If you have a nice system why do you really need room treatments?
Yeah you may need an absorption panel if your room is completely open, ie. No rug or furniture, ie just lonely single chair. But if your system can't cut it in any room then it's a system problem and you should be able to discern a good system regardless of the room. Unless you put it on the roof of your apartment building but the Beatles seemed to have survived that effort
I think people go nuts with all this absorption acoustical room treatment stuff and it looks kind of awful. Once in a while you see a really cool looking diffuser panel and I would definitely want one. But to have a system that works really well without any of the acoustical panel distractions is a wonderful thing.
Here are some easy tricks to try with Roon DSP parametric EQ that I think are useful in many cases, especially for cases of older ears and listening at lower volumes.
1) roll off bass levels below the frequency that your speakers tend to normally roll off in your room. Your amp will thank you by lowering its load and allowing it to do a better job with the frequency your speakers actually cover well.
2) If you measure and detect bass modes, Provide a bump in the right direction to help level that out. This is not a substitute for room treatments to address bass issues but can help if targeted properly.
3) try a 3db (or more or less maybe) boost from 4-6khz centered at 5 khz. This adds a bit of edge to the sound that older ears in particular may appreciate, especially at lower volumes. Think making your lower efficiency speakers sound more like a quality pair of high efficiency horns. You will probably not have to turn the volume up as much as well for things to sound sharp and clear.
4) For older ears in particular, consider a treble boost starting at around 10khz or higher, depending on the particular ears used. A hearing test can help establish how well high frequencies are heard, but it is pretty much always the case that as our ears age our ability to hear up to 20khz as one may have done easily when young is no longer a reality.
5) If you are not listening on-axis, consider measuring the distance to each speaker from listening position (in centimeters) and set up Roon DSP speaker correction accordingly for a more coherent sound at your off-axis listening position. You might also decide to add a db boost or decrease to left or right speaker. This is DSPs way of providing a balance control like the analog kind that pretty much all hifi gear used to have.
6) If you are listening well off axis from tweeter direction, additional treble boost at higher frequencies may be desirable.
Roon DSP makes it very easy to apply each of these in separate filters that all work together and then tweak each as needed to fine tune the results. Make sure the DSP does not introduce clipping as indicated in Roon as the music plays. It’s a good idea to use headroom management in Roon DSP to protect against that. I find I tend to like having headroom mgmt active in most cases anyway, but that may be a personal preference thing. If Roon indicates clipping (red indicator) during playback with DSP enabled, individual filter overall volume levels can be lowered as well to avoid.
TO measure rooms, take a look at Room EQ Wizard freeware you can run on a laptop. It’s fairly techy but worth the time to get a handle on. THere is lots of info on how to use it on teh internet. I’ve used it to measure then auto-create convolution filter files that can then be used in Roon DSP for room correction. There is a cookbook for how to do that out there on teh internet. ITs covered in Roon forums if you do a search there.
I have an AV processor and I use that for DSP that seemed helpful for all the various speakers.
For two channel listening I have roon and it’s tougher to use the AV processor to facilitate and measure the room and I guess I could insert mini DSP to do two channel listening measurements when I use my preamp but it’s very cumbersome.
Overall the original curve I got when I use the AV processor didn’t seem bad at all and then to use the DSP function within roon the concern is it would degrade the quality of sound. And then every single recording and music you listen to has different characteristics and there’s no way you’re gonna do a perfect DSP set up.
Just wish the user interface to test the room and provide curves for all those various tools was a hell of a lot easier to use
1) the room largely determines how any system at any price will actually sound
2) those with a goal to get the best sound possible will care and others less so
3) some rooms may require little or no tweaks for acoustics and others may be a total disaster. I have measured and tweaked acoustics in 5 different rooms in my house and they cover the range from little or no tweaking needed to well short of a total disaster but some serious issues to address to make things sound their best.
4) trained ears may suffice in some cases but to get it right for sure it helps to measure what you have first before taking action
5) Everything in the room affects acoustics to some degree. Room modes in the bass region are the toughest issues to address completely but some combo of traps and DSP can be applied to make things better. Other specialized room acoustic solutions like panels, etc. might be used to address any issues that cannot be solved in a particular room otherwise. Start with primary reflection points on walls, floor and ceiling based on speaker and primary listening location, Dispersion pattern measurements for a particular speaker model can help determine how to best apply, if needed.
6) DSP including room correction features in your system are your best friend when it comes to tweaking any system as needed to correct for issues associated with room acoustics!!!!
7) These days vendors integrate DSP into hardware (example:miniDSP, Anthem, NAD, Arcam, others) and software (example: Roon).
8) Once that is done (addressing room acoustics) you might then take the next step and tweak the sound from there to personal preference. Or just forget about room acoustics and the complexities of addressing those properly and just DSP to personal preference away as needed, for example using graphic or parametric EQ capabilities in DSP like that available in Roon. Either way (done right) should land you in a better place regardless of how good or expensive your gear is otherwise.
Treatments consist of corner base traps extending up to the ceiling, a couple absorption panels throughout the room, a 20 x 20 thick wool rug and an assortment of furniture.
So I guess treating a room with acoustical panels Will provide a benefit. This is news. So many great enthusiastic people have led me to rethink my position. I thank everyone for helping me overcome my fear of adopting a more liberal view about acoustical treatments.
I'm in a room right now and all the tested curves look fine and I've done it all with out acoustical stuff except for corner bass traps.
Funny thing is, I've had people over and they say how come you don't have any acoustical panels and then they look at me really strange when I say I don't really need them.
When you're famous you have to use aliases. I'm not famous, I'm just another nobody. I think we've all gotten used to leaf blowers and no one cares anymore.
I'm in a room right now and all the tested curves look fine and I've done it all with out acoustical stuff except for corner bass traps.
Funny thing is, I've had people over and they say how come you don't have any acoustical panels and then they look at me really strange when I say I don't really need them. I think we've just gotten used to assuming you need acoustical panels all over the place so it looks like everybody else.
You are so funny. Isn't it clear I love attention as well as learning so much wisdom offered by so many talented people who participate on this forum.
@emergingsoul , I wasn't intending to be funny. For quite some time I thought that your postings resembled @jumia 's posts, and then you did the leaf blower post, and the only other posts I read complaining about leaf blowers was from @jumia, so I was just asking if at one time you had gone by that screen name. That's all.
Well this is enlightening. My family can complain to me about playing my hi-fi too loud and maybe they have no right to do this. My neighbour plays a leaf blower too loud and it interferes with my phone calls inside my house I have no right to complain about that.
Further I have no right to complain about how wrong it is not to be able to complain about something.
The world according to those who use leaf blowers. Tom Hanks needs a new movie and I think this is a perfect fit.
Emerging well I think you just need to deal. You simply do not have the right to complain about others using such devices. Further, you dont have the right to determine when, how and for how long such devices should be used. Dont let an irritant become an obsession.
What’s really ridiculous about this repeated whine of yours is that you act like they are running blowers 24/7. It takes all of a few minutes for clean up once a week.. Surprised that you aren’t calling for everyone to get on their knees and hand clip the lawn versus using mowers. The horror of it all.
During the fall they make sense otherwise a lot of people would probably be dying from heart attacks. However during the summer when there’s no leaves it makes more sense to use a broom to quickly disperse errant leaf blades.
I believe it’s terribly inconsiderate to be revving leaf blowers sometimes two or three of them at the same time and serenading your neighbours with disturbing noise. It may not bother the person using it but it certainly bothers the people who have to listen to it.
I find people generally pretty inconsiderate a lot of times. We’re only here for like 70 years while being gradually replaced by others so why not make it somewhat pleasurable for other people while here.
@immatthewj More likely an AI programmed to be make illogical, whiney, rambling, irritating posts that dismiss facts and logic provided by those trying to be helpful.
Seriously you are complaining about leaf blowers? Then you attempt to add credence by discussing bird numbers. Perhaps you can get a grant. Please no more!
I remember a member who went by @jumia who was going off about leaf blowers for a while. Actually, his posts resembled the posts @emergingsoulmakes. @emergingsoul , were you @jumia in another life?
Run REW (Room EQ Wizard) or the equivalent and find out what your room really does.
You may be lucky and have a listening position that is accidentally perfect. My daughters bedroom is like that.
All it needed was some bass absorption on the floor (provided by two 2.5’X2.5’ 8" inch panels just placed on the ground about 3 inches from the wall behind her subs and speakers (some BW 701s and equivalent BW subs). She literally has a perfectly testing system for dispersion/standing waves/pressure -- the whole thing -- at her listening area with zero effort. It happens.
My actual listening room (a literal bomb shelter; not joking) was not so easy and had awful echos, dead areas, and all sorts of weird stuff that required a lot of both testing and treatment.
Then do what I did and move to the country. Some state or city is banning gas powered blowers in favor of electric. They walked through the seas of homeless people getting this petition signed.
do you not recognize that use of a leaf blower which can be easily heard within someone's home is terribly disruptive to listening.
Thankfully no one uses them at night. People have no idea how awful it is to listen to these things all the time and yet they use their leaf blowers to pristinely clear away grass blades from their driveways because they're too lazy to use a broom.
It's a huge problem that's driving away birds and increasing pollen count.
My family talks about putting me away all the time. But I won't go.
Seriously you are complaining about leaf blowers? Then you attempt to add credence by discussing bird numbers. Perhaps you can get a grant. Please no more!
I'm old school and will never care for the room treatment. Will there be an improvement? I don't know My ears are my ears, and if it sounds good I'm happy. I have a Luxman 590AXII with Silverline Sonata II, I use the Emotiva HC1 monoblocks to switch up here and there to compare, I can say difference of $8,000 is barely notice.
Somehow I think if you have a good system in a furnished room somehow you have to validate yourself as a true audio connoisseur by putting stylish acoustical panels throughout the room. Somehow not having them makes a room seem unfinished even though it may sound perfectly fine. I think people are hooked on getting acoustical panels in their furnished rooms and may just live with them after they get them because removing them is something they probably just wouldn’t do. A diffuser panel of 3 x 5 in a furnished room room hardly does much of anything, but it can look really really cool. I would have one but I’ve never found anything that I’ve really want to put up on the wall. I think everyone’s been conditioned to assume they should pursue acoustical panels even though many can never really discern a difference in a room that’s furnished. . Walking into a room with a nice audio system without acoustical panels and someone will say oh you need acoustical treatment.
to a statement like this in 14 hours with only two cynical posts in between???
So I guess treating a room with acoustical panels Will provide a benefit. This is news. So many great enthusiastic people have led me to rethink my position. I thank everyone for helping me overcome my fear of adopting a more liberal view about acoustical treatments.
These extreme opposing viewpoints over such a short period of time are concerning and almost schizophrenic like. I’m off this nutty merry go round, and participate further at your own risk. Peace out.
I haver at least a decent system (see my profile and decide for yourself). My modest addition of some acoustical treatment in 2023, consisting of some absorption panels and some diffuser panels yielded a surprisingly pleasant and budget friendly improvement (the cost of the absorbers and diffusers was less than the cost of just one of the balanced interconnects I use between various components).
So I guess treating a room with acoustical panels Will provide a benefit. This is news. So many great enthusiastic people have led me to rethink my position. I thank everyone for helping me overcome my fear of adopting a more liberal view about acoustical treatments.
Now if only someone could help me deal with Leaf blower noise throughout the day from neighbours who are too lazy to deal with lawn issues with a rake. And just why are we using leaf blowers in the middle of the summer when there’s no leaves? Because blades of grass somehow have taken over. Proliferating use of leaf blower noise is a serious problem. Ever noticed bird populations have declined quite a bit and a lot of it has to do with leaf blower noise throughout a community. Further if you have allergies they are probably a lot worse because of all the leaf blowers kicking up so many particles. I’d mention the environment because of the gas powered Leaf blower engines but people don’t care about the environment much anymore. They can't use mufflers because it would impact the flow of air and we wouldn't want that to happen.
"Adding an additional absorption panel in a 20 x 18 room that’s furnished is extremely hard to discern. Maybe Superman hearing would do it."
"Reaching to a textbook to help figure out whether a situation sounds good or not may be helpful to some but I trust my ears to tell me what’s going on.....My curve for the subs seems perfect, I guess you could say this is a helpful confirmation but I really didn’t need to see it based on what I was hearing. I’ve learned to trust what I can hear."
One minute you state you need Superman hearing to determine the impacts the next you’ve learned to trust what you hear. You constantly contradict yourself ,and frankly dig yourself deeper in the lack of credibility hole.
I hardly think of a room filled with furniture is considered a treated room. Certainly it offers acoustical benefits.
The title of the thread does not suggest the system would be placed inside an empty room. It merely suggests that good systems, or really good systems, may do an excellent job regardless of acoustical panels, or‘treatments’ placed about the room.
Reaching to a textbook to help figure out whether a situation sounds good or not may be helpful to some but I trust my ears to tell me what’s going on. I just feel people go nutty with acoustical treatments sometimes and somehow people are inclined to put a lot of acoustical panels all over the place. And gradually the room changes it may not always be for the better and people may not really recognize this. I’m tempted to remove the corner bass traps to see how things might change but that’s a pain to do, so for now I’m hopeful they benefit things. My curve for the subs seems perfect, I guess you could say this is a helpful confirmation but I really didn’t need to see it based on what I was hearing. I’ve learned to trust what I can hear. I still would like to find a nice diffuser panel but having trouble finding one I like, and I'm not sure how much it will really do.
Disagree. If the reason is the pursuit of the best sound the system can create in that space then it has nothing to do with being conditioned to think acoustic treatment equals true audiophile. What is the definition of sounds fine by the way? There are plenty of videos online you can watch and hear the massive difference in the before and after. I don’t want to treat my room using furniture, I want to use acoustic treatment designed specifically to manage issues I have in my room. I have no idea what piece of furniture I need to add in order to manage a +3db rise at 50hz. However, I can do some research and find acoustic treatment that can help flatten that out.
Somehow I think if you have a good system in a furnished room somehow you have to validate yourself as a true audio connoisseur by putting stylish acoustical panels throughout the room. Somehow not having them makes a room seem unfinished even though it may sound perfectly fine. I think people are hooked on getting acoustical panels in their furnished rooms and may just live with them after they get them because removing them is something they probably just wouldn’t do. A diffuser panel of 3 x 5 in a furnished room room hardly does much of anything, but it can look really really cool. I would have one but I’ve never found anything that I’ve really want to put up on the wall.
I think everyone’s been conditioned to assume they should pursue acoustical panels even though many can never really discern a difference in a room that’s furnished. . Walking into a room with a nice audio system without acoustical panels and someone will say oh you need acoustical treatment.
Oh, and you both hate bookshelves but wish you had them. I’m not judging you just making some observations that make the point of the thread hard to follow. By they way, how do you like your 901s?
I hardly feel that corner bass traps and very modest absorption panels in a furnished room is a serious effort to acoustically treat the room.
It may not be but it’s still treatment as well as your rug. You treat the issues you have in the room and not every room requires the same level of treatment. A lot of your responses as well as the thread title make it sound like you think if the system is good then it shouldn’t need treatment in any room, only to find out you have treated your room to manage issues you have. You can over treat/dampen a room for sure but I’m not sure most folks on this site are doing that. They are doing just enough to sort out issues. I guess it’s just between your thread title and opening comment that you make no mention of any treatment then it turns out you have some and have done some measuring (I think both of those things are good to do). That’s what made it seem like you’re all over the place.
The point of the entire thread was to better understand whether there's a benefit in doing room treatments given a furnished room which already inherently does a lot of this.
@emergingsoul Did you investigate any of the sources of technical information offered? If so, your question posed should have been answered long ago. I see no indication you have anything but opinion to offer that is based on your room as a single example. I see no indication you are open to better understand.
Have you listened in rooms you consider excessively treated? Do you have actual measurements to present of untreated, treated, or your room before and after?
And for those who still feel inclined to put acoustical treatments in a furnished room I'm not sure it would really be helpful and actually maybe harmful.
I hardly feel that corner bass traps and very modest absorption panels in a furnished room is a serious effort to acoustically treat the room.
If the room was more open, and lots of rooms aren't, it would be helpful to put all kinds of panels in a room otherwise it would be an echo chamber. The best thing I have in the room is a very thick wool rug and the couch. And other clutter that provides good diffuser relief although I wish I had a couple bookcases but I hate bookcases in a room. Everybody has bookcases and most people don't even read the books.
The point of the entire thread was to better understand whether there's a benefit in doing room treatments given a furnished room which already inherently does a lot of this. And for those who still feel inclined to put acoustical treatments in a furnished room I'm not sure it would really be helpful and actually maybe harmful. Openess of a room is a wonderful thing as long as you don't screw it up with all kinds of acoustical stuff on the wall.
This entire thread is a mess. OP doesn’t have treatment but does have it. Why are people dependent on Dirac, by the way I use it too. It’s all over the place.
"Why is everybody so dependent upon what dirac says?"
Well, you stated this in a prior post hence the question I raised
"Using dirac, I did acoustical measurements and the original curve versus DSP were very similar. It got a bit smoother. ....Would love to know if other people test their rooms before and after doing acoustical panels and how the curve changes."
Care to explain, or simply deflect as ususal?
"Adding an additional absorption panel in a 20 x 18 room that’s furnished is extremely hard to discern. Maybe Superman hearing would do it."
Seriously?
"in all fairness I think people go a bit neurotic when it comes to sound treating their rooms especially when they are furnished."
But supposedly you have "Treatments consist of corner base traps extending up to the ceiling, a couple absorption panels throughout the room" Or , is it this version "I have a bass trap in the corner otherwise minimally treated room .I’m a big fan of getting rid of reverbs so one absorption panel is on the far wall"
Why is everybody so dependent upon what dirac says? Adding an additional absorption panel in a 20 x 18 room that’s furnished is extremely hard to discern. Maybe Superman hearing would do it.
Maybe on the dirac curve they’ll be a slight change but in all fairness I think people go a bit neurotic when it comes to sound treating their rooms especially when they are furnished.
"I have a bass trap in the corner otherwise minimally treated room .
I’m a big fan of getting rid of reverbs so one absorption panel is on the far wall"
A week ago you mentioned plural of both
"Treatments consist of corner base traps extending up to the ceiling, a couple absorption panels throughout the room"
"’i’m a big fan of getting rid of reverbs so one absorption panel is on the far wall but so hard to determine what it really does in the scheme of everything else in the room"
On the surface it would seem that you should be able to hear the differences in the room as furnished with and without the panel(s)/traps{s) Is there something that prevents that? Also, would you not be able to take measurements with your dirac with and without to gauge the impacts?
I did post some details within this thread about my system. You don’t have any details on your system and I’m not really interested.
I have a bass trap in the corner otherwise minimally treated room .
I’m a big fan of getting rid of reverbs so one absorption panel is on the far wall but so hard to determine what it really does in the scheme of everything else in the room. Speakers are pulled forward quite a bit and I do know this really helps.
All I’m saying is that lots of people just throw around a few acoustical panels in their rooms and because it’s a furnished room for most people I would guess most people are hard pressed to discern a difference. For those who have dedicated listening rooms that’s a whole Nother animal since furniture is minimal. If I had a decent looking diffuser panel I’ll probably put it on the damn wall. But I’ve never seen anything I really like looking at because most of them are pretty ugly and you need a lot of them.
But if you think that some panels on a wall solve all acoustics problem you are right ... They do not... But that does not means that acoustics is a superstition created by audiophiles.. Read a book ... 😊
Lots of the acoustical treatments are voodoo science with results that may not do very much most of the time and actually served to dampen the room sound quality
Like pulling teeth to get a description of the OP's system and room. Shocking, he has room treatment, although not sure if the room information provided is complete. At some point measurements are taken, with bass traps in a normal living room. It is not clear what was done to the room to cause a second set of measurements to be a little smoother.
If room treatment is excessive, according to the OP, but based on measurements - What is the problem??? No doubt overdone room treatment exists as does no room treatment. Personal choice!
The OP again demonstrates circular discussion, dissing room treatment, withhold system and room information, finally reveals personal room treatment along with implication of expertise regarding room treatment. Can anything from this OP be believed?
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