Is room treatment a science?


What dictates room treatment?  
Many options are available but trial and error can be pricey. I'm a happy tweeker  seeking knowledge and experiences.
Thank You for your thoughts. Long live HiFi !
tomavodka

Showing 2 responses by audiokinesis

The sciences of acoustics and psychoacoustics are applicable to room treatments.

I agree with @erik_squires ’ recommendation of Floyd Toole, in particular his book "Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms". Imo the third (most recent) edition is the one to get.

Another excellent source is Earl Geddes. His book "Premium Home Theater: Design and Construction" is now available for download free. Don’t be put off by the title - most of the book is applicable to high end two-channel. Just skip the chapters which obviously don’t apply to home audio:

http://www.gedlee.com/downloads/HT/Home_theater.pdf

Chapter 5, "Room Acoustics", is the most obviously applicable, and includes sections on Spacious, Localization, and Timbre.

I used to engage in armchair-quarterbacking recommendations of room acoustic treatments, until I spent some time in couple of rooms that had been treated by a real professional, Jeff Hedback. A real professional acoustician can tell you where you need diffusion, absorption, and reflection, and how much. (By way of analogy, a professional crossover designer will determine where you need inductance, capacitance, and resistance, and how much.) Jeff is still affordable and his company is called Hedback Designed Acoustics. Here is an article he wrote for GIK Acoustics, it is about much more than just diffusion, imo it’s very much worth reading:

https://www.gikacoustics.com/diffusion-by-jeff-hedback/

Duke
Millercarbon wrote, "That Geddes book is a gold mine! If only I had known - and it had come out a dozen years earlier!"

Yes it is a gold mine, under-appreciated probably because it has "Home Theater" in the title.

I’ve been in Earl’s home theater room several times (mostly listening to two-channel). It is one of only two systems I have experienced which can pull this off: It can play so loud that you literally have to shout into the ear of the person next to you in order to be heard, but the sound is so clean that it doesn’t hurt your ears! This actually makes it kinda dangerous, as the SPL can be much higher than you realize. The only other system I heard which could pull this off was over ten times the cost.   The combination of natural timbre, smoothness, imaging precision, and spaciousness in his room is amazing.   And his bass is pretty good too! 

Duke