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Getting New Drapes for my listening room, what are the best ones to get for maximum absorbtion ?
Polyester, Cotton, Velvet, Wool ???
Anyone Know, and Ideas ?
Follow Ups:
For a sense of ambience.
Small randomly shaped wooden blocks. The wall opposite the windows would be covered with these same shaped blocks.
Well, you asked. The practical answer is that it probably doesn't matter. Test the speakers and move furniture and/or add bass traps to try and control standing waves and ringing. You could then EQ the room to your taste.
As several people pointed out, soft material is only going to absorb sound in a specific frequency range. It's becoming more common to see diffusion material rather than absorption material.
In a rectangular room, the speakers placed on the short wall and toed in is the place to start. As you probably know,speakers almost always sound better off the wall. Ideally you want the first reflection to be more than 6ms late and in the opposite ear. In a simple rectangular room with typical drivers with toed in the speakers accomplishes this goal. The minimum back wall distance for dipoles is 3 feet which puts the reflected sound at 6ms. But dipoles are better 5 to 7 feet off the wall. Typically not practical WAF.
Sound absorption is not necessarily a good thing. Like everything in better home audio its a good idea taken to an extreme. The fundamentals of speaker placement are the starting point.
Oh, the 6ms thing. Both Linkwitz and Geddes have written on this. They say reflections arriving in less than 6ms are interpreted as blurring the sound. Over 6ms is interpreted as room ambiance. Opposite ear is also better interpreted as ambiance. When a really good soundstage is created these rules are being followed, either intentionally or by accident. It also explains why a small room can be good but not great. Better to buy nearfield speaker for a small room and minimize reflections.
Dont forget to consider sheers with whatever drapes you choose. You should use them in any case for several reasons.
Edits: 05/16/16
I have had great success with heavy cotton drapes taming harsh sounding upper mid-range reflections. I experimented with many materials...polyester, wool, plastic...and found cotton to have the most beneficial sonic signature.
Cotton seems to create a kind of "silence" that makes the speaker's sound sharper, more distinct and more accurate. I think anyone who's ever had a plush room (such as a bedroom) filled with cotton drapery, furniture covers, bedding and other materials has experienced this.
Cotton is a very effective sound absorbing material. In contrast, wool was not as quiet as cotton (in my experiments) and polyesters and other plastic fibers were loud and confused sounding in comparison.
You can get the same effect of cotton drapes (or extend the effect) using cotton carpets and soft furnishings. I like the effect of cotton as an acoustic damping material.
...drapes to cover the windows or a thick cotton quilt on the TV/Flat-screen if you have it placed between your speakers. Very effective for imaging and reduces echo.
Well, I already ordered Polyester Drapes, but these do have Cotton Linings.
I have not tried my B&W Matrix 801's since I re did the room with Ceramic Tile.
Currently, I have my Infinity IL 60's in the system.
Perhaps the 801's will be better because they have a midrange head set back in the middle of a large piece of felt.
This felt absorbs some of the bottom part of the 801's radiation.
Have to see how they do ?
All rooms are in essence...horns.
A simple experiment is to sing in a bare bathroom.
Then, add cotton towels, curtains, rugs etc. to the room and sing again.
The cotton completely changes the sound of your voice (mellowing it out and reducing it's sound power).
A (bare) listening room is no different than a (bare) bathroom. It reflects and amplifies the sound of any sound source placed in it. A room thus alters and skews the power response of speakers...adding power at some frequencies and removing power at other frequencies...depending on the reflective/absorptive coefficients of materials in the room.
Cotton (due to its sound absorbing qualities) will cut sound power (direct sound + reflections) in the upper mid-range, which can restore a balance that many rooms would otherwise destroy (by boosting sound power too much at the affected frequencies).
Cotton is nice, tried it in my B&W Matrix 801 heads.
Sounded better then the wool in there.
Kapok sounded even better.
It too is a natural fiber, with superb damping propertys.
Now, where to find Kapoc drapes, LOL
Do "the google" on absorption coefficient for the various materials you ask about.
You might not want the maximum absorption, depending.
What you do want is roughly equal, average absorption for each pair of opposing surfaces, so the total or average absorption of the ceiling and floor should equal the total or average absorption of the front and rear walls. Then same for the side walls.
Of course, in view early reflections off side walls you want the absorption coefficient on those two surfaces to be symmetrical, ideally.
In general, drapes absorb a lot of high frequencies, some mid-range frequencies, but very little bass.
In general, home listening rooms need a lot more bass absorption, and some symmetrical mid-range absorption at the left side wall, right side wall, ceiling, and floor, early reflections points.
The good news with drapes is they can be opened and closed to change their effect.
But if the drapes will be closed when you listen, I would recommend drapes with minimum absorption, otherwise you could absorb too many high frequencies and make the sound dull.
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Richard BassNut Greene.....................................................................
The "Cliff Claven" of Audio
and the "Floyd R. Turbo of Bingham Farms Michigan"
Thanks Richard.
The leather furniture and ceramic tile made my room MUCH more reflective.
Building wall panels to take care of it.
Haven't got to the bass yet.
...you want them to be somewhat absorptive - to stop reflections in the upper frequencies from the glass surface and to create a deader, less reflective, front end of the room.
What is best ?
My listening position has the area to my right rear OPEN to another room, and my left rear has a wall ?
What would you think best ?
Make my LISTENING position dead, and speaker end Live, or what ?
Off topic, WHAT happened with you and TAS ?
I really enjoyed YOUR reviews, but I no longer read any stereo magazines.
Kind of a "burnt out audiophile" here, LOL
> Do we want LE/DE OR DE/LE
What is best ?>
Opinions vary. I prefer the deader end around the speakers so that the room interferes less with their direct output, as you can see from the pictures.
Otherwise, why not Bose 901s?
> Off topic, WHAT happened with you and TAS ?>
After 15 years of reviewing and listening to a lot of equipment, I decided it was time to just enjoy the music, which I had had little time for. My system was sounding pretty satisfying so I was less interested in hearing new equipment. My daughters were becoming teenagers so I thought I'd like to spend more time with them before it was too late. And the magazine went through a sale and changed for the worse. Perfect timing, so I resigned.
> I really enjoyed YOUR reviews, but I no longer read any stereo magazines.
Kind of a "burnt out audiophile" here, LOL>
Thanks. Your burnout is understandable, but I still enjoy reading the two print mags, just to keep up with what's going on.
Yeah, I almost "feel guilty" for NOT subscribing to TAS and Stereophile.\
Once, my whole world revolved around TAS, back in late 70's, early 80's.
You were "hot chit" if you got your copy of TAS before others.
When HP left, I kinda turned off to TAS.
Stereophile, never did get into that magazine all that much.
I read it, but it was not TAS, to ME.
To ME, the late 70's, and early 80's were the golden age of high end audio.
I still will read audio magazines, but my eyes are not what they once were.
I really enjoyed your reviews, and looked foreward to them.
Thanks for all your help.
If the area to your right is open to another room and the left rear has a wall, which makes me think the right rear hasn't, you're going to have an "uncontrollable area" to your right rear. By "uncontrollable", I simply mean an area you really can't make "live" because you can't balance the reflections from it with the left side, and you can't make it "dead" without treating the hell out of the area/s your room opens into.
Don't worry about LE/DE or DE/LE. The best reason for choosing one over the other is to get a particular result and it's different in each case. If the speaker end is dead, you have the original LE/DE recording studio setup which gives lots of detail and precise imaging. Going the opposite way, from my one limited experiment of introducing more reflection/diffusion into the speaker end of my room, gives a big spacious soundstage and much less precise imaging, more of a "concert hall" effect. While I liked that on orchestral music, most of my listening is small group jazz where I didn't like it and I also have an asymmetrical room which opens into other spaces and I found that approach increased the imbalance between my left and right side with imaging.
You may certainly be able to get either a dead end or a live end at the speaker end of the room but what you can do at your end with the openings isn't going to really be either.
Basically just concentrate on taming your high end problems from the reflective surfaces, add some bass traps if you can because every room will benefit from that, and consider treating first reflection points to help your imaging if you want to work on that.
David Aiken
Yes, the listening room end is "uncontrollable" because I am sitting there, LOL
Yes, it does have an empty wall on my right ear side, and a wall right behind my left ear.
Unfortunately, this is my listening position.
So, I think I am gonna make the speaker end dead, treat the first reflections, and see how it sounds.
BTW, we added 3 inches of fiberglass under suspended ceiling panels, it made a difference too.
There was a tile ceiling once, and they put in a suspended ceiling 3 to 4 inches below it.
We took 24 by 48 8 inch thick fiberglass, and used 1/2 of their thickness to wedge into the ceiling between the old ceiling tiles, and the suspended ceiling tiles.
This made a tight fit, forcing the suspended ceiling to behave during deep bass passages.
The room is now noticeably deader, and sounds better.
The room is COOLER too with the additional insulation on an 84 degree Florida Day.
I think most importantly would be a large deep pleat in the drapes
This would break up modes lower into the midrange and any reflections
for higher frequency
Thank you for the information, room treatments are all new to me.
might not be much help but ones used on stages and on the back wall of stages are something like velvet and they are soaked/processed with a salt solution to make them flame retardant. Or at least they were 25 years ago. Very sound absorbant/sound deadening.
"E pur si muove...And yet it moves"
There are noise absorbing liners you can have made for curtains. I think they are intended to cut sound from outside but they do absorb from both sides. You can get a fairly light curtain that suits your room and have it made with the noise absorbing liner which, since it's behind the curtain, you won't see and probably get better results since the liner is specifically intended for sound absorption. I've got them behind the curtains over 2 windows in my room and they really made a difference. As far as curtain material goes, I think it was one of the dearer options but I felt it was good value for money when I heard the difference when they were installed behind the existing curtains in my room.
Can't suggest brand names or anything since what's available here in Australia probably isn't available in the US but you will have local equivalents. Ask a shop which does curtains.
David Aiken
...I went with ones the designer chose (pics on my profile), which would be staying with the room after I left - heavy and lined but mounted out 6 inches from the wall to provide a cushion of air.
Nice setup!
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