Auralex Studiofoam

[SunnyOctopus]

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Auralex-Studiofoam-Designer-Kit-422602-i1134515.gc

With some price-matching, I could get that for 55$. My room is completely untreated.

Would that be worth the investment, or might my money be better spent? If you recommend I get it, what do I do with it? o.o

Haha, sorry. I've never tried to treat a room.

Thanks so much for your time!

 

[yepimonfire]

All i can speak for is about the corner bass traps, i installed 8 of them in my corners to reduce standing waves and reduce the "hanging notes" in the low frequencies. well as far as mid/highs go, my room is completly dead, as far as LF goes, the problem has been cut in half and i have a BAD acoustic room. i would certainly recommend them. what exactly are you trying to treat for?

 

[yepimonfire]

alright who thought it would be funny to be a dumb*** and give me negative rep over this post?

 

[sholling]

$55 is a good price but they do look a bit industrial looking for a living room. I do like their corner bass traps for places where they are too obvious but I don't think I'd hang those foam squares in my family room or living room. I went with ATS wall treatments. They are more expensive but they look at lot better. I'm sure someone with more knowledge on the subject could comment on foam vs other sound absorbent materials.

http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=64200

 

[AJinFLA]

My room is completely untreated.

Would that be worth the investment, or might my money be better spent? If you recommend I get it, what do I do with it? o.o

Haha, sorry. I've never tried to treat a room.

What is the perceived issue you wish to "treat" ?

 

[SunnyOctopus]

I have no idea what I'm trying to treat. I just know that room acoustics are important and that I have no treatment. Also, I don't really care about how they look.

 

[yepimonfire]

LOL if you dont know what is the issue your looking to get rid of then best find out! first test you can do is simply clap your hands, if the clap is not tight and short and does not immediately stop making noise after you end the clapping (or you can hear the clap sound appear to come from the whole room instead of right at you hands), you have a mid/high issue and you should look at the thinner foam panels that go on the walls, as far as bass and standing wave issues go, what you need to do is turn on some bass heavy music and sit down, now stand up, does the bass increase or seem to "hang" longer then it is supposed to? does one note sound louder then the others? now walk around the room especially near sidewalls and corners and see if the bass gets much louder, im sure your room is full of uneven bass response because unless you have your sound system in the desert and there is absolutley nothing for miles around, your going to have issues. sometimes the issues arent that big of a deal to you, sometimes they can make listening to music while working around the house irritating because the music sounds different everywhere you go, or when watching a movie, that person sitting over in the corner or by the wall will practically be blown out of their seat on LFE stuff whilst someone in another location doesent even hear or feel the LFE. if you decide you have a bass issue then the best idea would be to go with corner bass traps, foam ones. placing "panel" styled ones meant for walls wont do hardly anything because their NRC at 100-50hz is like .15 versus 1.25 for foam ones specifically designed for bass. if the bass issue is worse when standing versus sitting, (which is usually the case) place them high up in the corners. as far as treating a room for mid/highs, the corner traps will absorb a significant amount of it, but you can and should add a bit more for larger rooms (foam factory's bass traps have an NRC at around an average of 1.23 for ALL frequencies) you could add some higher frequency thin foam panels (2-4 per wall evenly spaced down from the ceiling will certainly help alot). well good luck anyways and i suggest you look at the acoustic material on www.thefoamfactory.com you'll save alot of money, and yes they do work because i have them in one of my listening rooms. anyways good luck.

 

[AJinFLA]

I have no idea what I'm trying to treat. I just know that room acoustics are important and that I have no treatment. Also, I don't really care about how they look.

Save your money and skip "treating" the Phantom Menace.
Spend it on something worthwhile, like music, movies, a measurement mic/preamp, Dr Floyd Toole's book on Acoustics or another subwoofer.
So called "room treatments" are solely for poorly designed and/or positioned loudspeakers. It's a double edged sword. They may improve one area, but at the cost of making another worse - such as killing spaciousness and realism with the HF absorption.

cheers,

AJ

 

[yepimonfire]

hmm well every room in my house is unusable, i cant even get clear sound and moving the speakers only changes the problem "spots" sure there are houses that dont sound that bad, but i honestly could not enjoy my music and movies without something to even out the bass issues they are that bad, bad enough people watching TV who could care less about audio complain the bass is too loud or muddy in certain spots. thats why i told him to do some checking. OP best thing to do is put on some bass heavy music like rock and walk around the room, if it sounds good to you, leave it alone. the music listening room of my house actually has a half triangle shaped wall and is awful sounding bass wise.

 

[sholling]

Treatments can make a huge difference but only once (or if) you identify a problem with your room. In my case the shape of my family room created a megaphone/echo-chamber effect in the listening area. Treatments eliminated the megaphone/echo-chamber effect that was driving me crazy.

I suggest that you make a drawing of your room and a list of questions and post it in the treatment forum.

 

[Jack Hammer]

Save your money and skip "treating" the Phantom Menace.
Spend it on something worthwhile, like music, movies, a measurement mic/preamp, Dr Floyd Toole's book on Acoustics or another subwoofer.
So called "room treatments" are solely for poorly designed and/or positioned loudspeakers. It's a double edged sword. They may improve one area, but at the cost of making another worse - such as killing spaciousness and realism with the HF absorption.

cheers,

AJ

While that statement may be true for certain circumstances, I don't believe it's applicable to all. My tiny place with low ceilings created a megaphone effect where I wasn't able to listen with much volume without the sound turning into a blur of noise. Even at a volume equal to normal speach the center channel and dialogue got muddied at times to where it was difficult to understand. This wasn't simply caused by poor quality speakers or improper placement, it had to do with the room dymanics caused by my 8.5' wide room with a 6.7' ceiling.

I added a few panels and the sound made an immediate and immense improvement (bear in mind my situation was more extreme than most peoples are). I was impressed enough by the change I added a few more panels. Now if I speak or clap my hands in my place there is no longer an echo and if I listen to music or movies at a normal or even loud volume the sound is clear.

Personally, I can't recommend accoustic treatments enough for people. But I don't think they should just slap a bunch of them around the room. They first need to work out proper setup and placement. Once that's completed treatments can be used to help deal with those situations that positioning wasn't able to resolve.

 

[GO-NAD!]

I agree with the AJ's measurement mic/pre-amp (or SPL meter) recommendation. Along with some test tones, that would be the first thing to start with. If you think you have a problem with the room acoustics, check the FR at your listening position. That will give you some indication (but not the complete story) of what's going on in your room. Then, you can experiment with speaker placement and/or your listening position.

I have Dr. Toole's book and it has been quite educational. It would be a good investment. By the way, he is not against room treatments. He just doesn't believe in overtreating a room.

So called "room treatments" are solely for poorly designed and/or positioned loudspeakers. It's a double edged sword. They may improve one area, but at the cost of making another worse - such as killing spaciousness and realism with the HF absorption.

If you put the absolute best performing speakers in a room with poor acoustics, optimally positioned or not, they won't be able to compensate for those room acoustics and performance will suffer accordingly. Sure, treatments can possibly worsen performance in some areas of the room, but if you want to improve the SQ in a particular spot within the room, there is absolutely nothing wrong with using room treatments. Just don't purchase and place them without analyzing your problem first.

As for music to listen to for getting a sense of what's going on in your room, I wouldn't use most rock music as the standard to go by. I find that most of it is too poorly recorded to use as a reference. Some is well-recorded - Dire Straits, for example. But most isn't. I love rock music, but it isn't the greatest reference material for listening tests, IMHO. Smaller Jazz ensembles work for me. A lot of jazz is very well recorded. A good jazz recording of a stand-up bass would be good for checking your bass SQ for music. The reality is though, that there isn't any very deep bass in music - except pipe organ. That can rattle your walls, if you have a good sub. If your system is for music only, testing with music frequencies is fine. If this is a HT setup and you like action movies, you'll need some test tones to check the truly low frequencies.

Good luck!

 

[yepimonfire]

i have my music setup in a 10' long by 6' wide by 7' high room, the wall on the left side of the room is slanted forming a weird triangle type shape with the ceiling, theres no way i could be without treatments, especially bass ones because the amount of standing waves and LF reverb was bad enough to ruin bass note ineligibility, especially on stuff like Obscura's Cosmogenesis where theres as many as 200 notes played a minute on the bass. its pretty easy to tell if you need room treatments or not by walking around the room, standing up, sitting down, if you hear differences in sound enough to where it is irritating, you can bet you need them. if it doesent bother you, leave it i say.

 

[highfigh]

Save your money and skip "treating" the Phantom Menace.
Spend it on something worthwhile, like music, movies, a measurement mic/preamp, Dr Floyd Toole's book on Acoustics or another subwoofer.
So called "room treatments" are solely for poorly designed and/or positioned loudspeakers. It's a double edged sword. They may improve one area, but at the cost of making another worse - such as killing spaciousness and realism with the HF absorption.

cheers,

AJ

"So called "room treatments" are solely for poorly designed and/or positioned loudspeakers."

How does a badly designed or placed speaker cause bad acoustics?

All rooms have acoustical problems. Rooms that are designed for specific sonic characteristics have less, but designing the room with "correct dimensions" only causes the modes to be more evenly distributed. Other than room treatments, not much can be done to change the way air in the room reacts with the sound produced by the system if how the room is used is the primary concern.

HF realism and spaciousness can actually be better if the problems have been dealt with effectively because the listener isn't being bombarded with multiple reflections and extremely strong first reflections. Room dimensions that cause flutter often can't be avoided- how will a speakers' design keep this from happening?

 

[AJinFLA]

I really hate typing but I see that there is gross misunderstanding of "room" acoustics. A "room" must have an acoustic source interaction to have "acoustics". No source, no acoustics. The typical "source" of all the responders, is a monopolar box loudspeaker. While this does indeed represent hat 99.9% will have as a source, it is not the only type.
My prior statement was made to address the typical living area. Some of you have very small listening areas (prison cells?) that are far from typical of the average American home. Extreme cases may indeed require compromised solutions.
In a more typical sized living room (around 250 ft2), with typical furnishings (sofa, rug, etc.), no room "treatments" are necessary when a well designed acoustic source is placed in them (and even a not so well designed source, as is typified by the box speakers used by the 99.9%). None.
The addition of "treatments" in a 250ft2 (say 16x16) room will have only negative effects on the sound (such as killing spaciousness at HF). At LF, they are an inferior and ineffective method as compared to spatially distributed monopole sources or better yet, gradient sources.
The aforementioned book by Toole is an excellent source of info, but by no means the only and definitive one.
For web access Linkwitz' site has this section Room acoustics as well as David Griesinger's site with articles like Multichannel sound systems and their interaction with the room.
Please don't assume that because one chooses to use a poor acoustic source, that all sources will interact poorly with the same room.

cheers,

AJ

 

[yepimonfire]

hmm well the ideal situation is to hear only sound from the speakers, wall reflections etc do nothing good for music but smear notes and reduce inteligibility. ever been to a movie theater that has acoustics so good that all you hear is the movie sound? it sounds awesome. ive been to cheap dollar theaters that dont pay a huge amount of attention to acoustics and i find the experience to be difficult to get into because the reflections etc are making dialogue reverb, bass uneven etc. ive also been to several concerts before where there was not very good acoustics and guess what? i couldnt even understand the lyrics or even tell the singer was singing, nor could i make out individual drum hits or any sort of fine detail.

A "room" must have an acoustic source interaction to have "acoustics"

the only thing a room needs is air, air is the medium through which sound travels and walls and corners effect this by causing the "air" to bounce off the walls ceiling and corners, cause you to hear notes longer then they are played hear them from directions they arent supposed to come from etc. if your sitting at a point in the room where the wall reflection of one note is the same amplitude of the note coming from the speaker, its cancelled out and you dont hear that note, or atleast it is much quiter or sometimes even the wrong note. its just like speaker cabinets, speaker cabinets are there for several reasons, one to hold the drivers in place and the x-overs etc. and two to combat the out-of-phase sound coming off the back of the driver, ideally you want a cabinet to be infinite dimension and to be damped to the point that the cabinet does not make any of its own sound, even though this is not 100% possible. note i am speaking about a sealed cabinet, bass reflex is a different story but even then the sound from the port is not "cabinet noise" or out-of-phase noise from the back of the driver, its a bit complicated as to what its actually doing and someone once posted a link that explained it well. imo i would most certainly prefer a room the acoustically damped to the point of ABSOLUTLY NO REFLECTIONS at all, the sound comes from the drivers (and port if your using a ported box) it is not supposed to come from the walls/ceiling/floor.

 

[AJinFLA]

hmm well the ideal situation is to hear only sound from the speakers, wall reflections etc do nothing good for music but smear notes and reduce inteligibility....

Incorrect. Too much may do this, but too little is actually detrimental. Your post is too long for me to address, so rather than argue, you would be best served to do some actual psycho-acoustic research and gain some understanding, like pick up a copy of Tooles book where he explains exactly why what you say is false....and in the mean time, try to read and understand the free web links I have provided. If you have questions, I'll do my best to answer.
Gotta run.

Cheers,

AJ

 

[yepimonfire]

i think its up to personal preference at this point, i myself find music o be much more enjoyable and detailed in my "dead" room, although i also use Pro Logic II to listen to music, which would give me extra spaciousness. and if thats the case that you HAVE to have reflections, why do headphones sound so good (full range ones of course)?

oh and as far as room treatments go, i dont think treating for mids and highs unless there is a REALLY bad echo problem is necessary bass problems on the other hand is usually a very annoying issue.