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Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ. |
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Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ. |
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In Reply to: Thank you Jon, but . . . posted by AmirB on June 22, 2005 at 11:44:26:
It's a lot harder to make a room dead than you think. Still, a room divider sounds like a considerable width, up to a fall wall of the listening area. A lot is going to depend on the actual area as a proportion of total room surface area and how reflective the other room surfaces are, plus some other factors related particularly to balance.The big factor is going to be which wall you're creating with the panels. Normally when we talk about balance, we're talking about left/right balance and having the centre image in the centre. Using the panels to create a side wall may very well unbalance that, but how much it will do so will depend a lot on how reflective/absorbent the opposite wall will be. You could compensate a lot by using another acoustic panel at the early reflection point on the opposite wall.
The Redirectors may work well as a room divider on a side wall because they are going to provide more reflection than panels so the left/right imbalance won't be as great, but there will still be some imbalance because of the difference in direction of reflection caused by the angling. Ideally you would balance the room divider side with some similar redirection on the other side, but probably nowhere near as much - perhaps only 3'-4' or so covering the early reflection point.
If the wall formed by the panels is the front wall (behind the speakers) or the rear wall (behind you), you won't cause a left/right imbalance but the effect on overall sound will depend on which wall you choose, and whether you're happy or not will depend to some degree on personal taste. Some people, like the Rives people, recommend using reflection and diffusion behind the speakers and absorption behind the listener while others go the opposite way, tending towards the classic recording studio LEDE orientation. The end presentation will be different and I think both can be extremely good, but different people are likely to prefer different approaches. I wouldn't try to predict which group you would fall into.
In the end, the question of whether either approach works or which works best is going to depend a lot on your taste. It's easy to talk about not making a room too dead if you haven't actually listened in an acoustically treated room of similar size to your own, simply because of a lack of experience as to what the different approaches to treatment can do. Still, different people do prefer different degrees of treatment between minimal to none and quite a lot, and that is most definitely a personal taste issue. Since this hobby is about listening enjoyment, there is no absolute right or wrong - the right solution is always going to be the one that makes you happy. Unfortunately, sometimes the only way of finding that out is by trying it yourself and backing off a bit when you discover that you've gone too far.
If you're going to try the Redirector approach on a DIY basis, I think I'd go for the swivel version they show on the page you provided a link for, and arrange the swivel panels/louvres so that they form a continuous solid wall when the louvres are arranged parrallel to the fixed panel behind them. You would ideally make that fixed panel the total width of the array so that it forms a solid wall. That way you've got the option of a reasonably solid wall of louvres if you want it, or small to large areas of angled reflective surface for which you can stategically select the location. No matter where you go over that range of panel orientations, the cavity behind the louvres will provide some absorption but you may need to do some work to balance any overall frequency balance aberations caused by that. Playing around with opening and closing some of the louvres may well help with that, but it may require some choice of absorption spectrum elsewhere in the room.
The overall reflective balance may work better if the hard side of the louvre is made of similar material to the wall opposite, so if the opposite wall is plasterboard then you could use that for the louvre surface with whatever absorption material you're going to choose placed behind it. Spacing that material away from the louvre will help improve the absorption as Jon says, but it's also going to increase the overall depth between the louvre and the fixed surface because you still need the same amount of space between the absorption surface and the fixed surface, and you have the additional depth between the other side of the absorption material and the louvre. You're also going to have to angle the ends of the louvre/absorption slightly if you install the swivel approach so that the things can actually swivel - the absorption width can't be quite as wide as the louvre width.
You will have to do some work at fine tuning the results to suit your taste if you want to achieve the best results possible with this strategy but you may consider the initial results without fine tuning better than the way things are now. Unfortunately the only way to find out that I know is to try it.
David Aiken
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Follow Ups
- Re: Thank you Jon, but . . . - David Aiken 14:08:03 06/22/05 (2)
- Thank you David . . . - AmirB 08:07:39 06/23/05 (1)
- Re: Thank you David . . . - David Aiken 11:58:43 06/23/05 (0)
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