05/18/2026
ATTENTION ALL SOUND NERDS!
We know expectations are high for The Dream. People want assurances that it will be a true listening room. This has been the plan from the start. And to prove it, I thought some might like to know what's going on behind the scenes to make this happen.
On Friday, Dave Mai and I spent an hour in the venue taking baseline measurements of its acoustics, which we'll use to track our progress as we add acoustic treatments. To do this, we used a calibrated microphone (miniDSP UMIK-2) and the REW (Room EQ Wizard) software. REW provides a plethora of information using just one 30 second burst of sound. (We repeated the measurements at six locations.) I've attached four of the more important graphs to this post so you can all see our starting point and our goals for the room. Whether we achieve them remains to be seen, but at least we know what we're trying to accomplish with our bass traps, sound clouds, reflectors, diffusion panels, etc., instead of just throwing random absorption panels all over the room.
As you'll see in the graphs, we have multiple goals for the room. But if you want the short version, suffice it to say that we'd like to keep the "echo time", which is currently above 1 second for all frequencies, in the 500-700ms range.
Full disclosure: None of us are certified acousticians. We are, however, very interested in acoustics and we're doing our best to make the venue sound great. If anyone out there understands stuff better than us, please feel free to chime in or, better yet, get involved.
