Hi All,
Many thanks to @JonP for starting this thread. I can see many views expressed, and the negative aspects seem to be regarding the visual impact of adding treatment as well as the cost and perhaps effort/ disruption.
Well, I too had the same view, at the start (2019) I was adamant that I DID NOT WANT TO SEE acoustic treatment in the room.
Luckily there is a zero financial cost way (not time cost unfortunately) of exploring the art of the possible.
Let me reinforce the points made many times already by others, sure select the right loudspeakers and put them in the best place in the room and you have sufficiently good sound?
Well, for the avoidance of doubt, when you have heard what a correctly treated room can do for any HiFi you have already purchased, you will not want to go back to the ‘old sound’ (I.e. pre treatment).
You may wish for the old visual appearance, but you for sure won’t want to ‘hear’ the old room again!
In my own circumstance I had a room with very poor dimensions for music playback (refer to my AMROC post no 53 above). I had tried to solve some problems with basic thin panels. It needed decorating and looked like this (apologies for trial equipment in foreground- that was temporary)….
Then I started to contact various companies who could do room design for music playback. I and others have given examples elsewhere on this thread. Some wanted to charge a lot of money for consultation. Others not. Some provided a design tool accessible through the web. I used one such example. Here is the starting point of the above room, entered in the design tool……..
The benefit of putting the work in yourself via such a tool is that you can do ‘what if’ exploration for the VISUAL impact, without buying anything!
Here is a sequence where I am comparing Tri Traps in the corners with some Diffusion and contrasting with Soffitt Traps and 15cm Monster Base Traps……
Here is a sequence where I explored adding some 15cm Monster Bass traps on the front wall either side of the TV, and cover the TV with sliding moving art panels for the transition between movie watching and music only modes of the room…….
The above sliding panel solution to cover the TV was what I decided to proceed with. Here is the front view in the simulation.
I bought the panels and fitted most myself.
Something happened though…… finally, when I wanted to upgrade the TV, moving art panel concept did not quite have sufficient space left and right to clear this new and bigger TV.
I had to amend the concept….. went into the visualisation design tool again (2 or 3 years later) and amended the concept this time to have Soffit traps rather than 15cm thick Monster Traps in the corners (more visible, but better acoustics), and a moving/ retractable TV mount, again better acoustic, covers with art panels that need to be manually removed.
This is it in progress in the 3D view of the design tool……
Any questions, just ask.
E of E
PS: All designs above are my own. The design tool is Roomle. There are quite a few other design tools. The one I used was facilitated via the acoustic treatment company I used.