Room Treatments--How far have your gone?

First of all try not to place anything between your speakes. A wall of books behind them will be better than a bare wall or windows and will help act as a difuser/asorper.

Foam can be very attractive if tastefully done. I have 16-2'x2'x4" pieces of foam at various places in my room. (I picked the basement so the WAF wouldn't be an issue) After I put it all up, my wife said for the first time that I was nuts about this stuff and went back up stairs.

Check out eighth nerve for some accoustic treatments.

A Library can be a great place for a listening room, but there are a few words of caution. While books offer both absorption and diffusion--too much of a good thing can be, well, bad. Don't over do the amount of book cases or you will have a very dead and lifeless sound, contrary to a live room, which is easy to tame. I typically would not use foam, but rather Owens Corning 703 fiber board wrapped in an attractive fabric. This can blend and even enhance the decor.

Room acoustics do not have to be ugly! It's just that many pre-fabricated room acoustic panels/traps etc are ugly. When we design rooms we try to design into the decor. This has ranged from traditional homes with coffered ceilings (the acoustical treatment was built into the ceiling), to very modern, to dedicated listening rooms with some rather exotic looking devices (not really conducive to the library setting). But my point is that room acoustics can take on virtually any shape, there are so many ways to get the necessary bandwidth and so many ways to hide the acoustical treatment. It really is unfortunate that acoustical treatment is perceived as a necessary eye sore.

How far have I gone with acoustical treatment--you don't even want to know. It's not a matter of what went into the room in terms of stuff--it's a matter of how many mathmatical equations were solved in the planning of the rooms. To see some of them, please go to our services page. From this area, you might want to check out the room simulator and the listening room (a tutorial on room acoustics). These areas may give you some ideas and tips for your library/listening room.

Hello Rives. Thank you. I shall explore your page at my leisure. Anyone following this thread should click on Rives' 'services page'. Interesting stuff. quite unexpected. I am in Real Estate andI have lots of experience with noise transmission, especially in Condos. We have employed acoustic engineers to find sources of lots of problems. quite the science, especially in these times of stacked living (one unit on top of the other). I shall look more to your site and I am hoping for other responses, too. Again, thanks.