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Room treatments for my first dedicated stereo room

Posted by Chris_F (A) on December 22, 2004 at 09:10:29

I've been developing ideas for populating my first ever dedicated stereo room. Budget is limited so I'm doing everything DIY (passive prestage and room treatments). I'm set on the prestage (intend to build a couple varieties and try 'em out, see what works best with my system) but I'd like to bounce my ideas for room treatments off you folks.

My background is Mechanical Engineering and I have done some independant study in acoutsics, so I'm no expert but I have some knowledge. I've read Jon Reich's (sp?) DIY page and found some sage advice there. My primary goal is imaging, tonal balance is secondary.

As a starting point I'll place speakers and listening point in an untreated room with a primary aim of tonal balance and a secondary goal of imaging. I'll then use treatments to gain back any lost imaging.

Right now my philosophy is to damp out (absorb) as many near term reflections (under 20mS) as possible with emphasis on cross talk reflections (left speaker reaching right ear and vis versa). I may not be using the right terms so if this doesn't make sense I can elaborate. I don't intend to disperse these reflections as I don't understand how dispersion can bennefit these short time reflections.

In order to find the short term reflections I intend to model the sound path lengths using Excel and back in to what areas of the room require damping. I'll probably use 20mS as my cutoff time to determin which areas need damping and which don't. I'll use Jon's DIY designs where space permits in an attempt to damp up to at least lower midrange frequencies.

That leaves the remaining tonal balance issues, which I may address or may just live with, depending on their severity. Also, I'll address any slap echo issues with dispersion. If I have the energy I may then re-adjust speaker positions in the treated rooms and iterate the whole process a second time.

I'm not too worried about making the room too dead sounding. If it comes out that way I plan on adding difusing panels around the room. I'll do this by assembling vertical boards angled such that only the edge of the board is visible from the listening position. The added surface area should increase the decay time in the room and because the diffusers are viewed end on they shouldn't create addition direct reflection at the listening position.

Does this sound like a basically sound plan? Am I missing anything really fundamental? I've done a search and read a bunch of stuff on the forum but may have missed a critical point or three.

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