I think the beam will be more or less OK. It’s too close to your head to reflect directly, but the ceiling above your head is ripe for treatment.
One radical listening approach is to toe the speakers in so they cross in front of your head. This minimizes the reflection against the side walls. They also seem to be too far out into the room to reinforce the bass well though, so, with an eye on the AM room simulator, consider pushing them backwards when you have that back wall treated.
Honestly though I'd move the speakers AND the couch forward as well.
|
OP:
Reputable makers like GIK and ATS (there’s a third brand that is often recommended to me which I’ve forgotten, but not ASC) have the absorption coefficients listed in Sabines or something like that. More Sabines = more absorption.
Also, given the strength of the 5 kHz time you might want to concentrate (but not exclusively) behind the listener and speakers. The reason is that speakers get directional by this frequency, and given the time is still so high it’s quite likely you have a back/forth reflection going on there.
If you felt like making some semi-circular diffusors behind the listening location those would probably help a great deal.
|
Well, if I interpret this correctly it's exactly what we expected. When you go looking for room treatments you want to focus on panels that are most effective from 700Hz upwards. This should be (if my memory is correct) mostly the 2" type of panels. It is worth including about 1/3rd of them as combination diffusion / absorbers so you don't end up with too dead of a room.
Once these times come down it will be worth revisiting.
Also, don't forget the floor and ceiling!!! The floor is easy to treat if not done already with carpeting and rugs. The ceiling you might want to wait until you finish placing the speakers as the area between them and listening location deserves extra treatment.
|
Next morning he said it was like being in a zoo enclosure.
Well, that's a little bit different. Your brain isn't trying to separate the snoring from the words in this case, or the reflections from the music, but if you were trying to pick out 1 specific snore... 😂
|
@mijostyn - That sounds like you are replying to something I said, but I'm not sure what that was.
|
......however, get this.....in doing a REW frequency sweep at the seated position, there was NO change in bass room frequency response! Yet, you can easily hear maybe 15% more "bass"!!
I did mention that the frequency response measurements would not help you in this case. 😀
This has to do with hour our ear/brain integrates signal volume over time. That is, the perception of bass, mid, treble levels is an average over time as opposed to an instantaneous measure. With very live rooms like yours we perceive mid/treble as much louder because it’s staying with us longer. The total energy is Direct Sound + Sound from up to 0.6 seconds ago = 1.4x amount of perceived sound (as an example).
Our ear/brain mechanism is exposed to a lot more of that energy during a listening session. As we move to cut the reflection times out the total energy there gets cut, and now we hear bass.
But oh man do some people have a really difficult time with this concept. 🤣
Also worth noting that studies have shown that having meetings in highly reflective rooms is literally exhausting. Your brain has to spend so much time listening through the reverb that it tires itself out making it harder to concentrate by the end of a lecture or meeting. If you’ve ever gone home after a long meeting feeling totally drained you probably had this to blame.
This is why colleges repeatedly invest in sound absorption in lecture halls.
|
OP:
Don’t go buying OmniMic because I use it. REW had similar capabilities, you just have to check the settings when you do a sinusoidal sweep. There’s usually some parameter that say "stop listening after x milliseconds" I’m just not familiar enough with REW. That’s the gating limit. There’s possibly/probably also a way to blend the gated measurements with the ungated for bass. That’s something OmniMic just does out of the box but I’m pretty sure REW has something similar.
Alternatively, if you ARE using REW with the gating turned on, it will cut the bass response off.
|
The only caveat is that bass does not respond to room treatment.
Kind of, sort of....
All my suggestions so far have been subtractive. That is, to remove sounds in the room. If you only subtract mid-treble then your balance shifts to the bass.
From experience and theory I can state that this absolutely brings out more bass and make speakers sound more powerful (I'd say larger but that sets some readers off into an irrational tizzy).
Will it fully fix the OP's issue? I'm not sure, but I do now his judgement about the bass problems will change after the room is treated.
Also, we want the room to interact a little. Diffuse sounds with a steady decay are really important to avoid a headphone-like experience and give us the illusions of the listening venue.
|
Frequency tests show 130hz and lower just drops like a stone. Example : 1000hz is at -24db, and 80hz is at -44db at the nominal listening levels.
Well, that does sound bad, but use gated measurements instead of sinusoidal pink noise. This will exclude the room. Not sure how REW works, but with OnmiMic I get gated measurements above a certain frequency, and overall below that. If it really is that bad you should consider heavily treating an area of the wall and pushing the speakers into it to get at least some bass re-inforcement.
|
Ya just wanna jinx things, don'tcha?!?!
Ahem, I'm not the one who declared there were no bass problems... that's exactly when the jinx happened!
|
He's insanely lucky that he has NO true oddities or issues like bass booms that can be very difficult to remedy.
Don't be so sure, yet. You can't hear bass problems because you can't hear bass. Once the mid-treble issues are dealt with these may become apparent and need to be dealt with separately.
|
Want to make a few points here:
1. One major reason we have trouble hearing a room is the ear/brain mechanism is actively filtering, which takes actual energy (i.e. the consumption of carbohydrates) and is tiring. Try recording your speakers and then listening that with headphones, or a friend’s voice in the room. You’ll be amazed at how much of the room reaches your ears but which your brain filters out in order to process the meaning of the words which were spoken. Do t his a few times and you can develop the skill to turn the filtering on and off. Takes a little practice.
2. IMHO, the Audioophle consensus is wrong about first reflection points. They matter but only if you already have a controlled acoustical environment. That is, you need a certain critical mass of absorbers before the 1st reflection points can make a perceptible difference. I’m not saying first reflection points never matter but that you shouldn’t get tunnel vision about them. Given a choice between an overall well treated room with controlled reflection time but no panels at 1st reflections and a room with only 1st reflection points treated the former will absolutely win. For this reason, do both, and don’t be disappointed if you place 4 panels and don’t hear a big difference.
3. Don’t forget the AM Acoustics Room mode simulator which in your case could be a real life saver. It will help you place your speakers and listening location more ideally, which you should do before considering 1st reflection points.
|
OP:
I was pretty much right, and yet no one on Audiogon ever takes my advice. Sigh. 😪
The good news is these frequencies are easy to deal with without getting too thick/exotic or expensive. GIK and ATS acoustics are places to start. GIK makes some panels you can have printed on with artwork.
Let your T60 be your guide and tackle the problem frequencies first. When you are done the bass will be more exposed and you’ll want to start considering speaker placement and bass traps (considering, not buying) if your room modes are severe. You may even end up with a system that sounds like it has too much bass, or has severely strong notes. All that will happen in time.
|
One last thought, OP:
You can use basic tone controls to bring out the bass, but generally speaking the better order of operations is to add room treatments first and then EQ/room correction afterwards. Of course, using a bass control is easy, so you may want to just do that until you decide about the room treatments, but since the room treatments affect the tonal balance, be prepared to do it again, so for this reason I strongly suggest AGAINST big hammer approaches like room correction being your first option.
Best,
E
|
OP:
Yep, so the frequency response plots won't help you as much as time/energy plots. REW has a number of tools for this, but their own forums are better places to go.
With my own tools there's usually a gated measurement in the mid-high frequencies specifically to remove reflections from the measurement. This lets me measure more or less, how well the direct sound reaches my room, but does nothing to tell me about intelligibility.
This is why we turn to other views like waterfall and decay plots.
Best,
E
|
OP:
One very useful tool you should also know about is the AM Acoustics Room Mode Simulator. Put your room dimensions in and it will show you the lowest modes. Try to keep your speakers and listening location out of those.
It won't help your reflection problems, but when you have that sorted, the bass will come out and you'll be all nit picky about that too. 😁
Best,
Erik
|
Room correction software won't help you much in highly reflecteive environments. They are better for correcting bass problems, but you can adjust the bass just as well for you by any EQ, such as the Schiit Loki, but you won't fix the reflected sound problem and therefore distortion.
|
It nearly sounds like (to me) that the two 12" woofers aren’t even running.
yeah, that’s a tell-tale sign. What’s happening is you have very long decay times in the mid-treble range due to the size of the room and highly reflective surfaces. As a result your speakers sound unbalanced tonally, plus the distortion-like effects. You can no longer hear details.
It is kind of like watching a movie with the audio out of sync with the video but here the delayed sound is now incoherent with the direct sound, and the more you turn up the volume the more of that delayed sound you’ll hear, especially in the midrange (Fletcher-Munsen curve).
With enough absorbers the details will emerge but so will the bass. That is, you’ll tonally change it so it’s less bright, more bass. Like taking all the veggies out of a stew, all you’ll be left with is the meat.
Alternatively, move the speakers and listening location as far from reflective surfaces as possible. Don’t forget the ceiling and floor as well for absorbers.
|
The room is often the cause of such issues. It can be the speakers, of course, but very often having a very reflective room causes it to sound distorting at higher volumes. The reflections seem to overpower the direct signal. Good way to test is to compare the listening experience at the normal location and listen also very close to the speakers.
|
