The Listening Room Reality

Yes, Was assuming 2 corner bass traps in the front and anything else you feel is needed. The front and rear corners include closet doors so would need to be movable. Fixed ceiling treatments would be fine. The sides are complicated by cabinets, shelves and speakers for the video system. The room is dedicated stereo and theater system.
It also has w to w carpet over suspended plywood. Was thinking of having hardwood floor installed with large area rug which would result in a much more solid floor.

Likely better soundwise (and assuming the joists are up to it) would be replace the plywood with thicker and more solid floor - there are a variety of possible materials - or simpler and less costly add another layer of sheet material with different characteristics (e.g. chipboard), to make more solid and reduce resonance, then refit thick wall to wall carpet with good underlay to minimise floor reflectivity and room decay time.

Or even better leave the floor as it is and mount the speakers on some Townshend Seismic Podiums.
I found they gave a large all round improvement very similar to , and complementary , to room treatment.

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Having “moved house and the sound collapsed” I’ve had to explore room treatment - not for optimisation but absolute necessity…. Not a path I fancied but it sounded so bad it was the only option….

I’ve got 3 panels to put on the ceiling (FRP) and need to hang the 2 panels on the wall properly and then await a custom tri trap in the left corner so it will be floor to ceiling (it will cover the window a bit but can live with that as it’s a dedicated room) - GIK sent wrong size but good service, they are replacing with no fuss.

I can now listen to the system and whilst not perfect I am encouraged by results and will be interesting to hear when all the panels are in place.

Watching this post with interest as I don’t really want to understand the science I just want to enjoy the music but needs must.

Gary

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I have finished phase 1 of my room treatments…this is the rear wall…finally done with 4 Scopus T70’s flanked by monsters… the result is very nice bass is tighter imaging is better…
I have also changed speakers to Vivid S12’s which are amazing…they go very deep. They also seem to have better grip over the bass through the 60hz zone (which is my problem area) and that inturn has reduced the room modes. I am still using some DSP…I have halved the notch filter. I think the little pmc’s reached the limit of their absolute control…which made the room modes worse…at around 64hz…The little pmc’s are being returned to Analogue Seductions tomorrow…they were plucky little chaps…I highly recommend them…

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Just started playing with my new umik-1! Really interesting how sensitive the measurements seem to be to speaker position and listening position, particularly the bass, amazing stuff, heartily recommended, even from just 20 mins playing around I think I can tell it’s going to help once I understand it a bit more :slight_smile:

(hope I don’t blow the amp X) )

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Just started playing around with REW myself, it seems a very powerful tool, but as you say it’s a lot to understand. I’ll follow this thread and see if I can learn more…looks like 100Hz is the obvious problem in your graph?

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Yes, but watching the video at the start of the thread, I think the largest issue is the general downward trend, and hump in the bass. Fix the big picture first, then attend to the little things, if I paraphrased it right!?

I have my speakers pretty much on axis, and sit approx 2m from them, so really near field compared to most, removing some toe-in dropped the treble even more, but moving the mic up from seat height to ear height dropped the bass a lot to the level on that pic!

The room is really reflective, and only has a single arm chair in it, plans to add a sofa just got fast tracked :wink:

What are you seeing in your room?

Here is the graph of my right/left speakers from the centre of my listening position. My room is pretty small and the length is not massively different to the width. My speakers are 2.1m apart and I sit approx. 2.1m away from speakers. I have a gap of about 1.4m from my listening position to the back wall. Speakers are toed in towards my listening position.

I’ve since put some home made panels on the backwall just to see what difference they make but haven’t taken any new measurements yet. I need to start reading up and doing some more measurements !!

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Wow. Rooms sound similar size, but the plots are massively different!

HOW TO ACHIEVE A SUBJECTIVELY SATISFYING LISTENING EXPERIENCE

I came across this very interesting publication. It’s worth reading the abstract and conclusion.

It basically says that low frequencies decay time is key for critical listening, or satisfying listening experience.

In other words, low frequency room modes is what degrades the most the listening experience (apart from the comb filtering caused by first reflection points).

Nothing really new but it is the first time I read a serious publication about this particular topic.

Unfortunately, low frequency room modes is also the most difficult problem to attend.

Even with 16 bass traps (which include 4 membrane based traps) I couldn’t completely flatten my problematic 67Hz room mode.

A nice and even decay time below 100Hz is a very complicated thing to achieve.

—> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281663153_Subjective_preference_of_modal_control_in_listening_rooms

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Hi Thomas, having just watched a YouTube video about the AVAA Active Bass Traps, wouldn’t it be great if somebody here would try them and give them a: :+1:t3:?! ATB Peter
PS. I actually have mains plug sockets in each speaker corner, but unfortunately not allowed to spend anymore :tired_face:

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I recently realized that “listening fatigue” I was experiencing in my listening room( 17 X 25 feet) was likely due to a low frequency mode, didn’t measure so not sure of actual frequency. This was apparently accentuated when I went from a NAP300 to a 500. Moving the speakers 12 inches closer to the front wall roughly from 5 feet to 4 feet measured from driver faces, improved the issue considerably. I have no room treatment at this point other than wall to wall wool carpeting.
Interesting article @Thomas , thanks for sharing.

I am about to move from a 250DR to a 500DR and am also a little concerned that a current low frequency room mode might be exacerbated by the 500DR digging deeper than the 250DR.

At the moment this room mode has been controlled with some modified bungs in my rear ported speakers and keeping the speakers well away from walls. So I was surprised when you found that you managed to improve a low frequency mode by moving your speakers closer to the front wall.

Oooh…

G

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Me too :thinking: Best Peter

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This is old news Graeme, keep up mate!

Bet you’re looking forward to to the arrival of your 300DR.

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Enjoy your 500 when it comes Nigel - pre or post Santa?

G

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About two weeks away, or 14 sleeps.

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I know there is a HGV driver shortage, but……:wink:

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