About to invest in room treatments; GIK, RealTraps, DIY -- what is your experience?

Or they are having problems working at full capacity while keeping people safe. Not exactly an essential business.

They seem to have helmholz resonators built in as well. That strikes me as a bad but not awful integration idea as the best position of a diffuser and a bass resonator would rarely be the same spot.  Some comments from people with them recently:   https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/argent-room-lens-2

A quick look at the "Argent Room Lens" indicates they are no more than a method of diffuser panel.  Would need more detail on the dimension to know what the effective frequency range would be.  I am not saying that is a bad thing, just pointing out what the effectively are.

I don't see them "reshaping" the sound waves to your listening chair per se, so much as diffusing the side emissions from your speakers in what appears to be a recommended placement, which again, is not bad thing, or providing diffusion wherever they happen to be.

The Stillpoints Aperture is the only acoustical product that will give you both absorption and diffusion at the first reflection points of a system. And you want both!

- The Stillpoints Aperture have been found effective from 40 HZ to 40K HZ.

- DIMENSIONS: 22" high x 22" wide x 3 1/8" deep

These two statements are in conflict. Define "effective". I am guessing that was an incredible stretch for effective at 40Hz

3. Unevenly control one frequency over another. (This is often the case with traditional room treatments)

Well I am going to call BS on that one. Simply their size says this is actually impossible, but when has that stopped audio companies from claiming things impossible or unrealistic.

Sure, they probably do something. However, where are the performance graphs ... you know like real acoustics companies provide?  They don't work equally well at all frequencies, so what do they really do?   It is hard to take a companies products seriously when they make such claims.

Just note that his test is technically incorrect. He is testing for sound blocking, not sound absorption though given the density of towels, I have to expect they would still work well especially at high frequencies. It's a cool hack.

"Honey, where are all the towels?"

One thought as well, before investing anything, spend $100 on a measurement microphone and learn how to use REW or something similar.  We are not talking cables here where the difference if at all is debatable. Acoustics can provide measurable improvements and a good place to start is knowing where you are starting from.

nolojunko, excellent posts!    ditto lemonhaze.

When dealing with bass peaks or nulls, the corners are the obvious places, but you also look at the frequency of those nulls/peaks and consider your room dimension and where those nodes are for each null/peak.

Are you just using two main full range speakers @hilde45, or do you have subs?  When you look at the cost and complexity and esthetics of bass control, sub-arrays make a lot of sense. I personally would still want acoustic control in addition, but it does make for a far more controllable problem.

w.r.t. Foley, https://www.digistar.cl/Forum/viewtopic.php?p=1681#p1681   Then the post after that one, and maybe a web search.

Simply where sinx equals cosx on a sinusoidal wave between walls which is at 3/8 and 6/8 or 37.5% and 62.5%. No golden rule, just math rule.

This ratio is the FACT......He was probably discovered by accident in room tuning with EARS or by someone who knows the importance in all field of this historical proportion in art and science....

There is no accident in using 38% (really 37.5% of 3/8th, or 6/8th). The room node lengths of any two walls is a complete waveform and multiples of that. 37.5% is simply where the originating waveform and its reflection cancel or reinforce each other out the least.


The golden ratio, unfortunately, is not purely math as you are no doubt aware. It is far too the proverbial square peg that people try to put into a round hole. In this case it is 1.67, and just happens to be close to 1.62.  If it was 1.7 or 1.55, people would still try to equate it to the so called golden ratio.

You see this what I consider sillyness applied to 16:9 aspect ratio for TV (movie) but this is again another false analogy. 16:9 was a technical trade-off. No more, no less. Our vision limit is 1.4:1 for black and white, about 2-2.2:1 for color discrimination (hence why widescreen movies are like this), and close to 1:1 for central vision.

You may wish to read this:   https://www.fastcompany.com/3044877/the-golden-ratio-designs-biggest-myth