How do you enhance a bad listening room's accoustics without breaking the bank? thoughts?


I am looking at a cork wall covering product to help enhance my listening room acoustics. The room is in a condo and shares duty as an "L" shaped living / dinning room. As I have neighbor's on either side I was thinking of doing the one wall where the speakers are placed and the opposite wall where I have my sitting position (The Coach!).  I was thinking the entire sitting room wall (10x8) and the speaker area (10x8) on the opposite wall. This may also have the additional bonus of helping to reduce the noise coming from my stereo into those condo's next to me?
I was wondering what people's experience has been and successful materials used as wall coverings or panels.
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Showing 1 response by lemonhaze

If you want to not break the bank then go DIY. The advice to get Smith's book is good. Putting up cork everywhere is not!

All rooms need treatment because of overly long decay and to treat this the absorbers need to be thick. There are many articles online that will explain what's needed and why. Look up Ethan Winer's videos for a simple to understand intro.

Drapes and carpet being thin will only act as narrow-band absorbers and too much will ruin the sound not help it. The same clown is back again recommending artificial ficus trees 🙄

Room acoustics is the best and cheapest way to get really good sound. In fact it is the only way. The most sensible thing to do is download REW which is a free program that will allow you to measure your room's response and so identify the problem areas and also provide info on the length of time it takes for the sound to decay across the full spectrum. A microphone is needed that costs about $100 or less. You might also consider migrating over to a forum that deals more with acoustics like 'gearslutz'  It is taken seriously and you don't get the ridiculous suggestion to clutter you room with dust collecting ficus trees, for ficus sake.