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Anyone know about these "dowel rod diffusers" ? I see them pop up now and then, but don't see any retailers offering them.
Do they work ?
Follow Ups:
Not being sarcastic or mean spirited, the fact is those rods would be a real fire hazard. They look great to me would love to have woodwork like that in my room.
A (non-electrical) fire hazard, to me, is anything that has a low-ish ignition temperature, like tinsel or dead Xmas trees or whatever or that is a container for flammable fluids. True the dowels are made of wood, and wood will burn if it gets hot enough, but I would think that such hardwoods as are used in dowels would have a relatively high ignition temperature, would be no more subject to catching fire than would the studs in the walls of a house in which they sit.
Edits: 06/25/18
The crosspieces of 2x4 between the studs are firebreaks, not spacers which is why the old technique of drilling plumbing access holes willy-nilly is now regulated and metal caps required.
Drywall fire-ratings are predicated not simply on flammability but on time to conduct flame and heat from floor to ceiling.
Floor to ceiling time is the key.
Those 'lovely' dowels, like dry Christmas Trees, negate all that careful fire code work.
Are you saying that the dowels ARE a fire hazard? Can you re-state the reason why? Anyway, I don't know that there is a formal definition of "fire hazard", so we both could be validated.
Yep, most of us are probably living in fire hazards.....with or without dowel rods. I'll take my chances.
FWIW, here is some more info about the manufacturer:For more than half a century, Nihon Onkyo Engineering has designed interior construction for acoustic rooms, recording and broadcast studios, performance halls and public spaces. In October, I was invited by NOE to attend a demonstration at their engineering studio in Chiba, where they would be introducing their Acoustic Grove System (AGS), a sound filtering system now used by various recording studios.
Edits: 06/15/18
Always intriguing with beautiful execution.
I am in awe of the dedication and relentless pursuit of our noble kooky hobby.
There has to be the highest concentration per capita of obsessive audiophiles in Japan and the close knit aspect of the nation creates a kind of synergy (believe me, I hate the overuse of that word but it is the one to use here) from the interaction easily available. A friendly sense of competition along with collaboration ...
I think all obsessed audiophiles wish they had been born in Japan. But then I think I might have made a mess of the whole thing so Providence was right.
Thanks for that photograph.
The American version of Obsession
Perhaps the photo does not show the true deployment of these devices, but if that IS their actual working placement, then the person using these is shortchanging themselves.
As a general rule of thumb, an Argent type diffusor should be placed about as far away from the wall, as it is wide, or the diffusion won't have enough space to fully develop. It can be angled, and this provides more spacing allowance, but placed up tight against the wall = bad.
A dowel based device will work just the same for the simple aspect of diffusion as a set of pipe/tube based diffusors, except that they won't have the slight amount of damped Helmholtz bass control that the pipe/tube based devices will.
That much round wood is costly, and PVC pipe is a lot cheaper, and can still be painted or otherwise decorated just as well as a wooden dowel.
If you don't want any Helmholtz action, then seal the ends of the pipes.
Jon Risch
What about the placement of the ducks? What effect on the acoustics do the size, gender, and number of ducks also play?
I mean really expensive!
When you spend that kind of money it would be nice to have some assurance you would be getting something of value.
I have priced dowel rods. Their prices have doubled within @ 5 years.
PVC schedule 40 is @ half the price for similar diameters and could be filled to increase the density.
Just would be nice to know if they work better/worse than a 1D QRD.
I use Ikea record shelves loaded with records as a diffusor. It actually seems to work pretty well. I would expect the filled PVC to work well too. Poor WAF though.
Dave
I just returned from Tokyo where I spent some hours in audio salons. I saw that these dowel-based diffusors are used liberally over there. They remind me of the similar Shakti devices, which have been around for years and are costly. I was thinking that I can make those, if I wanted to. There was a brand name on the ones shown in your photo (which are exactly what I saw in Tokyo), but I did not take note of it.
Lew,
The ones I see around the internet are the Acoustic Grove System from Nihon Onkyo Engineering. They seem to target recording studios as well.
https://www.noe.co.jp/en/product/pdt1/pd10/
From Pinterest, sorry I have no further info .
I don't care how good those B&W speakers are, that room would drive me insane. I bet when the video screen descends it has the violence movie in an endless loop from the Ludovico Technique.
Look up Argent Room Lenses here in the archives and on Jon Risch's old website as to how to DIY them. You'll find plenty of information about the commercial and DIY varieties. I made them 20 years ago and loved the way they could "shape" the sound profile, though my wife hated them in the room!
I have seen those before. They are not the same as these dowel diffusers that I am inquiring about.The dowel diffusers are @ 3 levels deep versus 1 level. The Room Lenses have 3 same-sized pipes versus @ 20 dowels of various sizes.
The Room Lenses are helmholtz resonators, the dowel diffusers are not.
Also FWIW, it appears the links to Jon's DIY pages are no longer functional.
Edits: 06/11/18 06/11/18 06/11/18
Just Google Jon Risch.
All his stuff pops right up.
The original room lenses are configured as you describe, but don't work the way you think they do. However, many people have experimented with variations on the theme, including versions that were not hollow, with items such as pool noodles, dowels, etc., and in varying configurations.
If you read the old posts, and read what Jon Risch posited, the original room lenses were primarily diffusors and diffractors, barely resonators and bass absorbers.
Yes, Shatkis appear to work similarly, as might a wide variety of different devices, including louvred diffusors, etc.
Red some of David Aiken's posts for some other configurations.
You just have to learn more and experiment, and fortunately, if you're even moderately handy, you can DIY all kinds to practice with cheaply.
"... If you read the old posts, and read what Jon Risch posited, the original room lenses were primarily diffusors and diffractors, barely resonators and bass absorbers. .."FWIW, I have read all of those posts.
I am going to build diffusers for my front wall behind my magnepans, but am trying to decide on which ones to build (conventional 1D finned QRDs, leanfuser, depot-difusser, dowel rods, etc).
I built a small depot-diffuser as a fireplace cover, but want to build 2 more "full height" diffusers to flank each side of the fireplace at the 1st reflection points (where the tan broadband traps are in the pict).
Edits: 06/14/18
David Aiken experimented with different spacial configurations of same sized PVC pipes, such as quadratics, and seemed to like the effects.
When I researched these many years ago I found that someone had used pool noodles, pipe insulators, pipes, cardboard tubes, etc. in different sizes and configurations in the same arrays.
As I recall from the Master Handbook of Acoustics, there are many other ways to accomplish the same result.
There is probably NO perfect arrangement, much less one that fits all needs. Whatever you try is likely to lead to more experiments until you settle on one you like best. I know of no other way to get to that point.
FWIW, I found JR's take on the original Argents, only two arrays in my case, as perfectly good to get the benefits. Some folks found more the merrier, but I never needed to go that far. WAF sucks, unfortunately, no matter what you do with these. YMMV.
Found a Japanese company that makes these. It looks like their distributors are all in Japan.
As noted above, those are the diffusors I saw in at least two audio salons in Tokyo. Home stereo in a big way, such as we used to know it, is much more alive and well in Tokyo/Japan than it is here in the US.
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