How to diagnose the need for room treatment?

Al,

That is roughly correct but beaming starts a little earlier. If you look at figure 3 you will see that the prototypical 6" woofer and combined midrange should not really be used above 1.8 Khz - like was done in the famous Energy Pro 22 speaker.

So why do we see so many speakers with 6 inch woofer/mids and a tweeter with a crossover much higher than 2 Khz?

Cost is the answer - unfortunately few tweeters can handle SPL requirements at that low crossover point - not without distortion and risk of failure. However to avoid having to add another driver (increased cost/complexity) the designers make do with beaming in the midrange...odd really in what is ostensibly an audiophile design and given we have known about the physics of loudspeakers for donkeys years and considering this frequency region is where our hearing is the most acute and discerning.

Al, Shadorne,

Very informative answers. I wasn't aware of beaming.

Thanks all three for your input. If you don't mind checking back on Sunday, I will try to make time and play with all of the above and post back results. I trust your input will help me make sense of what I measure/hear.

Thanks again for all your valuable input.

Regards,
Horacio

I am in India. It looks like it is not possible to get fiberglass panels over here. Is it possible to use EGG TRAYS which are made of THICK paper to back and the side walls. Thickness of the egg tray could range from 1/10 in to 1/4 of an inch.

EGG TRAY is 1ft by 1ft in dimension has corrugations such that it can fit eggs. It am not sure it works as a absorber or diffuser.

Let me know your opinion.

Paper egg trays are, fundamentally, useless.

Kal

Sandhya,

Thanks for bringing up this thread of mine again. A year and a half has gone by and I've done a fair amount of further reading and experimentation and things have improved, and I'm still working on improving things further. This might be the second most interesting aspect to being an oddiophile (ja!), following the enjoyment of music itself, of course.

I'm surprised you cant't find fiberglass panels in India. Where are you looking for them, may I ask? I say this because I'm in Argentina and I can find them at construction supply stores. Both the panel and the fiberglass wool are used as insulation for construction and industrial applications.

Horacio