Treating Rooms

[admin_exported]

I don't mean given them presents and stuff, but the acoustic treating mentioned on the whf listening rooms thread.

Is it worth it? is it expensive?

does it only work if you have one chair/sofa and a hifi system or can you have a real world situation.

Not that i'll probably ever have the cash to get it done but i sounds interesting.

Cheers,
Ed

 

[Anonymous]

Are you talking absorbers and diffusers? You don't need to spend loads on proper bass traps and stuff you can use normal furnishings in much the same way. Auralex is generally the way to go studio wise and can be disguised behind paintings and stuff. Take a look here.

 

[Anonymous]

Cheers, i thought they meant something flashier than sitting in an egg box walled room!

 

[radovantz]

My room walls are fully attached with pieces of sponge bought from DIY shop. That material is supposed to be used in refining wall plastering during construction. It is too much cheaper than the sponge that specially designed for HiFi use. But brings much improvement in sound. I tried once put my system to the other room without sponge, the sound quality turned too bad

 

[Anonymous]

The first thing you need to do is measure your room, how can you treat a room if you don't know what the problem is. You can use something like the XTZ room analyzer which is a simple programme to use which will measure your room.

Ideally for 2-channel, which is set up differently to home cinema acoustics, you want to look at all your first reflection, your speakers radiate a lot of sound so you want to use treatments to give you a direct sound as possible which will give you a far better sound stage, more depth, more focus and tangibility to the final sound instead of all those reflections bouncing of the walls muddling your sound, I treated my room and it's the best thing I've ever done, i'm not a great cable believer but i'm a great believer in room treatments, read up on it, read what kind of trappings you need, how to make bass traps and where to put them, it needn't cost a fortune but it will give you a massive improvement is sound quality.

 

[Anonymous]

i recently tried (just out of curiosity really) "treating" the reflection points of my room. once i found the reflection points (using a mirror against the wall so that the tweeters are visible in reflection from my listening position) i simply kept the mirror in place and hung a towel over it. i then did the same for the other side. not an elegant or permanent solution but it did improve the sound by defining the soundstage properly. simple enough for anyone to try!

 

[JoelSim]

I shall just buy myself a few packs of sponge scouring pads and hey presto, Glastonbury!

 

[Anonymous]

That0s the way, but to be honest a towel isn't going to go much,it's too thin and non absorbent, just like the chap using furniture grade foam instead of acoustic foam, it may change the sound but not the correct tools for the job.

 

[drummerman]

radovantz:
My room walls are fully attached with pieces of sponge bought from DIY shop. That material is supposed to be used in refining wall plastering during construction. It is too much cheaper than the sponge that specially designed for HiFi use. But brings much improvement in sound. I tried once put my system to the other room without sponge, the sound quality turned too bad

 

[Craig M.]

low frequency broadband absorbers would give a good improvement without having to measure your room, if the manufacturers claims are true. you could stuff the space beind the frame of a canvas picture with accoustic foam at your walls 1st reflection points. if you have resonance problems though, then you need to measure the room to find the modal frequencies. you would also need the correct frequency bass trap - which could be a big ugly box. the LF broadband absorbers are shaped like a large mirror and hang on the wall, they're about 4inch thick and should have a couple of inches of space behind them. the one's Real Traps make i think are about £400 each, but the postage from the u.s. is steep and there is no u.k. distributer. why don't you get a couple, and then you can let me know if they work?