Room Treaments - Where To Begin...

Listening first is a winner. When I bought our home (because my wife liked it), I tested out the lounge room and it was just terrible acoustically.
The master bedroom 24x15 was immensely better, the echo was considerably less of an issue. We had a smaller storage room that I was going to use, but when my wife suggested we use the bedroom as a dual purpose room, the idea appealed to me.

I’d seen other Agoners system pages, and yeah, many of us do go for a bit of a look at what others are up to in their rooms. I’d seen quite a few who’d put up reasonably cost effective absorption in between the speakers on the front wall.
I’d bought a $200 thick woolen rug from a garage sale and built a big frame for $200 for a fairly inexpensive science experiment.


Surprisingly this worked pretty well, the first reflections off the back wall (sent across to the front wall again) and the back energies from the ports were dealt with in a manner that cleaned up the higher frequencies pretty well. I did hear a cleaner and more revealing sound stage, where spacial information was more cohesive.

So I set about to have a crack at building some of Dennis Foley’s quadratic diffusers, bought the plans and managed through a friend (Kurtis) to find another guy (Paul, we also become great friends) who let me use tools in his cabinet making workshop and I finished the first two QRD17 diffusers (Paul is an audiophile now).

And modified my science experiment rug holder (well essentially that’s what my front wall absorber is) to fit two of these QRD17 on.


There are another two diffusers cut out, yet to be assembled. My wife and I both heard an improvement and curiously mostly in the lower end, where it seemed like my speakers finally had some depth in some bass.

I’ve changed focus for the moment, getting my electronics up off the floor onto a sprung isolation rack is the current project. I’ve only lived in this house a little over two years, so I’m going at it a little bit at a time, while getting out of the mortgage quickly (Dave Ramseying it).

My point is, that doing a bit of research and having a go at something is better than throwing your hands up in the air and not doing anything. A safe bet is to do some absorption and or diffusion on the front wall. I have a plan of attack, and it’s going to be done bit by bit and with listening as I go. I’m reading a lot about it, making informed and "safe bet choices".

You don’t have to break the bank to play around treating your room, read, plan, build and listen. I did mine a bit DIY, my wife is patient, and one day hopefully it’ll all come together as a nice looking, excellent sounding system :-)

@lemonhaze such a pity you haven't posted a system page.

Like millercarbon, the best sorted listening room I've sat in and heard music played on a system would be Mike Levine's. In your opinion what percentage of system budget would you expect for a room to come up to the relative performance of the stereo playing in it?

I've been reading where room proportions may matter as much and in some cases even more than just distances between boundaries in a listening room. And if you didn't have the budget to do an entire room all at once, where would you likely start?

@oregon +1
Yes, The complete guide to high-end audio, it’s a great book.
Chapter 4: How to get the best sound from your room.

 

@erik_squires yes, well I am certainly on board and can attest to it working better, I thought it might be from breaking up the bass energies. But on this I am still discovering what to do, well, at least I'm reading and muddling through it.

@fleschler about activated carbon filters, yeah I've used the Acoustic Fields QRD17 plans for four diffusers, and I'm deliberating building two or possibly three of their low frequency absorbers (I might even just break out the cash and buy them instead).
How much did you use? What sized room, and impressions?
I'd really like to know, sorry if I'm getting personal.