Room treatment questions.


I'm setting up a 2 channel system in my den and want to do a little room treatment if it will help. The room is carpeted, about 18'X18' at most with double swinging entry doors on one side and a large window with wooded blinds on the other side. The door opening sidewall angles out so that the front wall is longer than the back wall so there will be extra space beside the right speaker. I'd say the ceiling is about 12' feet or so with a ceiling fan hanging from it. My speakers will be monitors (no sub yet) and sit on stands on both sides of a 60" desk/table. I'm going to have at least 3' on both sides of them (more on the right) with at least 2' behind them to the walls. I'll have the speaker fronts far enough from the back wall that hopefully the desk won't cause bad problems. Right now there are just some various pictures hanging up, a few plants, my golf clubs in one corner and an 18"x18"x74" wire shelve/tower in another corner. Also, I have a small laptop table in front of the window (on the side). I don't want to go overboard and hang panels, etc. everywhere but am looking for some things that I can do to make the room sonically better. Maybe hanging plants in the corners, corner tubes, small panels etc.. It's not the perfect room because of the big double door/angled wall opening into another large room on one side but I'd like to do something within reason to help out my sound.

Thanks for any input.
asahitoro
If your room is very close to the measurements that you provided ( 18' x 18' x 12' ) you are going to run into some very strong nodes with multiple reinforcement harmonics. I would HIGHLY suggest reading the book by F. Alton Everest that Clueless linked to and learning to become "handy" with tools and DIY acoustic projects if you are not already so inclined. From the info that you've provided here, it sounds like you'll have your hands full for a while. This is not such a bad thing though, as working with room acoustics can be a VERY rewarding and educational process. Sean
>
Thanks for the replies guys,

Those are some great suggestions that will give me a good idea of where to start. Very nice system BTW Islandflyfisher. I can only dream right now about having a system like yours.

Thanks again.
Scott,

I'd start out by trying out with three Room Lenses. Argent is the company that produces them. They are fairly easy to constuct yourself if you have some extra time and have access to some tools. With the size of your room and speakers, I doubt that you will need any corner tubes or wall panels. The room lenses actually help out with some mild bass problems as well as really making any impact with soundstaging and diffusing your highs and mids.

If you've never seen them, I've got a few pics in my "system" link.

Denis
Measurements are good.
Rives,who posts here sells a cd that is not expensive and along with a radio shack spl meter it will be some help.

There is a good forum for room acoustics here:
http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/rives/bbs.html

There are some simple rules that help. For example, a room with common dimensions is tough. The distance between two walls will reinforce a Frequency. The frequency reinforced for opposite walls is easy to figure out.

1130/2L where 1130 is the speed of sound in feet per second and L is the length of your room. 1130/36=31.38

Your room is going to give you a boost at about 31hz and multiples thereof. 62hz, 94hz etc...There are some things you can do.

Besides the above forum I'm sure you will get some good advise here and also there is a book you can get for about $25 and IMHO it is a good and fairly easy read.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0071360972/qid=1065281502/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-3290392-5668016?v=glance&s=books

Cheers