bpape said:
Corner placement can provide some benefits - but also some drawbacks. Also, corner placement will not eliminate standing waves and room modes nor will it do anything to deal with overall decay times. About the only thing it can do is help focus the early reflections away from the seating location.
Bryan
I don't want to start a flame war.. but I beg to differ on the following points:
1) In the case of an overly strong reverb field and low modal density at low frequencies, corner mounted porous absorbers are a high efficiency solution, I fail to see the drawbacks of corner placement in a typical room. Corner mounted low frequency capable bass traps, and early reflection control are the one-two punch of a standard acoustic treatment scheme. I don't think it is sensible to discount or elevate one task versus the other, they both are important and beneficial.
2) A properly configured corner mounted porous absorber treatment scheme that includes tri-corners [such as where wall/wall/ceiling meet] will effect all of the modal resonances of a room [all of the standing waves]... they don't go away just because you treated the corners, but you do get smoother low frequency resonances. In any event, you don't want to treat the room's resonances [standing wave modal resonances or otherwise] into non-existence, that would not only be a Herculean task, but would sound horrible.
3) Any introduction of absorbent material into the room will reduce reverb field strength. This is true whether the material is corner mounted, or otherwise. But, corner mounting is especially beneficial because a properly configured corner mount encounters ALL of the room's modal resonance frequencies, and there is a LF performance boost of the absorber efficiency in corner locations. To say that corner mounting can't be effective on the room's standing waves is backwards... the tri-corner is the ONLY place in the room you can effect all of the room's resonances from one spot.
4) Corner mounting of absorbers is rarely the right way to address early reflections - early reflection treatment typically requires side wall / ceiling / and rear wall treatments as these are the locations of the early reflections - corner treatments, generally, are about diminishing overall reverb content across the entire band and such mountings are especially good at diminishing LF resonances.
