Wilson Electronics Grand Slamm, Owner'S Manual, Page: 18 / 80

W I L S O N A U D I O S P E C I A L T I E S , I N C .
Occasionally, however, there is just enough resonance to give a little added warmth to the sound… an addi-
tion some listeners prefer. Tube traps manufactured by the ASC Corporation are effective in reducing some
of this low frequency room coloration. While, custom designed bass traps, such as perforated Helmholtz
resonators, provide the greatest degree of low frequency control.
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There are three basic shapes for most rooms: square, rectangular, and L-shaped. A perfectly square
room is the most difficult room to set up speakers in because, by virtue of its shape, square rooms are the
perfect medium for building and sustaining standing waves. Standing waves are pressure waves created by
the integration of sound and opposing, parallel walls which accentuate particular frequencies. They heavily
influence the music played by loudspeakers, greatly diminishing the listening experience.
Long, narrow rectangular rooms also pose their own special acoustical problems for speaker setup.
They have the ability to set up several standing wave nodes, which will have different standing wave fre-
quency exaggerations depending on where you are sitting. Additionally, these long rooms are often quite
lean in the bass near the center of the room. Rectangular rooms are still preferred to square rooms because
by having two sets of dissimilar length walls, standing waves are not as strongly reinforced and will dis-
sipate more quickly than in a square room. In these rooms the preferred speaker position for spatial place-
ment and midrange resolution would be on the longer walls. Bass response would be reinforced by speaker
placement on the short walls.
In many cases L-shaped rooms offer the best environment for speaker setup. Ideally, speakers
should be set up along the primary (longest) leg of the room. They should fire from the end of the leg (short
wall) toward the bend, or they should be along the longest wall, with the speaker furthest to the bend being
inside of the bend. In this way both speakers are firing the same distance to the back wall. The asymmetry
of the walls in L-shaped rooms resists the buildup of standing waves.
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