Room acoustics


How about a thread on room acoustics and ways to improve the in-room performance of your system and its speakers? Subjects covered could be the physics of room response, measurement of response in your own room, and how to deal with imperfections, above and below the Schroeder frequency, like damping, bass traps, speaker positioning, (multiple) subwoofers, and dsp equalization. Other subjects could be how to create a room with lower background noise for greater dynamic range, building construction, or what to do in small rooms.
I am a bit busy just now, but as soon as I have time I will try to kick off with some posts and links.
willemj
Surprised no one has mentioned the room build itself, or as a core component of the acoustic environment. If one has an oportunity, building a room with acoustic design forethought, aids a lot to improve the overall acoustical environment. Of course, if one does not have this opportunity, then all of these other suggested methods, which help to tune the room, are also great. 

My room was built with acoustics in mind from the onset. 31’x19’ is the core, resil channel all walls, dual wall construction on back wall, (2x4 studs each, 5/8 inch quiet rock each layer (530), Roxul safe and sound each wall assembly)), sidewalls and one back walll (surrounded by concrete (5/8 quiet rock 2x4 construction with roxul safe and sound), ceiling (5 inch acoustic spray foam insulation, roxul safe and sound, double layer quiet rock 5/8 inch 530). Room measured with Phonic and Rives Audio measuring tools, in addition to Velodyne Sub EQ for low frequency measurements. After all that, the room still needs some spot treatments. I have natural stone columns, and partial natural stone front wall, to aid in natural diffusion. The result, one of the best complements was from a fellow audio friend, who dabbles in the extreme exotic who said that my system sounded the best compared to other extremely expensive systems. It’s the room to blame👍😀
Great thread so far with a lot of information. When taking FR measurements, what kind of smoothing needs to be applied? IOW, what is the minimum Q of a mode that should or needs to be dealt with?
geoffkait, Yes you might be right because the guy was telling me that since he got his room done professionally his systems didn't sound as good. He has had hundreds of speakers and components and even 100,000 system. It definitely helped sales. I probably wouldn't of bought them. You have to watch out when buying equipment. But back to room acoustics I have read many articles on room acoustics and to get it done right you need somebody to come in and measure all the room nodes and so forth. You can probably buy a few acoustic panels and reflective panels. It probably would help to a certain degree. But as I pointed out before get somebody that knows what their doing if that is important to whoever really wants to put that kind of money into a room. Audiophiles can be obsessive to a large degree. I just want to be happy and listen to the music on a nice system. Yes that guys  100,00 system sounded phenomenal especially in that room. But like I said he wasn't happy until he got that done. That just goes to tell people how important Room Acoustics really are. Laterr  
@robd2 (why don't these @things work?)

I'll generate that graph when I'm back from the dentist.