room treatment gurus, please
This my friend's problem. The listening room is 16 x 16 with 13ft ceilings. It was built in the 1980s. One wall has two sliding wood doors, 8 ft high by 12 ft wide total. These doors separate two rooms. This door is 12 inches behind the head of the listener. The opposite wall is all drywall. One side wall has another sliding door with two glass panels for room entry, total is 6ft x 6ft. The other side wall has a wood and tile fireplace with an ornate mantle. The speakers are Sonus Faber Amati Tradition. All electronics are MacIntosh. He complains about poor bass, and I don't think his system sounds near as good as it should.
Now, I know a square room is the worst, and that one should cover all smooth surfaces (all wood and glass), including the floor, but that's about it.
So I ask. What should be covered? How should it be covered? If we switch the wall behind the listeners head, will this have a significant impact? How should the problem be approached?
TIA
Bill
I have used GIK acoustic panels, and it worked great. I have also used DSP using convolution filters remotely created by the acoustic guru behind this company. Digital Room Calibration Services, Convolver, Headphone Filtersets It was even better than the panels since there were a few options to tailor the sound. I actually tossed the GIK panels when I moved to another room. Reason being is that I had the guru as my safety net in case the room was wonky. I was not concerned about the loss of the physical treatments. Now the DSP I am suggesting is best done on a client such as ROON or JRiver and it will ONLY work on digital streaming, Not your TT or tuner. No analog. The computer to run this can be far away in another room and not near your audio gear.
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Glass walls are the worst. A good room is a mix of absorption and diffusion. DSP won’t fix 1st reflection points whereas your panels would have. I was using dsp for a couple years trying to get the sound right with my speakers that were just too big for my current room. Buying speakers to fit my room, adjusting the speakers using the techniques from Jim Smith and Cardas, I stopped using dsp and allow me to put up for sale some of my absorption panels. |
Drywall with Cavities are the most difficult to work with. A Filled Cavity is the better of the Two Evils, the room coupling of Speakers is quite difficult in such an environment. It was described to me, by an individual who is quite skilled at producing Speakers, it is due to Drywall Systems with Cavities, that Typical Speaker Designs produced in the US are heavilyy augmented in the Bass Frequency. The same individual stated that when such designs arrive to be a sale item in the UK, when used in a Typical UK Home the Bass is noticeably overbearing.
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You didn’t note the speaker and listening chair placement. I am stuck with a difficult room but have found inches of speaker movement can make a significant difference. Same with moving the listening chair. It might be interesting to create a near-field space in the middle of the room temporarily (like at a mixing board) just to hear what’s possible. Also, the corner configuration mentioned above solves a lot of problems. Has your friend tried damping the rear wall to hold down standing waves? Or any other experiments with the room? Rugs on the floor? A little bit of absorption can make big changes. Of course, if you can have an acoustician treat the room, all the better. I have found the experimentation interesting and kind of fun. It’s helpful to have friends with good ears who can provide feedback. |
Having tried three types of room treatment in two awkward rooms and comparing these to a one room that is close to ideal. I tried Dirac (Datasat and others), Trinnov (both multi and 2 channel / 2.2 channel) and Lyngdorf "roomperfect". Only Trinnov gave the level of performance and integration I was looking for (initially tried ST2 HiFi, then Amethyst). I have glass on two sides in awkward places in one of the rooms and on all for sides two with awkward places in another. The difference between on correction on / off and completely bypassed (just to check against 'off) is huge. But I acknowledge that some of the DSP benefit is that in both instances I am using speakers with smaller bass drivers than I would like and consequently I am integrating speaker arrays / sub integrations which would not be "an advantage" in a 2.0. However, where one of the sets of speakers I use are 2 way then I found the dsp crossovers were for both a single seat and especially for a multi-listening position more effective than either single or bi-amping without correction. Comparing this to the set-up in the 'ideal' room gave a 'awkward room' performance that was quite close. Even the 'ideal', gained in timephase precision. To be clear I am not in anyway suggesting that physical correction should not be undertaken or ignored. But in cases where I simply could not remove windows, etc., Trinnov DSP did and excellent job. |
