Help with room correction

[Bloom@83]

Hi

Am a noob when it comes to room acoustics. My listening space is a rectangular room measuring 14 feet by 12 feet , with a ceiling height of 6.5 feet (low false ceiling ).
My bookshelves are placed on stands against the wall , while listening I pull them about 1 feet from the wall (rear firing port), toed in about 60 degrees and my listening position is the sweet spot with the rear wall directly behind me (less than 1 feet gap).

What would be the most effective acoustic improvements that can be done here, within a reasonable budget (~5K INR)?
I'm not a DIY person so please do not suggest on those lines.

 

[jai1611]

A question - do you have rugs on the floor? If not, that may be a good place to start.
second question - is the wall behind your listening position bare? Are you getting reflections from it?
some pictures would go a long way

 

[MaSh]

Hi

Am a noob when it comes to room acoustics. My listening space is a rectangular room measuring 14 feet by 12 feet , with a ceiling height of 6.5 feet (low false ceiling ).
My bookshelves are placed on stands against the wall , while listening I pull them about 1 feet from the wall (rear firing port), toed in about 60 degrees and my listening position is the sweet spot with the rear wall directly behind me (less than 1 feet gap).

What would be the most effective acoustic improvements that can be done here, within a reasonable budget (~5K INR)?
I'm not a DIY person so please do not suggest on those lines.

Get a wall mirror and another person. Sit in your primary position and ask the person to slide the mirror on walls(sides, rear and front) and floor. Mark all the spots where you see the speakers in the mirror. Try covering them all.

MaSh

 

[Bloom@83]

A question - do you have rugs on the floor? If not, that may be a good place to start.
second question - is the wall behind your listening position bare? Are you getting reflections from it?
some pictures would go a long way

No rugs.
Also bare walls.Both behind the speakers and behind me.

 

[Bloom@83]

Get a wall mirror and another person. Sit in your primary position and ask the person to slide the mirror on walls(sides, rear and front) and floor. Mark all the spots where you see the speakers in the mirror. Try covering them all.

MaSh

Okay. Cover them with what ?

 

[MaSh]

Okay. Cover them with what ?

Anything. Carpets on floor, furniture on wall or you could check out the acoustic foam panels for the walls. Basically you cover these spots to absorb reflections.

MaSh

 

[Bloom@83]

Okay. Thank you.

 

[MaSh]

Decoupling Q3050i floorstanders + room treatment for reverberations

I will try to keep this short. Well before I decided to buy them, I knew that the Q3050i floorstanders lean towards being slightly bass heavy which is not a bad thing at all but which can feel boomy and overwhelming in untreated small rooms with no breathing space between the speakers and...

www.hifivision.com

Check out this thread on similar lines.

MaSh

 

[Deleted member 15865]

If I’ve understood your right, in a room of 14 ft length you have one foot behind the speakers and one foot behind you. Assuming the speakers are another foot feet, you sit 11 feet away from the speakers. And the toe in is 60 degrees. I have the following remarks on this:

- 1 foot from the wall is usually less for most rear firing speakers. Try increasing in steps to 2 ft and see. You might get better separation and depth of soundstage.
- Try pulling your sitting position further up from the wall behind you. You need as much space behind you as the furniture placement permits. Try sitting in a chair, keep moving it ahead and check.
- Ideally you need an equilateral triangle between you and the two speakers. In your case it’s an isosceles triangle with speakers much closer to each other than they are to you.
- 60 deg toe in seems excessive especially when you are so far away from the speakers. You might be listening to reflections from lateral walls opposite to each speaker. Try reducing gradually from 60 to 0 and check the improvement in clarity, separation/focus around instruments and balance between vocals and instruments. My guess is at your sitting position 0-10 deg toe in should suffice.
- Given the extreme short height of the room you might want to check tilting the speakers slightly forward (ie tweeter firing slightly downwards) to reduce reflection from the ceiling. You can do so by raising the rear spikes of the stand or placing a coin below them.

In short, before getting into any room treatment, get your placement and positioning optimised.

 

[square_wave]

Read this page :

How to Build a &qout;Reflection-Free Zone&qout; to Treat Early Reflections

How to Create a Killer Sweet Spot in Your Room The Ultimate Reflection-Free Zone Setup Guide: Placing Acoustic Panels to Treat Early Reflections and Sharpen Your Stereo Imaging What’s the MOST POWERFUL thing you can do to dramatically improve clarity and imaging in your playback room? (Hint…

arqen.com

 

[avtar2008]

this is what i have done:

I had a spare 4" mattress, so, I tried placing it in different places in room and listened the changes in audio. This will give you places where you should place the acoustic panels for most effect.

 

[drkrack]

Hi

Am a noob when it comes to room acoustics. My listening space is a rectangular room measuring 14 feet by 12 feet , with a ceiling height of 6.5 feet (low false ceiling ).
My bookshelves are placed on stands against the wall , while listening I pull them about 1 feet from the wall (rear firing port), toed in about 60 degrees and my listening position is the sweet spot with the rear wall directly behind me (less than 1 feet gap).

What would be the most effective acoustic improvements that can be done here, within a reasonable budget (~5K INR)?
I'm not a DIY person so please do not suggest on those lines.

The Ceiling height is Less, the ceiling needs to be covered as much as the floor. It is quite a tricky Room for proper acoustics (even for Professionals) I think.
I will need few more info
1. Why do you think that you need Acoustic treatment in the 1st place, specify What problems you are facing?
2. What's your gear, what kind of Music you listen to, what are your listening levels?
3. Some pictures of the Room almost 360 deg view will be quite useful.
4. Do you have access to Umik mic, if you can upload a basic frequency response of the room, it'll be great.

Few Suggestions :
At your budget, decoupling the speakers from the room (isolating Speakers from Room modes) via acoustics is quite impossible. Rather I'd look for positioning speakers in such a way that, you take the advantage (work in Synergy) and boost from the Room.
In your case, Half hearted attempt at acoustics might actually ruin the SQ further than enhance. Luckily you have a bookshelf speakers, so LF issues will be less problematic.
There are lots of Speaker position threads on HFV, A recent one had many positioning ideas, try various combination mentioned and report your experience. Also look at the bookshelf manual for expected speaker positioning.
Keep us posted.

 

[Bloom@83]

The Ceiling height is Less, the ceiling needs to be covered as much as the floor. It is quite a tricky Room for proper acoustics (even for Professionals) I think.
I will need few more info
1. Why do you think that you need Acoustic treatment in the 1st place, specify What problems you are facing?
2. What's your gear, what kind of Music you listen to, what are your listening levels?
3. Some pictures of the Room almost 360 deg view will be quite useful.
4. Do you have access to Umik mic, if you can upload a basic frequency response of the room, it'll be great.

Few Suggestions :
At your budget, decoupling the speakers from the room (isolating Speakers from Room modes) via acoustics is quite impossible. Rather I'd look for positioning speakers in such a way that, you take the advantage (work in Synergy) and boost from the Room.
In your case, Half hearted attempt at acoustics might actually ruin the SQ further than enhance. Luckily you have a bookshelf speakers, so LF issues will be less problematic.
There are lots of Speaker position threads on HFV, A recent one had many positioning ideas, try various combination mentioned and report your experience. Also look at the bookshelf manual for expected speaker positioning.
Keep us posted.

My bad - ceiling height is 8 feet.
Honestly - I’m quite pleased with my sound - I have Marantz amp ,CD player and Project Debut Carbon DC.

My objective is to improve to the bass response furthur by adding some absorbers on the rear\ front wall - that’s the idea from a very laymen perspective. Will try to add pictures but imagine a very rectangular room with no crevices or niches.

 

[drkrack]

My bad - ceiling height is 8 feet.

Haha okay, I was puzzled imagining; The room with 6.5ft height could serve as store room, not a good choice for music listening.

Honestly - I’m quite pleased with my sound

Don't tinker much with 5k budget on acoustics.

My objective is to improve to the bass response furthur by adding some absorbers on the rear\ front wall

Routine Absorbers don't do anything to LF (<500hz) response, they're used to reduce reverberation or Echo to improve clarity in vocals & high frequency.
You should be looking for Bass Trap or corner bass panels. This Cylindrical Bass Trap from Amazon can be tried and you can return if you don't like it. Please keep us posted, as you'll be helping others.
Alternatively, You could look for other Corner Bass Trap Solutions from Mmt Accoustix, (but you'll get reasonable SQ benefits with mmt corner traps, mostly when you cover from floor to ceiling, for all the four corners, or at least the front two corners ).