Accidental improvement in performance...cheap


I had family and friends over this weekend, my dad has a nice system and two members came down for a couple days. We had more people than rooms and one friend stayed in my listening room on an air bed (Queen size) the kind that comes with a electric pump and folds into a gym bag, $40.00 at Walmart.....anyway, during the day he rested it against back wall behind speakers. We went down for some serious listening and he asked if he should move it, thinking it would be easy to just leave it there we fired things up (I figured if it made the sound bad we would move it) now this Air Bed has dimples that look like where the springs would be and it has a sort of suede finish and I am probably going to be laughed at but the system never sounded so good, less smear and HF glare, maybe ot also asted as a sort of bass treatment too, so I wonder if folks would maybe try this if they have an air bed and report what you hear.........I think it made a nice improvement (or we just simply had a great time and my mood made everything sound great) Cheers
chadnliz
makes perfect sense to me - so here's the question, now that you know what you know, are you going to leave it there?
Well my Audio bud took his Air Mattress back with him but I am seriously thinking of blowing mine up and doing just that, I should make it clear my speakers have Di-Pole mid range which may make them a better canidate then sealed but hey its worth a try!
While tweeks to room acoustics can produce wonderful results, one must consider aesthetics, as well. Is it really worth having to stare at an ugly blown up mattress placed between your expensive speakers just because it improves the sound? I realize the main priority of this hobby is to achieve sonic nirvana, but at what cost? No, I am not laughing at the idea; I'm sure it does improve the sound somewhat, but I am scratching my head in wonder.
IMHO what you tried was really a "quick and dirty" bass trap. I had something similar happen when I put a big bag of pink fiberglass (in the unopened bag) in the corner nearest my rack. Esthetically horrible but acoustically nice. So now I think you have an idea of how a bass trap (and maybe some diffusion) could improve your listening room.