As many of you have heard and seen pictures of my room treatment attempts I would like to offer my opinion on simple room treatments.
Like many of you, I knew I needed room treatments but had trouble finding anything that looked good in the home and would pass the WAF. If you remember; my room is ~8,000 cubic foot, open floor plan and is the main living room. It has bad echo and sound at high volume seems to just jumble all together and provides quite an unpleasant experience. As a simple and unscientific test I wanted to put the least amount of money into some treatments to see if they calmed down my room. I purchased some #8 mineral board which came in a package consisting of 6-2’x4’ sheets that were 2’’ thick. I paid $34 for these. I then took my wife to the fabric store and she picked out the material she liked understanding that it had to be a loose weave and easy to breath through. By chance, the material she liked was 75% off so I paid around $16 for enough to cover four panels. I then used spray glue to stack two of the panels to make 4’’ panels for the two treatments that would go behind the speakers. I covered all 4 panels with the material and safety pinned them as a temporary fix to test the panels. The 4’’ panels were then placed behind the speakers and the 2’’ panels were set at the first reflection point as defined by the “mirror test”.
My unscientific test only consisted of listening to music that I am very familiar with and clapping my hands. The slap echo was almost gone and music has never sounded as detailed, tight and separated as it did with these simple panels.
At this point I was convinced that room treatment could provide a major upgrade at a very low cost. I framed the 2’’ panels with 1”x2” wood and stretched the fabric over it and used simple staples to attach. I then ordered the Ready Acoustic Chameleon Frames for the 4” panels.
The Ready Acoustic Chameleon Frames arrived approximately 1 week late due to a shipping error. RA refunded my shipping cost and I think they are going to send me a free T-shirt as I told them I am easy to please. The frames were packaged well and arrived in perfect condition. Now, I have never wrestled an alligator but assembly of these had to be close to the same thing. I never thought screwing in 8 screws per panel would be difficult but when you are trying to keep the corners square and the fabric tight, as you assemble the frames, it can prove quite difficult. My thought is if you were to use a helper it would be very simple work. It took around 3 hours to finalize the panels which also consisted of cutting and ironing the material, attaching fabric to the back of the panel, assembly of the frames and hanging the frames.
Once the panels were hung, I had a fear that the wife would not like them. The only thing that I did not like was the fact that the screws are stainless steel and should be black to match the frames, the corners where the frames meet have a small gap and that the frames have “Ready Acoustic’’ stamped into them. Now, I am all for advertisement but not in my living room.
When the wife came home she took one look and said “very nice, I like them”
The thing that I don’t like is that I can see the ripples of the mineral board under the fabric and the tighter I stretch the fabric the worse it gets. My thought is that a heavier material or the use of OC 705 may prevent this so I may change this in the near future.
All in all, I have spent ~ $45 per panel and the gain in SQ far surpasses any upgrade I have ever made. Later down the road I will put a little science in the placement of the panels and see if more gains can be appreciated.
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