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Room Acoustics Forum by Rives Audio Welcome! Need support, you got it. Or share you ideas and experiences. |
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Room Acoustics Forum by Rives Audio Welcome! Need support, you got it. Or share you ideas and experiences. |
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In Reply to: Re: Words of experience please posted by gonglee1@hotmail.com on March 3, 2006 at 01:54:34:
There's no way to say how much absorption you need in response to the information provided. An accurate answer would require measurements, and the answer would be frequency dependent. A lot depends on the nature of your walls, ceiling and floor, whether there are drapes and carpets or rugs installed and, if so, how much and what type.Your speakers, their radiation pattern and placement, plus where you sit the listening position would also have an influence.
As a general rule of thumb, bass trapping the corners and placing absorption at the first reflection points will almost always be beneficial but it may not produce as much benefit in some rooms as others. In addition, not everyone likes what that treatment approach does, so a certain amount of personal taste is involved.
You can treat a room without resorting to measurements, but it's a matter of trial so you install a treatment and listen. DIY treatments are ideal for this approach since they're relatively cheap, and you can even 'mock up' panels with several thicknesses of blankets at no cost to see if you like the result. Such experiments won't be as effective as the real DIY item, or commercial products, but they do give you a taste and you can then decide if you want to proceed further.
Diffusion is harder to add, and requires space in which to develop. I think some diffusion is helpful, but I don't think early reflection points are the place for it because, by definition, those are exactly the points in your room which will allow least space for the diffusion to develop.
Depending on your tastes, you may also wish to investigate a nearfield listening setup like the Audio Physic method (see the FAQ). Nearfield approaches minimise the contribution of the room to what you hear, thought they don't eliminate it entirely. In some rooms, some people are happy with that sort of approach on it's own, or it can be supplemented by some acoustic treatment and, given the lower room contribution to what you hear, you may be satisfied with less acoustic treatment than you would use with a different speaker placement approach. Not everyone likes nearfield listening, however.
Don't underestimate the importance of personal taste when it comes to recommending acoustic treatment strategies. Rives, who host this board, recommend a live end/dead end approach with the dead end behind the listener. The classic live end/dead end approach as pioneered in recording studios rotates that 180 degrees and places the dead end in front of the listener, and my room tends to that approach though the dead end isn't as dead as a studio dead end would be. I'm very happy with my results though you may not be. At the very least that should indicate that there is no single, universally accepted recipe that will satisfy everyone. You will need to experiment a bit to get things to your taste, but the benefits will be obvious.
Finally, it's worth noting that all absorption based acoustic treatments work with sound that reaches you via an indirect route. The direct sound which reaches you in a straight line from the speaker isn't treated, so all treatments will tend to shift the sound balance towards the direct sound emanating from your speakers. If the speakers are good, you should appreciate them even more and if they're bad, then you'll appreciate that even more as well. Expect to become more aware of the strengths and weaknesses of your system in the process.
David Aiken
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- Re: Words of experience please - David Aiken 13:07:07 03/04/06 (0)
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