DCAudioDIY.com

In my new house I have a dedicated audio room which for the first time allows me to properly treat the surfaces for best audio performance. The room is 20' long by 16' wide with a 9' ceiling. During construction I specified a Berber carpet and heavy felt underlayment. There are three windows that have textured shades that can be run all the way down.

Since I don't know a whole lot about room acoustics, I went to the company Sonitus USA for analysis and products. They have a room calculator on their site that allows you to describe the room and then pick the treatment scenario at three price levels. Here is a link: https://www.sonitususa.com/product/home ... ic-systems

Yesterday I received the order but because I am still unpacking and it is the holidays it will probably be a while before they get installed. I'm including a list of things I ordered and also a photos of the boxes that arrived in my garage. I ordered them early because they had a Black Friday sale with 10% off and free shipping. Looking at the stack of boxes you can see why the free freight was important. Further developments as they happen.

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Walt

This was designed by the guy who has won many awards for room treatment. It is not just absorbers which I agree would be an overly dead room. It is a combination of absorbers, diffusers, bass traps and combo diffusers/absorbers. They are all described on the site.

The placement was designed with the room dimensions, windows, and carpet as inputs. When I first walked the room doing the clap test there were areas of significant "slap echo". The nice thing about this system is that there are magnetic mounts for most of the pieces. If they have to be moved it is not like they are glued to the wall. That way the room can be fine tuned by ear with different types of music. Not only can they be moved but changes of the types can also be make. The only fix would be to fill a few holes that hold the mounts and touch up with paint.

I think your brain is the only room treatment you need unless you are in a concrete hall

Interesting comment Paul that flies in the face of most experienced acousticians who all say the the biggest problem in reproduced sound is the room itself. I have been at seminars with Leo Baranek and other big name acousticians who bemoan the degradation of sound in poor rooms. Here are just a couple of links to articles on that subject. If you take the time to do some research you will find a lot of other corroborating information.

Electronic compensation usually is successful only at frequencies where the wavelength is longer than the room dimensions. At frequencies above that you will get different results at different locations for the same applied correction. The best results are achieved when the room is properly balanced with combinations of diffusion and absorption.

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Walt

Excellent move, Tom!

I'm always surprised to see people spend $100s and $1,000 on crossover capacitors, coils, resistors, fancy speaker wire and interconnects, etc., etc. and never bother a penny to treat their room. You are doing it right!

Looking forward to more pictures when you get moving on the project.

-D

Glad to see that you're moving forward with this, Tom. Can't wait to make the trip and see/hear the finished project!

Stuart