Room treatments

To answer a question with a question: has anyone tried Acoustics First? I ran across their products while doing a search on the web at http://www.acousticsfirst.com. Maybe someone here has some experience with them but I've not seen anything posted.

Furniture with fabric covering. Hang a tapestry behind your listening position. Drapes on windows. Wool carpet. Bookshelves. I've read that a square room presents many problems. Might be worth it to have an acoustics consultant pay a visit and give you some tips to tame your room, help place your speakers, etc. Makes a huge difference.

Thank you all for your responces. Basically the room has a
lot of echoes and the music sounds shrill - at least to my ears.

I'll go with some drapes, an area rug and the tapestry idea
before I spend money on specialist products.

Thank you again.

J.

I have a 10' by 10' room and the fact that it is square presents a huge problem. So for full range speakers bass traps are a must.

Another solution (which in most cases including mine is unreasonable) is to position the speakers kitty corner so the room becomes a diamond shape rather than a square. This works best with bookshelf speakers. Most important is to cover windows and the area behind the speaker. That made the most difference in my room and I simply threw a comforter on the wall. It works.

Don't give up though it can be frustrating at times.

Tweed, A couple of additional hints. Pay close attention to the 1st reflection points from your side walls and the radiation pattern of your speakers. There is a conflicting issue involved. If you have a speaker with a broad radiation pattern, sidewall reflections will reinforce and distort high frequencies. If you point the speakers at the listening position to lessen these reflections you will be listening to them on axis and many speakers are "hot" on axis and meant by the manufacturers to be pointed straight ahead, which takes you back to excessive sidewall reflections, unless you can deaden this wall area(if that is a problem I can recommend a solution). Also, the dimensions of your room will likely cause some severe bass abnormalities. These may be impossible to cure with speaker/listening positioning, but you could make them worse by placing the speakers too close to reinforcing boundries. I would get a good test tone disc and a Radio Shack meter to help you identify and solve these problems (see the Rives site). Ultimately you might need to put an equalizer in your tape loop to get a good response in your room. And, at its best, I doubt in your room that you will ever get great sound at high volume with out serious professional help, both service and product, but you should be able, with monitors, to get some pretty good sound at medium volume. Hope that helps a bit.......