I’m getting ready to buy a 42" curved screen monitor but am a bit concerned about what it’ll do to the acoustics, being between (DOH!) my monitor speakers.
Here in Adelaide we have a huge water reservoir with a curved dam, maybe a hundred metres wide. It’s affectionately called ‘The Whispering Wall’ because when you have a person at each end you can talk to each other in a normal voice and clearly hear each other.
So, what do you think, will the curved screen monitor empty my pockets and stuff up my sound system to boot?
I wouldn’t worry about it being curved. If the speaker were pointing directly into the curve then it could act as an ‘acoustic lens’ & might cause problems. But your speaker is aiming away from the screen from the side. So any sound entering the concave portion will be scattered reflections from the side & back walls. I’d expect it will change your diffusion somewhat, which might not even be audible. That will be dependent on the existing acoustic treatment in the room.
EDIT
As a thought experiment imagine your new monitor is a model of your magic dam. Where in this model are the two people conversing situated? Is that where you are sitting?
I’d guess you’d be sitting in the middle of the river a half mile or more downstream.
At the dam the two people are situated at each end of the dam, roughly where my speakers are now. in relation to my two 24" flat monitors.
There is some interaction, always was, between the sound from the speakers and the monitors.
Sitting in the ‘sweet spot’ I get a definite impression that the sound in the middle, where much of the percussion is, originates from an area higher than the speakers on the left and right, kind of like the arc of a rainbow and that may be due to the flat monitors being angled slightly up.
I’ve always visualised sound behaving a lot like ping pong balls, bouncing around off solid surfaces, this is why I wondered about the curved screen, what sort ‘bouncing’ will it cause.
I’m going to get one of those curved ‘thangs’ anyway…
Well, I got an Odyssey G9 49in, it’s an amazing piece of gear, and so far I haven’t noticed any bad effects on audio. All I need now is a better graphics card, my old AMD Radeon RX 580 doesn’t quite cut it now.
