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Room Too Dead
Hello All,
I am looking for advice and ideas on how to condition my Home Theater room. I built the theater in my unfinished basement. The foundation walls are covered in insulation and vapor barrier. Instead of construction walls to cover them, I chose a "pipe and drape" to cover the walls. I believe that the room is too dead. It seems to affect overall soundstage in the midrange range. Does anybody have experience with this problem and ideas to add a little "excitement" to the room? Thank you all.
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- 45 posts total
As an experiment try covering sections of the drapes with plastic sheeting or poly tarps. You could even try paper/Xmas wrap (anything that won't absorb much). https://www.tarpsplus.com/products/white-poly-tarps?variant=39757140197538
DeKay |
+1
Thin plastic can reflect highs while still letting bass go through and get absorbed by underlying layers. You’ll need to get it distributed on opposite walls so the sound can bounce around again. By selectively livening up parts of the room you may be able to achieve a desirable effect where immediate early reflections are absorbed but later reflections can stay alive for a while and reach your ears to create some spacious ambience. If you can prevent early reflections from reaching your ears for the first 10 to 15 milliseconds and then have some ambience sustain after that in the room, that should sound really good. That corresponds to a path length of about 14 to 20 feet, so the sound from the first reflection should travel an additional 14 feet to your ear after the direct sound from the speaker arrives. Delayed reflections that cross your head at angles of 60 degrees or more are desirable to create maximum inter-aural difference. Reflections from straight ahead and behind are less useful and should be deflected to the sides of the room. |
Just to be clear, bass will not get “absorbed” in any way whatsoever by underlying layers of drapes — just some mids and highs will be attenuated and that’s it. Bass waves are waaaay too long to be affected at all by some fabric, so they’ll pass right through that uninhibited to your cement walls. |
A heavily damped room is just fine..... IF you can tow your speakers in toward your listening position. When you are dampened everywhere, you lose your reflection and boundries. So, to get a real idea of how well your speakers can throw a soundstage an image, they need to be towed in. If you speakers have natural peaks that are unpleasant, then it gets tough in a room that is highly damped. |
- 45 posts total