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In Reply to: RE: How's this for a listening room? posted by Skye on May 17, 2012 at 19:57:08
Skye, you wrote folding door or words to that effect. A folding door MAY be transparent to bass frequencies. The adjoining room will act either as a bass trap or an extension of the room for bass modes, depending on door and wall thickness.Here is an inexpensive tip:
Phonic sells the affordable model PAA3 RTA. It measures 30 frequency bands, RT-60, absolute phase, also has memory and AVG functions, plus an USB interface to store the graphs in your computer. Street price is about U$ 350.
It comes with a test CD. Play the pink noise track in Repeat mode through your system and place the RTA where the listener's head would be, with the aid of a short camera tripod.
With an RTA, you will be able to position the speakers, your chair/couch and bass traps, looking for the most even bass response (30 to 300Hz). Small peaks and valleys are inevitable in any room, no matter how perfet its dimensions.
I like to use with curtains, carpets and acoustic panels to obtain a ~0.6 seconds RT-60 and a declining treble frequency response above 10 KHz, which is the correct response given the distance from speaker to listener and the average in-room high-frequency loss.
Do NOT try to obtain ruler-flat treble response, it will sound bright as hell.Another tip: while house-shopping, ask the realtor to leave you alone and walk around the room while talking to yourself. If your voice is deep, you will hear the bass modes resonating around your head as you walk. You may want to practice at home first :)
More details: search Wilson room/speaker setup method.
Have fun!
Edits: 05/17/12Follow Ups:
Thanks for the helpful tips. I'll make sure to try them out!
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough about the wall behind the listener. Two thirds of the wall is taken up with the closet. It is not a walk-in closet, but the less-deep kind that has the accordion-style doors. The wall in the back of the closet is shared with the master bath.
The other third of the back wall is taken up by a normal, cheap, interior door leading to an overlook of the living room on the floor below.
I'm considering taking the closet doors off and filling the closet with absorption for deep bass, and then putting a large 1D diffuser covering as much of the back wall as I can. Of course, the treatment is still in the research phase. It's fun!
On the other hand, you have five fingers.
Skye, a few comments:
A partially open cavity filled with absortion material may be a bass trap....but you do not know if you need a horizontal (back wall) bass trap yet.
If you remove the closet doors and fill the space with absortion material, it is no longer a bass trap, it will be a highly damped wall...instead of trapping bass, it will kill mid/high frequencies.
In any room, there are vertical, transversal and longitudinal bass modes, not counting ten diagonal bass modes. Luckily they all add and subtract in a haphazard way, therefore most rooms have decent bass, if one chooses the speaker and listener locations wisely.
The bathroom may or not be part of the bass modes equation, depending on how thick are its wall and door. If it has a thin decorative wall and a thin door, the whole wall will act as a bass membrane and absorb some bass frequencies while blurring bass definition.
The same concept applies to the slanted ceiling: if it is solid, for example, made of a thick concrete slab, it will reinforce bass modes. If it is made of one thin gypsum layer, it will act as a large bass "drum", leak bass out and "return" some unwanted bass overhang.
The cheap interior door is a concern, because it may leak bass, therefore your room is no longer a simple space, it's two interconnected spaces with a lossy interface. I suggest that you replace the flimsy door with a solid wood door.
I suggest that you do the "voice" test as outlined in my other post. If the room gives you a headache, look elsewhere. If you hear no major bass boom or total null points, I suggest that after you move in, listen to the system, then proceed to treat the room based on actual listening experience.
Too much bass > bass traps
Too Much treble > absortion
Echoey sond > diffusors (never overdo diffusors).
In other words, do not spend $$$$ on acoustic materials before listening to the system in a fully furnished room. It is very rare that one needs to cover more than 30% of the wall/ceiling surfaces to obtain excellent results.
In the meantime, I recommend that you read Jim Smith's Better Sound (no affiliation)...and DO NOT read acoustic advice on Pro Sound forums.
Studio acoustics has a different set of goals as compared to listening room acoustics. Enjoy the music
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