophile. He had contracted with our company to design the ultimate listening room. Some of the design efforts and materials research we did for him went well beyond any prior project. And as the project progressed, I learned about his amazing American success story.

Chinh and his parents were Vietnamese refugees who emigrated to the US in 1975. He was 8 years old. His family possessed nothing more than the clothes on their back. His father, who had been a physician in Vietnam, learned English and went back to school. He soon resumed his medical practice. Like many immigrants, his father prized education and put six children, now all successful professionals, through school. Today, Chinh’s drive and business smarts have made him one of the most successful investors on Wall Street. His passion for business is surpassed only by his love for music and his wife Ha Phuong, a Vietnamese pop music star. I was fortunate enough to attend his wedding anniversary celebration at his home, which featured musical acts from Vietnam.

Sometimes extraordinarily successful people who have worked their way up forget the past and the less fortunate. Not Chinh. He regularly travels to Vietnam and tells stories of people working for a full day to earn only one dollar. He says, “It keeps me grounded.”

A philanthropist who fervently believes in education, he has established a Vietnam Relief Effort campaign. The organization makes numerous efforts to improve the daily lives of the Vietnamese--schools need the most basic equipment like pencils, chairs, tables, not to mention computers. Perhaps one of the VRE’s most essential missions is bringing Vietnamese doctors to the U.S. for training.

You can find out more about this remarkable organization at www.vietnamrelief.org. Through our efforts with the VRE the Vietnamese people will be able dramatically to improve their lives. Please join us in aiding this vital cause.

Richard Rives Bird
President, Rives Audio

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