What Does Dead Room Sound Like to You?

I’ve had some people look at photos of my room and say it’s way too dead. I’m thrilled with how my room sounds, it’s a pleasure to be in.



For years I’ve heard that a dead room is bad. What does “bad” mean? what does bad sound like? Is it like pornography, you know it when you see—hear—it? I’m looking to get some more input on what a dead room is.

I can think of a few rooms which I would consider dead. Most have been in the theater room of a hi-fi shop. Walking in the first impression is wow it’s quiet! Wait, it’s… too quiet. It feels well, dead-lifeless. After a bit more time it actually begins to feel uncomfortable like something is wrong.

In my last room which was a temporary setup I did get the room sounding on the dead side.

I recently had a mastering engineer visit my room. He walked in and said wow it’s dead in here. I asked him what me meant by dead. He said quiet then trailed off. He said in the mastering suites he has been in it’s quiet and dead with no emotion. He went on to say that my room was quiet but had life so he didn’t know how to how to describe it. After we listened to music he said he has never been in such an emotional room before.

Another friend came over to help install the last 3 cloud CPA absorbers in my room. He said it sounded a lot like the vocal booths he has been in… He then paused and said. “but, my ears don’t feel funny.

For me a dead room is lifeless lacking emotion sterile. Worse is it has an eerie-spooky-wrongness to it.

Have you been in a room you would call dead? if so what are your thoughts on what a dead room is? How do you describe it?

If you have not been in a dead room, what do you imagine when someone says the room is too dead?

I’m looking to get a sense of what others consider a dead room. Thank you all.

PS. The Torii MKV isn't in the system it's at Cryotone right now.

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Isn't that the only thing that matters?

To me, only looking at the photo, a room with that exposed wood floor is unlikely "too dead." Maybe deadish, but there is a lot going on. Back when I was playing we would judge the live or deadness of the room by how long the sound "hung" in the air when we stopped playing. You can get the same effect by clapping and then listening to the decay. Your shower is typically pretty live, try it in there and compare to your listening room. I've been in stone cold dead rooms, crazy live rooms and everything in between. A lot of auditoriums sound very live without an audience (when you are rehearsing) and then deaden up with people in the seats.

I guess to me, as a (recovering) performer a dead room is honest. A live room (but not too live) adds a little bit of extra body to the sound. That is maybe what you call sterile. For listening, I think on the dead side is better than the other way, but either extreme is not good.

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In another thread I recorded popping an airpack in my music room and one in my kitchen. It's a radical difference. Not as much as the sound clips on the link you shared though.

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! IT’S LOUD! START LOW VOLUME!

https://voca.ro/1jb61tS0CEhI

https://voca.ro/1iGTepR1rAi6

From the same website you shared they have a definition of a dead room

https://www.sfu.ca/sonic-studio-webdav/handbook/Dead_Room.html

I find it interesting that it says high frequencies. Nothing about mid and low frequencies. I spent some time clicking around reading the how they define things.

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Absolutely!

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This is getting to the heart of the matter for me. I don't consider my room dead at all. Quiet yes. Honest yes. So how close or far apart are our internal definitions of what dead means? Am I trying to change my internal definition of what dead means because I don't like the connotation of dead?

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Wow! I haven't been in a room like that. not hearing foot steps would be spooky.

That's for the comments so far, I hope some more people chime in and give their thoughts and feelings on what a dead room is for them.

It's been about 15 yrs so memory is a bit foggy. At the Rock n Roll hall of Fame in Cleveland they had a padded room that was seemingly void of any sound reflections. If you talked in the room you'd hear your voice IN your head more than from your ears. Freaky. I did a quick look for any info on it and came up empty. I believe this was on the floor that had innovations of sound history on display.

For me a dead room is clinical, dry, emotionless or just not "real". I like sound moving around and filling space, but like plumbing tighten it up too much and it goes to hell.

Based on my loving a “real” “alive” sound, I should try to describe this first. I go for a sound that really makes it sound like the room is where the players are, or where the recording is happening…. where the completeness of resolution and the many balances make it feel like real musicians in a good room. My sister was visiting a while back, and every time she came in with music playing, I saw her make a little double-take. She later said it was because the music sounded so real, her first impulse was to think the players were here with us, and to look for them.

Though I get that a room seriously EQ'd (treated) for frequencies and reflections can go a long way toward getting us “there,” and that some rooms require more work than others.... so far, for me, a slightly lively room that does not notably accentuate or attenuate any parts of the music, makes "real" easier. Like playing live acoustic music, some reflection done well can support a more complete "alive" feel. And in my room, though quiet here, this does not particularly equate to "quiet" due to a lot of calculated absorption and diffusion like Groovy's.

Still, I am always careful to try to get the many balances... spectral, timing, and resolution, without going very far in any “adjustments,” tending to go gradually and  learning discernment as I go so that I can make better choices. If I can find it more simply, without much compensation in any one area at a time, it seems I can remain within the vast complex of balances that make lots of recordings sound great in my system/room more easily. This is an ultimate balancing tool for me… if it sounds really good across most decent recordings.

And this has been our day-to-day living area... not a "dedicated" music room, though my dedication to making the room sound real is an ongoing creative devotion, and to me, effective.

But my room does a lot of good things just from how it was made... so I can't say how any of this would come out if I started with a room with square and plumb sheet rock and glass everywhere... very different from this adobe house with virtually no flat reflective surfaces except glass, and lots of natural materials, and inadvertent (for music) construction choices supporting diffusion and adsorption.

Within this, toward the quest for "real," I try for all information to be present and balanced, so that each part of the frequency range and timing support all the others in terms of balances that feel as "real" music does in a good music room. I am like Tony, I can’t even listen in many venues anymore, it just sounds so much better to me here, clearly pointing to the importance of room in those places I don’t go.

The places I do like are generally quite live, like good old-school church spaces. Related, for me, once I heard more complete harmonic complexity, really good seeming resolution and balance was not enough... I realized that there was much more to resolution and space, even though at the time, I had a resolving system by most standards.

I find that with care we can have good balances and enough resolution to sound like a pretty awakening system. But it takes the refinement of resolving the very fine detail within the "detail" to transform hardness into complexity, and bring out the more nuanced information and tonal values of beautiful instruments and spaces…. including textures, air, decays, spacial information between players and beyond.... things that create a sense of living music.

Clearly all balances are important to hear it all, but looking at harmonic richness, the very fine stuff in balance, it seems to me to be a lot about resolution and timing at this point... the timing good enough to create space around the finest detail. So I go for musical resolution and balances without smearing, whether from gear or room, requiring a level of liveness that is “just so,” not too live and not too dead.

Pulling this information more completely not only proves 44.1/16 files can have loads of musical information, but without that finer information, it can sound bad...to really good, but not quite real.

And the broader balances.... the rooms I don’t go to for music, are off balance and dull sounding “dead” in some areas at least, but a little death goes a long way for me. At the same time, though not necessarily dulled "dead" overall,  off-balance is pretty disturbingly deadening to the music for me. So what is dead?

The same applies in my experiments here. Even if the bass/mid-bass frequencies are pretty well defined and fast themselves, if the bass is balanced to be too much in the blend, it will mask the rest. It may not make it dead, but heading that way by dulling the complex of articulating information. I think a little too much bass can be seductive, especially on better recordings, but on others, it can easily mask the mids and highs, and with that, even if subtle, it can damage natural tones, textures and decays of the bass information the mids and highs help create. Even a little off tends to feel pretty invasive to me across recordings, making the potential of gain riding with Steve’s tuning boxes useful. If otherwise “good” bass keeps the mids and highs from blending properly, the bass will sound thicker, less defined, weakening its potential to sound real itself, while dulling all the rest. I am glad to be able to tune the balances on the fly for recordings that need that.

So I need to solve smearing across the spectrum from all of the electronics and cables, and from the room, mitigating notable attenuation, overlap, and amplification of some frequencies over others, while ending with a fast alive sound that sounds “right” bottom to top. Related, loving a lively, reflective feel, excess reflections confuse the sound, another balancing act. So many fine lines!

Based on the old clap test, seems my room is on the lively side of absorbent, and this balance seemingly works more or less across the spectrum for revelation and natural speed the way it is tuned. But it is always in a state of being tuned...Each month and year the whole getting realer and more captivating. And now, though more real sounding across recordings, the clap test reveals less reflection than years back when I did it last with a little less refined components, cables, power, absorption and diffusion. But as my sister noticed, it is live feeling, real feeling. And it sounds about the same most places in the room, and down the hall in my bath tub… so I am hearing a system/room here, not a system or room. “The seat” is another thing, where the soundstage blossoms, but overall, the whole sounds pretty right to me.



Finally, assuming decent balances, speed, and resolution, with relatively balanced reflections, I guess a fairly typical way of considering "dead" sound would come from taking down mids and highs more than low mids to bass on balance. Even if the lower frequencies are in pretty good balance and not particularly muddled, not having good complexity with mids and high contributions, information that articulates the bass sounds, it would sound mirky and some level of dead to me.

Or, the mids and highs could be really complex and real sounding, and a muddled low end from system/room bass imbalances could cause it to sound dead, the lower frequencies smeared and wacky spectrally, enough to mess with speed and articulation no matter how much the mid bass-up helps articulate and texture it.

Or, if the mids and highs are present and relatively balanced spectrally, but rigid and lacking complexity ...concentrated... and the low mids to bass pretty right, I might call that "hard" (or some folks might call it "bright"). But, "off balance," having rigid, too concentrated mids and highs, it is not able to sound real, leaving out complexity we associate with real bass sound, as well as mid and high complexity.

I know these are all listening impressions based on sonic information, not whether a room is dead seeming or not. But the point of Groovy’s room is to solve all this, that room treatment done well can balance all these things. I have never been in a room that heavily treated, so can’t guess how I would like it, but I can certainly imagine the difference he feels between quiet and dead with an excellent balance of room tuning tools.

I could ramble more, but I guess to me, a dead or quiet room, or not, is not just like a chamber compared to an untreated reflective space. I guess it is all part of the same toward the end musical experience... the system and room. And functionally, the room can sound quiet, and the music beautiful, if all works with extensive treatment. Or the music can be beautiful with less extensive treatment and the room not feeling as quiet, dead being the too-far side of quiet. So whether from gear, or room, or how those synergize... spectrum, resolution, speed and smearing imbalances can deaden the sound if the many, many intricate balances that cause it all to work together are not refined as a whole.

Clearly great treatment can seriously support this all working together. At the same time, I have yet to see “science” in audio define complete, beautiful sound, indicating to me the science is incomplete. In ways, this makes the approach of Acoustic Fields based treatment pretty bold seeming to me, where you basically build a room with a variety of calculated treatments and mold the sound this way..... helping to create a notably quiet system/room like Groovy’s, that if just-so, reveals the many musical balances together to make the deep beauty. I am really glad it works!

^-LOL!
Technically speaking a dead room has a reverb time less than approximately 300 milliseconds. Sometimes the term “dead” is also applied to rooms that have a claustrophobic feeling - low ceilings, close walls, and extensive absorption. The claustrophobic feeling is a perception of the brain caused by two things: 1.) the dimensions of the room are not great enough such that all of the frequencies that we can hear are able to fit inside the room, and 2.) the absorption is insufficient to treat the full spectrum that we can hear- generally being more effective at absorbing higher frequencies and being less effective at absorbing as the frequency decreases and the dimensions of the wave grow. To me this has a very disorienting effect on my senses and is very unpleasant.
GS, with that hard floor and the diffusion that you have I would find it hard to believe you have less that 300 ms reverb time, your dimensions are good, and I’m sure Dennis’ absorption is working across the spectrum. If anything, perhaps someone entering your space needs some time to process what they are listening to because they have never heard anything like it before. There is likely a cognitive disconnect between what their eyes are sending the brain and what their ears are sending to the brain. I’ll bet a person’s initial impression would be different in total darkness

If I understand correctly, this is a room that is deadened by the room treatment, but seems live because of the wood floor.  One might say this is a room that is neither live nor dead.  

Is it . . . an undead room?

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Schrödinger's room. Only by opening it and playing music can one determine whether it is alive or dead.

GroovySauce:  Sorry for posting off-topic in your interesting thread, it was just too tempting to resist on Halloween.  To go back on-topic, I wanted to respond to one of your initial questions:

"If you have not been in a dead room, what do you imagine when someone says the room is too dead?"

I am answering this question on a theoretical basis as i do not have a lot of experience with different rooms - I think my room (untreated) is much more of a live listening room, so this answer here is more like a "thought experiment" that a response based on broad experience.

I think of a "dead room" as not having a lot of reflections.  My guess is that such a room would tend to give you an accurate version of what is on the recording you are listening to.  If the recording represents a "live" room, then I think that your experience would be similar to the room in which it was recorded.  If the recording is itself relatively "dry," then I think your perception would be of a dry recording, that might not be the most enjoyable sound.  

In contrast, i think a more "live" listening room might be better for the dry recording (which might seem more natural because of the characteristics of the listening room), but might be more confusing for a recording in a live room.  

So, my guess is that the "ideal" choice might be an "intermediate" room that would be suitable for a wide range of recordings - as with all things, it is a question of trade-offs.

I also think your room seems like an exceptionally good listening space.  Just visually, I like it with the wood floor, and some natural light.  And I think having many of your room treatments on casters means that you can adjust your room "on the fly" (very cool idea) to adjust the sound.  You may be one of the people best equipped to offer informed opinions on your question, and thanks for posting this and giving you thoughts.

Again, my apologies for going off-topic.

CAJames wrote on 10/31/23 at 23:42:40:


CAJ, you may have just offered up a new definition of what it means to be a true gentleman.


... but, yes, I agree that listening is the only way to know.

I would have considered my old house to have had a "dead" living room. Two fluffy love seats on opposite walls, deep padding with thick carpet on wood, quilted drapes with blinds behind, fluffy couch on one end, dropped ceiling with acoustic tiles made for a rather undefined dead sound.

To me the dead sound was like nothing I heard had a reference point, except for the direct information eminating from a speaker system somewhere. Even then it was almost like I was hearing only the final fragment of what was left.
After crawling across a desert and you have no spit left type of sound.
It was almost like the sound almost died off before it got to you.
But it worked well for movies.

The super dead room actually sounded fine with movies via the fairly powerful 5.1 system.
Then at times when I wanted to shake the floor, I think the deadness actually helped. Crank it up and enjoy some live Zep.
Not great with two channel, though. What was missing was any nod toward a natural liveliness.

Our new home, we have the same couch and one love seat with an added big comfy chair, but the ceiling is a sixteen foot at the center cathedral type. And there is nothing above eye level here to diffuse anything.
Stomped plaster ceiling, so it is very lively.

I chose not to do a surround movie system, because the sound is very compelling the way it is. I use 5.1, but I have my "surrounds" set behind my fronts (which are out from the wall about four feet) and aimed at the massive wide open ceiling space. I get plenty of expansion of surround sound, but nothing coming from behind me. Which I prefer anyway.

I like the lively open sound for this space.
Neither the old space or the new space is very "natural" sounding, though.



Sorry, but I edited to add a better description of my old room and some thoughts on why my new room is so much better.

Hello, GroovySauce.

Yes, when I said "wet," what I meant lots of room reverb, and "dry" having little or not room reverb.  

From what I know, I think a relatively "dry" recording can be made in a relatively "dead" room, and/or by using close-miking on the instruments or singer.  As the mike is moved away from the source, the reverberations in the room become more prominent, particularly in a "live" room.  

From what I have read, and a quick listen on youtube using headphones, I do think Tom Petty on "Wildflowers" is a relatively dry recording.  I had a hard time thinking of any really dry commercial recordings I have.  I have heard "board mixes" of live performances that were close-miked, that seemed really dry.

One other thing I came across on you-tube was this recording, which gives examples of recorded drums recorded in relatively dry and wet configurations of the room, and using different mike locations (close miking, overhead mikes, "room" mikes) - about 8 minutes long:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ7qFwUhaaw  

When I think about the paragraphs above, I think audio is a bit like cocaine!

Oh, now I get it.

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GroovySauce: Reply #19 -

"This is a good insight. It’s not just about the reverb time. It’s the reverb time across the frequency range.

So  in a room if an octave or two has a low reverb time it will sound wrong or dead. Another room could have an average reverb time that has a lower reverb time across the entire spectrum and still not sound dead?

So when people say the room is too dead it has an uneven reverb time across the frequency spectrum? and/or the overall average reverb time is too low like an anechoic chamber?"

Whether from signal development and delivery (power, source and file type, electronics, cables, speakers)... or from room reflections (or lack thereof)... or from associated spectral imbalances... All effecting each other, I am finding more and more that good timing is paramount.

Within this musical complex, and associated with it, a longer balance (or lack of balance) of room reverb timing, or a slower one, as best as I can tell, the overall room timing effects all the rest, and visa-versa. So finally, I can't really separate one aspect from another... signal development timing, frequency balancing, or room time balancing. A pretty clear example: whenever we try to integrate a subwoofer really accurately, anything off in the setup of frequency range, rolloff, phase, and volume can show just how much each effects the whole musical experience, especially noticeable and difficult when tuning across recordings.

Though often more obvious in how well they blend (or don't), to me, imbalances of bass frequencies are no more important than those in, and between, all the rest of the ranges.

So when I said earlier, "what is dead," better put would be, what makes a deadened sound experience? And it seems it can be about anything in a system and room.

I guess that if any parts of the spectral and timing balances are not tuned to sound natural within their range, and to integrate pretty flawlessly with the rest... it will feel wrong. Going back to a bass example... the low end could be pretty right, but if it is not well supported, especially by some frequency areas from mid bass, midrange, and highs.... and with good timing between them, we might think the bass is off.

Or if the bass is off in timing and frequency range, and not balanced enough to integrate and give good foundation to the mids and highs, the mids and highs can sound disparate from one another, and from the bass. Or if all is pretty "right" other than the bass being just a bit off even... the bass stronger in the blend will muddle/thicken the rest... or bass/mid-bass lower in the blend, it can make the rest sound too forward and bright. Sound familiar???

Finally, I hesitate to say our ears, because to me, it is all our senses. But if our senses feel the complex of music just a little off, no matter the cause, it feels wrong. Then it might take a lot of practice and experimenting to tell why, but we feel and hear it, for most of us, causing us to seek balance...  ultimately seeking that experience of harmony that I think GroovySauce is alluding to.

For me, when my system and room are giving me an engulfing and entrancing musical experience, I am happier, I feel healthier, more tranquility... I have more sense of integration in the ever-changing nature of harmony and life.

Hello, Groovy Sauce.  I wanted to add one other example of a "dry" recording.  I am listening to a CD of Bernard Herrmann's soundtrack for "Jason and the Argonauts."  As I was reading the liner notes, I noted that:

". . . we elected to record with an emphasis on clarity, stereo separation and instrumental color, requiring a complex forest of mikes and dry acoustics.  The placement of so many mikes very close to the players and careful attention to instrumental colors was an engineer's field day, or nightmare, depending on your point of view."

It is orchestral music, but an unusual orchestra, "dismissing the strings entirely and expanding his winds and percussion into a gargantuan ensemble."