Systemic Development > Psycho-Acoustics

Chime in!!!! - Thinking of some listening space changes......

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bpape:
Lots of options in that room.  Gut tells me to continue to face the right side of the drawing.  Hitting that acute corner is an excellent place to kill bass resonances if you straddle that corner with something at least 4" thick.  I agree with Rich that the flat wall also needs to be addressed.  The issue with 2" is that it doesn't do a lot be lot below about 175Hz or so.  Deep male voices will go lower than that.  If you do 2' wide straddling that whole corner, you might be able to do just 2" on that wall or a mix of 2" and diffusion.

Bass absorbtion can increase apparent bass level and depth and help smooth response abberations if done properly.  The way it works is that it keeps the bass from cancelling itself out or reinforcing itself - hence, smoother, deeper, increased HEARD bass.  The bass is always there - it's just that a lot of it get's cancelled out at times.

Another thing you can do to get a HUGE soundstage in a room like that when facing right is to use diffusion on the slanted ceiling.

The last thing you'll likely need to address is the rear wall behind the seating position. This will need to happen either way.  Some of the deepest and worst nulls many times come off that rear wall.  With the distances you have, it can be very low.  6" panels would be an excellent choice.

You can certainly DIY panels if you want.  There are a variety of materials to choose from.  OC703, mineral wool, and acoustical cotton all have excellent properites and each has their place though in some cases, they're pretty much interchangable.

Just be careful with doing the blanket thing and making decisions based on that.  They'll be pretty much upper mid and high frequency absorbant only so it's not going to help the bass issues and it's going to skew the decay time across the spectrum a bit so things may sound 'dead and muddy' to a point.  You'll just have to concentrate on the imaging/high frequency stuff.

Also, if you just want to play, go buy a few rolls of insulation, leave them in the bags and stack them in your vertical corners.  That's something you can play with and balance things a bit and then return.

Just a few thoughts.

Bryan

canyoneagle:
Thanks for the input, Bryan.  You are the acoustimaster  8)

On my "play evening", I tacked a couple of foam mattress pads - one behind each speaker, and one on the side wall to cover 1st and 2nd reflection points. I hung a thick quilt across the front wall, and stacked thick cushions in the front corners.

My listening position was about 6-7' from the plane of the drivers (the centers of the drivers are 7' apart).

WOW!

The imaging, soundstage and tone were dramatically better.  The bass seemed more solid and smoother through the range.  This was an encouraging experiment!!!!!!!!

More soon,
Michael

richidoo:
That's fun!! Now you're hooked! Acoustics is a great tangent/complement to the audio hobby. Because the more addicted you get to acoustic treatment, the higher your enjoyment and the less expensive your gear need be to achieve same listening high. Being FG and wood, it will never cost as much as transformers and tubes... but it can enable much greater performance of the system than incremental and expensive gear upgrades. Experimenting like you're doing is the best way to figure it out, even when you buy commercial treatments, where they go is discovered by ear.
Enjoy!!
Rich

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