Poll: Is your listening room acoustically treated?
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I have a dedicated, professionally treated room
1.92%
2 1.92%
I have a dedicated room I treated myself
13.46%
14 13.46%
I listen in the living room but it's well treated
14.42%
15 14.42%
I listen in the living room and it has no room treatment but it sound ok because of all the stuff in it
49.04%
51 49.04%
I listen in a living room that sounds pretty ordinary
21.15%
22 21.15%
Total 104 vote(s) 100%
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Is your listening room acoustically treated?
#21
I think good acoustics is as important as good system, if not even more. For many years I didn’t have dedicated music room and that was a challenge and always had to compromise on the acoustics.
Personally I prefer “live” acoustics vs “dead”

As for bass , I’m fortunate enough to have a very large room that allows the very low frequency to travel without any problems. Prior to this room I always failed in low bass management.


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#22
@Confused:

I said it's taken a long time to get things sounding really good since I changed speakers. That's true, but it has sounded good/very good a lot of that time and a lot of that time was spent just listening and getting used to the sound a change in treatment placement made. There were times when I went a month to 2 months without making a change and times when I either changed back to the previous arrangement or moved things a bit further very quickly, sometimes after listening to just one track. In that sense it's been a bit like some of your progress with the electronics, a process of refinement over time.

You said you don't want to lose dynamics. One thing I've learnt in my room and system is that not treating the first reflection points preserves dynamics while treating them can reduce that impact. That makes sense to me in retrospect because the first reflections arrive very soon after the direct sound, often early enough to fuse with them and help boost the sense we get of dynamics whereas treating them diminishes their level and reduces the perceived dynamic impact, and also reduces the sense of spaciousness and width of the soundstage.

You can treat in stages. Since you mentioned a concern with evenness of bass, I'd start with bass traps in the corners of the room. That will help with the bass and perhaps even give you a lot of what you're looking for just by itself. After that, try treating the centre of the wall behind the speakers, just one 2x 4 foot panel there may be all you need, and the centre of the wall behind you. You may want to treat a wider space there if you're sitting close to that wall. As far as height of placement goes, place the bass traps as recommended (some are meant to sit on the floor and rise in a column if you add more, some are meant to stand midway between floor and ceiling). I'd place treatment on the front and back walls midway between floor and ceiling in an 8 foot high room. Having those panels free standing on stands so you can move them and also leave a space between them and the wall behind them makes it easy to move them in order to adjust placement if necessary and improves their effectiveness. That's a good starting point and should yield good to better results. You can fine tune at will over time as I did.

The 2 big things about keeping the sound lively which I've discovered is not to treat the first reflection points on the side walls and wall behind the speaker, and to place any treatments you add apart from the basics i mentioned above in places that don't impact on early arrival sound. The other tip I'd give is to ensure that the treatments you get are broad band and cover as wide a frequency range as possible, and to ensure that the panels are identical as far as possible.

It's not difficult to get good results right from the start. What takes time is getting better results and fine tuning the result you get to your own personal preferences when it comes to things like dynamics, soundstage and imaging which tend not to get talked about as much as solving bass and frequency response problems.
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#23
(28-Apr-2019, 21:04)David A Wrote: You said you don't want to lose dynamics. One thing I've learnt in my room and system is that not treating the first reflection points preserves dynamics while treating them can reduce that impact. That makes sense to me in retrospect because the first reflections arrive very soon after the direct sound, often early enough to fuse with them and help boost the sense we get of dynamics whereas treating them diminishes their level and reduces the perceived dynamic impact, and also reduces the sense of spaciousness and width of the soundstage.

You can treat in stages. Since you mentioned a concern with evenness of bass, I'd start with bass traps in the corners of the room. That will help with the bass and perhaps even give you a lot of what you're looking for just by itself. After that, try treating the centre of the wall behind the speakers, just one 2x 4  foot panel there may be all you need, and the centre of the wall behind you. You may want to treat a wider space there if you're sitting close to that wall. As far as height of placement goes, place the bass traps as recommended (some are meant to sit on the floor and rise in a column if you add more, some are meant to stand midway between floor and ceiling). I'd place treatment on the front and back walls midway between floor and ceiling in an 8 foot high room. Having those panels free standing on stands so you can move them and also leave a space between them and the wall behind them makes it easy to move them in order to adjust placement if necessary and improves their effectiveness. That's a good starting point and should yield good to better results. You can fine tune at will over time as I did.

The 2 big things about keeping the sound lively which I've discovered is not to treat the first reflection points on the side walls and wall behind the speaker, and to place any treatments you add apart from the basics i mentioned above in places that don't impact on early arrival sound. The other tip I'd give is to ensure that the treatments you get are broad band and cover as wide a frequency range as possible, and to ensure that the panels are identical as far as possible.

It's not difficult to get good results right from the start. What takes time is getting better results and fine tuning the result you get to your own personal preferences when it comes to things like dynamics, soundstage and imaging which tend not to get talked about as much as solving bass and frequency response problems.

@David A

I am in 100% agreement with you regarding how much to treat & 'not to treat' one's room. Usually, people generally treat rooms based on guidance they receive from various sources incl. Acoustical experts & companies but indeed - this will kill the dynamics & impact of the fundamental sonics. I am also in agreement regarding the 1st reflection sidewall treatment & IMHO I will do with it and will play with Toe-in of the speakers to get the "right sound" I need. I have also found that the correct toe-in/ out of the speakers in very-very small increments plays a strong role in the IN-PHASE & OUT-OF-PHASE sounds and one can use that in particular to their advantage to get a pretty good 3-dimensional sound at their Listening Seat. 

GIK offers their panels on stands and this is what I would opt for. I would use their broadband 244 (6-inch thick) with FlexRange on stands and play around with a few of them to understand their effects in the room.
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#24
(28-Apr-2019, 13:07)Confused Wrote: EDIT:  I have just voted in Pim's poll "I listen in the living room but it's well treated", I should have picked the option below, although if I get my act together and do some of the stuff described in this post, my selection will then become correct.  Maybe this is the motivation I have needed all along!

Well, you don't want to stuff up my statistics now do you? Time to get cracking Confused!
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#25
Whoohoo! We've got one! @Peelke has a dedicated professional treated room.

What's it like mate?
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                                                                                                                                                                            Dynaudio C1 MkII.
                                                                                                                                                                              Jim Smith's GBS.
                                                                                                                                                                        Northern NSW Australia.
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#26
My current home was built in 1947 on a concrete slab, the walls are poured concrete and finished with plaster.  The flooring is wood.  Furniture is somewhat sparse. Having previously lived in similarly-sized wood-frame houses, the sound of the current home is wonderful.  Solid, tight bass from a pair of JL Audio F113's and nothing but lovely sounds from 120Hz on up to the silky  mids and highs that the Beveridge Electrostat line source boxes are known for.
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#27
An interesting interview about room acoustics on Darko.com

https://darko.audio/2019/08/a-long-film-...acoustics/
                                                    Lifetime Roon, Mac mini, int. SSD, ext. HDD, tv as monitor, key board and track pad on bean bag as remote,Devialet 200, Od'A #097, Blue jeans speaker cable,                                     
                                                                                                                                                                            Dynaudio C1 MkII.
                                                                                                                                                                              Jim Smith's GBS.
                                                                                                                                                                        Northern NSW Australia.
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#28
surprised only 20%
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#29
nice post, I am thinking to have my basement remodeled acoustically treated
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#30
Room treatment is the best money you can spend.

In fact, many A/b tests on the Internet forums are only taken serious by me when performed in a decent room. I know quite a few persons that favoured component B over component A in their non-treated room. And once some room treatment is done, they went back to component A since suddenly it did not sound harsh anymore or whatever reason.

There are quite some DIY videos on youtube to get you going with absorbers and diffusers. Very easy to make and cheap (unless you want special print / pictures etc.).
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