Hi all - at the risk of self-promotion, I wanted to let you know that I got my side wall reflective baffles (i.e. horizontal oak planks) installed a little while back. Pictures of the room are in my "System."
The planks are 3/4" thick Oak and there are 3 rows per side wall: the top plank is 12" wide whereas the middle and bottom are both 24" wide. All are about 12 feet long. They are mounted using piano hinges on 2"*4" and I use doweling to push the bottom of the plank away from the wall to whatever angle I think sounds best. By changing the doweling length I have complete control over adjusting the angle from 0-90 degrees.
The bottom plank - which is at ear height - is at about 40 degrees (42 actually using trigonometry to calculate it) and reflects sound upwards to the ceiling where I have 12 RPG Skyline diffusers. The middle and top planks are at 30 and 20 degrees respectively, also reflecting sound upwards to the ceiling.
Besides looking cool IMHO, they are a welcome sonic addition to the tricked-out room. By splitting up the vertical space on the side wall across three planks, I can choose to listen to different amounts of 1st reflections at ear level compared to spots higher on the wall than ear level. I've found that with the bottom plank 'closed' - meaning, open a small angle (e.g. 10degrees) - that the plank actually absorbs bass and the sound becomes bass-shy and anemic sounding, but when the plank angle is increased to say 40-50 degrees the bass returns and sounds more natural and engaging.
I'm also playing around with putting a GIK Monster (that is a custom smaller sized unit) and GIK D1 diffuser on the bottom plank at the 1st reflection points to see what effect it has. The 40 degree angle does a good job of minimizing the 1st reflections upwards and over my head but doesn't do it 100% because when I add the Monster absorber the soundstage width gets a bit narrower and I can hear a few more musical details. (I suspect that with a larger angle of the bottom plank that there would be no sound difference between it and an absorbing panel at the 1st reflection point as in both cases early reflections don't make it to my ear as they're either reflected overhead or absorbed.) What the D1 diffuser does is make sure that more reflections come my way (when the QRD wells are oriented vertically so as to diffuse sound laterally). It sounds more live-sounding with more MF/HF energy sent to the ears.
I still have more experimenting to be done with the angles of the middle and upper planks before settling in on the perfect setup. But as an acoustical experiment it is doing an admiral job of reducing flutter echos down the length of the side walls and reducing MF comb filtering (which may or may not be a good or necessary thing). The built-in flexibility of varying reflective angles and adding optional absorption or diffusion at ear level makes for some fun experimentation. Any guesses on what will sound best?! ;-)
Hope this is of some help to the larger community.
