Room treatment??

[Hornblower]

Hi guys, thanks for the effort going into this its well appreciated, I dont profess to be extremly knowledgable on this subject , but the little I have read on the subject suggests that bass traps are quite effective, while concur with the earlier statement that traps get huge once you start to look for real "deep bass" treatment (this is because of the physical size of the wave that we try to treat, I.E many feet long) , the simple method that i used really helped me in my situation and I have to say that I was more than a little skeptical but thought id give it a try as it was well within my budget and hey, at the end of the day, I was considering spending quite a bit of my hard earned on "better equipment", not that the stuff I have is trash , just one does get the old "upgrade-itis" LOL.

As they say every little helps and I definately can hear the difference, If there is anybody in Mexico reading this thread I cordially invite you to come and prove it for yourself! We can do a/b comparsons with traps and without, and if you cannot hear the difference Ill refund you your travel money!

There is an excellent site I found regarding this subject and its from a well respected gentleman by the name of Mr. Jon Risch, the traps i have so far I admit are not high on the WAF/SAF scale, but its a dedicated room and I am KING in there! HEHE.

If anybody wants the link etc send me a p.m and ill be happy to pass it along, ive just assembled 2 more and these are so simple its rediculous.

Eq can be usefull, but what one must remember is that most eq's are wide band and you really dont want to be boosting frequencies as youll be effecting more than just the desired frequency, not to say that I dont advocate the use of, but one must excersise a modicum of restraint! For you could make worse the problem already there.

Anyhooo, my best regards and sincere thanks to all that have contributed so far your input is very valid and im enjoying it very much.

Kind regards
Gareth.

[Zilch]

http://www.bobgolds.com

[Steve Schell]

Lately I have been experimenting with room treatment. I have always preferred a heavily damped room, to maximize the ratio of direct to reflected sound. Rooms are basically evil sonically, especially small ones with parallel walls. Many years ago I upholstered the entire listening room in my apartment with R19 fiberglass. It freaked out visitors, but I sure liked the sound of my Quads in there.

A few years ago I built seven big 'n ugly absorbers from sound deadening board (compressed wood fiber), carpet padding and pieces of R19. They are 8" high by 30" wide and about 6" deep. More recently I added 24 panels of 1 1/2" compressed fiberglass, 2' by 6', built to use in demo rooms at trade shows. The room has been quite dead recently, helping the system to sound good.

Recently I did some recearch, printing out a couple of articles and a few patent papers. Particularly intriguing was a US Patent from 1982 by Per A. Hellstrom, "Arrangement for Damping and Absorption of Sound in Rooms." He describes the arrangement of panels spanning the corners at a 45 degree angle and methods of providing adjustment of them for different uses in a room such as a church. I decided to try this yesterday, and placed four of the big 'n uglies across the room corners. Wow, what a difference! The room is now even more dead, and bass from 80 to 150Hz. increased so much that I had to rebalance the system. The system sounds quite a bit better now, without changing the number of panels, only their placement.

From the reading I've done, it seems desirable to bring the reverberation time of bass frequencies down to that of the mid and high frequencies, or as close to this as possible. Placing the material across the corner gives the most bang for the buck from the panels, as low frequencies concentrate at room boundaries, and especially so in the corners. I also spaced the other panels out from the walls, which increases their effectiveness at lower frequencies.

[jblfreeek]

You "sound" like you're off to a solid start.

The most important things to remember are:

• Collect meangingful, repeatable measurements. Make sure you understand what you are looking at.
• When applying EQ, the less you apply, the better - for ALL sorts of reasons (phasing, power consumption, interferences, etc).
• When applying EQ, try to not boost. Cut, only. Look at the response curve and try and gently bring down the "excited" frequencies. You won't be able to get "flat", but anything close will sound darn nice.

If you get stuck, post a question here - there's many that can help!

Thanks boputnam, will sure do!

[hapy._.face]

I recently was given the nod to put together a dedicated listening room in my house. I don't know much about the subject of room treatment, nor do I have any software. I did, however, make MAJOR improvements using an imperical "trial and error" approach. I also saved a huge amount of money by squeezing performance from my system. Here's what I did:

The house is a circa 1938 EOG townhome with granite/brick/plaster/hardwood and has been largely modded out. The room is (technically) our formal living room. You know, that odd room with the furniture no one ever sits on? Now, it's mine! It's dimensions are generous, but the floorplan is an acoustical nightmare (unless you prefer a natural reverb all the time). It has 3 large windows and it is joined with 2 stairwells (one up and one down), an open french door and a standard open 35" door-. Neither door openings have doors on them (there is also a third entry door). The stairwell is also open with only treads and a handrail. The french door opening is joined by nearly 600 square feet of wide open kitchen and dining room space (we took out a couple of walls and added load bearing beams). It is not the ideal space- but it's what I had to work with.

I started off by clapping my hands all around the room to see how it echoed. The room was totally empty at the time. I noticed that the echoing sort of "canceled out" in the very center of the space. It was immediately decided that my chair would go there.
Next, I put a big rug down. That helped!
I'm an aesthetics junkie, so I typically hate anything on the windows. I'd rather walk naked in front of my neighbors than have curtains, but I knew something had to be done about the glass. I put up celluolose shades- triple insulated. This proved to be a major sonic improvement. I leave them up and out of sight until listening time. I threw in a small armless loveseat- and some throw pillows. I clapped some more. I hung the artwork back up. I stuck a cut panel of compressed fiberglass behind the canvas piece and mounted it slightly off the wall (about a 1/4"). I put a coatrack on the wall by the main door and put heavy winter coats up on the hooks. I made a piece of fabric wrapped panel board- very much like the ones in the Acoustical Solutions catalog- and placed it behind the speakers.

I clapped a lot, listened a lot, and learned a lot. I also saved a lot. I'm not done yet. My simple "upgrades"- put in the right places- have been more rewarding (sonically) than ...say...a better source component.

People overlook the room so much. What a shame. You really need some sort of benchmark or point of reference before you make system changes. It doesn't seem very scientific to swap stuff out without first addressing the room and making it better. I'm glad I did!

[allen mueller]

I saw a link to one of the white papers from Harman.com in another thread. The other night I read all the white papers and downloaded the room mode calculator. There is some good information on room setup in all of them. In the papers they discuss how to address many issues economically. I learned allot about how the room affects the sound from reading them all.

Link:
http://www.harman.com/about_harman/technology_leadership.aspx

Allen