Not speaker related per se but am redoing the room with lots of acoustic treatment goodies thrown in. The room is rubbish for acoustics ie. too small, speakers in corners but this should make a dent in those problems. Will be interesting when I finally get to do a before and after comparison.
The treatments consist of Rockwool RW3 rigid fibreglass, in both 2" and 3" thickness's which will be framed and covered in Alcantara. The rear wall of the room where the speakers are, is floated away from the structural wall by 1 foot and the space is filled with Rockwool RW5 rigid fibreglass then covered over with Alcantara fabric. This effectively creates a giant bass trap at one end of the room. At the rear of the room I'm going to do a 6ft x 3ft DIY diffuser based around the skyline style diffusers that are commercially available.
This is the preliminary draft to give an idea of the look and area of the treatments
Any suggestions or thoughts?
The treatments consist of Rockwool RW3 rigid fibreglass, in both 2" and 3" thickness's which will be framed and covered in Alcantara. The rear wall of the room where the speakers are, is floated away from the structural wall by 1 foot and the space is filled with Rockwool RW5 rigid fibreglass then covered over with Alcantara fabric. This effectively creates a giant bass trap at one end of the room. At the rear of the room I'm going to do a 6ft x 3ft DIY diffuser based around the skyline style diffusers that are commercially available.
This is the preliminary draft to give an idea of the look and area of the treatments
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An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
Any suggestions or thoughts?
ackcheng said:
Hey Arthur,
Number one priority is the side wall reflections and taming the bass because the speakers are unfortunately backed right into a corner.
The whole of the rear wall behind the speakers is in effect a bass trap - its moved out 12" from the real wall and has heavy rigid fibre glass placed there and then is covered in fabric. I'm hoping this improves the bass issues related to placing the speakers in the corner.
As for the side wall reflections, at the minute its 100% absorption with 3" and 2" Rockwool RW3. This should be effective down to around 200hz so fairly broadband. What I'm worried about is that yes it may virtually kill or greatly reduce first reflections off the wall but is it going to suck the live quality from the sound and make it a dead mess. I've thought about a mix of diffusers and absorption on those side walls but the diffusors would likely only be effective to around 1Khz due to me wanting to keep the depth of the treatments to a max of 3" or 75mm.
If anyone has any thoughts about this I'd love to hear them please.
I certainly don't have any solutions for you, but if you deaden every surface, you can always undo that. If the whole wall is sound absorbent, simply add some glass paned pictures or paintings that will increase the room reflections. I think in your case you are going to need more than not. So, I say go for it and plan to add back some reflective surfaces. Also, if you have a hard floor covered by an area rug, you can then control that as well.
Hi Shin -
spontaneously, it looks like you might have too much absorption on the side walls. It might be enough with one or two 1m wide absorption panels on each side wall placed with your listening position in mind.
Another thing that I would do is to have a very thick carpet on
the complete floor,
and a diffusor on the ceiling covering a few square meters between the listening position and the speaker position.
You might wanna take some action in the corners, too, and maybe also where the walls meet the ceiling.
Sigurd
spontaneously, it looks like you might have too much absorption on the side walls. It might be enough with one or two 1m wide absorption panels on each side wall placed with your listening position in mind.
Another thing that I would do is to have a very thick carpet on
the complete floor,
and a diffusor on the ceiling covering a few square meters between the listening position and the speaker position.
You might wanna take some action in the corners, too, and maybe also where the walls meet the ceiling.
Sigurd
ShinOBIWAN said:
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An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
Pretty much finalised, the rest I'll figure out as I go.
Main points of interest are:
Speakers firing along the length of the room with a retractable screen which uses the maximum width but also can be stowed away for more serious music listening. This of course absolutely necessitates the need for an acoustically transparent screen.
At the front of the room between the two speakers is a large AV cabinet with removable doors and this houses all the amplifiers/audio related stuff, HTPC, games consoles and a 40" LCD for regular daytime viewing.
2" RW3 and 3" RW5 rockwool acoustic treatments on the walls with lighting integrated into the recesses at the top and bottom of these for a pleasing glow that seemingly emanates from the rear of the treatments and onto the floor and ceiling. 1ft thick bass trap encompassing the front wall.
Window on the right with retractable blackout blind which will run in a channel for 100% light blockage.
I've just got hold of the paint,
This is turning out to be more expensive than I imagined. Even with ebay the Alcantara fabric has cost £378 @ £21 per meter. I should be thankful I'm not paying £70 per meter as per the UK distributor's wishes. BTW it looks and feels stunning, hugely impressed with this and will really turn the room into something special once finished.
I've ordered the Rockwool from http://www.sheffins.co.uk/ as they're local, do delivery and are reasonably priced. Total cost is £320 but a good chunk of that is taken up by the large bass trap at the front of the room.
2x2" and 2x3" timber for the framework is coming from http://www.laver.co.uk/, again another local company and they do delivery which is a must for this lengthy stuff unless you own a van or something like that. Cost is £215.
Still looking around at paint for the walls. Light grey seems to work within the renders but I also wouldn't mind a hint of brown in there so it goes a little better with the other colours in the room. White on the ceiling for sure, anything else brings it down.
Talking with SeymourAV about the perforated acoustically transparent projection screen material.
The AV cabinet will likely be 18mm baltic birch or 18mm MDF veneered in oak or similar. I'll draw up something more concrete as things move on. I've looked around at commercially available cabinets and they're very expensive for the size and style I'm looking for so this will definitely be DIY.
Not sure whether to go with carpet or laminate floor with a rug or two. I like the look of laminate but not ideal for acoustics in small rooms where its better to have dead surfaces rather than a surface creating reverb that's too short to be useful.
Random thoughts over, that's it for now. I'll be sure to take pictures once started.
Shame to cripple such speakers
Having them so close to all the boundaries really limits what they'll be able to do. I understand that a large part of it for you is the build process, and the aesthetics of your listening space are really important, but you're going to have a whole mess of early reflections, which will interfere with.. everything (sonically anyway)
C'mon shin, yer a bright guy, surely you can figure out a way to get them away from the boundaries somewhat without throwing away the aesthetics of the room? The only tech justification I can think of is you're keeping the S/N ratio high by pacifying SWMBO.
Having them so close to all the boundaries really limits what they'll be able to do. I understand that a large part of it for you is the build process, and the aesthetics of your listening space are really important, but you're going to have a whole mess of early reflections, which will interfere with.. everything (sonically anyway)
C'mon shin, yer a bright guy, surely you can figure out a way to get them away from the boundaries somewhat without throwing away the aesthetics of the room? The only tech justification I can think of is you're keeping the S/N ratio high by pacifying SWMBO.
Re: Shame to cripple such speakers
Hi badman,
Your couldn't be more right, the speaker placement and room in general is a real problem but you've got to make the best of a bad situation.
The room only really allows two half useful placements, the one chosen/shown and another where the speakers are placed either side of the window firing across the width of the room. The latter gets the speakers away from side walls but then you end up sitting right up against the rear wall in order to get the listening position far enough away from the speakers, which brings up another point. The projected image is limited in size because a projector requires a certain amount of throw distance to cast a particular size of image. In other words the screen size will be a relatively small 64" as opposed to 92" with the layout I've decided to go with.
Going with the layout that I have is not an ideal situation by any stretch of the imagination but there's some small solace knowing that directly behind the loudspeakers is an entire wall full of 1ft worth of rigid fibreglass to help tame corner placement related bass boom. Then on the side walls there's a large surface area of absorbent materials which will work very well down to 200hz. The absorption coefficient or NRC rating of the materials used on the walls varies from 0.75 upto 1.00 over the range from 250hz and up. Just for reference, an NRC of 1.00 is theoretically total absorption so side wall reflection will be greatly reduced over a wide bandwidth throughout the entire room including the first reflection point near to the speakers.
These physical treatments go some way towards a solution already but also don't forget that remaining problems will be gently messaged by the room correction system I've been occasionally detailing throughout the latter part of this thread.
So lots of counter measures employed but I don't pretend that I'm going to be laughing knowing I'm getting 100% from the speakers, that simply won't be the case. However I'm confident it'll sound good enough knowing the harsh limitation they're working within.
I certainly look forward to the day where I can give them a proper space to work with and still do the physical and electronic room treatments also. But that's in the future and right now I need to make the most of what I have.
badman said:
Hi badman,
Your couldn't be more right, the speaker placement and room in general is a real problem but you've got to make the best of a bad situation.
The room only really allows two half useful placements, the one chosen/shown and another where the speakers are placed either side of the window firing across the width of the room. The latter gets the speakers away from side walls but then you end up sitting right up against the rear wall in order to get the listening position far enough away from the speakers, which brings up another point. The projected image is limited in size because a projector requires a certain amount of throw distance to cast a particular size of image. In other words the screen size will be a relatively small 64" as opposed to 92" with the layout I've decided to go with.
Going with the layout that I have is not an ideal situation by any stretch of the imagination but there's some small solace knowing that directly behind the loudspeakers is an entire wall full of 1ft worth of rigid fibreglass to help tame corner placement related bass boom. Then on the side walls there's a large surface area of absorbent materials which will work very well down to 200hz. The absorption coefficient or NRC rating of the materials used on the walls varies from 0.75 upto 1.00 over the range from 250hz and up. Just for reference, an NRC of 1.00 is theoretically total absorption so side wall reflection will be greatly reduced over a wide bandwidth throughout the entire room including the first reflection point near to the speakers.
These physical treatments go some way towards a solution already but also don't forget that remaining problems will be gently messaged by the room correction system I've been occasionally detailing throughout the latter part of this thread.
So lots of counter measures employed but I don't pretend that I'm going to be laughing knowing I'm getting 100% from the speakers, that simply won't be the case. However I'm confident it'll sound good enough knowing the harsh limitation they're working within.
I certainly look forward to the day where I can give them a proper space to work with and still do the physical and electronic room treatments also. But that's in the future and right now I need to make the most of what I have.
Dr.EM said:I don't know nearly enough to comment on the acoustic treatment but whatever you decide to do definately post lots of pics! Such a dedicated space is the thing of dreams
Thanks Dr.EM
Yes its been a long time coming for me, I originally started planning at the very beginning of this year but a string of misfortunes and bad timing delayed to the point where I'd almost given up.
For me this year has been very light on DIY and its not for the lack of interest either but finally I now have the finances, mind, body and time to follow through on it and squeeze some in a DIY project before the year is out.
Hi Shin,
How about another DIY speaker project for this room? Selfishly, we'd all enjoy that I'm sure.
Only this time base the design on Roy Allison's research regarding boundary reinforcment. He had some excellent speakers back in the late 70's, early 80's that were designed to fit near intesecting room boundaries, even one that fit in the corner. All of his designs were optimized so the drivers were adjacent to one or more likely two boundaries.
Your room plan looks great, BTW, given the constraints.
How about another DIY speaker project for this room? Selfishly, we'd all enjoy that I'm sure.
Only this time base the design on Roy Allison's research regarding boundary reinforcment. He had some excellent speakers back in the late 70's, early 80's that were designed to fit near intesecting room boundaries, even one that fit in the corner. All of his designs were optimized so the drivers were adjacent to one or more likely two boundaries.
Your room plan looks great, BTW, given the constraints.
DRC and your room
Unfortunately, there's no way to deal with early reflections with DRC. Your side and rear walls being so heavily treated (maybe too much, you'll find out soon enough) make them less of a concern than that horrid cabinet in there.
What about a horn system for your next rig shin? Why fight the beast, if you're stuck with the room, might as well use the only speakers that even approach removing it.
And if you'll ship the existing ones to me, I'll gladly dispose of those monstrosities, free of charge. No need to thank me, we all wind up with speakers we can't fit sometimes!
Unfortunately, there's no way to deal with early reflections with DRC. Your side and rear walls being so heavily treated (maybe too much, you'll find out soon enough) make them less of a concern than that horrid cabinet in there.
What about a horn system for your next rig shin? Why fight the beast, if you're stuck with the room, might as well use the only speakers that even approach removing it.
And if you'll ship the existing ones to me, I'll gladly dispose of those monstrosities, free of charge. No need to thank me, we all wind up with speakers we can't fit sometimes!
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