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In Reply to: RE: Any recommendations for this room posted by Dynaudio_Rules on April 29, 2009 at 16:25:17
There's a tendency for people to think of room treatment as a pretty uniform "one approach fits all" sort of thing but it isn't. For example, some people like precise imaging while others are distracted by imaging and prefer to avoid it. How you treat the room depends on what kind of result you're chasing. Apart from that you also want to address any specific room problems/anomalies you have in the process.
Bass traps in the corners will never go astray. Regardless of what you want to achieve, bass traps are pretty much guaranteed to be beneficial. In fact they're probably the one universal recommendation.
Treating the front and rear wall first reflection points will always help with imaging. There's debate about treating the side wall first reflection points. Floyd Toole recommends leaving them untreated on the basis that research shows that most people prefer the sense of spaciousness those reflections add to the sound but he also points out that there are people, especially many musicians, who prefer the sound with those points treated. It's worth experimenting with treatment there and going with what you prefer.
There's a lot of argument about absorption vs diffusion. In a small room you will not achieve a diffuse soundfield but that doesn't mean that diffusion can't help. The big problem with diffusers in a small room, however, is that they cause sound problems if you sit too close to them, just as sitting too close to a speaker can cause problems. The basic rule of thumb seems to be that you need a minimum of 10' between you and a diffuser in order to avoid those problems though there are some products which claim that they can be placed closer than that. In my experience diffusion will tend to work against precise imaging so I'd tend to go for absorption treatments if you want precise imaging and to only consider diffusion if you've got a large enough room to put the necessary distance between you and the diffusers and also are less concerned with imaging.
If you use absorption, make sure that the materials you use provide wide band absorption. That tends to require thick layers of material, a minimum of 3" or so, and some space between the material and the wall, around 4-8" or so. Thin layers of foam or other materials placed directly on the wall don't provide broad band absorption and tend to work on the higher frequencies only. That tends to result in a duller, less lively sound and is probably the cause of most criticisms of room treatment. Good broad band absorption doesn't change the tonal character of the overall sound.
David Aiken
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