Tell us about your acoustic treatments

Hey, I ended up going with GIK soffit traps instead. Remarkably effective specs, variety of colors. Easy to stack.

kgveteran,

Well you asked...
I have many SR HFT's, ASC 20" round tube traps (up to the ceiling) in all 4 corners and convoluted 4" spiked deep foam on side walls at the first and second reflection points. On the ceiling I have 1" thick acoustic tile glued and stapled to 1" drywall. And a few of the triangular echo busters at the corner ceiling connections. All drywall walls are 1" thick with 3 1/2" insulation between the studs.

ozzy

• GIT soffit traps in rear corners
• ASC tower traps in front corners
• ASC half-rounds, GIK A6 Alpha panels, and one Vicoustic DC2 diffuser on front wall
• Vicoustic DC2 diffusers on side walls near the speakers (which have side-firing ambiance tweeters)
• ASC 2" panels on must of the remaining side wall area, along with some pictures & rugs
• RPG 2" BAD panels mounted to door (center of rear wall)
• ASC PCAD bass traps between those BAD panels and the GIK soffit traps on the rear wall
• ASC Cinema Panels on ceiling behind listening position.

The ASC items (except the Cinema Panels) and BAD panels were reused from a previous listening room.

Did any of you do decay time measuring

Primacoustic panels for ceiling, front wall, side walls and back wall. Thick area rug covering most of wood floor. No rack of gear between the speakers. No TV between the speakers. No coffee table in front of listening seat. 

I did a reno of my two channel listening room (our living room - most of the family’s actual "living" takes place in the back family room), turning it in to dual duty as a projection-based home theater and 2 channel audio room. I involved an acoustician in the design.

We did a drop-down ceiling which contains acoustic absorption at strategic points (including some very large areas of bass-trapping-type structures), but it’s all hidden in the drop down ceiling which has a felt-like material stretched over it. This makes the drop down ceiling look like a solid ceiling, when in fact it’s got all sorts of absorption properties (also which kills light reflections back to the screen).

The room has a large shag rug and an over-large custom built sofa. The walls are uncovered except that I have thick brown velvet curtains that can be pulled to any location on the walls, to modulate reflectivity as desired.
This has all worked wonders. Any speaker I drop in the room tends to sound fantastic, and I can modulate the reflectivity depending on the speaker, or even on what type of sound I happen to desire.

In fact there is an added acoustical bonus: I designed a 4-way automated masking system for the screen wall behind my speakers. The projection screen is about as large as the whole wall, but I have full control of it’s size and shape by remote-controlled velvet masking - horizontal and vertical. So from the same remote I use for volume when listening to 2 channel music, I can alter the position of the masking - drawing the masking in over the screen increases absorption behind the speakers making for a more intimate, lush and subtle sound. The more I open up the masking, exposing more reflective screen surface, the more open and airy the sound becomes.

I’m a fan of flexibility so this all works great for me.

@kgveteran : I did measure decay time, but I haven’t done it for a while. The main improvement that bass traps give, IMO, is reduction of bass decay time.

Dropbox link to early graph.

I have 3 Gik Monster Bass traps, 6 Gik 244 traps, 3 other generic fibergalss (?) panels mainly for slap echo.  
I also took the metal doors off the closet in the back of the room and use that closet as another bass trap since it is full of hanging clothes and folded towels.

I also hung curtains along one side wall.

I’ve really started to look at tuning the room as an important factor as anything else in a system.  Reductions in image smearing and bass overhang really tighten up the musical presentation!

Finally understanding that acoustic treatments are tools, and like tools they need a problem first. I always looked at it as though I needed treatments but never really understood the progression and actually assessing what the problems in the room are. I looked at acoustic treatments like equipment just stuff I had to have.

it was as simple as corner traps, velocity absorbers and diffusion, they solve everything that’s wrong in my room

PS: i made my own 100% blackout shades, and tracks ! It was huge to have the room void of all light during the day

Can someone who has done extensive bass trapping chime in on the significance of the treatment. Was it a “yeah, that’s better,” or was it a “wow, this completely transformed the low end and was more than worth every dollar spent.” It’s seems to me that proper bass trapping requires lots of treatment and significant investment. I would like to know if it’s really worth the effort before I start down that path. 

I have a rug on the concrete floor and ensure no chair upholstery is behind my head. Records and wood break up reflections in the corner. Not being in a small closed room helps.

To me, bass trapping is about decay time. 
The idea of producing sound, and then controling it was very foreign to me in the beginning, once you understand reflection points, flutter echo, standing waves, those are common issues in dedicated HT’s.

i never measured before implementing the corner traps :0/  so definitely i cannot show you proof on paper, maybe when im retired and project hunting, i’ll pull em out and plot some graphs....

theres no doubt about the bass decay, i find it very acceptable 

For me, it was “wow, this completely transformed the low end and was more than worth every dollar spent.” It made more difference to the sound in my old room than spending 3x the money on speakers. And the new room, being well sealed and in the basement, was a hopeless echo chamber without bass trapping.

And in cleaning up the low end, you should get far more clarity across the rest of the band.

Thanks Mike. I’m not familiar with all the products you use. Is it mainly absorptive bass traps? Any limp membranes? Tuned traps? Resonators?

I only used superchunk corner traps, diffusers and absorber, i had no large peaks that needed addressing.

the room measured so well i dont use the parametrics EQ in my MiniDSP for my subs, and adding in room gain gets me flat to 10hz

For the low frequencies, I've used mainly absorptive bass traps. When I looked into tuned traps (GIK Scopus traps), I thought they were too difficult, as you have to get the frequency exactly right, and if that frequency is > 100 Hz, the traps are big and expensive. I understand that Vicoustic now has a tuned (resonator?) trap with a clever design to adjust the frequency by telescoping the trap. I have nether seen it nor tried it, nor do I have space in my room for one more thing (!), but it seems like a great idea. To deal with deep-bass problems much below 100 Hz, I use DSP.

Thanks for the reply. I’ll have to check out that adjustable bass trap. It makes a lot of sense. One of these days I will build or buy some traps. I use DSP which really helps. I wonder if you can reduce the number of bass traps you need by adding more and more subwoofers and using DSP. What are the odds you can reduce the number of traps required to zero with a well tuned distributed bass array?

My room is 17x34x9. Built myself from scratch, so I have heard it in every state from wide open (framed up, no sheetrock) to -
sheetrock on walls but not ceiling, and half the room with furniture (long story)
1/2" sound board over sheetrock (walls) and studs (ceiling)
5/8" sheetrock over sound board, room empty, with bare plywood floor
(really, really obvious flutter echo like this)
without this experience its easy to be lulled into thinking things called "room treatments" affect the sound, when in reality every single thing in the room affects the sound and is, technically, a room treatment.
Every. Single. Thing.

Wall to wall carpeting. 
MDF light and sound blocking shutters on windows. I live in a very quiet area, basically in terms of background noise I live in the woods. Yet standing in my empty room it is easy to hear the difference when the shutters are closed. Acoustic treatment? Hell yeah.

Solid core door, with weather stripping. Wife thought I was nuts. The door was first hung without a door knob. When she heard how much noise was coming through just the hole when the door knob hole was plugged it was so startling she decided maybe not so nuts after all. Stops sound going out as well. Think you have a dedicated room? Not without a solid core weather stripped door you don't.

OC panels on walls. Moved them around. Real easy to do too much of this. Cut them up, rectangles along the wall to wall and wall to ceiling corners, triangles where the walls come together at the ceiling. Much more effective than on the wall, without creating an overly damped room. Which most rooms wind up being.

Have heard this room with varying amounts of furniture, from nothing but one listening chair without even a rack, components sitting on the floor, to beyond fully furnished with way too much crap piled into it. Every single thing you put in the room is a room treatment. The less, the better.

Tube traps, tried em. Big one, huge one, more than one, lots of locations. Tube traps are so useful, mine is hanging from the ceiling in my shop. Nothing kills the table saw whine like a tube trap. Best use for one yet.

A much better "treatment" for bass? Distributed bass array. The one and only solution to deep, smooth, articulate bass. All else is band-aids.

Last but not to be the least, in fact by far the best of all: Synergistic Research HFT, HFT-X, HFT Wide Angle, etc. Nothing else comes anywhere even close. Every single one of these little gems makes a difference you can hear. So effective, moving one even an inch makes a difference you can hear. Excuse me. What's that? Oh. Right you are.

Makes a difference I can hear. You I have no idea. But for me, the improvement in clarity, detail, imaging, and smoothness, dynamics and freedom from grain and glare, all so even and across the board its remarkable, and easy for me to hear. Forced to choose between all the normal treatments and HFT I would throw it all in the dumpster before I'd let my HFT go.

Oh, and this all happened over a period of some 20 years. Some of it pretty fast, some with years between changes. Some with the same components, some with components changing while the room stayed the same. Sometimes even with two systems in the same room. Sometimes with components used in other rooms besides the listening room. Sometimes even able to hear how differently the same speakers sound in this room compared with the more or less normal living room. Not for nothing its been called The Listening Room.

Let’s not forget Acoustic Discs from Golden Sound for room corners, tiny little bowl acoustic resonators from Franck Tchang and others, speaker isolation devices, Room Tunes Corner Tunes and Echo Tunes, Schumann Frequency Generators, including the teeny little USB device from Hong Kong, Mpingo disc, crystals, Marigo VTS Dots for wall, windows, speakers, etc., Helmholtz resonators, Quantum Temple Bell from yours truly, and of course the XLO Test CD for absolute speaker positioning.

Let’s not forget Acoustic Discs from Golden Sound for room corners, tiny little bowl acoustic resonators from Franck Tchang and others, speaker isolation devices, Room Tunes Corner Tunes and Echo Tunes, Schumann Frequency Generators, including the teeny little USB device from Hong Kong, Mpingo disc, crystals, Marigo VTS Dots for wall, windows, speakers, etc., Helmholtz resonators, Quantum Temple Bell from yours truly, and of course the XLO Test CD for absolute speaker positioning. 

         I guess you don’t agree with acoustic treatments, could you explain why, unless i misread your post.....

You misread my post since they’re all (rpt all) room treatments. I’m trying to cooperate here. 

:0) Gotcha, thanx