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RE: Adding Room Treatments

Room treatments are essentially "lossy devices". Bass traps and absorbing panels absorb sound so they actually remove sound from the room. Diffusors spread sound over a wider angle but while they don't absorb it, they will cause some small losses in the process, probably losing a little more sound energy than reflection from a wall or ceiling loses. Overall, sound decays faster in a treated room than in an untreated room and part of what that means is that overall things get softer faster so you will not get an actual level gain from treating a room.

At bass frequencies, however, there are large swings in level at different frequencies because of the effects of room modes, the frequencies at which the room resonates, and a couple of other factors. Bass traps reduce the level of reflected sound at those frequencies and also, in the process, reduce the scale of those swings. The level of sound at frequencies where room effects caused a large dip in the response curve can actually increase because of the reduction in reflected energy at the room's modal frequencies. At bass frequencies you can achieve gains in level at some frequencies due to room treatments.

There's one other factor to consider, and that's perception. Things can appear louder in a treated room. I'm not certain as to the reasons for that, but I think that part of the reason may be that things sound clearer in a treated room and we tend to turn the volume up at times because we can't quite make out something we want to hear. In a treated room it's often much easier to make out those details so we don't have to turn the volume up to do so, or at least turn it up as much to do so, and we probably tend to think that things sound a bit louder because of that effect even though what has happened is that things haven't got louder but rather clearer.

So the quick answer is that overall things will get softer rather than louder though things can get louder at some bass frequencies, but you may well perceive the overall sound to be louder with treatment than you did without.



David Aiken


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  • RE: Adding Room Treatments - David Aiken 13:40:28 10/24/10 (0)

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