Room Treatments

The Complete Guide to High-End Audio by Robert Harley addresses room treatments and more. It's a good starting guide. I used this in the beginning of my audio room adventures.

RIVES also has a great service where they will give you plans to address your specific room and equipment for minimal cost. This is where I went eventually and I wish I had gone there from the start. They really help and provide excellent advice and service. They gave me complete plans and you could pass this off to a millwork contractor as I did or if you are handy you could easily do it yourself.

There are several approaches to room acoustics however, a combination of both absorption and diffusion may be required. I have a relatively small room so RIVES opted for resonators on the side walls. As I understand it, these will make the room "sound" larger than it is. The end of the room with the speakers is fairly reflective with only bass traps and some absorbers directly behind the speakers. The listening end is more absorptive however, some diffusion in used here too.

The "trick" is to get a correct balance. Too much absorption and the room will be dead. Too reflective and the room will be just the opposite.

As for the television between and behind the speakers that may be an issue however, I've read that simply throwing some fabric over the glass of the plasma screen will improve the sound. This would be easy to try and most likely wouldn't cost anything to experiment with.

I hope this helps!

So a bit more about the blanket thing over the TV might be in order as some are missing the issue I think. You are going to get reflections off it as the sound from the speakers projects out hits a surface and bounces back. Then it will hit the glass and come out into the room again. Putting a fabric over the glass is the easiest and least expensive way of dealing with it.

Any glass you have in the room will be an issue regardless of where it is. It tends to be highly reflective and it rings a bit like a bell. I have glass on a gas fireplace in the room and two glass doors to the room. The glass doors are two sheets of glass with three sheets of clear plastic film (one on either side and one between) and they have drop-down honeycomb shades for the most absorption.

I don't do anything with the fireplace however, I think I should as it's behind the speakers and off to one side...

Anyway, by simply throwing a blanket over the screen things should improve. I think...