My listening room has a major problem: lots of windows. The room is 15’ long and 11.75’ wide. One of the narrow ends has two very large picture windows, and the opposite narrow end has a sliding glass door. My system sits in front of the sliding glass door, and my listening chair sits right in front of the other windows. The windows all have curtains over them but the curtains are thin and don’t help much.
In the past year I’ve tried various things to help with the windows. The first thing I did was get the current curtains, but because I had to get something my wife would like, what I ended up with didn’t really help. Then, at the suggestion of my very wise neighbor, I put a large rug over the plate glass windows. The change in the sound was huge! There was more detail and a greater sense of presence. I was amazed. But it looked awful. After a while I had to take the rug down.
Over time I tried hanging a small rug, but that didn’t work as well as the original rug, and it still looked awful. I thought about building various things to put over the windows, but I suck at building anything and so I never really pursued it. Then I found out about Marigo Audio’s Tuning Dots…
The Tuning Dots are small, round dots with an adhesive back, that when applied to the surface of something, provides dampening of vibrations. Ron, the owner of Marigo Audio, assured me that applying a number of these dots to my windows would solve my problem, and it would look good as well. I was VERY SKEPTICAL. I just couldn’t see how these little dots could do much of anything to my large windows. I hoped though that they would work because it would be such an easy solution to my problem.
Given the size and number of windows in my room, I was going to need 48 dots. I ordered them and then proceeded to install them. There are actually 4 panes of glass in my room, and so 3 dots went into each corner of each pane of glass. I had sent Ron a precise description of the windows, and he send with my order a diagram showing the exact position of where each dot should be placed. As I was installing them my wife kept calling me a sucker (in a friendly, teasing way) and I kept wondering how the heck these things could possible do anything.
I installed the dots on the plate glass window first and then sat down to listen. I didn’t have the curtain up so the windows were completely exposed. I played a track from “Jazz at the Pawn Shop” that I am very, very familiar with, and was immediately struck by the change in the sound. Imaging, which had previously been OK, was very good. High frequencies sounded better than ever. Even the bass was better! It seemed that they indeed were working!
I set up the rest of the dots on the sliding glass doors, and then was even more amazed. A sense of presence like I have never known was coming from my speakers! The imaging was just totally locked in. There was an ease and naturalness to the sound that I had not heard before.
The change in sound that these dots made is HUGE. You would have to kill me to take these dots away. The sound didn’t just improve; it went to a level I had not known existed. More than ever before, the music is so REAL, and so NATURAL. It’s my Acoustic Reality equipment set free of the windows!
I am incredibly excited about these dots. Some day I want to order some for my audio stand, which is metal and glass, and then some for my equipment. I don’t have any idea how they work, but they really do!
Ernest
