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Room treatment success story

A couple of months ago I asked the forum for advice about what may make the best upgrade for my system (e.g., better amp, sub woofer, etc.) One of the responses was to focus on room treatment/room acoustics. While I had seen mention of the importance of room treatment, this was not originally on my list of possible upgrades. However, it got me thinking and doing more research.

A few days ago I took delivery of 5 GIK Acoustic 244 bass trap panels. WOW, WHAT A DIFFERENCE! I knew my room had a little too much slap echo (e.g., clap of hands echoed a little too long than it should), but I was not prepared for the dramatic change that the bass trap panels made. They not only took care of the slap echo problem, but the bass in the Magnepans have completely come to life.

A few of the very noticable differences:

-- Bass lines are much more prominent and it is much easier to distinguish individual notes (rather than low notes that sound more the same).

-- Vocals are clearer and more focused. For example, Mark Knopfler's vocals on the Get Lucky CD are now much more easily understandable and clearer.

-- Listening to Keb Mo's Slow Down CD, I realized that there were certain guitar notes that without the traps would seem to disappear or have such a lower volume as to almost not there, but now I am hearing notes that I simply could not hear before.

-- Some of my rock CDs that I thought were simply very poorly recorded (and perhaps are) are now much more listenable and actually sound pretty decent.

Before getting the bass trap panels, I had borrowed a REL sub from a friend for a couple of weeks. It sounded great. However, the roughly $400 spend on these bass trap panels made a MUCH more significant difference in the bass in my room than this $1,500 REL subwoofer. (Again, the REL sounded great, but I now realize that I was not able to hear what it or the Magnepans were truly capable of.)

GIK Acoustics was great to deal and was very patient in answering my questions. I am in no way affiliated with them, just a satisfied customer.

So thanks to Lenny_zwik for pushing me in the direction of improving my room acoustics!

By the way, I would still like to get a better amp and a sub woofer, but I plan on my next purchase to be a rug for hard wood floors and a few more bass trap panels (I have a large room).
edge22

Showing 6 responses by schipo

schipo
1,268 posts
 
great I just myself purchased some used treatment RPG and waiting for delivery.May I ask where you positioned the panels? Thanks for this thread.
schipo
1,268 posts
 
The rug on the floor ads a nice touch but does very little with taming the room. Rpg has a unique product called BAD panels, combination absorber&diffusor in one package.They should with proper application keep from the over usage of to much absorbtion and dead room.I suggest using their 4" panels and work on the early reflections.The front wall should receive first treatment and then back wall.
schipo
1,268 posts
 
How does one determin how much and where? There ae many ways to determine placement of treatment. Small rooms always have bass problems so you might start at the top where walls meet. You may ask a friend walk around a room and talk in a faily loud tone to determine if the voice sounds pleasent or sharp or grating to your ear. The use of clapping hands and listening for the decay "slap echo" and just good old commen sense.Placing treatment of the front wall in thickness of a least 3"to 4" is best and the rear wall are best and the most safe.
schipo
1,268 posts
 
This information comes from "Sound Reproduction" The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms written by a pioneer in acoustics Floyd Toole

first reflections
While the consensus is that there should be some absorption in a room, there are two schools of thought on whether one should try to absorb first reflections:

1) Don't treat first reflections: See Toole, Sound Reproduction for info that you don't need to treat first reflections. Toole's chapters 6 and 7 and in many places throughout the whole book, explain that when tested and asked in controlled experiments, people prefer early reflections for music and early reflections help speech intelligibilty. having the first reflections give the benefit of a sense of envelopment and broader spatial imaging (and low IACC) that listeners in Toole's experiments prefer from first lateral reflections.

Of course, you do still want absorption in the room primarily to avoid flutter echoes. But so long as reflections are not so delayed that they start to resemble echoes, people prefer them.

2) The old conventional wisdom, but on the wane (especially among those who have read Toole's book), is that you should treat first reflections.

Possible good reasons to absorb first reflections are:

speakers with poor off-axis repsonse may benefit from first reflection absorption. That is, if your front speakers send out the equivalent of acoustic flatulence to the side to be reflected off the walls, then you probably don't want that acoustic flatulence to be bounced back to you, so you might as well absorb it.
if you are a sound engineer and want to hear only the direct sound, including the direct sound from the surround speakers and don't want to be distracted by the ambiance and envelopment created by the reflections, then you should absorb them.
Apart from those good reasons to absorb first reflections, some people maintain that absorbing first reflections helps imaging. This is inconsistent with Toole's experiments, however.
schipo
1,268 posts
 
Yes to adjust the side wall treatment to individual "TASTE"..the individual taste may be wrong when it comes to treatment of first reflection.
schipo
1,268 posts
 
There is no evidence that first reflections are bad as a matter of principle, hence there is no NEED to treat them.
Side wall reflections have generally positive effects, and there is evidence for that.
Reflections from front and rear are less preferred and treatment may be beneficial.
There are the obvious exceptions and therefore each case must be considered individually.
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