Thank you in advance for my fellow forum members for choosing to ready this lengthy post.
Lets get right to it -
My problem is that I don’t have a dedicated listening room and I don’t want to hang random acoustic panels and diffusors in my living room (I love my family, I don’t want them to throw me out). Also, I don’t want to draw a lot of attention from guests, don’t like explaining why I have used what. The intent is to keep the entire room treatment subtle and easy on the eye. I have also not used any room measurement software like REW. So need your expert advice.
I will add some photos so that it's easy for us to address the problem.
I am using MusicHall a30.3 + Quad 22Ls, great combination - because I had auditioned the speakers with this amp before I bought them used.
However, my living room has lot of echo and reverberation because of hard surfaces - huge glass window (dont want to add curtains) , granite floor, and there are other glass surfaces too.
Below is how the room is set up.
View attachment 69286
Coming to the room treatment.
I always wanted to build a skyline diffusor, however, I learnt the difference between diffusor and absorber recently. I reckon absorber is what I need. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Now the plan is to add absorbers on the entire wall (at least 8 feet from the floor) that is opposite to the speakers.
There are two options to do this -
- Custom absorption panel using Rockwool or Geowool from Aural (50mm) - this requires a lot of work, like building frames, fitting the material, choosing proper cloth material and making provisions to hang them
- GeoDeco PET FELT collection from Aural (9/12 mm) - Its available in 4'x8', I can just stick it to the wall using double sided tape or Fevicol HeatX. If I can make up my mind, I can even create some patterns etc.
https://www.auralexchange.com/produ...pet-polyester-fiber-felt-acoustic-panel-12mm/
The front wall has some wooden furniture and center table, this can act as diffusor. And since I am covering entire wall, I hope this is enough to absorb echo to a reasonable degree.
As you can see, I am leaning into this GeoDeco thing, It would be really great if anyone can share their experience of using GeoDeco PET FELT material for acoustic treatment.
Wall where the TV is set up
View attachment 69287
Opposite wall where the furniture is placed - this is the wall where the absorber would be added
View attachment 69288
And finally, here's the huge glass window, where we are not adding curtains for aesthetic reasons
View attachment 69289
...But definitely looks like a echo chamber. There is not one, but plenty of contributing factors here. Having a thick carpet to cover as much area as possible will be a big help. And if you sit in the center of the sofa at the back, then having a absorber wrapped in some acoustically absorbent painting mounted right behind your seating position, will make a big difference. And if done nicely, can be a unique design statement too. Next will be to add lots of soft furnshings to the room, like cushions and curtains etc ( You did mention that you dont want curtains ). But considering the bare concrete walls, hard granite floors and large glass area, you will need all the help you can get. There are more suggestions like pulling out the speakers farther from the wall, if possible, or possibly rearranging the orientation of the room, to have the speakers in front of the glass doors. This will atleast give two parallel walls on the sides, to do something. And the listener will have free space behind his back, so that back wall flutter and reflections will be much reduced.
