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room treatments? is it the room that's bright?

Hi

Tom from New Orleans, here goes with my novel,
please excuse the length

I've been refining my system with ic and speaker cable upgrades - Cardas,Harm Tech, Acoustic Zen, preamp upgrades - Arc LS 5, tube upgrades - pricey nos Telefunken and Siemans,Dac and transport upgrades - EVS MIllenium II and TEAC VRDS 10 transport and power upgrades - equitech balanced power on my front end.

All have made nice improvements. I've been moving steadily toward good imaging, resolution and natural tonal balance.
I've always tried to move towards more musicality - tonal balance, naturalness, air and warmth.

Unfortunately it may be my room that's my guilty culprit for a slightly bright mid and high end, and I don't have a lot of experience in taming that.

I have a 27 by almost 15 by 8 room, hallways on both ends and my speakers are along the long wall, leather couch opposing in a couple foot notched out area (small closets from other rooms notched in on the ends of the hallways).

The speakers are almost 2 feet away from the walls, set in 9' equilateral triangle with the listening area - imaging is very nice (even with a Proton tv on my cwd lowboy equipment cabinet, back a little from the front of the speakers). Floor is carpet (older), walls drywall with drymount music posters on them, ceiling spackled - no special room treatments

The speakers are Von Schweikert Vortex screens - basically a VR4. they are large floor standing. Their tonal balance is good, acoustic instruments sound nice - I play acoustic guitar. I thought maybe the titanium teeters may be the culprits and I've been considering upgrading to VR4se at $6000 or another neutral speaker, but I'm now think my room may be the biggest culprit and would like to take care of that first. At lower volumes things sound nice tonally, but get a little shrill at higher 'more resolving' volumes. I also have a pair of B&W Matrix 2's to compare, which are nice, but they have more cabinet resonance and don't disappear or image as well in the room.

Imaging is great in the room, I went to great detail in the setup, the speakers disappear nicely (a trait I like) and the image is well beyond and behind the speakers (these speakers are designed for true phase coherence.
But things appear to be a little brighter at mid and high freqencies at mid to higher volumes than I'd like. If I am listening in the room behind this room the tonal balance sounds absolutely wonderful even on sax, horns etc(of course imaging suffers).

Is it the room? Is it too reflective that is causing the slight brightness in the mids and highs?

I did an extensive search here on room treatments and I'd like to hear a few more suggestions. I'm single so I don't have the WAF factor, but I don't want anything too hideous looking in the room.

I'm probably less inclined to do a diy project like at David Risch's site, but would be interested in finding some asthetically pleasing but not too expensive room treatments to tame the high and mid freq. Perhaps absorbtion panels on ceiling first arrivals and back wall arrivals, maybe diffusion behind. The low frequencies seem rather nice, so maybe I don't need to go the corner trap route first, plus I have an old wood victrola in corner. I'd prefer something that would be removeable later for resale purposes.

Any suggestions on manufacturers, particularly those not too pricey, who make high quality products that can slightly tone things down? Anybody work with your dimensions or recommend full room treatments based on them? Any elegent or easy DIY projects?

It's distrubing to think that I've ignored my room all this time, when it's more than likely the biggest factor. Doh!

thanks a lot

Tom

thanks

Tom

Can anyone suggest
128x128audiotomb
fs_audio
148 posts
 
Disclaimer: I am a dealer for Eighth Nerve.

Tom,

Hello...Do you here any echo when you clap your hands (even the slightest amount can cause significant increases in "brightness")? Also, do you here this on all recordings?

Very good (and sanely priced) room treatment products can be purchased from Eighth Nerve. The majority of room treatment products work well, but the prices are usually quite ridiculous. We searched for a LONG time before finding this company and have been VERY impressed with their products and service. Anyway, you may not need any room treatment at all, just wanted to bring this company up as a possibility. I don't believe that your system is the culprit. Do the B&W speakers sound brighter to you than the Von Schweikert's?

Regards...Mike - Father & Son Audio
pmi_guy
72 posts
 
Have you tried any vibration/isolation tweaks? Sometimes vibration problems can show as extra brightness at higher volumes.
rives
953 posts
 
Sorry to enter the discussion so late, but I was travelling last week. I've said this before in other discussions, but you have 2 approaches. One is a trial and error, which is not as bad as it might sound for the basics, the other is to hire a group like ours to do the plans.

In the trial and error method I would look at the first reflection points, both ceiling and walls. If possible try diffusion on the ceiling and absorption on the walls. The second area is to work on speaker placement (including toe in). If you go to our site there is a tutorial on speaker placement in the "listening room" section.
http://www.rivesaudio.com/listroom.html
There are many tips in the listening room section and hopefully it will help considerably if you like the experimentation aspect (it is actually fun if you have the patience for it).

Two tools that are useful for helping you determine the severity of your problem and possible solutions. One is the Radio Shack SPL meter (already mentioned), but either use our Test CD which corrects for the non-linearities of the meter or download the correction values which are found on the instructions. (This can be downloaded from our site as well). The other tool is the CARA 2.1 software. It is an room acoustics simulator and can help determine what some possible solutions for your problem might be (we sell this as well, so I may be a bit biased here, but I do think it is a very good value). You can basically model your room, make changes, and see what the theoretical results of your changes are. It does take some time to use and is not the most intuitive program--but is very very flexible and the best I've seen of it's kind so far.

One caution on hiring groups that sell pre fabricated material, they are in the business of selling material. We only sell designs and have no interest in filling up your room with unnecessary items. In fact, we try to use existing furnishings and standard products where ever possible to keep costs down for our clients. In many cases our design costs are offset by the savings in acoustical treatment.
audiotomb's avatar
audiotomb OP
1,112 posts
 
Thanks for all the imput so far.

I bought the SPL from Radio Shack and am awaiting the test discs in the mail

I tried the clap tests and get a clap with some overtones from the walls (not a long delay seperate echo but a spread out clap) then there is a reflective sound maybe 1/4 to 1/2 sec after that rises in pitch/volume and seems high freq. This may be a reflection from the glass on my cd cabinet (I think I'll remove the glass and see if things improve.)
cdc
1,668 posts
 
The analog RatShack SPL meter is better - shows peaks better due to faster response. I tape mine to a wooden cloth drying rack as reflections from your body / sofa etc. will affect frequency response.
As people have said, 1st reflections are importnant to fix but I had glass windows behind my speakers and putting blinds over them helped some too. Also carpeting on floors.
What I did was masking tape heavy blankets to all the walls and put some on the floor. This is a cheap experiment but blankets may not attenuate the harmful frequencies. For that you can buy absorbing pads tuned to absorb certain frequencies.
One other thought, if your amps produces it, your speakers will too. If the source or amp is the problem, room treatment can't do much to fix the problem which is already there. But this is my unscientific opinion and may not have any merit.
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