Room acoustic adjustments, before equipment hookup?

[Chopper Greg]

Is it viable to try and deal with any acoustic adjustments to a room, before equipment is available - let alone hooked up, or is this something to be dealt with after everything is installed?

Some things that already jump out as sources of potential acoustical problems, include a brick fireplace opposite the TV wall and a cathedral ceiling.

 

[jostenmeat]

Good question. But a tough question.

The issue here is that it's an interactive thing.

On one hand, yes you have to have the equipment first.

The other side of the coin is that treating a room can allow for better, and easier, placement of speakers.

You see, w/o treating, you might place certain things where you can avoid some nasty modes, but give up the best spots for imaging. Or, in the opposite sense, you might place for imaging, but find yourself in some nasty modal spot. In this sense, treating first can help you find better positioning. But, you can't find that w/o equipment!

You've already done a lot of typing and reading. You'll just have to experiment a whole bunch. Think of it as fun.

 

[Chopper Greg]

The kicker is that I'm stuck with basic placement - sure I can probably shift things about a foot or two, but I only have one real wall that will hold the TV if I'm going to have even 5.1

Turn the planned layout 90* clockwise and I only have 1/2 a back wall as the rest of it opens into the kitchen - major acoustic problem, as any speaker is now shoving sound into the kitchen. When we had both a smaller TV and smaller sofa, this was the layout we had and while it made the sound from TV easy to hear while eating dinner, it was less than optimum for anything other than 2.1 sound.

Turn the layout another 90* clockwise and I have a fireplace dominating the wall.

Turn the layout another 90* clockwise, and I now have only half the wall to work with, and the TV, front speakers, and the A/V center now intrude on the main path in and out of the kitchen.

So I have a general furniture layout, and I have some things that I know are going to cause problems like the cathedral ceiling and the fireplace - I was thinking to get a bit of a jump on dealing with both - building sound dampening screens to go in front of the fireplace when it wasn't in use, and perhaps do something with the ceiling.

The idea I had was to suspend a passive cloud trap from the ceiling, thus artificially lowering the ceiling ( not the the entire ceiling, but from the back wall to the front of the sofa ) - and deal with the slope of the ceiling that would probably otherwise reflect the sound from the front right back to the rear of the listening position. Due to the ceiling hight and the required use of a ladder this would best be done when there was no other furniture in the way - including speakers and TV, and as such if the ceiling is going to be an issue, I would like to get it taken care of before set up.