How do I dampen a live room!!! [Archive] - Audio & Video Forums

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andy13
01-23-2005, 03:19 AM
My room is 11x14. It has cement walls, ceramic tile, and a wall that is half windows. The echo is driving me crazy. Does anybody know of any home remedies that I can make myself or of any panels that I can buy or cables I can change. The problem is mostly with the highs. Will appreciate any help!!

E-Stat
01-23-2005, 06:24 AM
My room is 11x14. It has cement walls, ceramic tile, and a wall that is half windows. The echo is driving me crazy. Does anybody know of any home remedies that I can make myself or of any panels that I can buy or cables I can change. The problem is mostly with the highs. Will appreciate any help!!
First of all, rule out cables as the answer to room related problems such as slap echo. You need to tame the reflective surfaces. There are really quite a few solutions if you do a google search. For years, I simply used bookshelves, rugs, draperies, wall tapestries, and even plants such as large ficus trees to help out. Here is a link for constructing wall panels and bass traps. While your stated problem is not bass related, they can help tame another primary acoustical problem posed by most rooms.

http://www.geocities.com/jonrisch/a.htm

Placement of treatments is also critical with most speakers. You want to dampen the "first reflection point" of the speakers. Here is a link that describes how you determine that.

http://www.msr-inc.com/sp_installation.php

For any serious audio system, room treatments are a must for optimizing the sound.

rw

Mr Peabody
01-23-2005, 08:40 AM
Your room sounds like the apitomy of live. Luckily I have carpet over my concrete floor but I had bare drywall which caused me some problems. My wife put curtains up over the windows and the back side was partially open to another room with a bookshelf full of albums on the rest that helped. When I stood in front of my speakers I could still hear a slight echo when I talked. My wife finally found a tapestry she liked and hung it for me. I was amazed at how much that improved my sound quality. Details like acoustic guitar were much more noticeable and detailed. I share this because you will not only appreciate the lack of echo but enjoy much better sound quality after putting some of this room treatments to work.

kexodusc
01-24-2005, 04:47 AM
Just a question...is it "dampen" or "damp" we should be using here...I've always associated dampen with wetting a towel and damp with reducing or inhibiting something...any ideas?

BTW, good links here.

Worf101
01-24-2005, 06:57 AM
As him, he helped me tame my speakers and I feel he's one of our resident experts on taming rooms and sech...

Da Worfster

E-Stat
01-24-2005, 08:59 AM
Just a question...is it "dampen" or "damp" we should be using here...I've always associated dampen with wetting a towel and damp with reducing or inhibiting something...any ideas?.
Well, how 'bout looking it up in the dictionary? I have the google tool bar and when I'm looking for a definition I google "dictionary" and the word in question.

Yes, to soundproof it one of its definitions among others.

rw

kexodusc
01-24-2005, 10:22 AM
Could look it up myself, but there's always someone that does it for me...thanks E-Stat :)

topspeed
01-25-2005, 10:33 AM
Just about everything you need to know can be found in this thread. (http://forums.audioreview.com/showthread.php?t=7505&highlight=room+treatments) Luckily, I don't think there is a member here that underestimates the importance of room acoustics. Outside of speakers, room treatments will make the most significant difference in the sound of your rig, IMO.

Hope this helps.

Woochifer
01-25-2005, 11:32 AM
My room is 11x14. It has cement walls, ceramic tile, and a wall that is half windows. The echo is driving me crazy. Does anybody know of any home remedies that I can make myself or of any panels that I can buy or cables I can change. The problem is mostly with the highs. Will appreciate any help!!

Sounds almost exactly like my room from three years ago. Hardwood on slab floor, glass on one side, drywall on another wall, and brick on the other wall. Slap echo galore. Fortunately, you can tame the echo by simply filling in your room with decorations, pillows, rugs, cushy furniture, bookcases, etc. Basically, anything that either breaks up sound (hard uneven surfaces like a bookcase) or absorbs it will help to reduce the echos.

The general guidelines are to use absorption on the front and sidewalls, and use diffusion on the backwall. You should try the decorating and "lived in" approaches first. A thick rug alone can make a huge difference, and wall tapestries are surprisingly effective as well. Basically, filling your room with the normal everyday things is really the first step. What you're trying to do is prevent all those smooth reflective surfaces around the room from directly interacting with the direct sound that comes out of the speakers. Reflected sound adds to the ambiance and gives a sense of spaciousness. But, if the reflections are too strong and they occur in close proximity to the speaker (which they will in a room of your size), then your brain interprets it as originating from the same source. This time domain distortion has the effect of making sounds seem harsher and less coherent.

Once you've filled in your room and you still need to tame your room even further, then you start looking into acoustic panels, foam diffusers, and bass traps. It doesn't have to cost much, but just know that the more attractive it has to be or if you have precise frequency ranges that you know you need to control, then the price goes up accordingly. In my room, I originally just lined up six acoustic ceiling panels ($2 each) along the front wall, and it was startling to hear how much tighter the imaging sounded. Because my wife hated how those panels looked, I had to dress them up and hang them along the front wall (and I only use three of them now, rather than six).

Other inexpensive standard building materials like rigid fiberglas panels and duct insulation can be used. The professional products give you a more focused and targeted way of controlling the acoustics in your room. But, they are a lot more expensive, and from the description of your room, you're not yet in the fine tuning mode. Topspeed's linked discussion is a great place to start. I linked to another previous discussion.

http://forums.audioreview.com/showthread.php?t=6701&highlight=panels

Here are some sources for buying more finished looking and professional acoustic panels (w/ pics). The Hometheaterhifi.com link is especially useful at providing a survey of the types of products on the market.

http://www.owenscorning.com/around/sound/commercial_acoustics/soundsoak_wall.asp
http://www.silentsource.com/fwpanels.html
http://www.soundstage.com/planethifi/planethifi200311.htm
http://www.echobusters.com/page1.html?
http://www.tubetrap.com/
http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_11_4/feature-article-acoustic-treatment-methods-and-materials-12-2004.html

Also, DIY Network just started running a series called Home Theater Workshop and one of the pointers on that show was how to design and build acoustic treatments. Here's a link to that episode. If you get that channel, you should look for the program because it has some good pointers. I also linked to Audioholics FAQ on acoustics, which has a huge assortment of articles and pointers on this subject.

http://www.diynetwork.com/diy/hi_family_room/article/0,2037,DIY_13912_3471072,00.html
http://www.audioholics.com/techtips/roomacoustics/index.php

mjon99
01-25-2005, 12:44 PM
Should a room be dampened differently for HT and music?

andy13
01-25-2005, 07:41 PM
Thanks alot guys. I will do those things and post how it worked out. Its incredible the effect it has on the sound quality. Thanks.

Woochifer
01-26-2005, 12:32 PM
Should a room be dampened differently for HT and music?

In either case, I think you want to find a happy medium between taming the echoes, but not overly dampening the room to the point that it sucks the life out of what you're hearing. One of the articles on the Audioholics FAQ that I linked to indicated that with music, you might want to keep the room somewhat lively. In general, I think you can get away with more on the acoustics when you're limited to two-channel sources. It's a lot easier to tweak with the placement, and set up.

I'm not sure if HT needs to be dampened differently, so much as it's a lot harder to get a multichannel setup right. You got more variables, especially if you use a subwoofer.

But, I think that with both HT and music, you want to minimize the echoes and control the reflected sound, so that the sound is evenly distributed.