Wall Reflections pt. 3

Let’s spend one more day on the important topic of wall reflections, wrapping things up by discussing the most detrimental ones of all.

Courtesy of ASC founder and President, Art Noxon, Acoustical Engineer.
Enjoy!

Wall Reflections (the bad kind)

The most signiﬁcant wall reﬂection has not been mentioned. It is the least thought of wall reﬂection and does the most damage to imaging. It is the cross-talk wall reﬂection. Here we show the right speaker with its two side wall reﬂections. The near wall reﬂection, RRR is the one that widens the sound stage. But look at the cross-talk reﬂection, RLL, it delivers right speaker information into the left ear. This wrong ear misinformation almost eliminates stereo imaging. We always get our two Ds, the two direct signals, left speaker in the left ear and right in the right ear.

This is aided by the near wall bounce, left speaker oﬀ left wall into left Ear LLL and RRR. But the cross talk reﬂection, although having traveled further distance, being weaker and later it still delivers plainly audible wrong information into the wrong ear. The net result is in eﬀect, no stereo imaging.

By now, hopefully you understand why some sound systems present an amazing image, while others exhibit collapsed or confused sound staging. Our next installment begins with the phrase, “Here’s a true TubeTrap story about this situation.” You will see (and then hear) how best to create an immediate – and exciting – improvement in your high-end audio room.