Room treatments / where to begin?

pearsall001

I've heard so much lately that room treatments should be considered as a piece of gear. Apparently it is that important. I personally have never given it much thought. Maybe it's time I take a serious look at it. Where in the world does one begin? It's not that I think my room sounds bad, actually it's pretty good, but I'm sure it can be improved. I'm in a finished basement on concrete, the room is 13x32 / the 1st 16ft are on a raised wooden floor w/ carpet. This is where my set up is. The other 16ft. are tiled. The whole room is open, no dividing wall. Walls are paneled w/ 1/2" real wood paneling over styrofoam insulation on cinder block walls. Where'a a good place to start? any suggestions?

Skynut

I am going to be building some wall panels pretty soon, I don't have the links right now but when I get time I will post some.
I am going to start with 2'x4' acoustic panels 2" thick then wifey is going to tell me what color and style fabrick we are going to cover them in.
I plan to go floor to celing 2' wide on each side of the t.v.
My wall there is about 16' tall where the vaulted ceiling peaks. I also plan to go across the celing and the wall at the vault. 2' on celing and 2' on the wall.
My rear surrounds are mounted on the celing behind the listening possition so I plan to put panels around them also.

jmierzur

pearsall001 wrote:

I've heard so much lately that room treatments should be considered as a piece of gear. Apparently it is that important. ...

Where did you hear this from? This is one of the best kept secrets in the audio world.

Articles

Here is a good article on acoustic treatment by Ethan Winer. More acoustics information on his site.

This is the location for Acoustic Sciences Corporation articles.

Products or DIY

This thread on AA in the Tweaker's Asylum has links to sites having assembled acoustical panels and DIY supplies. Another is GIK Acoustic.

You may also want to look at the Rives Audio forum on AA.

There is John Risch's site for some DIY information.


Start by reading the articles on room acoustics so you can form an idea what you would like to accomplish for your environment. There are plenty of sites with additional information; more than you would ever want to read.

goingganzo

if it is a theater i would go with a 1-2 inacustial bat from floor to ear level all the way around

Skynut

I will also be putting up a wall just behind the speakers in the corner. It will come out 2' on each wall in the corner.
I plan to lower the resonance in the room but I don't want to go to low.
I might put 1/4 round in all the celing/wall corners.
Too much dead-en-ing is bad emkay. So I don't want too much dead-en-ing.
This is a link I was checking out but this thread should fill qiuckly with links to all kinds of info.

scottnbnj

when you get around to troubleshooting treatments, i find listening for image and soundstage the most direct route. when that's solid, other stuff seems to fall into place.

aim for travelling sounds, like on dark side of the moon, to move smoothly in 3 dimensions. for vocals and instruments, that every note remains solidly focused in space in relation to other notes from the same source.

sounds obvious enough, but as you start removing layers of clutter and things come into sharper focus, there might be a stage where these become more obvious and distracting, not less.

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Midnite Mick

Maybe a silly question and showing my primitivity.....but do you find that you lose a lot of bass in a treated room?

scottnbnj

it's likely that you'll get increased spl at some frequencies and less at others.

depending on where you're starting from, you might hear distinction between bass notes, as opposed to louder longer uh,single notes. very cool when it happens.

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Pablo

From what you describe, with all those hard surfaces, you probably have a lot of echo going on. More than likely any accoustical treatments will probably help. I'm not an expert by any means, but the minor changes I made seems to have made a huge improvement.

When I re-did my basement, I started thinking about this. But the wife wouldn't let "real" accoustical treatments all over the room. So what I did was to carpet the entire wall behind the tv (found black carpet at a bargin). I also built these fiber filled, fabric covered pannels for the lower half of the wall coming down the stairs (the fabric matched the paint and mahagony trim I used). It was amazed how much better is sounded. My next change will be to build something for the wall opposite the TV (but it needs to be a little artsey, so I haven't gotten around to it yet).

One quick test you can try is to just hang some blankets on some bare walls and see if it sounds any better. If it does make a difference, then properly placed treatments will make a world of difference to you (remember it's your ears listening, so only they really matter).

scottnbnj

a coat rack or even a broom with a coat or comforter draped over it are good quick and dirties too if you're thinking about treatments that treat down to lower frequencies.

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