Need help choosing room treatments

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proudx

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Need help choosing room treatments
« on: 3 Jun 2004, 02:18 pm »
I have a dedicated theater room.  the room is 154"X216.375"X96.7"

Anyway My room has thick carpet pad with regular house type pile carpet and drop ceiling tile.  My walls have columns made of mdf every 5ft with arches made of mdf as well.  There is a chair rail about 40" on the side wall made of mdf.  in the back of the room is a solid wood door in the back corner.

I have purchased 705 fiberglass board to make diy panels but am not sure the best places to put them as well as what bargain fabric to put over them

I am interested in purchasing commercial Bass traps from you guys as well, what configuration would you recommend in my room?  Is there a microphone I can purchase along with the TRUERTA or other software you might recommend so I can check my results with the treatments.

Thanks,

David

8thnerve

Re: Need help choosing room treatments
« Reply #1 on: 3 Jun 2004, 02:30 pm »
Quote from: proudx
I have a dedicated theater room.  the room is 154"X216.375"X96.7"

Anyway My room has thick carpet pad with regular house type pile carpet and drop ceiling tile.  My walls have columns made of mdf every 5ft with arches made of mdf as well.  There is a chair rail about 40" on the side wall made of mdf.  in the back of the room is a solid wood door in the back corner.

I have purchased 705 fiberglass board to make diy panels but am not sure the best places to put them as well as what bargain fabric to put ...


Can you upload some pictures of your space?

proudx

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Need help choosing room treatments
« Reply #2 on: 3 Jun 2004, 03:09 pm »
sure I will post some pics in a hour or two.  Also before I do anything with the room would buying the TrueRTA software and getting a good mic and sending you the results help us in choosing what treatments?

I have heard that it  is better to treat a room than to use an EQ is this true?

Red Dragon Audio

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Need help choosing room treatments
« Reply #3 on: 3 Jun 2004, 03:59 pm »
Quote from: proudx
sure I will post some pics in a hour or two.  Also before I do anything with the room would buying the TrueRTA software and getting a good mic and sending you the results help us in choosing what treatments?

I have heard that it  is better to treat a room than to use an EQ is this true?


It is 'better' to treat a room but that alone doesn't always solve your problems.  If you are using an EQ to fix anything most of the time it is to bring down peaks in response but you shouldn't use it to boost dips that are too deep.  If you use it to boost a dip at say 125hz that is 12dB low, your amp may clip at that frequency because it has to produce way more power to bring that dip up.

Whereas if you have a peak of 15dB at 500Hz all you have to do is cut that and the amp does less work at that frequency which is of course easy for an amp to do.  Less work that is.

zybar

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Need help choosing room treatments
« Reply #4 on: 3 Jun 2004, 05:51 pm »
Treat the room and get speaker placement as good as possible before using an EQ.  An EQ is a tool to be used, but it needs to be used wisely.

As was said above, the EQ should be used to bring peaks down and not dips up.

I highly recommend the Behringer products (8024 and 2496 models).  These can be used as an EQ and a Parametric EQ.

George

proudx

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Re: Need help choosing room treatments
« Reply #5 on: 10 Jun 2004, 05:24 pm »
Quote from: 8thnerve
Quote from: proudx
I have a dedicated theater room.  the room is 154"X216.375"X96.7"

Anyway My room has thick carpet pad with regular house type pile carpet and drop ceiling tile.  My walls have columns made of mdf every 5ft with arches made of mdf as well.  There is a chair rail about 40" on the side wall made of mdf.  in the back of the room is a solid wood door in the back corner.

I have purchased 705 fiberglass board to make diy panels but am not sure the best places to put them as well as what bargain fabric to put ...


Can you upload some pictures of your space?


sorry it took so long as I have been very busy, here are the pics..
http://
http://gallery.avsforum.com/showgallery.php?cat=500&ppuser=2731


[/url]

8thnerve

Don't adjust the volume on your distortion, eliminate it.
« Reply #6 on: 11 Jun 2004, 02:04 pm »
An RTA is very helpful.  Anything that you are comfortable with will work.  I am quite fond of the new Phonic PAA-2.  It is affordable, has a real-time RTA, built in calibrated mic, phase testing and XLR inputs and outputs for equipment testing.  It's also very compact and portable.

As far as EQ, I hear this all the time.  I think that good room treatment addresses entirely different issues than an EQ.  We don't make room treatment to alter db levels in a room.  That is an inevitable result of reducing acoustic distortion.  Reducing distortion is what our products are made to do.  Once you have achieved that, you can properly apply some EQ if desired to balance your frequency spectrum.  But only using EQ is only adjusting the volume level of your music and its related distortion, which in my opinion, is missing the boat.

As far as the room treatment appropriate for your room, I would suggest 8 of the Framed Response controllers, 2 in each corner, in black of course with the corner mount brackets.  This will reduce most of the distortion from the main 4 floor->ceiling corners.  You would also benefit tremendously from two Framed Responses horizontally in the corner above the screen.

proudx

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Need help choosing room treatments
« Reply #7 on: 22 Jun 2004, 05:08 am »
where could I find this  Phonic PAA-2 rta to buy?  Also would using http://www.trueaudio.com/  or other software with a belinger calibrated mic hooked to a pc provide me more robust results than the PAA-2?

8thnerve

Need help choosing room treatments
« Reply #8 on: 22 Jun 2004, 08:39 pm »
Quote from: proudx
where could I find this  Phonic PAA-2 rta to buy?  Also would using http://www.trueaudio.com/  or other software with a belinger calibrated mic hooked to a pc provide me more robust results than the PAA-2?


Phonic PAA-2:

http://www.samash.com/catalog/showitem.asp?ItemID=26577&TempID=8&Method=2&CategoryID=0&BrandID=0&PriceRangeID=0&PageNum=0&DepartmentID=0&DepartmentKeeper=&pagesize=10&SortMethod=0&Word1=phonic&Contains=%22%2Aphonic%2A%22&Search_Type=SEARCH&GroupCode=nonetodaythanks

A sophisticated software package will give you the ability to measure more things, but not necessarily any more accurately than the Phonic.  If you are tesing loudspeakers or anything else that would require more functionality, go with a software package.  For room setup, the Phonic is more than capable, and the portability goes a long way for me...  Depends on your needs.  Both are a great improvement over setting up by ear, so I highly recommend something like this.

proudx

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Need help choosing room treatments
« Reply #9 on: 26 Jun 2004, 04:15 am »
wow the software package can actually cost nearly as much as the handheld paa-2.  

The thing it doesn't seem to measure is the RT60 time of my room.  Are there any devices or software that can assist in that area?