large venue-a concert hall, a movie scoring sound stage, or a similar space created with artificial reverb. But when played back in a small untreated room, strong early reflections from nearby surfaces can drown out the larger-sounding reverb in the recording. This makes music sound smaller and narrower, not larger and wider. As proof, headphones are fully anechoic-having no reflections at all-yet music generally sounds larger on headphones than through loudspeakers. Some people claim that diffusion is better than absorption at reflection points, but I disagree. When I tried that in my living room home theater, the sound of diffusers was hardly better than bare walls. Perhaps diffusers would be useful in a very wide room where side-wall reflections don't arrive early. But even in large professional control Figure 5a: This is the spectrum of a pink noise source. Figure 5b: This is the same source combined with a simulated reflection. Figure 5c: This is the same source with the simulated reflection lowpass filtered. 52 RECORDING NOVEMBER 2016http://www.recordingmag.com