6moons industryfeatures: Richard Bird of Rives Audio
You mentioned the multi-channel PARC for home theater earlier.


That's the PARC Plus which we'll introduce at CES 2004. It adds four more channels of equalization so you can treat a center channel speaker, a pair of surrounds and a subwoofer. It is controlled by the PARC and uses its power supply. Existing owners aren't penalized if they want to upgrade and expand to multi-channel functionality. In fact, the PARC Plus is useless without the PARC - all the control and memory functions live inside the 2-channel unit which was pre-designed with the necessary 7-pin XLR expansion port to piggy-back our forthcoming multi-channel unit.


What will the Plus retail for?
We're anticipating slightly less than the $2,800 for the PARC to give you the extra four channels. The very instant you connect the Plus to the PARC, the latter recognizes the former's presence and the software automatically resets itself to display the additional channels.

Where will CES 2004 showgoers be able to hear the Plus?


We'll be in the Talon Audio Reference Room which is the Crystal Ballroom in the St. Tropez. We're also in negotiations on a second multi-channel room that will be announced in the CES directory. Those folks came to us requesting our assistance and we're willing to work with them. Naturally, we'll have a number of 2-channel rooms and will likely bring a spare unit or two, for our own backup and, perhaps, to make it available to one more lucky exhibitor whose room acoustics are killing him - not softly [chuckles happily].

You were earlier mentioning a statement subwoofer project in passing. Can we talk about that?


Talon Audio has approached us to incorporate our PARC functionality into their upcoming Thunder-bird top-of-the-line subwoofer. It's an excellent idea and you'll be seeing such a beast sometime in 2004, I expect, though I'm not comfortable committing to pricing or exact release date on Talon's behalf.


Wrapping up now, what would you identify as the gravest misconception which audiophiles hold about room acoustics?


[Without hesitation] Room acoustics are ugly! That's probably the biggest conceptual barrier preventing audiophiles from addressing the root cause of their suffering. They instead hit the gravy train of endless hardware substitutions, the one you caricaturized in your "The bigger S.U.C.K." Auroville 23 column. They know something's not perfect. They can plainly hear it and are prepared to spend money to improve it. But they somehow overlook facing the 'invisible component' that is the room. They end up purchasing that $3,000 power cord instead. If they asked what the weakest link in their chain was; the one that held everything else back? The answer would be the room, in almost every single case!

Even worse than the room-acoustics-are-ugly belief is ignorance, about the room being the 500-pound gorilla that's towed behind your components. People are upgrading to audio equivalents of high-octane racing fuel, nitrous injection, fatter tires and engine bore jobs but often forget to look back to realize that they're dragging poor acoustics in their wake. It would be pretty comical if they weren't spending so much money on it. That's one reason why I invited you over to Jacob's - to help move this topic further into audiophile awareness. The gravest misconception really? It's that there is no consideration for this core issue: The room is usually the most important component, not that shiny amplifier or new pair of speakers you're lusting after. Conversely, once you've addressed the acoustic problems, your hardware upgrades will really make the desired difference, rather than frustrate you with less significant performance gains than their expense had promised. It's simply a matter of addressing things in proper sequence and by priority.

Naturally, room modes disappear when you get to the size of a theater or concert hall - it's a simple matter of wavelengths vs physical dimension. As you expand cubic volume in a space, room modes lessen more and more - but reverberation time nonlinearities increase. So it's a trade-off: Room modes versus diffusion/absorption issues. It means that no matter the size of your room, you will have acoustical problems that need addressing. If you desire ultimate sonics, that's the bottom line! Granted, the problems in larger spaces are easier neutralized - but they still require competent solutions. And that's why Rives Audio is focused not on hardware but engineering consultancy. Put differently, clients who are willing to embrace acoustical solutions will, in most cases, not need our PARC equalizer at all. That's why you don't see one here chez Jacob's. This room doesn't need any further help. It's perfect. [Smiles contentedly.]

Listening to Jacob's system proved two things. One, his room did indeed sound far bigger than the open-eye assessment of the actual room boundaries knew it to be. Two and more importantly, playing some of my familiar tracks didn't unearth a single area anywhere in the bass where certain notes were too loud or emphasized, to hint at even minor peaks. No, that room was as flat as those endless cornfields in the midwest which Richard Bird now calls home. Final measurements that he'd conducted just prior to my arrival showed Jacob's space to be essentially linear down to 25Hz.
Moral of the story? If you're a dealer, you'd be a honkin' fool not to at least have one demonstration room that was acoustically optimized, to make the kind of superior sound that takes no explanatory convincing but has even complete novice listeners get what this hobby is all about - in a Chris Huston infamous nanosecond. Ditto for serious audiophiles. What good is a $100,000 system if it performed in what equated to a $2,000 space? You wouldn't be caught dead with a generic Belden power cord, would you? Then why tolerate an Electric Avenue weekend-special for an acoustic environment? That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Hence our interview's byline "Every Audiophile's Wet Dream". The dedicated, optimized listening room is it, baby! S.U.C.K. on that.


But, it's also true that most of us music-loving hobbyists are not engineers. Room acoustics weren't on our high school curriculum. We haven't studied up on this specialty subject since. It's all Greek to us. To do our part in rectifying this sorry state of affairs, 6moons will syndicate a series of technical articles with Rives Audio that will comprehensively address the major points of this acoustical science, as and how it pertains to our collective home environments.

Here's a proposed itinerary of columns which Richard & Chris already submitted as a concept brief:

Introduction to Acoustics:

  • Facts and Myths
    • It sounds bright - it could be my transport
    • Room Acoustics are ugly
    • Room Acoustics are complex -where do I begin

Basic topics to be discussed thereafter:

  • Absorption
  • Diffusion
  • RT-60
  • Frequency response
  • Waterfall plots and energy time curves
  • Measuring equipment and methods
  • Modeling software
  • Training and seminars (detail for future)
  • Resources and educational sites for acoustics/training and seminars (overview)
  • Frequency Response and RT-60 in detail
  • Absorption and Diffusion - how can they be applied to achieve the right FR and RT
  • Measuring equipment and results - what do these graphs mean
  • Home Theater and multi-channel acoustics vs 2 channel acoustics - what are the differences
  • Live-End/Dead End - or what's the difference between studio control rooms and a listening room

Let's take a walk through a project (series of 5 articles)

  • First visit with client and on-site inspection
  • Concept plan creation
  • Schematic plan calculated and delivered
  • Construction phase
  • Completion - final tuning and client's reaction.
These topics are far too important and relevant to restrict to a single magazine's readership. Hence expect to find them covered in syndicated form by multiple publications, amongst those our good friends at Positive Feedback On-Line. If any publishers are reading this with interest, contact Richard Bird to get on the 'article comp list'. 6moons readers will, however, enjoy one exclusive features - our forthcoming RAM:EF column:
Because the expert engineers at Rives Audio are too busy to moderate an intensive interactive on-line forum, RAM:EF will solicit questions from the 6moons readership. Click here to autolaunch an e-mail or write to srajan@6moons.com and put RAM:EF into your subject header. We'll submit such questions at regular intervals and let Richard and Chris answer those which they deem to be of greatest interest to a general readership. We'll publish RAM:EF in our industry features section, and invite your immediate participation now.


Also expect a review of the 2-channel PARC on 6moons in 2004. What an unexpected harvest of useful information, from one brief two-day trip to Jacob's Washington/DC digs - n'est çe pas? With thanks to Richard Bird for his time, and Jacob Heilbrunn for his hospitality and excellent taste in Asian hybrid cuisine, this now concludes our introductory article about Rives Audio in particular and the greater subject of room acoustics in general.

Rives Audio website