17-Mar-2021, 20:41
What's am "SME"?
Acoustically treating a room is a bit different to "electronic room correction". Physical room treatments affect the sound you hear in some ways that electronic correction doesn't. Both can smooth the frequency response at the listening position but physical treatments, depending on the types of treatment you choose (bass traps, mid to high frequency absorption, diffusors) also affects things like the size and shape of the soundstage and the way the sound is presented to you in ways that electronic correction cannot.
It's definitely not as simple as "put two panels behind the speakers. And then here and there" and, if you have a non-rectangular room and/or non-flat ceiling then things get more difficult very fast. All of the standard recommendations you will see for where to place acoustic treatment tend to assume that you have a rectangular room with a flat ceiling. Other shaped rooms, L-shaped rooms for example (my room is L-shaped) are more individual and require more individual responses. Sloping ceilings can require different responses with factors like does the ceiling slope from the left side of the room to the right or from front to back, and in which positions the high point and low point are or whether it's a cathedral ceiling oriented from side to side or front to back. Your mentioned that the ceiling has "some crazy shapes" so I expect that would require special consideration. Other factors which influence where you would place treatment are things like whether the entrance or entrances to the room are permanently open or whether they have doors and whether the doors are open or closed while listening, and the size and placement of windows. Finally, the inescapable factor that affects your placement of treatments are the location of your speakers and listening position.
In the end "what's best" depends on your room and the type of result you want to get. You've told us virtually nothing about your room including nothing about its size and shape, nothing about where your speakers and listening position are located in relation to walls, corners, and doors/windows, and nothing about the type of result you want to get. Do you want to get detailed soundstage and holographic type imaging or are you after the type of sound you hear from an orchestra if you sit in the middle of the hall so there's a large and expansive soundfield but very little sense of stereo imaging? Are there any specific issues with the sound you're currently getting that you're hoping to fix, things like a lack of clarity in the bass or a stereo image that's too shallow or which pulls to the left or right? What kind of speakers do you have (cone speakers in a box, panels such as electrostatics, horns, omnidirectionals, etc) because that affects how they radiate sound into the room and can affect what kind of treatment you use and where it's placed.
There is no "standard" or "one size fits all" set of instructions which can be given for physical room treatment which will give a result which suits every room/system. If you want useful suggestions on how to treat your room you're going to have to provide a fair bit of information about your room, any particular issues you have, and what kind of result you'd like to achieve. There's really only about one standard "rule" worth paying attention to and that is using bass traps in the room corners to help smooth and clean up the low bass response. After that, everything else depends on your particular circumstances.
Acoustically treating a room is a bit different to "electronic room correction". Physical room treatments affect the sound you hear in some ways that electronic correction doesn't. Both can smooth the frequency response at the listening position but physical treatments, depending on the types of treatment you choose (bass traps, mid to high frequency absorption, diffusors) also affects things like the size and shape of the soundstage and the way the sound is presented to you in ways that electronic correction cannot.
It's definitely not as simple as "put two panels behind the speakers. And then here and there" and, if you have a non-rectangular room and/or non-flat ceiling then things get more difficult very fast. All of the standard recommendations you will see for where to place acoustic treatment tend to assume that you have a rectangular room with a flat ceiling. Other shaped rooms, L-shaped rooms for example (my room is L-shaped) are more individual and require more individual responses. Sloping ceilings can require different responses with factors like does the ceiling slope from the left side of the room to the right or from front to back, and in which positions the high point and low point are or whether it's a cathedral ceiling oriented from side to side or front to back. Your mentioned that the ceiling has "some crazy shapes" so I expect that would require special consideration. Other factors which influence where you would place treatment are things like whether the entrance or entrances to the room are permanently open or whether they have doors and whether the doors are open or closed while listening, and the size and placement of windows. Finally, the inescapable factor that affects your placement of treatments are the location of your speakers and listening position.
In the end "what's best" depends on your room and the type of result you want to get. You've told us virtually nothing about your room including nothing about its size and shape, nothing about where your speakers and listening position are located in relation to walls, corners, and doors/windows, and nothing about the type of result you want to get. Do you want to get detailed soundstage and holographic type imaging or are you after the type of sound you hear from an orchestra if you sit in the middle of the hall so there's a large and expansive soundfield but very little sense of stereo imaging? Are there any specific issues with the sound you're currently getting that you're hoping to fix, things like a lack of clarity in the bass or a stereo image that's too shallow or which pulls to the left or right? What kind of speakers do you have (cone speakers in a box, panels such as electrostatics, horns, omnidirectionals, etc) because that affects how they radiate sound into the room and can affect what kind of treatment you use and where it's placed.
There is no "standard" or "one size fits all" set of instructions which can be given for physical room treatment which will give a result which suits every room/system. If you want useful suggestions on how to treat your room you're going to have to provide a fair bit of information about your room, any particular issues you have, and what kind of result you'd like to achieve. There's really only about one standard "rule" worth paying attention to and that is using bass traps in the room corners to help smooth and clean up the low bass response. After that, everything else depends on your particular circumstances.
Roon Nucleus+, Devilalet Expert 140 Pro CI, Focal Sopra 2, PS Audio P12, Keces P8 LPS, Uptone Audio EtherREGEN with optical fibre link to my router, Shunyata Alpha NR and Sigma NR power cables, Shunyata Sigma ethernet cables, Shunyata Alpha V2 speaker cables, Grand Prix Audio Monaco rack, RealTRAPS acoustic treatment.
Brisbane, Qld, Australia
