Room Treatment

So I am wondering what you mean by overdoing it? 

@unreceivedogma signs a room is overtreated...the room feels emotionally uncomfortable as our brains expect reflections...you start removing absorption and find improvement...the room feels overly warm due to a scarcity of high frequency wavelengths...the room sounds smaller than it actually is.    

An over dampened, deadend, etc room results in a test chamber is not generally an optimal listening environment. The best results are with a combination of treatments that allow life into the music so it  sounds more natural to the space it was recorded in.

Thus, there might not be a perfect way to do this as music is recorded in quite a wide range of places, studios, live venues outdoors, concert halls, etc.

If you take the time to study the subject then use the minimal amount of bass traps, diffusers and absorbers to get to the place where it sounds the best to you for your tastes in the variety of music you listen to then that is perfect, for you.

Rick

@unreceivedogma

Yes, it is possible to over-treat a room. Over-treatment typically refers to,

- Excessive absorption of mid and high frequencies while leaving the low end untreated. This creates an unnatural, muffled sound with no liveliness or air.

- Lack of appropriate diffusion, which can make the room feel claustrophobic and sterile by removing natural spatial cues.

However, in a semi-anechoic room like yours, the goal is to minimize reflections almost entirely, creating an ultra-clean, controlled soundstage. In such rooms, the “liveliness” and spaciousness should come from the recording itself, not from the room reflections. If you’re thrilled with the sound of your system, you’ve probably nailed it.

@lalitk

@seanheis1

@raam

I am THRILLED with the sound.

yes: all the dimensionality and atmospherics is coming from the groove almost entirely.

The room is not dead, I am getting full spectrum.

And, the sound is somehow holographic: on some recordings, sounds seem to originate from either side or behind me. I suspect this has something to do with the woofer placement, which is behind me.

To be clear: I am not arguing that you cannot kill a room with over-damping. I am arguing that most experienced audiophiles would look at my room and say: this has to sound terrible.

But it is the opposite.

My architect went to Harvard to get his masters. A good friend of his from back in those days was an acoustical engineer who now holds a number of patents. When my architect told him about my restoration of an historic home to its original aesthetic, while also making it near-passive house in energy performance, he also told him btw the client is also an audiophile. That is when he hit on the idea (based on some of his ongoing theoretical work) of the room treatment. Allegedly, until me, no one had done it yet.

I’m always up for experimentation and as it was a gut reno of a building that was distressed and abandoned for 21 years, it cost me nothing to frame it out and put the rock wool insulation in as I was going to do anyway for thermal barrier and fire resistance reasons, install the audio, crank it up, settle back and let it rip. If it worked, cover it with fire resistant burlap. If it didn’t work, up goes the sheet rock.

I covered it with burlap: his friend nailed it. No need to spend $$$$$s on expensive traps, diffusers, absorbers etc, all of which are ugly aesthetically. All for the cost of what I was doing anyway: basically, the acoustic insulation is a freebie piggy-backing on the thermal barrier.

I figured that I could always ADD harder surfaces (framed posters, eg) if it was too muddy but that has been unnecessary.

The Mastering Lab shelving on the Altecs is set to neutral on both the midrange and the highs most of the time, and when I do adjust it, it’s at most by 10 to 20%

As for “emotional distress” caused by a dead room: guests feel the opposite. They volunteer that it feels serene, peaceful, meditatively zen-like.

I've always found clapping to give me general sense of liveliness/damping of room, I've been on both side of equation. I've accumulated many types of acoustic treatments over the years since changes in system may require change of treatments. I mostly rely on items like carpet and tapestries when I need absorption, acoustic panels like Skylines and Synergistic HFT for diffusion. Just a few strategically may be all one needs, easy to overdo it with treatments.