I'm always in favour of curtains because they are adjustable.

Ooops.

Edited November 2, 2025Nov 2 by Keith_W

2 minutes ago, Grizaudio said:

For a sound wave to propagate, air partials must vibrate. 

 

@Keith_W correct me if I am mistaken. 

 

AIR PARTICLES! 

 

Correction done. 

2 minutes ago, Keith_W said:

 

AIR PARTICLES! 

 

Correction done. 

 

Thanks Keith... typo fixed.

lol

 

Edited November 2, 2025Nov 2 by Grizaudio

33 minutes ago, almikel said:

That would support the idea that glass makes a good membrane absorber, which I accept is a bad idea.

 

Mike

 

You need to read the literature like I needed to... 

All glass is predominately reflective with mid to upper frequencies. Excessive exposed glass makes a room/system sound bright. It smears the soundstage, ruin focus, kills tonal texture, you loose detail and impacts midrange quality... below I explain why.

Your room needs something to absorb or redirect side wall 1st reflections from both speakers. In my experience treating these side wall first reflection points has proven to bring more benefits compared to treating any other reflection point.

When sitting at your listening position, have someone move a mirror along the left wall until you see your left speaker tweeter and midrange in the mirror, thats your left speaker first reflection point. Now staying on the left wall, have them move the mirror further along towards the room rear, when you see your right speaker tweeter and midrange in the mirror, thats your right speaker first reflection point on your left wall. Now repeat the same for the right wall. You should now have 4 points marked, 2 on the left wall and 2 on the right. Acoustically treat all 4 points.

Lastly toe out your speakers to tame or soften the upper frequencies. Its a very effective way of passively controlling treble.

Drapes on side walls work a treat. Venetian blinds can also work very well when you angle the blind so sound reflects to the floor.

When treating 1st reflection points what we're really doing is changing the time delay between direct and indirect sound hitting your ears. If this delay is too short our ears & brain cant process things fast enough to depict direct sound only, so we get smear... music reproduction sounds crap. But there's also another issue here, phase.

All 1st reflections are out of phase with direct sound. If we have 2 speakers out of phase its difficult to identify where the sounds coming from and worse still we get sound cancellation. This is how headphone noise cancellation works, buy replaying ambient noise out of phase! So it's very important we get these 1st reflections in check to give our room/system any hope of great sound reproduction but also hearing every detail the recording engineer intended.

@Cigar nuke your room has huge potential!

Would curtains improve things or deaden the sound? It won't deaden it will bring more detail, focus, texture, improve the soundstage +++. Music will become easier and way more enjoyable to listen too

Any particular type of curtains? Blinds or thick curtains? In the perfect world wave style heavy drapes

Any other suggestions for room treatment that might help - been wondering about acoustic reflection panels instead of those red lights hanging from ceiling. Focus on side wall 1st reflections first, your ceilings angled plus its not flat, its defuse like which is already a huge bonus!

Any suggestions how I can try things out before committing to curtains?

You need to first find where the 1st reflection point are, then go from there. Get some old blankets temporally hanging over the 1st reflection points, leave a 1~4in gap between the blanket and wall. If your first reflections don't fall over windows - great, but myself I would still put wood venetian blinds over the windows if you don't like fugly heavy drapes..

Edited Friday at 11:22 PM2 days by Skip