About to invest in room treatments; GIK, RealTraps, DIY -- what is your experience?

@nolo and @pdreher  Thank you both very much. These are especially useful.

@papafrog Thanks. A "tunable" idea sounds attractive.

Thanks, djones! Looks good.

Nolo, it looks like you posted the same URL twice.

@jdal I've heard similar good reports from others about RealTraps. It's going to be a balancing act between predicted efficacy of the kind of unit and cost. I will probably mix and match companies and go with things I can eventually use in other rooms, should I be able to do a new room, down the road.

@ebm  Can't quite make out what you're saying. Are GIK/Tube traps better than Stillpoints? 

@djones I was on the long wall and had good results but the short wall (now that I've rearranged the room) offers a much deeper sound stage. Speakers can come  as far as 6.5 feet off front wall if I wish and I can treat some of the first reflection points  which are now more prominent than before (on long wall). Bass is a bit crisper now.

They're Salk SS 6M stand mounts. They go down to around 35 hz (really do).

Thanks, Erik.

Otherwise, interesting discussion, albeit not what I was asking about.  Helmholtz resonators are not the first thing I'll consider.

I appreciate the suggestions so far. I have taken hundreds of scans with room EQ Wizard and have someone very experienced helping me look over and analyze the scans. I am managing to deal with the low frequencies pretty well and have optimized listening position and speaker placement. After a lot of experimentation I reorganized my room and set up along the short wall rather than the long wall. I understand that a variety of different treatments are likely necessary and the stillpoints product sounds almost too good to be true, because from what I have heard most rooms need to be mostly covered. Low frequencies have a lot of energy and need either a very deep trap or some kind of a dense trap that is a bit less deep. I have never heard of a product that absorbs from 40 to 40,000. 

For those who like Stillpoints, WHY do you like them?

Having a busy week. Here are some replies.

Thanks, newtoncr for the tip about ASC. I have read that whether treatments are tubes or panels, it doesn't really matter, but I'll read some more. Some of the photos of a room filled with tubes seems more spoof than proof.

bigwave1, yes, I'm doing extensive analysis first.

@mesch 
mesch, I've played with my OC 703 at the side walls and ceiling and I definitely heard an improvement. I am looking at some kits from ATS. The shipping is a killer! I like the idea of the 2' x 2' corner placement. I could cut a panel and try it up there. I don't need to frame these to try things. Just covering in fabric for now and then will put in a frame if they have a good effect.
After a lot of room measurement and listening, the optimal placement is: tweeter to ear, 8'7"; speaker baffle to front wall, 5'10"; listening position to front wall, 13'10"

corelli (a great composer!) thank you for the recommendation. I'll go look at Audiomute. I love your room -- so organized and modern-beautiful! Are the side wall reflection points that wide so they deal with reflections from *both* speakers? Also, what's on the front wall?

@wfowenmd 
thanks wfowendmd for the head's up about GIK. People do love them, but the time consumed by sending stuff back and forth is a real negative. Time is my most precious resource at this point in my life.

thanks baylinor for your experience, too. My room is so odd that I'm taking a stepwise approach, not just throwing my situation at an expert also paid to get product out the door. Given the complexity of acoustics and the likelihood of mis-treatment, and the profit motive, I will likely buy a couple things, add them, measure and listen, and then move to the next step.

8th-note, thanks. I saw that and we do have some towels. ;-) But as audio2design notes, I have lower frequency challenges, too.

@djones MMM? Not sure I have.

@jmphotography 
@jmphotography I've already had a long delay with GIK and now am back in touch, but I had a great response from ATS. GIK is warning about huge waits. Perhaps they're too successful for their own good (can't keep up)? Still, I'll work with more than one if it seems helpful.

@pokey77 
@pokey thanks. Pillows do nothing in my room. Stillpoints is just expensive enough that I would worry that once I buy them, there would be too much cognitive dissonance to say they're bad. I suspect there's some "margin" in their products that doesn't smell kosher.

mmm -- thank you djones. I'll take a look.

@corelli I posted a photo but it's old. It's on the long wall. I've moved to the short wall and everything is in measurement Hell. Moving the sub, taking measurements on listening position, speaker position, room modes, etc. I have not done treatments yet because until I have a very firm sense of what my room's actual, physical limitations are, I won't be sure where to plant my flag, so to speak. 

My current impression of my setup is that it's quite good to excellent. But I know it has issues and I want to address them. Just need to be sure what they are. I do not want to buy lots of treatments unnecessarily.

I'm not against the idea of a Helmholtz resonator type of solution, but I'm not yet sure which frequencies are most problematic. I do not have too many peaks, the greater problem is with nulls. 

@audio2design
I have had a mic and REW for 7 months and have done hundreds of measurements. I thought I mentioned that, but I agree with you that this is an absolutely necessary prerequisite to spending money on the room.

@pdreher Thanks for the head's up about wait times for GIK. Will probably try to confirm about wait times. Others have suggested others, here, too, such as ATS Acoustics. That may be a good solution, too

@rbstehno  good rec's. thanks.

@midareff1 thanks for your experience report. nice room!

@martinb Glad to hear of good experiences with GIK. I will send them a scan, I'm sure.

@hornps Good to hear from someone with a similar ceiling height. Dennis Foley said to me, "Worst ceiling height I've ever encountered in 20 years. Find another room." Good to hear about GIK.

@nagel Good to hear your story, too. Thank you.

@nolojunko I have not started treatment at all. I have been doing analysis for 6 months (learning) especially focused on 20hz-300hz only, because bass is most important to figure out, first. I've optimized LP and Speakers. Working on scans with sub(s).
I've heard good reports about RealTraps, too, and they're on my list.
I had not heard of Knauf; not against simple building project, and agree about complicated corner traps -- too much for my schedule/abilities. I suppose you're not warning against OC 703 in your comment about "dense/rigid foam" or are you? Now sure what they're best called.

Thank you for the links. I cannot figure out how to get rid of a couple really persistent nulls.

Thank you Lemonhaze. I have seen some instructional videos on how to make corner traps. They look easy-ish. (I’m not that handy but this seems doable.)

I posted a single scan to Avnirvana and got some interesting feedback from Earl. https://www.avnirvana.com/threads/how-much-can-the-results-of-two-identical-scans-vary.8061/post-608...

Appreciate the input.

Having watched a bunch of Dennis Foley videos -- which seem sensible -- can anyone tell me what you found problematic with what he says or does? 

@audio2design Thanks -- I’m trying to correlate the factors you mention. The room is quite irregular in some ways, so it’s lack of closed-ness and rectangularity makes it hard to know what the standards might be. I know there are ways to do it, but I’m quickly getting over my head.

I have one sub dedicated to listening and another in the house I can try out along with the first to do measurements. I am convinced about swarms/arrays but I cannot go there, in this room. I will do it eventually, but for now, I’m optimizing a less-than-perfect room.

Thanks for the info, re: Foley.

This seems like the mortal blow, since this technology is their killer app (if I gleaned their message correctly):

Aside from all that - what do you all think about using activated carbon in bass traps? For me it of itself makes some sense

Activated carbon actually does have some useful acoustic absorption properties. That much is true. Somewhere I have a couple of papers and some research on that. It is even used in some types of "ear defender" headsets, for industrial hearing protection. It's better than foam for that. However, in studios, it does not perform better than more traditional bass traps, and doesn't even get to the same level of efficiency. Then there's the cost, and the weight... it would have to be much, much better than other types of bass trap to be justifiable.

Comparing my local prices for materials it would be ca. 10x more expensive

And there you have it! It mostly certainly will not be ten times better, nor five times, nor even twice... To justify an increase of ten times in the cost, one would expect to have a rather substantial increase in performance. That isn't the case. There are already very good bass traps that can do the same job for a fraction of the price, and at a fraction of the weight: panel traps, limp membrane traps, Helmholtz resonators, even plain old porous absorption. All are proven to work at low frequencies, and to work effectively, at lower cost and lower weight. So there's no real benefit here... except to the pocket of the manufacturer!

@nolojunko

Thank you for your detailed and probing reply. A few answers/comments.

I am realizing that I need to do more left/right speaker sweeps. With help, I've built a spreadsheet to record db changes at key frequency points along with various positionings.

Yes, I have no corner or front-wall bass traps in place yet.

I am about 14 ft from the front wall, but the room is odd. It's 27 ft long in the rectangle I'm in, but there is an additional 8' x 5' hallway entering into it. This listening position was chosen because of the way it both sounded and measured. It's very hard to know where the standard 38% position is, given the irregular shape.

And yes, what I'm seeing on the sweeps before treating is just a couple of nulls; the member here helping me said it was one of the best untreated scans he's seen in a long time.

Are you measuring each speaker separately? Answer: no, but I will.

I will reach out to the acoustics thread at Gearslutz forum. I have a lot of the data ready to go. And if I stare at it any longer, I'll lose my mind.

Thanks again!

Um Mahgister, no offense, but you do this in a lot of threads. Take a question and relatively focused discussion and drag it into your interesting but somewhat hard to follow and tangential directions. At great length.

Clearly you want or need to talk about these issues. That's fine. But may I politely suggest you start a thread with the things you want to discuss (however abstract they are) rather than injecting them into focused threads seeking to solve a problem? It would keep this thread open for more focused or useful contributions (to my question).

@maghister Yes you have the "right" to go on and on. I was only making a request. Forget it. I'll just skip past your posts if they're off topic and everyone else who is interested in the main theme of the thread can do the same.

Thank you, nolo!