Humour a Newbie. Trying To Figure OUt What To Do With This Room

Mister Pig

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2016
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Moved into a new house, and the living room is designated for the stereo. The room is a bit empty, and I don't want to fill it up with a bunch of junk. And I am ready to hang room treatments before someone gets the idea of slapping pictures on all that open wall space. The room shape is a bit odd though, and it pretty well dictates where the speakers have to be. The room is 20 feet long, 16 feet at its width, but have a little alcove that closes it down to 13 feet at the end. The speakers are an open baffle design and are 4 feet off the front wall. Height is 8 feet. On the one wall there is an opening into the dining room, so that side only has a wall about half in length, and it has that alcove in it.
 

treitz3

Super Moderator
Staff member
Dec 25, 2011
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The tube lair in beautiful Rock Hill, SC
Hello and welcome to the WBF. I am a little confused with your post. You want to know what to do with the room but already have a set location for the speakers. What exactly are you asking us to figure out for you?

Tom
 

Mister Pig

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2016
14
11
133
Pics didn't attach, trying again.

One question I had, is how do you know when to use diffuser's versus absorption panels?

The general plan is to build one stand alone panel to use by the window once the first reflection point is located. Use a pair of panels in the alcove area. A bass trap in the corner where the gear is. But this is new territory for me, so I am trying to learn.
 

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YashN

New Member
Jun 28, 2015
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One question I had, is how do you know when to use diffuser's versus absorption panels?

I might be wrong but my understanding is that with Open Baffles you need less of these things.

The best way to proceed is enable the OBs to have plenty of space (away from the back wall), then diagnose the room with REW (or equivalent) and a good mic, then from there see what needs to be done, otherwise it's going to be putting in random things for unknown effects.
 

Hi-FiGuy

Member Sponsor
Feb 23, 2015
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My first thought is to get the equipment, more specifically the turntable away from the speakers, maybe move all the equipment and albums into the alcove area. I think that would be a huge improvement.
After that work on speaker placement for a bit, then work into treatments.

Or even put the speakers on the wall where the equipment is now or up on the step of the alcove and let them breath out the back.
 

Rodney Gold

Member
Jan 29, 2014
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Cape Town South Africa
you cannot dictate treatment until you know what to treat

Gretting good sound in a minimalist or unfurnished room is also fraught with difficulties.
diffusers will not affect the "brightness" level of sound , they will just scatter it with no absorption
Absorption panels will "suck in" the sound in that they will absorb the HF and mids or sonics above the schroeder freq (circa 300 hz .. where the room stops acting like a resonator and more like a reflector)

Neither absorption or diffusion panels will fix any bass issues.

My advice is get all positioning right , furnish the room as it's gonna be used and then measure and treat accordingly

Be aware that most bass traps will NOT help with the typical low bass peaks a room generates. You would have to have huge bass trapping to damp , lets say , a 10db peak at 40hz ...
you have to separate how you treat bass vs the rest .. so its a 2 pronged approach you need
 

Mister Pig

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2016
14
11
133
Hi. Thanks for the clarification response. Since its part of a house, the room dictates speaker location to a degree. The speakers cannot be on the long wall that has the dining room open behind as one speaker would have a wall behind it, and the other none. If you flipped it, then the speakers go on the wall with the window, and you get the listening location a bit close to the speakers. Also the chair gets nestled into that odd alcove, and I suspect that creates its own issues. If you go long ways, you cannot locate the speaker where the French doors are, as the wiring would go across the threshold and be a nuisance, as entering and exiting between the speakers. From my perspective, it seems where they are is the most conducive to daily living, which unfortunately has to be factored into the equation. But this does not mean that the distance to the front wall is not adjustable, nor width, or the location of the listening position.

I do use a DEQX 2.6P to measure the room, with calibrated mic. I can perform parametric eq functions, time alignment, and measure the results once corrections are put in. But its only capable of so much, and the more processing it is asked to do, the more it affects the overall sound also. It's been my experience that with this device less is more, if you can reach that point.

Oh to the point regarding the tables. The equipment racks will be moved when new speaker wire is ordered. Part of the location is dictated by the fact that my speaker wire is 12' long, and interconnects are 1 to 1.5 meters, so to get things wired up, there is a bit of a tether.

Sorry for the mess of the pics, we are in the process of moving in still. As far as furnishing the room, that is a bit of a quandary also. We moved from a 2500 SQF house to a 1000SQF apartment, and divested ourselves of all furnishings that could not fit in the apartment. They were worn from raising kids anyways, and not needed at this stage of our life. So there is nothing to put in there that is not going to have to be purchases, and the main purpose of this room is for listening to music. So aside from my massage chair, its carte blanche for furnishings and wall hangings.

Regards
Mister Pig
 

Mister Pig

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2016
14
11
133
you cannot dictate treatment until you know what to treat

Gretting good sound in a minimalist or unfurnished room is also fraught with difficulties.
diffusers will not affect the "brightness" level of sound , they will just scatter it with no absorption
Absorption panels will "suck in" the sound in that they will absorb the HF and mids or sonics above the schroeder freq (circa 300 hz .. where the room stops acting like a resonator and more like a reflector)

Neither absorption or diffusion panels will fix any bass issues.

My advice is get all positioning right , furnish the room as it's gonna be used and then measure and treat accordingly

Be aware that most bass traps will NOT help with the typical low bass peaks a room generates. You would have to have huge bass trapping to damp , lets say , a 10db peak at 40hz ...
you have to separate how you treat bass vs the rest .. so its a 2 pronged approach you need

Hello Rodney. It's been a long long time since I spoke with you. From the early Audio Asylum days really. Hope you are well. I have not seen Dave Voohoris(sorry for spelling...really am) in a long time either. Hope he is well. Good to see you.

Regards
Mister Pig
 

treitz3

Super Moderator
Staff member
Dec 25, 2011
5,455
949
1,290
The tube lair in beautiful Rock Hill, SC
Hello, Mr. Pig and good morning to you. As you mentioned, you can relocate the LP collection to somewhere else and move the equipment further away from the speakers to let the R speaker breathe. One thing you can do is build a "false wall" on casters to the L of the L speaker. Perhaps making it as high as the speaker itself to help balance out the sound? A good way to test whether this will work or not is to move some unboxed moving boxes on top of the stair leading up to the DR. Build them up as you would a wall to "see" if that would improve things. This would be a quick way to see if this would or would not work.

Tom
 

YashN

New Member
Jun 28, 2015
951
5
0
Canada

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