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In Reply to: RE: Any Ideas For Helping The Sound Of This Room posted by stltrains on November 16, 2007 at 04:44:58
On the bottom end I would have expected what I think you are describing as 'more boom' and bass being less tight. You've replaced an absorptive surface with a reflective one. I suspect that the bass effects don't fully show up with your sweep because most of the effect is in the change in reverberation time rather than a change in frequency response.
This is not meant as a criticism but simply as a description of what I see in the photos. The space looks like a crowded combined living/dining area. That does make things harder as far as the acoustics goes because it means a lot of reflective surfaces at varying angles. I've had to live in that sort of situation myself when we were in a small house so I'm definitely not being critical, just noting what you have to work with and the fact that it does make things more difficult.
As far as the increased brightness goes, getting some absorption back into the room to replace the absorption that the carpet supplied would be good. The fibreglass panels will help but a thick throw rug, preferably handwoven or with a loose weave rather than a tight machine weave, between the speakers and the listening position would probably help more because that's the location where you've lost important absorption.
If you can't do that, then you have to find some way of reducing the higher frequencies reaching your ears and about the only way I can think of that may help would be playing with the toe in of the speakers so that you're a bit more off axis than you now are. Try turning them in more so they cross a fair bit in front of you, or turning them out a bit more and see what you can achieve that way. If they have spikes which are height adjustable, tilting them back a bit may help also. Doing things this way will be a bit hit and miss because of the number of reflective surfaces at different angles provided by the furnishings.
The other thing that may help is locating the side wall reflection points using the mirror technique (sit in the listening position and have someone move a mirror along the wall until you can see a speaker tweeter reflected in it—there will be 2 such points, one for each speaker, along each side wall). Those points are the best points for your fibreglass panels but if you can't place them there, try to avoid having very reflective surfaces like glass or ceramic objects there. Moving furniture at those points may help if there are problem objects there and may make space for the fibreglass panels.
The only cure for the bass issues that I know is bass trapping in the corners, and I'm talking proper bass traps rather than your small corner devices. Bass traps are much larger and quite visible so I don't know how they'd fit with your room. I think devices like the ASC tube traps would fit better into your limited space, especially if you stack 2 in each corner, rather than panel type traps which are a lot wider and would take up a lot more space.
If you can't do that, then I'm not certain what to suggest. There are new approaches being advertised like Frank Tschang's Acoustic Resonators which aren't supported by any acoustic theory I know and understand but that doesn't mean that they don't work or won't help. I can't say because I have no real experience of them. I know one person who has installed the Acoustic Resonators and seems happy with the result but they are extremely expensive. At more reasonable prices I've recently had a person tell me about Cathedral Sound Panels, relatively small and placed in the corners at ceiling height, which are much more reasonably priced and I've read reviews of the 8th Nerve products, but I really can't say how well any approach other than traditional bass trapping would work. You may wish to explore one of those options. They're definitely space efficient and much less visible than traditional style bass traps but, as I said, I have no idea how well they work.
I hope something in that is of value.
David Aiken
Follow Ups:
David we bought several area rugs, a large one in the main listening area and others down the halls, under the dinning room table, and others spread around. The pictures look crowded but thats a illusion as the room is 30 feet long. As you can see from the pic we have added throws to all of the chairs. two fiberglass panels above the rear ceiling, and the rugs. We also removed the two pictures on the very back wall and added a tapestry. all added up to much better music to my ears.
Stu putting the rug right in front of the speakers was a big help.
I dont know if it will hurt or help to put panels behind the speakers or just one in the middle. i am getting a super stage now with pin point imaging. And very listenable sound.
Thanks all and if you have any other ideas please let me know
Mike
"The pictures look crowded but thats a illusion as the room is 30 feet long"
It's just as likely to be an illusion to me because, in my room, there's only the system and the listening chair in the open. Everything else (bookcases and CD shelves plus DIY acoustic treatment and a couple of other chairs) is located around the edges or in a small area behind me so there's lots of vacant floor space in my room, especially from the listening chair forward. I'm afraid to say that, after living with the system in a combined living/dining area that was quite cramped, I've become rather enamoured of bare floor space in a listening room.
Glad you're getting some improvement. Actually seeing this latest photo reminded me that in my previous house where things were in the living/dining area, we also had the carpets taken up and the wooden floors polished and I remember noticing similar things to what you've said. I too used a rug between the listening position and speakers but I compromised on a rather cheap one. My wife and I saw a lovely hand woven modern Persian rug that we both liked and seriously considered but it cost a fair bit and we had a large dog who tended to shed hair all year round and we wondered what the dog would do to the rug. We bought the cheap rug as a test and decided quickly that that was it. The dog took to the rug like mad, curled up on it for long periods, and shed hair all over it all the time. It didn't take long for a blue rug to look grey and weekly vacuuming only restored the original appearance of the rug for a day or two. We decided that if we bought the rug we liked, we'd never really get much of a chance to see and enjoy it so it wasn't worth spending the money on it. Pity because it was hand woven with a longer, looser pile and all natural wool so it would definitely have been superior acoustically.
And despite what I've seen some people say, a dog between you and the speakers, even a dog with a thick coat, really isn't much benefit acoustically so don't bother trying that as a partial solution. I think cats would be about as useful acoustically as a dog, probably less because there'd be much less of them since the dogs I like tend to be larger.
David Aiken
Good morning David. We have a 9 pound cat and she does her best to add hair to the house. but thankfully so far she is not sharpening her claws on the new rug.
after a late night of rocking and rolling the biggest improvement was readjusting my turntable setup. before the floor swap out i had my rack between the speakers. now its in the bed room behind the speaker wall. put a hole and ran the interconnects to preamp. all in all the sound is very good now and many thanks for the replies. BTW maybe one day i will have a dedicated music room as you mention, and set up like yours.
have a good weekend.
Mike
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