Music is a primordial and most common expression of emotion.

From the ancient Greek theatres to today's high-tech concert venues, the conveyance of music from its producers to the human ear has been studied, dissected and optimised, with every step carefully controlled and stage-managed by the music cognoscenti.

On the part of the discerning music lover, it is simply the desire to experience the best music to his ears and food for the soul. Yet two wild cards remain in this process: the room and the listener.

Therein lies the problem: what use is there in ensuring a pitch-perfect performance, only to have the quality of the sound ruined by the acoustics of the venue?

In any given room, sound can bounce or be absorbed, or distorted by many things. It all depends on the nature of the materials that make up the room and the layout of the room, the furniture and furnishings as well as on the placement of the speakers.

Quite simply, it has been near impossible and even impractical to create a perfect sound system for the home because there are too many unpredictable variables.

This is traditionally where we would tune in the high-end audiophile toolkit, and where major adjustments to the room as well as complicated additions and expensive enhancements are mandatory in the effort to get anywhere near great sound.

Fortunately, overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds is oxygen to those who crave the best and is often the rites of passage for luxury products. Thus we have Steinway Lyngdorf's patent-pending RoomPerfectTM technology, employed in its signature Model D Music System.

Before we begin our odyssey into the realm of aural perfection as envisioned by Steinway Lyngdorf, we must begin with a brief examination of the history and science of the minefields they navigated.

In search of perfect auditoriums

In ancient cities, the theatre played a central role in civilised lifestyles. Without a means of recording or capturing music and performance, it thus fell to performers to maximise their live sets.

A system needed to be devised whereby a large group of people could experience the sights and sounds of a performance in a way that matched the artiste's original intention.

The ancient Greek theatre, the forerunner of Rome's coliseum, was created to serve this need.

The theatre at this time – in the 5th century BCE – emerged as a venue for thousands of people to experience the plays and music of the period. These semi-circular affairs were built with an ear for acoustic properties that is strikingly contemporary.

Ancient Greek theatre-goers had the pleasure of being able to experience performances as they were meant to be experienced, and this design was eventually replicated across the ancient world, with the Roman amphitheatre as its most famous architectural descendant.

The chief triumph here was that of sound because even those seated on the highest level heard the action just as if they were directly in front of it.

The room imperfect

To state the obvious, our enjoyment of music today has evolved greatly from the days of the ancient theatre performances.

In the modern context, the supply chain of our music can be summarised as follows:

1.    Artist
2.    Recording environment and equipment
3.    Producer
4.    Storage media reproduction
5.    Player
6.    Signal processing
7.    Amplifier
8.    Loudspeaker
9.    Room
10.  Listener

However, even as technology behind the ways and means of capturing, rendering and delivering audio has developed at an astonishing pace, the science behind the acoustic properties of spaces remain unchanged,.

Since it became possible for people to experience music in their own homes, the room has become the wild card in the delivery of excellence in aural experiences.

Once the audio system has transformed electrical signal into audible sound waves, the music we hear will become subject to the strict laws of acoustics, and this makes the room the weakest link in the sound supply chain.

Optimising the acoustical environment is the exclusive domain of highly skilled and specialised professionals who track all the relevant factors, including reverberation, absorption, reflection, diffusion, vibration etc.

To give you an idea of what this involves, simply take reflection as an example. To get a realistic simulation of how a given sound will play out in a given room, you need to simulate a minimum of 100,000 reflections.

Even with the most advanced sound system in a controlled room, peaks and dips between +20 to -20 dB in the sound frequency response are to be expected.

There is no way that simply tweaking cables, power stabilisers or the interconnects can ever adequately compensate for this big difference. (As an illustration + - 20 dB can be the difference between the sound levels in an average living room and an underground train!)

When this large difference in frequency response can be expected in a controlled room, one can imagine the difficulty in optimising sound in a room with furniture, carpets and other accoutrements of a livable home.

The room made perfect 

Many sound correction systems operate by compensating for the room and the sound reflections within.

Problems arise however with this approach. For example, one might recommend placing the speakers away from the walls to obtain a smooth bass response.

This would minimize coloration of the bass but has the side effect of severely affecting its timing and precision. 

Steinway Lyngdorf's RoomPerfectTM technology embodies a different approach by not attempting to remove the room and its inherent reflections, but rather to adapt to them.

Indeed the RoomPerfectTM technology is based on the principle that part of the influence of a listening room is natural to the human ear and should not be removed by a correction system.

Derived from the Steinway Lyngdorf team's market leading experience in sound research, RoomPerfectTM is the only solution in the market that derives information about:

•    Room Acoustic properties
•    Power response throughout the room
•    Loudspeaker directivity
•    High frequency roll-off
•    Characteristics of low frequency roll-off

With over 50 claims to new technologies incorporated within it, RoomPerfectTM combines global measurements of room positions with measurements at listening points to derive up to eight optimal listening positions.

With this, Steinway Lyngdorf is able to deliver extraordinarily accurate and life-like sound, regardless of the room, speaker position and listening position.

This article is published in association with www.luxury-insider.com.