[ekovalsky]

Looking for advice on room treatment.  .

Currently the room has no treatment, medium pile carpet, drywall with blown-in cellulose behind it.  Three of the walls are 2x6" frame and the other (adjoining the family room) is 2x12".  The listening room is entered from the family room by double sliding wood doors, each 8' tall x 4' wide, with a wood frame and beveled glass windows.  Photo link below.   The glass windows do create some echo in the room at the seating position when the "clap test" is performed near the left speaker, there is only minimal echo from the area of the right speaker.

I know basically nothing about room treatment so any advice is appreciated.  Maybe some bass traps in the corners behind the speakers, diffusors behind the listening chair, and absorptive panels on the walls behind and to the sides of the speakers for starters?

 

listening room diagram

photo of sliding doors

photo of equipment


PS -- weird how the acoustic zen cables illuminate so brightly with the flash... they're a dull blue-grey under normal light.

[Val]

The setup looks basically right to me except for the lack of treatmentand perhaps the "equip" and ottoman being in the direct sound path. Your ideas also sound good. You definitely have to absorb the first reflections off the walls (even if the RM40's limited dispersion helps) and get tube traps with the correct diameter for the main resonances off the close-spaced l&w dimensions. My 6 RPG Diffusors (behind listening chair) are perhaps the best accessories I have. More "things" in the room will also help damp echoes and any extra liveliness. Moving the speakers (and perhaps also the listening chair) a bit forward will get you closer to an equilateral triangle and the speakers farther from the equipment rack, as anything smack behind and between the speakers damages the soundstage. Bass reproduction varies widely as you move either yourself or the speakers along the long wall, so you have to find a compromise. What I used to do when I was less lazy was to put a subwoofer on the chair, play a continuous bass range on a test record and sit down and slide myself around the speaker positions; you learn a lot by doing this and it is much easier than the other way around.

Why the small toe-in? Doesn't Brian recommend a drastic one? (I have never listened to RM40s, so I can't opine on this). Hope this helps.

Val

[WilliamL]

ekovalsky,

I don't want to write a novel here; however, I can tell you that the best bet is to for myself, or one of the other Eighth Nerve dues, to talk on the phone, or at the least initially start chatting via email.

For sure you can really benefit by getting a RoomPack and treating the corner areas in your room--both at the ceiling and midwall areas. (Many posts here in our forum can attest to this.) As well I would probably suggest some well placed frames in the area that Val suggested, as well as possibly behind the speakers and listening areas.

In the future though, I do plan on using some of our customer's rooms (with permission) as Case Studies. Maybe I will give it a fancy title like "Best Practices and Most Expeditious Applications of Eighth Nerve Products to Palliate Acoustic Anomalies".    

Cheers,
Bill