Best room treatment

@roboco, Usually, one can do a good bit with two subs.  How much depends upon the room and to an extent on the mains and how low they go.  In my room, I tried using two REL subs and couldn't get to where I wanted to be.  However, I did not elevate either sub off the floor.  Had I known to do so at that time, I almost certainly would have had better results. 

AS for REW, there is a learning curve, but there is a users group forum and one can usually depend upon excellent guidance on set up and use.   I was  advised to utilize REW many years before I decided to do so.  What a mistake.   REW used properly makes everything 10 times easier. 

@brownsfan  the room is our 2 story family room open on two sides. Not ideal. My speakers are Kanta 3 with the Kanta center channel and Kanta 1 for surrounds. What is the advantage to elevating the subs more than the feet on them already do ?  

+1 Brownsfan. Even if you do go with treatment products, learning a bit about how to analyze your room will help you along the way. 

I totally improvise with homemade available materials and some unorthodox materials for my own acoustic active and passive devices and the results are stupendous at peanuts costs....

The only problem is that you must learn how to trust your own ears, an exercise nowadays absolutely not recommended by the so called experts because they said that our ears are " biased" in a way a computer is not....For sure they are and fortunately nobody own the same ears...


But think about it: room passive treatment and active controls connect inseparably 3 elements : the speakers, the unique geometry and content of your room, and the unique structure of your ears...

You must trust your ears, having fun, and TRY creatively simple materials solution.... I succeed.... Why not you?





A powerful and non technical musical test for your audio system :



Take a copy of Bruckner 9 th symphony, by Celibidache in my case, And listen to it attentively...You can try his great mass by the same maestro....

Do you perceive the intricate dynamical geometry between smoothness and intensity, punctuated by silence ?....Do you sense easily the difference between, the brass family, the wood instruments family and the strings family, the solists and choir voices family, their slow interpenetrating dances and complex successive motives transformations.... Do you SEE it? (a perfect listening is always a seeing)

If yes, it is because your system allow accurate timbre reproduction and 3-d imaging that help to perceive the dynamical interplays between musical motives in a 3 dimensions space out of the speakers....
If yes, your audio system is then able to give you an audiophile experience indeed....


If not, dont panic and especially DONT upgrade anything tomorrow...


Read my posts about the 3 embeddings dimensions and controls....


Any relatively good system must give to you what i describe while listening Bruckner....

By the way dont said to me that you dont like Bruckner.... Say instead i never perceived this beautiful dynamical geometry and i dont have a clue about what you speak about.... I will say to you that probably you had never perceived these beautiful motives because your system is badly embedded and dont help you at all.... You probably dont need any upgrade, just some minute attentive listening concentration time in setting your embeddings controls for the months to come and trust me it is fun....And rewarding....

And you are lucky because without clues it takes me few years to figure it out....I has given to you some creative ideas in my thread about the embeddings then it will takes you months and not years..... Be creative and enjoy without throwing money in illusions....


My best to all....

ronboco, 

the room is our 2 story family room open on two sides. Not ideal. My speakers are Kanta 3 with the Kanta center channel and Kanta 1 for surrounds. What is the advantage to elevating the subs more than the feet on them already do ?

Below about 300 Hz, aberrations from flat frequency response at the listening position are determined largely by the dimensions of the room.  These long wave frequencies will in some cases be reinforced, and in other cases partially canceled, by reflections off of the walls, floor, and ceiling, at a given listening position.  Reinforcement of certain frequencies happens when a reflection off of a surface meets the primary signal or another reflection in phase with that signal.  If a reflected signal meets a primary signal out of phase, there will be a partial cancelation of that signal.  Frequencies where these reinforcements and partial cancelations occur are called room modes.  Some room modes are determined by room length, others by room width, and others by room heights.  Still others occur (generally at less problematic levels) when in phase or out of phase signals result from reflections off of surfaces in two or three dimensions. Adding subwoofers in positions other than the position of your mains changes the location of the primary signal and also the reflected signals.  By careful placement of the subs, you can significantly mitigate these reinforcements and partial cancellations.   Most of us have ceilings around 7-10 ft high.  Our low ceilings will result in significant deviations from flat frequency response below 100 Hz.  Using a sub to mitigate those deviations requires locating the sub at a different position than the main--different in all three dimensions of the room.   This is why some speaker designers who use multiple woofers mount those woofers at different heights in the speaker cabinets. 

If you have an irregularly shaped room, one that deviates from a symmetrical rectangle, it becomes increasingly difficult to predict room response based on the available models.  It also becomes more difficult to predict optimal speaker and listening position replacement.  Measurement with a sophisticated tool like REW greatly simplifies the process.   You still want to use your ears as the final arbiter in making placement decisions, but trying to do all this by ear alone is just an overwhelming task.   Hope this makes sense.