Acoustic Panels and Bass Trapping a new lounge

[playdough]

9 hours ago, davewantsmoore said:

Consider fixing this at the source, rather than with "room artwork"

I measured those things outside to see if they were any good, which they were (unsurprisingly), beyond a few meters though. Bit hard to mic close up. Sound fabulous outside, lovely.

It's when they come inside, things change, gets lumpy and peaky. The ceiling and floor wasn't helping.

 

I've only applied a carpet and some ceiling treatment. The old girls sound better. (they are safe there not getting knocked around)

 

I'm interested how the RT60 graph is low because there is nothing else in the area, other than the speakers and a couch and me. if you take out the carpet, it's a crisp clap echo chamber. Not a  place to create a stereo reproduction, let alone a good one.

 

Have been always a "get the room reasonable first" apply the Impulse Time Delay last sort of operator.

 

Hopefully by then there  be a better speaker set there. At least the lounge room zone  is nearly finished construction.

 

Absolutely no other acoustic treatment for the balance of the kitchen area. (other larger half of the total floor area) Which is mostly flat, hard, reflective surfaces. Seems to give the listening zone, plenty of life. The bass traps wont effect that attribute, just fix the bass, mostly.

 

 

 

[playdough]

15 hours ago, DVDHack said:

membrane that is too large to resonate.

No such thing  

 

[davewantsmoore]

9 hours ago, playdough said:

things change, gets lumpy and peaky. The ceiling and floor wasn't helping.

This can't be fixed with room artwork.

 

You can mitigate it through speaker positioning, and adding extra sources like "flanking subwoofers", or even a "centre channel", speaker(s) which run from ~250Hz down to fill in these cancellations.

 

9 hours ago, playdough said:

I'm interested how the RT60 graph is low

I'm talking about the "target" one you posted.

 

9 hours ago, playdough said:

clap echo chamber

Yeah, obviously don't want this.... but I wouldn't be fussed on speaker measurements to look at this issue.  Just furnish the room with whatever is needed to get it down to a "pleasant living room acoustics vibe"..... I guess that's not so easy if you're trying to fit refrigerator sized speakers into the room.

 

9 hours ago, playdough said:

Have been always a "get the room reasonable first" apply the Impulse Time Delay last sort of operator.

Interpreting your decay (and similar) charts is vary hard with out (more) normalisation.

 

EQ the speakers to the correct target response before you run any "room treatment" type measurement.... otherwise it's all just swamped by "the speakers have a different frequency response between the A and B measurement".... and nobody (likely including you) can really see what is going on clearly.  It's pretty simple if you're using something like DL.

 

9 hours ago, playdough said:

Seems to give the listening zone, plenty of life.

Yeah, I've done this before (open kitchen living with speakers).    It makes the reflections quite bright.  

 

9 hours ago, playdough said:

The bass traps wont effect that attribute

Sure they will, if they're soft on the outside .... they'll change the balance of the reflections that hit them (less bright)

[playdough]

40 minutes ago, davewantsmoore said:

t makes the reflections quite bright

It seems to add to the area, which would have been a walled in 4 x 6 x 2.4m box. Glad the wall is gone, makes it a nice space.

42 minutes ago, davewantsmoore said:

they're soft on the outside

That is true, facing the soft damper inner of the suspended membrane into the room, a 20mm soft constraining damper layer in front of the diaphragm., plus the upholstery decorative outer shell. 

I thought that bit was clever, something for nothing,

47 minutes ago, davewantsmoore said:

if you're using something like DL

I'd employ something like this if I new what it was. 

 

In saying that next readings should corelate at least vaguely with previous if I resist mucking about with the present, the familiar big   lumping low bass curve reasonable HF SPL Graph.

Place is a construction zone and speakers fairly well just test rig, not optimised. Well one night I did over a beer, run some pink noise and had a play with the EQ. 

[DVDHack]

6 minutes ago, playdough said:

I'd employ something like this if I new what it was. 

Think he means Dirac Live room correction.

[playdough]

6 minutes ago, DVDHack said:

Dirac Live room correction

 

Would like a miniDSP Flex 8. 

I'll get one after the dust settles.

 

If a tower speaker or goofy footed Builder has a moment of trip and on something, there isn't a nice piece of kit crushed.

[playdough]

There won't be any valves de tipped, then arc out and destroy output transformers, seen that happen before. Smoke emanating from a case, disaster.   

[playdough]

That's the test rig, 

Yea and that amp, 25w x 4 , with it's 16v SMPS large as life. What the speakers do with it is nothing short of "unbelievable" 

I'm a lover of efficiency 

[playdough]

 

[playdough]

Inner suspended membrane frame assembly complete.

 

Interesting things to be near and personal, wagering at this point they will definitely measurably soak reverberation.  

At what frequency and Q factor  is the question.

 

I might try RTA measurement see what frequency comes of, throwing a roll of insulation tape at the centre of the membrane.

The larger of the 2 has a slightly lower "pitch" when struck with the flying roll of tape. Would be measurable.

 

Could lie the frame membrane on the carpet, sort of seals it to the carpet place a mic inside the Enclosure and run pink noise, see what that measures. There will be a lower SPL and a filtered frequency.

 

Might give an idea of what has been actually done, and outcome if it's ok or not.

 

Busy night ahead.

 

Edited August 10, 2023 by playdough

[playdough]

Unloading over a beer reflect the job, with a tune

 

As the job has progressed, some treatments competed, carpet and ceiling, the outcome has been the creation of a zone effect. Good experience so far.

 

The open living area in total is becoming 2 types of acoustic areas, obvious to everyone here.

Roughly  half of the space is a full kitchen high traffic, it's hard acoustically hardwood floor, plaster and steel. The clap ring echo is prevalent, typical from timber, easily audible in that area.

 

The soothing reverberant life sounds of busy kitchen remain.  Another positive.

 

The room seems divided on vertical line directly  in between the ceiling treatment and carpet.  You change zone moving through it into what seems to be a acoustically more reasonable, much less reverberant  critical listening place (if you like loudspeakers). 

Entirely different to the kitchen minimal clap echo in the listening position sitting on the couch.

 

The listening zone has 6m2 of DG AL windows dressed in night/day double blinds, nothing fancy. These windows seem to behave in an ok neutral way acoustically, despite their size, Good experience. 

 

The kitchen sink is about 4 meters from the couch, the difference is uncanny, when you realise how "locally affected within an open area the treatment sensitivity is".

 

Best is you can hear the reverb from the working kitchen at the couch but not the speakers in this treated area, keeps the "dead area very lively." 

 

Lowered the noise floor, slightly overall

 

 

For certain It appears you can treat quite locally, within a larger area.  Ceiling and Floor for start.

 

Can see now how an entire treated room can sound dead and overdone, no life.

 

 

 

 

[playdough]

My midget mate here always keen to make a start, but has a short  attention span, and no hands.

 

Laser is on the wall, boards are in the saw !

[DVDHack]

I thought I read somewhere that your room was going to be carpeted?  Carpet will hugely kill your top end, care needed with more absorption.  I'd rip it out if I had the option because while carpet takes out the high end it does nothing for the mids and bass.  When I added a cloud to the main listening room with carpet I had to add the BAD.

[playdough]

3 minutes ago, DVDHack said:

Carpet will hugely kill your top end

When the carpet is not in there, I loose the tiny amount of any acoustic control, I had. Without it it's an echo chamber. The carpet is a high end hemmed woollen remnant, it's 4.6 x 3.2m, with a 10mm cotton acoustic wadding underlay and as a treatment an absolute bare minimum 

 

Really ? Not sure what to say after what I've actually experienced AND documented, with measurements.?

[playdough]

17 minutes ago, DVDHack said:

I'd rip it out

yea nah. 

 

As I've suggested, your job and your treatment types suit what you like. You say your room is dead sounding, I quoted you on this. There is certainly a need for you to do some initial spectral decay plots, with a mic a calibration file and REWmeasurement software, otherwise it is simply "conjecture and ad hoc: which is a poor approach IMHO

[DVDHack]

3 minutes ago, playdough said:

yea nah. 

 

As I've suggested, your job and your treatment types suit what you like. You say your room is dead sounding, I quoted you on this. There is certainly a need for you to do some initial spectral decay plots, with a mic a calibration file and REWmeasurement software, otherwise it is simply "conjecture and ad hoc: which is a poor approach IMHO

The room has been measured, before and after.  It looks like the plot you put up with a RT60 time between 200-250mS except at the low end, which is what I'm dealing with now with diffusion over some absorption and more bass trapping.  That low RT60 works fine with home theatre but it's not a good music listening plot.  As you said though it might suit your taste but you're not there yet so how do you know.?  

 

I use REW with a UMIK-2 running through a minidsp SHD.

[playdough]

9 hours ago, DVDHack said:

how do you know

From months and months of making sure not one

substrate in this entire build resonates, ridgecap down It's a timber tin roof dwelling (standard family home) not huge, which are shocking for annoying resonances and when empty, fitted out and painted a nightmare environment acoustically. I liken it to a locker room, very resonant.

 

It does trap sub 18Hz as a building (it is acoustically neutral fairly well, below 18Hz acceptable, seen in the waterfall graph, so a small mercy. Really low bass does sound ok, 100Hz up, nah resonance gain like mad as the faces of the plaster actually all large flat surfaces start resonating

 

Getting to know intimately the space, starting with a mono single 4" cone speaker in my work radio, within the space, moved it about. centre wall, corner load and so on.

 

Being here at all stages of the build, there has been many acoustic instances when it sounded perfect, like when it was a bare frame with foil board on the studs, just insulated before lining, was like acoustic nirvana heaven with a bare floor acoustically 

 

Moved up to a pair of Krix Brix, a 2 way tiny bookshelf set. tried to get a soundstage and image, knowing what these should sound like, in a control room.

Disappointing, so in with a 12" sealed box single sub, moved it around. Brought another sub in, moved it all around the room, settled on the listening pos, then flipped the set up trying opposite ends and ended going back to my fav. pos.

Gave up for a while disappointed my speakers sounded bad, the echo smeared and practically white out the sound stage with reverb. 

Dragged the walrus boxes and jiant horns in, someone said "do it for fun", they are doing an ok job, SPL sweep rough but recognisable.

Came up with this thread as I was a little ignorant on the matter at hand

, though someone might help not heckle with some cool information, encouragement

however on reflection this type of work is difficult to accurately asses properly, using models and those that know are not saying anything or seemingly negative about custom room treatment 

 

I started this thread a week ago ? I'm here, making quantifiable decisions with the materials on hand and measuring the performance of the outcome.

 

That's how I know.

Now if we could just work out at what frequency's 2  large MLV very heavy limp, constrained, loaded, damped membranes resonates are at and at what sensitivity we will all be better off, 

 

I'm only the messenger of the outcomes here.

 

 

Edited August 11, 2023 by playdough

[DVDHack]

I just ran a sweep in the family / kitchen room.  It's not my main listening area, I just want it to sound good when I'm listening in here without getting too much into acoustic treatment, it's per the photo I put up this morning.  I'm pretty happy with it, the bass could do with a bit of treatment but there's no room for that in here without it being obtrusive and the room has other purposes.  It sounds pretty good with the JBLs and the PerListen subs.  I'm now of two minds whether to bother with the ceiling panels., may do more harm than good.

 

[playdough]

Latest graph. I could wind the sub down 5dB, it's doing a job. You can see the smoothing effect from 2Khz, of the ceiling and carpet treatment, traps are go, outer frames made.

Edited August 11, 2023 by playdough

[DVDHack]

Where does your sub crossover? 

[playdough]

6 minutes ago, DVDHack said:

sub crossover

250Hz

 

There is a vast difference in decay times on those graphs, when you look at the 300ms lines on both. One is raw room, one has control measure.

 

[playdough]

15 minutes ago, DVDHack said:

Where does your sub crossover? 

Iv'e another control area within this dwelling, an extension. It's down to 120ms to 25Hz, you my good Friend would not like that, it's very isolated as well.  IT has 2 large membrane traps across a full end wall. It doesn't present as a dead room though, because of a brick wall and cement floor, other walls timber, non treated walls. Perforated bulkhead ceiling trap one end to the other, awesome space.

[DVDHack]

5 minutes ago, playdough said:

It's down to 120ms to 25Hz

I've got an area like that... It's where my cattle graze, outside with nothing to reflect off for kms.

[playdough]

11 minutes ago, DVDHack said:

area like that

Good places to rev the guts out of a valve amp, with an electric guitar, or play cymbals and drum set. Not bother anyone,

[playdough]

This evil  anti speaker membrane trap thing has a resonant frequency centred around 50 Hz, when hit with a roll of tape or tennis ball, do not know if that means anything towards it's actual outcome.

 

The first third of that prehistoric analogue RTA display(left to right, is 25 to 250Hz. Has a slo mo feature for catching/save impulse sounds at peak, manually of coarse, was check cal, a decade ago, was ok.