Acoustic Treatment : an amazing step in sound quality

I don,t doubt it for 1 minute. I had to remove and dispose of the hall carpet and underlay last week. We had a few days of the hall, stairs and landing being bare wood and tiles....the echoes were horrible. But it even I intruded on the sound of the Hifi in the living room with an annoying echo like ring to some notes, even with the door shut. New carpet installed, life and music much better.

My room is heavily treated with very similar products,which used to be in my home theatre room.I agree with you,the results are stunning,and might be the reason I actually love the sound of my Focal Sopra1s,while so many other say they are bright sounding.I am using all Viscoutics products...bass traps,diffusers,and absorption panels.

Parallelepipedic - try saying that when your semi paralytic.

Totally agree, and something that is often overlooked. I use a mixture of absorption and diffusion products from GIK to good effect in my room.

Bob the Builder posted:

Parallelepipedic - try saying that when your semi paralytic.

Try saying it sober!

DaveBk posted:

Totally agree, and something that is often overlooked. I use a mixture of absorption and diffusion products from GIK to good effect in my room.

I wonder if all our household clutter has the same effect 

Your listening room looks fantastic Tomser, would love to have a dedicated area like that one day.

I have lived in the same flat in the last 20 years. My room could probably be a lot worse acoustically 3 by 7 meters, but I have to place speakers on the long wall so I play across the room. But I believe the dimentions are  much better than e.g.  4 by 4 room. Fortunately I have carpet on the floor otherwise the room would be unusable for anything, but the walls and ceiling are made of a special concrete material that is harder  than usual. When you want to drill wholes in it you need special equipment to do it! A few  years back I started to notice the ekkoes when I did the clapping test, eand also the bad effect of having my sofa used for listening placed close to the wall.  I first removed the sofa from the wall, and then bought  courtains for the wall behind the sofa. This definately improved the sound, but there is still some of the ekko left, however too much treatment can create other problems, so I think I am going to leave my room as it is.

Claus    

Very nice looking! Well done!

Alley Cat posted:

Bob the Builder posted:

Parallelepipedic - try saying that when your semi paralytic.

Try saying it sober!

Sounds like the room was built by M C Escher. 

TomSer posted:

If some of you are interested in the curtains, diffusers panels and absorption panels I gladly may give you the references.

Hi Tom; Very nice room treatment indeed!. I would certainly be interested in references in particular for the acoustic curtains. Thanks!

Chag -

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Chag... posted:

TomSer posted:

If some of you are interested in the curtains, diffusers panels and absorption panels I gladly may give you the references.

Hi Tom; Very nice room treatment indeed!. I would certainly be interested in references in particular for the acoustic curtains. Thanks!

Chag -

.

I echo; highly interested in which brands you chose for

Here are the references.

Sound diffuser panels :

Vicoustic Multifuser Wood 64. I used 9 of these panels.


Sound absorption panels :

Vicoustic Cinema Round Premium. I used 22 panels. 4x4 panels for the ceiling and 2x3 for the front wall.


You can order these panels from thomann.de


The acoustic curtains are made of a fabric designed in Switzerland by Annette Douglas Textiles. 

I bought the “Streamer Pro” fabric for my curtains. These sheers are a very unique product offering an amazing alpha-p value of 0.8 (max. being 1).

Annette Douglas website. I contacted her directly to place an order.








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Yes it’s indeed a big step forward for most of us, i even had a less intrusive treatment done and it was a huge step forward....

Yes, the room is as much a key part of the supystem as any other component, and can affect clarity, evenness of response (including comlete cancellation of some frequencies and huge eboosting of others, bass ‘speed’, etc etc - in extreme cases having far greater effect than almost anything else. Yet it seems it is the most ignored component, with the most some people do being playing with positioning - which is only half the story (and not necessarily even that).

The significance was brought home to me when I once played my system outdoors, well away from any walls and or other significantly reflecting surfaces. And the sound was superb - the best I have heard from any hifi system, ever, despite that it was a relatively modest source and amp, though very good speakers. (TD150, RB300, AT-OC9, MF The Preamp 2A, MF P170, IMF RSPM).

One issue with rooms, of course, is that whereas you can simply take all the hifi kit to another place if you move home, to be most effective room treatment needs to be tailored to the room, so whilst some absorbers etc could be re-used, it could require rather different solutions. In my own case, because I plan a house move in the not far off  future I have held back from treating my present listening room, but the next one is expected to be home to me for many years and room treatment will be an early target.

Looks really good Tomser. Lovely looking space still.

Stu

Tomser- A really nice looking room. I totally agree with you, there's a lot to achive soundwise with acoustic treament. I use Vicoustic Cinema Round premium myself, my experience with quite thin absorbers, you can easily overdamped the room an kill musical enjoyment. I therefore plan to do some diy absorbents by using Knaus slab isolation, 20cm thick in first refelctions.

Have you made any measument in the room to find how and where to put absorbers/ diffusors?

S

Balance is really key here. An overly treated room that has no artifice of the room on the sound will generally sound awful. I have a very treated room once and like the OP, it went down to acoustic curtains over windows filled in with sound absorbing boards, bass traps, a special floor... the works.

The purpose was for a cinema room where I wanted to delete the signature of the room so that the AV system could transport the listener/viewer to the where the action is. And for this it worked well. 

For music, it was dire. Like being an ant in a giant pair of headphones.

Treating a room should only be done to deal with major objectionable problems when it comes to stereo listening. It is, in fact, the signature of the room that lets you believe the music is being played for you in the room. With a totally treated and dead room, those cues in the sound do not exist and there is no feeling of a performance in the room whatsoever.

So while I agree on the benefits of treating a room, in my experience, it needs to be done carefully and in moderation.

feeling_zen posted:

???? Treating a room should only be done to deal with major objectionable problems when it comes to stereo listening. It is, in fact, the signature of the room that lets you believe the music is being played for you in the room. With a totally treated and dead room, those cues in the sound do not exist and there is no feeling of a performance in the room whatsoever.

???? So while I agree on the benefits of treating a room, in my experience, it needs to be done carefully and in moderation.

???? Feeling_Zen,...I totally agree with you,I put in a post I just wrote in another thread...I think it fits well here too.

???? I use the term "room-tunning",it involves a combination of installing,optimizing the music system along with adjustments of furniture, carpets,paintings,curtains,large flowers etc,etc in relation to the loudspeakers and the music system.

◾Example: After making a "tunning" of the speakers,you make a "tunning" of different parts of the furniture.
Then after that,you go back to making a "tunning" of the speakers,....then back to the furniture etc...

Yes,you understand what I mean,..This takes time,perhaps one year before everything is optimally ????????????.
But I,..AND we who have done this,have never had to use "acoustic aids".

Yes,..I have tried such aids,even listened in completely Acoustics adapted rooms,rebuilt by professionals in the field of acoustics.
It may sound good,but something is always missing,...for example..The nerve,The liveliness, The natural dynamics etc..

◾Factors that I think are very important in the musical presentation.

/Peder ????

I agree with others that treatment needs to be properly done to get the right balance and not kill the naturalness of the sound - the aim is not an anechoic chamber! It is a matter of proper measurement of the room and its behaviour, and assessment of appropriate treatment, and for many people that means seeking professional assistance. In the UK I am aware of one supplier, GIK Acoustics, that provides a free assessment service, and will interpret measurements made oneself with software like REW (and guide on what measurements to take), to advise what would be appropriate. There may be others.

Tomser - nice room! Where did you buy the curtain fabric from? I can find descriptions of it online but no actual prices or stockists.

Room interface. The most important, up there with the "source first" philosophy.

When redecorating I left my hi-fi kit as the last item/s to be removed. Totally different sound and NOT for the better either.

Then when we replaced the single glazed Crittal metal windows with modern double glazed units the sound firmed up. I am not allowed any serious room treatment (wife) neither do I really have the space either.

The 500 DR really helped with better grip on the speakers and SL cabling. Also a quantity of Stillpoints helped a bit more.

Then, looking at loudspeakers, I have had three generations of B & W 802s finishing up with their latest D3s, now about 2/3 months old. They are simply brilliant, not just down to revised drive units, but also the sheer mass of 94kg stops (helps) with cabinet resonance. The shortest run in period yet or is there more to come? There is a view that Naim and B & W do not work well together. Hmm.... The outgoing model worked extremely well after they were sympathetically thrashed, but that took a good few months for the bass to settle down. Then the previous ones to that were not for me. Trouble is if your dealer doesn't do a particular brand you need for a home audition, essential, and you sell on privately there is a ton of hassle to get round. So I could have had a "sensible" standmount and probably avoided a lot of the above. I listen mainly to large orchestral classical music but we are back to the laws of physics. I like the  scale of big speakers, always have.

If we all had bottomless pockets and a dedicated room to work with AND the services of an acoustical engineer then its possible that you would get the job done in one hit. Might not be so much fun though!

Douglas,

ok, this may of been posted here before. Its a good 3 hour read with many more hours of re-reading. I would say this to be one of the best room treatment blogs I have ever read. The guys a complete nutter and needs a hospital, but somebody’s got to do it. Enjoy .

Richard I’m sorry there maybe some  commercial names/links  in this, but bugger if I’m looking for them. I’m sure you have this read over a cup of tea. I needed  Siri to do it for me at work. I got paid to learn this!!!!!!

http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/theroom/1.html