Looking to do some acoustic treatment to this room.... is it possible?

[Namella73]

Hi all, 

 

I will add two drawings of my room. I think two major issues : the open area on the left and the glass on the right. 

 

I will take out the Chinese cabinet and move the speakers evenly.

 

All windows have some kind of luxaflex on it made from fabric. Will that help?

 

Any thoughts?

 

 

[Namella73]

Maybe is it a good idea to place a small book shelf in the left corner? it is before the first reflection point though. 

[Namella73]

This is the stuff on the windows, even though it is thin will the structure help?

[BugPowderDust]

That room is going to do you no favours I’m afraid.

Your floor and ceiling look to be the most easily addressed options. You don’t have many options for wall treatment at all.
 

Your windows, with their coverings, will likely give you some mild diffusion at best.

 

Have you tried measuring the in room response using REW? 
 

see: https://avgadgets.com/ultimate-rew-tutorial-taking-measurements/

 

I’d imagine you are going to have a very long rt60 in that room as it stands today.

[AudioGeek]

Nice space!

That alcove will really boost bass - not a bad thing, and easy to control with eq/dsp.

For a highly reflective room speaker choice becomes important. Not sure b&w is a good choice here.

[frankn]

It looks like the room & system is mainly setup for watching movies?

What do you perceive as problematic now and What are your goals?

It looks like you have a microphone stand in the picture - as PBD said have you tried room acoustic measurements to see whether you can identify potential issues you might want to address?

Personally I don’t think Luxaflex blinds will do much except in very high freq. 

How much effort, cost and what freedom will you have within the family constraints to add treatments to the room?   Some commercial products can look nice and work but are expensive.  
DIY can be very cost effective but can look “industrial” depending on how good your skills are. 

 

 

[davewantsmoore]

19 hours ago, Namella73 said:

This is the stuff on the windows, even though it is thin will the structure help?

 

No.  It will make no difference.

[davewantsmoore]

19 hours ago, Namella73 said:

the open area on the left

 

Yes, this is a problem.

 

19 hours ago, Namella73 said:

and the glass on the right. 

 

No. This is not really any more or less reflective than if it were a normal wall.

 

19 hours ago, Namella73 said:

move the speakers evenly.

 

Yes, this is a problem to fix.

 

19 hours ago, Namella73 said:

Maybe is it a good idea to place a small book shelf in the left corner?

 

No.

[genkifd]

first thing i would do is a thick rug and then first reflection on the right try a plant to diffuse sound. 

[davewantsmoore]

1 hour ago, genkifd said:

try a plant to diffuse sound. 

will do basically nothing

[Namella73]

Lost of good answers, thanks so far... 

I ran Dirac (with UMIK 1) and get following results (se e pics).  

 

Listening to music on 2.1 it sounds like the mids are constrained... base sounds ok (but I'm a noob).

 

Snoop advised me to map the sub to a db+6 curve , I will do that this weekend and listen to it.

 

Do you guys see any issues with the measurements? 

 

I think I need to upgrade de center and surrounds cause they are not very good...

 

I was thinking maybe a couple of GIK 242 on feet (see pic) that I can move into the first reflection points when I listen to music... or is that crazy talk?

 

[genkifd]

6 hours ago, davewantsmoore said:

will do basically nothing

many audio reviewers do this. depends on the plant

[davewantsmoore]

5 hours ago, genkifd said:

depends on the plant

If the leaves were larger than 10cm in any dimension (ie. an individual leaf bigger than 10cm) ..... then it might start to have an extremely minor effect.

Edited February 12, 2022 by davewantsmoore

[davewantsmoore]

8 hours ago, Namella73 said:

Do you guys see any issues with the measurements? 

No.

... but there isn't enough information there to say if "room treatment" is going to he helpful.

 

 

If the room does sound too "live" .... then you may need a substantial amount of extra absorption.

[BugPowderDust]

1 hour ago, davewantsmoore said:

No.

... but there isn't enough information there to say if "room treatment" is going to he helpful.

 

If the room does sound too "live" .... then you may need a substantial amount of extra absorption.

Reiterating what I posted earlier, use the Umik mic to measure the room response and aside from the SPL chart share the various output charts it gives you for RT60, Clarity and Decay. 

 

This will tell you if the room is causing big issues in terms of frequency response (and where) as well as tell you how live the room is and what frequencies have the longest decays, which in turn will help you design what kids of treatments will make the most sense.

[Namella73]

will give that a go and post results later thanks!

 

[Pim]

Although different in shape and size, I also have a room with lots of reflection issues. I was about to give up on it because proper room treatment would ruin the look of the room. I ended up going for a rather different approach that works remarkably well; semi-near field listening. I pulled the speakers way into the room where they sound best.

 

I do have a chair with a high back so there's no reflection from the rear wall to worry about. You have plenty of room behind the listening seat so no worries there. I also have a few couches in between the speakers and me, that prevent reflections from the floor, which you don't have, but some rugs would help somewhat.

 

Once I had it all sounding pretty damn good, I put two felt pen dots on the floor to mark the corners of where the speakers were. Now, when we're just watching tv or for casual listening, the speakers are plonked close to the wall and when I want to sit down for a serious session, I put them where they sound best and just enjoy the music. Those B&W's wouldn't be too hard to move so it's an option you can consider.

[Ed369]

[Ed369]

I guess have those at early reflections would help . besides this i dont think you have much choice

[Namella73]

thanks all for the help

I will. try pulling the speakers closer to the listening position. To see what that does.

Im getting familiar with REW to see if I can measure the  RT60, Clarity and Decay.

Edited February 18, 2022 by Namella73

[Namella73]

Hi all , just did the REW measurement of L+R + Sub.

 

I have no idea what I'm posting here so forgive my ignorance.

 

These are the results without Dirac.

 

I need some help with interpreting this is the room as horrible as we expected?

[Namella73]

And after Dirac (I don't know If there should be a difference )

[frednork]

Your graphs show a pretty reverberant room where below around 2k the reflections all moosh together.  As mentioned by @BugPowderDust a big rug and something absorbent on the ceiling will help a bit with that. What are you most interested in? multichannel movies or 2ch music?  As 2 channel relies on the phantom centre then things like uneven reflections can really cause havoc with getting the phantom centre to  sit solidly.  you can also  try acoustic drapes along the right window

Either way (if you can), getting closer to the speakers and aiming the speakers at you or even inside of you may provide some benefit. .this is mainly due to placing the speakers and yourself in a position where any reflection is late enough that it is not perceived as part of the direct signal from the speakers. The panels may help here but I would try without first. As you have dirac some of the left right imbalances can be sorted by that hopefully. perhaps see this for some ideas https://www.audiophysic.com/en/rules-about-positioning/

 

 

Here is a decay plot of a similar room to yours. Open on the left and another smaller room behind. This room has no treatment and no dsp except for carpet and normal couches etc. The dimensions are probably not as big as yours. the decay is pretty even down to below 100hz

 

 

Here is the RT60 graph, you can see the rt 60 is around 300ms for most of the range. If you can bring yours down to around 400ms or so and as even as possible then that would be a big step forward.

 

 

 

Here is the clarity graph for comparison

 

 

 

Edited February 28, 2022 by frednork

[BugPowderDust]

Yeah, what @frednork said. My room is probably more reverberant than yours, but I put up about 25 panels of Art Novion stuff and I'm considering more on the ceiling. I dropped my RT60 down by about 150 msec and then I engaged a DSP specialist to build me filters to deal with the room response and to integrate my subwoofers.  I know you've got Dirac, but in the playing with it I did I didn't like the results (Mini DSP DDRC24).

 

I have filters from Mitch at Accurate Sound and Thierry at HAF in my system and they are worlds better than anything I could wrangle out of Dirac.

 

I've got a copy of Audiolense XO to do this myself one day, but I've yet to commit the time to start playing. 

[Namella73]

thanks gents for the insights,  

 

I'm using it mostly for Home Theatre and second for Music.

 

I'll dabble some more in Dirac to get optimal results for now.

 

I have already turned them a bit closer and inwards... that helped. I will place the speakers closer  , or will that mess up any HT experience? How close do they need to be for this to work?

 

On the stereo image when I listen, is everything supposed to happen between the speakers (and a little to the left and right). Or is the aim to have it very wide? This probably depends on the track but if I listen to a bunch of different tracks.... Or can you recommend a good test track ?

 

Need to dive into those rt60 , clarity and decay graphs I still don't fully understand them.  

 

@BugPowderDustAfter Dirac which was meh of u, u added a mini dip DDRC24? And u had Mitch and Thierry create filters for this? 

 

Was this 5.1 or 2.1? what kind of price range are these DSP filters?

 

Thanks!