Bad setups

[pkerai]

To discuss bare rooms with solid floors a little further,

Are there any cheap or widely available items that can be used to improve the acoustics.

Panelling from acoustic suppliers is often expensive.

Ive heard the obvious advice including carpets, shaggy rugs and canvas wall hanging panels. Anything else?

What about just adding an acoustic damping carpet tile just where the speakers sit, and having normal carpetting everywhere else. Plus using spikes too.

Add your recommendations ...................

 

[drummerman]

To discuss bare rooms with solid floors a little further,

Are there any cheap or widely available items that can be used to improve the acoustics.

Panelling from acoustic suppliers is often expensive.

Ive heard the obvious advice including carpets, shaggy rugs and canvas wall hanging panels. Anything else?

What about just adding an acoustic damping carpet tile just where the speakers sit, and having normal carpetting everywhere else. Plus using spikes too.

Add your recommendations ...................

Don't know if the egg cartons have been mentioned yet.

Don't forget to cover the windows too to get that authentic anechoic chamber look.

 

[Gazzip]

Hi,

I cant understand the rationale to place DACs, Amps and Streamers on hifi racks (Ok disclude CD players too).

What is the science behind this. As long as these items are kept far away from each other so that it less affected by electomagnatic radiation they can be kept on any normal shelf or racking. There arent any moving parts within these type of components.

You are half right.

CD players and turntables you have already mentioned but valve amps certainly benefit from a good support system because they can suffer from microphonic issues. Also anything with a toroidal transformer in it (most power amps) can vibrate themselves, requiring such components to be isolated from other components which may be effected by that vibration (valve amps, CD players, turntables etc.).

Filling a rack with solid state electronics like DACs and streamers is, as you say, a waste of time.

 

[Gazzip]

To discuss bare rooms with solid floors a little further,

Are there any cheap or widely available items that can be used to improve the acoustics.

Panelling from acoustic suppliers is often expensive.

Ive heard the obvious advice including carpets, shaggy rugs and canvas wall hanging panels. Anything else?

What about just adding an acoustic damping carpet tile just where the speakers sit, and having normal carpetting everywhere else. Plus using spikes too.

Add your recommendations ...................

Carpets, rugs, hanging stuff on the walls etc. will help to tame/control higher frequency stuff, but bass control is much, much harder to successfully execute without using professional equipment. Acoustic tiles under your speakers I suspect will do nothing.

 

[matt49]

To discuss bare rooms with solid floors a little further,

Are there any cheap or widely available items that can be used to improve the acoustics.

Panelling from acoustic suppliers is often expensive.

Ive heard the obvious advice including carpets, shaggy rugs and canvas wall hanging panels. Anything else?

What about just adding an acoustic damping carpet tile just where the speakers sit, and having normal carpetting everywhere else. Plus using spikes too.

Add your recommendations ...................

Carpets, rugs, hanging stuff on the walls etc. will help to tame/control higher frequency stuff, but bass control is much, much harder to successfully execute without using professional equipment. Acoustic tiles under your speakers I suspect will do nothing.

Indeed.

In fact for most domestic spaces, which are likely to have room modes in the 40-60Hz range, even professionally manufactured bass traps would have to be so thick as to be unacceptable.

To absorb low frequencies you a need absorbent material of a thickness of roughly one quarter the wavelength of the relevant frequency. A soundwave at 50Hz has a wavelength of 6.85m. In other words, to deal with a 50Hz room mode you'd need a bass trap around 1.7m thick.

For low frequencies, DSP really is the way to go.

 

[steve_1979]

Hi,

While I can appreciate speaker positioning and something like turntables affecting sound quality, I cant understand the rationale to place DACs, Amps and Streamers on hifi racks (Ok disclude CD players too).

What is the science behind this. As long as these items are kept far away from each other so that it less affected by electomagnatic radiation they can be kept on any normal shelf or racking. There arent any moving parts within these type of components.

I would have thought that this outways the resonance isolation for non-moving parts components. Would you rather these items kept on hifi racks within close proximity of each other, or on any sturdy shelf kept apart from each other. And the other issue is that shorter speaker cables ( and possibly other cables too) does benefit the system too. Having the system in between the speakers means that the speaker cable is of equal length, something which is also important.

Of course i havent even begun to discuss the room size and items within it to improve sound quality.

But I dont understand any other factors apart from this?

Many people put their HiFi equipment on racks because it looks cool. Simple. With the exception of record players which do need a sturdy support you could put your HiFi equipment pretty much anywhere and it won't effect the sound (unless there's a source of RFI nearby) so you might as well put it on a nice neat rack to make it look pretty.

Also long cable lengths (within reason) and unequal cable lengths make ****** all difference.

 

[yani]

Don't know if the egg cartons have been mentioned yet.

[/quote]

I had forgot about seeing that one. What happems if you dont like eggs ? Do you just have to suffer the reverb ??

 

[bigfish786]

Whilst it was not my first priority when choosing a rack, in fact I would say it was never so much as a thought, the rack DID make a difference to sound quality. Why? I have no idea! Let Atacama explain that. I'm just happy with the results.

 

[lindsayt]

Pkerai, my "room treatment" includes thick wallpaper, fitted carpets with decent underlay, Ikea Expedits stuffed full of vinyl, some open fronted storage stuffed with books, soft comfy sofas and armchairs.

I suspect the Expedits full of vinyl have the most effect as they are big and against the wall.