Room Treatment

This is something I've been meaning to do for ages as I've long believed that the room/speaker interaction is probably the single most influential factor on the sound of your system...any system. Just moving my speakers a foot or so can completely change the soundstage. Ask a pro engineer about cables, stands and other upgrades much touted in the hi-fi press & they will say get your room right first. It's a subject that, while acknowledged occasionally, rarely gets column inches. Doesn't sell the expensive kit they are there to advert...err sorry.. review, I suppose.

Obviously properly treating a room isn't always viable in the home, where the "better half" might have something to say about you filling up the living room with diffusers & absorbers. You're lucky if you can sneak a half decent set of speakers past the guards let alone cables & stands and other "complete wastes of money". But I'm lucky enough to have a dedicated room now. The downside is that it's fairly small & square and I'm forced to sit about a metre from the rear wall. Less than ideal to say the least. However I've been slowly working at it.

I've had quite a bit of experience of recording studios in the past and my job now sometimes involves doing fit out in theatres and broadcasting studios. We don't do the acoustic design, but we do manufacture to the acoustic spec. So I try to glean some knowledge. I've also taken some advice and read a bit on t'internet.

Putting some proper wideband absorbers on the rear wall really helped clean up the sound at the listening position. So now I've got a couple of bass traps for the corners behind the speakers and some diffusers for 1^st reflection points on order. Should be here at the weekend. I've been advised to try a few other things, but I'll do one step at a time.

Also (IMO) some of the stuff available doesn't look too bad, we use similar (but too expensive for me) things in my day job, doing ultra high end corporate fit out. A far cry from eggcrates stapled to the wall.

Does anyone else here go the extra mile? Any tips?

Edited by DaveG - 11 Apr 2016 at 7:12pm

I agree Jon, I definitely don't want to overdo things. The diffusers I'm going to use are supposed to not absorb too much, rather to delay or scatter the reflections so that they don't arrive at the listening position too close in time to the direct sound. I'm told the human brain does a pretty good job of sorting this out anyway and this should just help that process.
It was actually recommended by the people I'm getting the panels from that I put wide band traps at ceiling reflection points too, but I haven't ordered these yet.

Aside from limited budget I am certain that this is the biggest problem with my setup.  It is also a problem that I have no idea how to fix.  My amp and speaker combo sounded jaw dropping in the Richer Sounds auditioning room.  They sounded open and airy with beautiful clear treble and taught precise base.  But at home they just sound pretty good, plenty of clarity but nowhere near the levels I heard before.  The bass also seems heavier and less precise.  I have tried to work out why and it pretty much has to be the acoustics of the room.  I bought the same speaker stands that they were using.  They plugged the unit directly into a wall socket in a dilapidated 1970s single-storey shop while I am using at least a budget filtering system.  And my cables are the same brand but higher quality than the ones they used.

Have you read any of Siegfried Linkwitz' stuff Ash? I'd have thought this would be right up your street. I read an interview with him a while back that I found interesting so followed up with a visit to http://www.linkwitzlab.com/


Edited by DaveG - 12 Apr 2016 at 12:17am