Room treatment success story

Rrog,

i only do such listening when i am tweaking. i am talking (re)position of speakers.
Also, my room was in a paint prog, so i do not just suggest all do exactly the same in their rooms. There are key elements that are pretty common though.
I had great contact with a manufacturer, they told me what i ultimately was to work with first.
I have also leveled with 4 acoustic companies before treating this specific room.
Even though they suggest a bit different, the start off point is similar.
Ofcourse rooms alter - even sonics.
There are audiofreaks changing cables, cdps etc etc to balance the percepted sound. Even though they might be better off looking over the acoustics first. Even a room that seems ok, might benefit from treatment.
Some alter this with cables. That is kind of chasing a ghost with butterfly net.
Just currently, a quite large cable manufacturer suggested i would skip the Gik package, and invest the money in their cables instead. They told me many clients had complained of same things as me, and all was bettered with the good cables they make. That pretty much tells me how screwed up the scene can be.
As i leveled pretty much with Tony Gee (Tg-acoustics) about this, he also confirmed how common this is.
I was in at a local small dealer. They have an extremely treated room (with quite large speakers). When i told them, they have great sound in their small room, and that it sound horrible at my friends home (he bought a system from them), they say it is for demo purpose and not at all needed. They say this, due to the fact many clients bought oversized speakers and and expected this would sound great in their rooms. When my friend set up his system, it sounded really bad. Go figure if he should start altering electronics and cables due to the fact he listened to them.
He could blow off so much money and never start off correct.
There are many storries i have heard that are close to this.
Not all have had opportunity to hear what room treatment and better placements can do.
Those that knows, don't have to care for this. But again, not everbody have had the chance to actually go hear differences (before/after).

I still await my full kit. It's currently being built:)
So i'll have to wait.

Inpieces, I agree with all you wrote. You are on the right track. Keep me posted, I am interested in how it goes.

Hi Rrog and ofcourse the rest of you.

I intended to do an easy compair and not complicate too much. A before and after the tweak.
Mainly keep it down to the most obvious.
Also to see, if it is ok, to use larger speakers in small listening rooms.
I will try to tell of sonics, if it alters or not.
What will change, for better or worse.
How i percept the all in all sound(field) and also, bass, mid and the top.
I only use, the typical start off kit, though, very extended due to the small size of my room.
All in all 7 panels and 8 bass absorbers.

When i had my room painted and requested help.
I explained i wanted pin point focus, heavily reduced flutter echo and fast deep bass with dynamical contrast and impact.
Flutter echo in itself, makes the sound blurr.
If just reducing flutter echo and 1-3 bass nodes (pending on rooms), it is an incredible change.
I hope it turns out well.

Either i start off a new thread named GIK Acoustic treatments (or similar)... or post here.
Expect minimum 10 days as nothing has been shipped.

So, what do you do, with a room that is really quite much to small for the speakers - you just must have?

Does it even work decent?

Counting, from the size of my room and looking on how large a recommended listening room would be - for my speakers (Monitor Audio PL 300).
We talk numbers from 60-70% larger.
My room have these numbers: 515cm wide and 388cm deep. Height (floor to ceiling) about 247cm.

So, how does this work?

In the begining, the room suffered from flutter echo. But to my surprise, not as big of a subject for worst room-boom as numbers suggested.

As i listen to quite much alternative, i also listen to Canadian Frontline Assembly. The album Epitaph, push low bass and trigger nodes like nothing else.
Many highend speakers can sound compressed with this album.
A few speakers sounded just terrible, some are handling it superb.
If this album works in a room, i guess no-one will have problem with bass nodes in that room (happy you;)

For most music and probably 90% of what i have. My untreated room had a clear masking effect due to flutter echo. Also bass made blemishes that added to less than ideal results.
All people does not seem to find issues with this - the dark side of acoustics.
I have friends having even worse. Still changing very expensive cdp, cables etc etc without even caring for the acoustics.
Well, enough of that.

I contacted some acoustic companies and decided to buy what looked most in synergi talking shape/ size and colour options.
My choice became Gik Acoustics. So, i did a check up and found fair kits. I suspected these would not help me. Mosty due to the fact that the kits had lesser panels and bass absorbers, so i contacted GIK.
After same paintings and mails, i decided to buy a kit, suiting better in my room.
Mainly to absorb bass and reflection/ echo.
Most units are made to be wall mounted, or you can use them an optional stands. I decided to buy optional stands making them easier to move + no need to use nails in the walls.

The corners behind the speakers (front wall from listening position), i decided to use TRItraps.
2 units in each corner.

Behind the loudspeakers i placed 1 unit 244 panel, behind each speaker.
Between them, i placed 1 unit 242 panel (center of room).

Behind my sofa, (rear wall), i placed 1 unit of TRItrap in each corner. Above the TRItrap, i was going to mount 1 unit 244 panel, in the angle of rear wall and sidewall.
(i did not)

Directly behind my sofa i placed 2 units of Monster bass absorbers.

At the sides (left / right), between listening position (sofa) and the loudspeakers i have 1 unit of 242 panel at the first reflection.

To detect that is easy, when you sit in listening position, have a friend hold a mirror. When you view the loudspeaker, you see the first reflection.

The remaing 2 units of 244 panels, those that was ment to hang over the TRItraps of the rearwall.
I have now placed these, between the 244 units that are situated behind the loudspeakers and the dual TRItraps .

The difference is a more coherent soundfield. The slight blurr and smear of the flutter echo, and rumbling bass are very very reduced.
The readability - better view the very layeres of material, the dynamical contrast and impact. The silence the focus and depth.
Bass is more agile and clean impact is more firm. The whole music flows different when start and stop are more defined and firm. This is hard for me to put words on, it is just so much better. If you suspect you might need treatment, you probably do.

Sonics does not alter. I would say this is a very good upgrade.

I have a new loudspeaker cable. I compaired these two i have, before i got my GIK kit. The difference is way more obvious now.

I can concluded that in my case this is a very good upgrade.

I think it looks quite good, all units are black, they are easy to move on stands. Music sounds alot better, i better see into to soundfield and better orientate in the event.
There are no downsides of harsh treble response, shrill, thin, cold or too little bass. There are no holes or dips.

I had large industrial absorbers at one time. I bought them to try. Those are not made for music.
What happened was that the sound became dead, it felt as whole frequencies were sucked out and the experience was terrible.

There are probably bad absorbers and treatment avaible.
I have no intention to say these are good if they were not. IMO, this is a very nice upgrade and it helps you better hear what your system can do.

For 90% of the music i have, it is terrific and hope that a few more dare to invest to achieve audio-nirvana. The remaining 10%, is just when the lowest bass is too powerful in it's output.

If you listen alot to electronica with heavy/ low frequent bass. See to it that you are not buying to small absorbers.
As for me, i could use 2 more TRItraps and 1 unit Monster bass more.

I am sorry if it is somewhat inconclusive and/ or unclear - what i experience. If anyone asks (whatever really), i will try to answer best i can.

Inpieces - thanks for sharing your story above. Have you a digital camera to take pics of your room for all to see?

Like Inpieces, I too have traveled down a long road of room treatments. If there was any advice I'd like to share it's to educate yourself first so that you (i)don't go down the wrong path based on falacious reasoning or outdated theories, (ii)don't waste your money buying the "wrong" kind of treatment that is too thin or not deep enough, and (iii)can learn and begin to appreciate the physics that's occuring and why certain treatments work the way they do. Gaining knowledge, understanding, and common sense go a long, long way.

My bare room with just drywall for walls and ceiling and low cut pile carpet from wall-to-wall (with underpad) sounded terrible - too live a sound with too much flutter echo as one would expect. I began to tackle the bass region first with lots of bass traps and experimented with positioning around the room and with the distance between the wall and the back of the trap. All the while taking repeated measurements to see what was happening. You'll invariably be surprised at some of the sonic outcomes based on treatment location. For example, when a bass trap works better on the back wall than the front wall because the front wall has a door on it and the back wall doesn't and because the back wall also has a brick foundation behind the drywall. All of these things are factors that pretty soon add up to hundreds of permutations and combinations of variables that would make a Ph.D.'s eyes swim, let alone mine.

But taking it one step at a time starting with the bass region and then progressing to the mid/high region was key. I've reduced a 11db peak at 80Hz down to now just 3dB - an eight dB reduction - due solely to bass trap positioning and using thick enough resistive traps and pulling them at least 6"-7" away from the wall, sometimes as far as 13" away from the wall. WAF be damned!

The next region was the mids/highs which I only wanted to diffuse or reflect not absorb. You wouldn't believe how much HF wall-to-wall carpet can absorb so I desperately wanted to prevent a dead-sounding room. Again education came to the rescue with what kinds of diffusion to use and where, 1D vs 2D, seating distances away, calculating low freq effectiveness of diffusers etc. . .

The end result is pretty special as it's been about a 2 year journey (a slow learner?) and it really sounds amazing now. It's like having your own audio laboratory where the smallest of changes in tubes or cables can be heard. It's like falling in love with your music all over again, as cliche as that sounds. People who have spent their lives listening to music on boom boxes, or in cars, or on their iPods have the dumbest grins on their faces when they listen and point to places in space to the musicians on an invisible stage! it's the funniest thing to see but also very rewarding.

So, I would encourage all to treat thy room before upgrading your equipment as it'll pay back sonic dividends far greater than swapping out tubes, cords, preamps etc. Please email me if you'd like with questions and I'd be happy to try and convey my experience.

cheers,
kevin