Treating my front wall

I want to build some DIY acoustical treatments to treat my front wall. I can't do much on the side's and rear of my room because there is "stuff" in the way (college apartment, kinda crampt). I was going to get some acoustic insulation from Home Depot and make some panels... cover them in black or white fabric. Maybe also a pair of DIY bass traps?

My signature has photographs of my room. I can treat the corners with bass traps, and the front wall.

What do you guys think?

Nice room...

Wow, I wish my college dorm room was as large and well furnished as yours...

Anyway, sticking to acoustics, it looks like you've got two nice right corners behind the speakers into which you could put some corner traps. You definitely need to hit the front and side first reflection points with some panels, although judging from the pictures it looks like the first reflection point to the side of your right speaker is precisely where your computer workstation / window is located. I guess that's not so bad since the items on the desk and the Venetian blinds provide some level of diffusion. Based only on my preliminary mental ray tracings of your photographs, it looks like you may actually want to consider an acoustic panel on the side of the computer workstation desk. Those nice high ceilings must provide a nice open soundstage. None of the pictures show the rear wall but if it is as flat and bare as all the others you will definitely want to work some diffusion onto it. Residual diffusion panels have some of the best WOW potential of any acoustic treatment. Walking into someone's listening space and seeing some fabric covered panels garners some reasonable respect. But wooden residual diffusion panels on the back wall demand respect; especially in a college environment where most people try to earn respect by the size of their subwoofers. (Oh man... I'm having flashbacks...)

What kind of acoustic insulation are you going to get at home depot or lowes? You'd be better off to investigate the local HVAC supply houses or metal building suppliers and see if you can find some 703 or mineral wool.

Agreed on hitting the front corners with chunk style absorbtion. As for the sides, if you're good at DIY'ing, a couple of panels on stands for the first reflction points that can be slid out of the way when not doing serious listening would be great.

Bryan

Forget Lowes or Home Depot

Bryan is right; you're not going to find what you need in the way of absorption at Lowes or Home Depot. You'll need to find an insulation distributor, which you can find by contacting Owens Corning or Roxul. And you'll definitely want to find a local distributor over an internet mail order company, because the shipping costs are rediculous. By rediculous I mean more than half the cost of the raw materials themselves.

In reading over my previous post, I feel like I need to clarify that I am NOT suggesting acoustic treatments for the purposes of gaining respect from your friends. As a life long engineer I favor function to form almost to a fault. Diffusion on the back wall will contribute significantly to the quality of your audio. It is only icing on the cake that it also happens to look badass.

-Byron

For some reason, I can't see your profile ....

Generally:
You may get very good sound absorption at low frequencies by pursuing some DYI tracks.... Buy off the shelf fibreglass plates and cut them in the dimensions that you require in order to set them in a 45 degree angle in the corner. You may treat them with fabric so that it easily matches the rest of your furniture. These components will possibly perform just as well as bass traps at a considerable price.

When it comes to diffusion and absorption, just buy off-the-shelf illbruck absorbers and diffusors. They are cheap and performs better then most products around there. Most of the high-end brands use products like these anyways and if you buy directly from the manufacturer you money.....

This may be integrated into your environment anyways way better than any product from rpg, echobusters or others, because you're making the decisions on how it's going to look....

Seems like a win-win...

Regards

Harald N