Excessive sibilance and edge....treat room?


Hi Everyone,

Before I purchase room treatments...

Will treating room help in reducing excessive sibilance and edge? Besides equipment mismatch etc etc...what causes a room to "sound" that way?

Room size is 10 x 14 x 10. It's a bedroom...concrete walls. Wood laminate floor with throw rug. Drop ceiling.

Thinking of treating 1st reflection points...side walls, front wall and back wall(back wall is actually a floor to ceiling wardrobe).

Should I use absorbers (foam or rockwool) or diffusors to achieve my goals? I was thinking absorbers for side walls and diffusors or absorbers for front wall. What do you guys think? Might skip treating the back wall altogether since it's a wardrobe. If I do treat the backwall...I think it would definitely be foam as it's light and I can use double sided tape.

Thanks for your help.
pc123v
Consider isolating your source. Footers made of cork, rubber, foam, wood what ever works. Diana Krall (The Girl in the Other Room) use to fatigue the heck out of my ears due sibilance. Solved the problem by isolating the cdp.
Also consider isolating the speakers. I had an annoying high end artifact that would surface every now and again and removing the flagstone under my spiked speakers eliminated it completely. Even with 2" maple butcher blocks atop the flagstone, the high end annoyance was still there, to a lesser degree.
That one baffled me.

All the best,
Nonoise
@Zd542 & Larryi & Everyone...wow...a big thank you for all your advise.

While my system is not really edgy per se...it definitely could be smoother and more refined in the top end.

Listening in the nearfield does yield a smoother and fuller sound. Unfortunately...that is not my desired position since I am on the computer all the time while listening to music.

I wouldn't say that my bedroom is live sounding...but when clapping, there is a distinct echo (not long though). That is what I would like to tame and hopefully it would ultimately result in a much smoother and refined top end. Would also like improvement in soundstage and image size...Larger!..:)

I listen to jazz female vocals and jazz instrumental...not loud and my bedroom is smallish...I am hoping that my amps (18 watter monos) have adequate power to drive my speakers...90 at 6 ohms. I can't be sure though.

Would treating the 1st reflection points on the side walls and some kind of diffuser or absortion on the front wall be a step in the right direction? How about that echo? What's the best way to get rid of it?

Thanks.
We used to put tissue paper over the NS10 tweeters! Change speaker cable to ordinary 12 gauge mains. Have you window treatments? Move speakers out and away from the walls.
Pc123v,

My advice to listen in the nearfield was not to advocate that this be the setup you use, but, rather, as a means of diagnosing a problem. Because you heard better sound in that position, it does indeed indicate that you would benefit from proper room treatment. This can be as simple as covering part of the walls with a tapestry or having an area rug on the floor. Bare walls--without bookcases or anything else to scatter sound--are sources of problems.

As for actual acoustic treatment, there are panels that can be purchased that are reasonably decent looking so that your room does not have to look like a recording studio. I will mention, again, GIK Acoustics. They make relatively thin panels that can they cover in fabric that can be printed with whatever you want (you send them a photo) or some stock pattern/image that they frequently use. I am not saying that they are the best, in terms of sound, but, I do know that their products work and look decent.

I know some creative people that have cut plywood into geometric patterns and then covered the plywood with fill material and then covered everything with colored fabric. These geometric blocks were then assembled into a really nice pattern that looked like art, rather than room treatment, and this worked reasonably well.

It often does not take that much treatment to transform a room (which means it is also easy to transform a room too much). Good luck.