KRK ERGO - Manual (Page 6)

6
“The ideal response is flat and without reflections” is a statement
you’ll hear if you ask people what the perfect sound would be
for them. However, for various reasons, it is not ERGO’s goal to
do this. Instead, ERGO is focused on making the room sound
right, reflections and all.
11..66..33 SSoo,, wwhhyy nnoott ffllaatt aanndd wwiitthhoouutt rreefflleeccttiioonnss??
We are used to listening to music inside a room. Listening to
music outdoors is rarely satisfying as it is missing something:
bass and impact. In other words, what we define as the generic
in room bass enhancement sounds natural to us, which is
precisely why you shouldn’t compensate for this.
Secondly, listening to a speaker with a flat in room power
response sounds very bright. Measuring the direct on-axis
response will look flat, but at the listening position the sound will
roll off towards the high frequencies – due to distance,
directivity, off-axis listening, general high frequency absorption,
and reflections in the room.
Last of all, reflections are a big part of how we determine
directionality and ambience. That is if there are no reflections, a
lot of the 3 dimensional information would be lost. If you are
trying to simulate how something will sound in a given position
in a room, you need to simulate a minimum of 100,000
reflections – otherwise, it just doesn’t reflect what happens in the
real world. Therefore, the challenge is not to remove the room
and the reflections – but to work with them.
Speaker designers obviously have an idea of how a loudspeaker
should sound. ERGO strives to preserve the speaker’s identity, no
matter what kind of room you’re in or how the speaker is placed.
You bought your great KRK monitors (or some other monitors)
because you liked the way they sounded and we understand
that. That’s why ERGO does not make every audio system sound
the same. The tonal balance of your speakers will be kept intact
– but ERGO will match them to your room by compensating for
the room’s influence. Generally, room influence can be defined
as peaks and dips in the frequency response. Some can and
should be compensated for, others cannot and should not.
So now you see the challenge involved in creating a room
correction system that maintains the tonality of your system and
only compensates for problems that can be solved. ERGO can
correct for many of these issues and help your mixes to properly
translate to other listening environments.
11.. IInnttrroodduuccttiioonn