06-Apr-2019, 12:42
I started experimenting with some DIY treatments in my living room around 20 years ago. After moving to my current house in 2002 I was able to set up a dedicated listening room which I continued to treat on a DIY basis until 2008 when I bought a number of REALTraps panels and stands. The room is an L-shaped room which presents some interesting problems which is one of the reasons I prefer treatments which have stands and are free standing, you can experiment with placement a lot easier and using stands is about the only option when there's a window behind the treatment. It's also easier to move treatments if you change speaker positions or the listening position.
At first I tended to be guided by Everest's "Master Handbook of Acoustic" on the placement of the treatments, basically bass traps in corners and panels at first reflection points on side walls and the wall behind the speakers. In recent years however I've changed to following recommendations from Floyd Toole in his book "Sound Reproduction - Loudspeakers and Rooms". The bass traps are still in the corners but the panels are now in the centre of the front and back walls and the first reflection points are untreated. This is delivering the best results I've had over the time I've been using acoustic treatment.
Ethan Winer of REALTraps used to say something like "acoustic treatments can be effective, small, and low cost; pick any 2" and that about sums it up in a lot of ways. Effective treatments tend not to be small so they cost and they also tend to be highly visible. Those things aren't a problem if you have a dedicated listening room where you can do what you want but they tend to be major problems if your system is in the living room and you have a partner who is less concerned with sound quality and more concerned with having a living room which functions well as a living room. There's a lot you can do without acoustic treatments if you're allowed. Good speaker placement and getting the listening position right is a big thing and should be the first thing. A wool rug on the floor between speakers and listening position and curtains or blinds over windows help. Bookcases filled with lots of books provide quite a bit of absorption as can some but not all sofas and chairs. With a bit of time and effort you can achieve a lot in a living room without acoustic treatments.
Acoustic treatment is icing on the cake in my view. It's often only possible in a dedicated room because most acoustic treatments are basically unattractive and tend to stand out like a sore thumb so they're not what partners want to see in a living room. They also take up space and you may not be able to put them where they're most beneficial because there are furniture items in the way or they're going to block the view out of windows. On it's own it can't deliver great sound, you still have to get the room setup right anyway and you've got to get the treatment right as well. Done well it can make a good setup better but done badly it can make things worse. I consider myself lucky because I could set up a dedicated room and do what I like with it. I wouldn't have a treated room if that had not been the case and I wouldn't be getting the results I'm getting if I hadn't done a fair bit of reading on room acoustics and spent a lot of time experimenting with different placements for some panels. You don't need to hire a professional in order to get good results but you need to be prepared to do a bit of experimentation to get a result you really like which is one of the reasons I prefer freestanding treatments which you can move rather than treatments you glue on the wall.
At first I tended to be guided by Everest's "Master Handbook of Acoustic" on the placement of the treatments, basically bass traps in corners and panels at first reflection points on side walls and the wall behind the speakers. In recent years however I've changed to following recommendations from Floyd Toole in his book "Sound Reproduction - Loudspeakers and Rooms". The bass traps are still in the corners but the panels are now in the centre of the front and back walls and the first reflection points are untreated. This is delivering the best results I've had over the time I've been using acoustic treatment.
Ethan Winer of REALTraps used to say something like "acoustic treatments can be effective, small, and low cost; pick any 2" and that about sums it up in a lot of ways. Effective treatments tend not to be small so they cost and they also tend to be highly visible. Those things aren't a problem if you have a dedicated listening room where you can do what you want but they tend to be major problems if your system is in the living room and you have a partner who is less concerned with sound quality and more concerned with having a living room which functions well as a living room. There's a lot you can do without acoustic treatments if you're allowed. Good speaker placement and getting the listening position right is a big thing and should be the first thing. A wool rug on the floor between speakers and listening position and curtains or blinds over windows help. Bookcases filled with lots of books provide quite a bit of absorption as can some but not all sofas and chairs. With a bit of time and effort you can achieve a lot in a living room without acoustic treatments.
Acoustic treatment is icing on the cake in my view. It's often only possible in a dedicated room because most acoustic treatments are basically unattractive and tend to stand out like a sore thumb so they're not what partners want to see in a living room. They also take up space and you may not be able to put them where they're most beneficial because there are furniture items in the way or they're going to block the view out of windows. On it's own it can't deliver great sound, you still have to get the room setup right anyway and you've got to get the treatment right as well. Done well it can make a good setup better but done badly it can make things worse. I consider myself lucky because I could set up a dedicated room and do what I like with it. I wouldn't have a treated room if that had not been the case and I wouldn't be getting the results I'm getting if I hadn't done a fair bit of reading on room acoustics and spent a lot of time experimenting with different placements for some panels. You don't need to hire a professional in order to get good results but you need to be prepared to do a bit of experimentation to get a result you really like which is one of the reasons I prefer freestanding treatments which you can move rather than treatments you glue on the wall.
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
