room acoustics

I'm surprised how little interest there is here on room tuning. I can't tell you how to cure your room problems, but, one thing I have learned after fooling around with HiFi since 1970 is this:It is very easy to over damp a room. The sound will loose a certain life like sparkle that is not a brightness per say, but, the natural sound of real instruments. Untill I discovered the Room Tunes products I was always struggling with the compromises of traditional methods like hanging rugs, or, acoustic foam, etc. The corner tuning pillows make a huge difference without soaking up all the natural timbre. It is easy to over do it with the standing "delux" room tune panels. I only use two in my room. Anyone using Room Tunes please try this simple tweak: Cut a piece of heavy duty Reynolds Wrap one inch smaller than the pillows and slightly crumple it up to give it a slightly uneven texture. Dont squeeze it into a ball, just crumple slightly. Now affix it to the pillows with one piece of double stick tape in each corner. Just for fun, lets refer to this as the Harvey mod. I have "wasted" most of my adult life working on this stuff and all I ask is a little recognition. Try this and let me know what happens, you will be surprised. I have a host of other tweaks to offer. Try this first. Also, don't use anything but Heavy Duty foil.

Get in touch with a company called ASC, accooustiic sciences corp. (www.tubetrap.com). Chris will give you driectiioon. Peace. Judd

Hi people Interesting tip by Blair Zasitko, and nice trick of HifiHarv! I plan to buy RPG Profoam Level one for $50/6 pieces + shipping ...is it a good price? My crampy small room (11X19, with the system on the short wall)is so accoustically incorrect! I'll try Blair's tip since that's the one I can afford right now. Any suggestion on how to place an Infinity BU-120 (12" 150W) sub? Should be on the front speakers' horizontal axis or not? Thanks in advance!

I just bought some software from RPG (www.rpginc.com) called Room Optimizer. It is supposed to calculate speaker & sub placement as well as room treatments. Not the best looking software, but it might help you setup your room & place your software.

To use software to calculate treatments requires extremely detailed measurements and a perfectly symetric, closed room. Otherwise, a detailed investigation with advanced software is needed. Just experiment to tastes. To know how to treat your room depends on what music you listen to. If its Jazz or Classical, dead rooms will sound awful. The best "generic" advice is treat all the corners with bass soakers (you'd be surprised what foam products like Aurelex will do here), treat the primary reflection points with a broadband absorber that will reduce reflections, but not soak em up all together. It is important to use a material that absorbs equally through the spectrum so you dont change the reflecting material's balance. After this, diffusive treatments ( Bookshelfs with random items in them) will give you a life like ambience, while minimizing time/phase problems and seating location nulls. As for subs, I have never seen one mounted on a platform as to equal the height of the main woofers! Just play something with a rolling bass line with the sub at your seating position, and walk around the room till you find the quietest bass response, and put the sub there. This is opposite to some advice which tells you to put it in the loudest response is, but this will give you a boomy response. Good luck, and remeber to experiment to taste, don't follow some rigidly applied rule, and don't deaden the whole place! Dead front or dead rear rooms, to me, kill the ambience.