Acoustic Room Treatment

no point making one. There are plenty of companies out there that make them, and know what they are doing.  Auralex, customaudiodesigns, Gik Acoustics, to name only a few

jon honeyball posted:

Huge posted:

jon honeyball posted:

Go buy the ClioFW by Audiomatica, and their microphone. Measure your room properly. Educate yourself. Then make informed decisions. 

Anything else is just stabbing in the dark.

€1800 and many more facilities than are necessary for HiFi room measurement - it's just not necessary to spend that amount unless you're doing professional setup and need to demonstrate compliance with defied standards (particularly ISO).

in the context of a power supply or a loudspeaker cable from Naim, it seems like good value to me. Having designed and built a number of ISO compliant listening rooms over the years (and just been measuring my current one) I'm pretty sick and tired of great hifi being put into rubbish rooms, and then people attempting to tweak their way out of the mess. Get the tools, get the knowledge, and get it done right. The room is as much a part of the system as the equipment you put in it -- arguably even more so.

Sure, get your dealer to do it for you. If you can find one who has a grasp of the subject. Which is, unfortunately, very unlikely.

Bitter? Maybe. But way too many dealers are happy to sell systems costing 10s of thousands into dreadful room acoustics, and then to womble on about cable dressing when the issue is the elephant in the room.

And randomly moving acoustic wedges and absorbers around a room seems like an exercise in futility to me. But hey, its their time not mine...

 

Totally agree - and to my mind it doesn't stop with room acoustics - especially with network based audio.. (although I did go for two absorber panels  on the wall behind my speakers - and these were placed on a trial and error basis... improvements were in imaging, detail and subtle dynamics - all with no change of electronics...). I think the comb effect in rooms with fairly strong reflections with the higher frequencies can be really challenging.. the so called sweet spot syndrome..

Halloween Man posted:

How difficult is it to make a 40Hz tuned bass trap? I would not know where to start! I guess in the grand scheme of things an extra £1k in getting your room right is good value. You could buy a cable costing many times that and not get so profound results. i now consider the room to be just as important, if not more so, as any equipment you have.

atc actually put me onto rpg so perhaps they have some experience with them.

i did suggest a house move to my wife to accommodate an ideal listening room but you can imagine the response (a bit like my current room response) 

I did some assessments and got a lot of guidance from GIK - to do the minimum recommended in my room would be over £3k, and that doesnt guarantee all will be fixed. (Had it guaranteed, I might have gone for it)

There's a lot of info on the net about DIY tuned traps (which is what is needed for smaller sizes for bass), and some info in a thread about 3 or 4 months ago if you search 'room correction'. If you can't find I'll have a look. Huge as always generously contributed.

Sorry, I have to ask--Did the system sound good before you started making all these measurements? Is the bass bump really offensive? It's clear that you aren't going to be happy until you've ironed all this out, but maybe you need to crack a beverage, put your feet up and just enjoy the music.

I detected the bump right at the start when I got the speakers (same results with other full range speakers I demo'd) and decided it was an evil I could live with. I'm now focusing in on it and it's become irritating - it is a very offensive bump, around 10-12db. It's not the speakers, it's the room. I have a simple choice, treat the room, live with it, or get limited range speakers.

good advice about the beverage

Another recommendation for GiK. 

But be carefull how far you go with treating your room , as its easy to go too far.  I know I did. , and had to backtrack a bit .

JRHardee posted:

Sorry, I have to ask--Did the system sound good before you started making all these measurements? Is the bass bump really offensive? It's clear that you aren't going to be happy until you've ironed all this out, but maybe you need to crack a beverage, put your feet up and just enjoy the music.

In hindsight I've taken a rather backward approach to my system upgrades. First a variety of box upgrades, then getting proper racking, then addressing room acoustics, and finally finding a decent power strip. Of these I'd say the box upgrades are probably the least meaningful. Racking and room treatment are fundamental and no level of gear will sound their best without addressing these.

Racking is relatively easy; there are a handful of worthy contenders and Isoblue hit the mark for me. Same for powerstrips; a couple of trials and errors and a Wiremold did the trick. Now get into room treatment, which I've found to be the primary contributor to a system's sound quality, and complexity greatly increases, Reflection points, frequency nulls and nodes, and varying speaker and listening positions. Consider all these variables, the variety of treatments available, and a methodical approach that includes some form of measurement to assess the response to treatment makes sense.

I'll admit to taking a hunt-and-peck approach with my ongoing room treatments, but even from that it's clear to me that bass trapping has a big positive effect on musicality/PRaT. From there reducing clutter at reflection points greatly increases the clarity of the message. I've been able to put my feet up and relax with the music throughout my experimentations. Good learning process along the way and contributors from this forum have been a big help.

joerand posted:.

.From there reducing clutter at reflection points greatly increases the clarity of the message. 

Joe, could you elaborate because I'm a bit confused with this particular point: it is, I believe, generally accepted that uneven surfaces - which I associate with 'clutter' - should be beneficial in scattering the reflections, which is particularly desirable at the early reflection points. 

IB,

Sorry, I used ambiguous terms. I was referring to the primary and secondary reflection points along the sidewalls. These can cause phase coherence issues because the listener hears the reflected signal later than the direct signal from the speakers and in the case of secondary reflections in the opposite ear of the intended stereo image. Typically sidewall reflections are treated with absorption which greatly reduces the strength of the mid-range and upper frequencies, increasing clarity. This is what I meant by "reducing clutter". Reflections from rear walls can be treated with diffusion or absorption, same with ceilings. Diffusion scatters (rather than absorbs) the signals via an uneven surface thereby helping to maintain soundstage and imaging.

This is my rudimentary understanding, and I'm by no means an engineer. I'm more than happy to be corrected by anyone more knowledgeable and it's a good exercise for me to chat through these things to help my understanding.