Acoustics

[BWLover]

I have moved into a new apartment. My stereo is still in storage in another city.

My new apartment is a concrete building so...

My living room is carpeted over a concrete floor. And the walls are textured drywall over concrete.

What effects do you think the concrete floor/wall/ceiling will have on my rig?

[Kal Rubinson]

My apartment, too, is reinforced concrete and I predict you will have very well defined primary room modes due to the rigid boundaries. You will need lots of bass trapping as well as the other usual recommendations.

[azazel]

My listening room is the opposite. I have soft walls, ceiling and floors. I have rather a dead sound and its surprising how quiet my system sounds. You can hear very low level details, almost annoyingly so, but on the upside it’s very tuneful and not harsh to the ear. It’s very directional though. I plan to add some hard surfaces to the ceilings and walls to experiment. I thought it easier to make a dead room and add ambience than deaden a lively room.

[Kal Rubinson]

Those leather sofas should add some zip. ;-)

Kal

[SPACEMANRICK]

Speaking of leather sofas Kal......I just replaced my fabric sofas with a big heavy 8 foot leather sofa and 2 leather chairs and I have noticed quite a difference in the acoustics of the room. With the 18 foot ceilings and big room, I have found the music from my 804's a little thin but with these new leather sofa's the highs definitely seem to be tamed and not so bright. The sofas also must be absorbing more of the sound because I have to turn the volume louder now to get the same volume from the speakers.....

[Kal Rubinson]

Speaking of leather sofas Kal......I just replaced my fabric sofas with a big heavy 8 foot leather sofa and 2 leather chairs and I have noticed quite a difference in the acoustics of the room. With the 18 foot ceilings and big room, I have found the music from my 804's a little thin but with these new leather sofa's the highs definitely seem to be tamed and not so bright. The sofas also must be absorbing more of the sound because I have to turn the volume louder now to get the same volume from the speakers.....

That runs counter to expectations. Fabric upholstery will absorb more high frequencies which would be reflected by the leather. Consequently, one would expect such a change as you have made to result in a brighter sound.

There are, of course, other factors including the additional chair between the speakers and some changes behind it. Surprising, nonetheless.

[BWLover]

I'll upload pictures of the walls

[emig5m]

Oh you guys are so silly... acoustics don't mean much of anything... a room is a room. :lol:


Seriously, good luck in your new listening room. I just moved my system into a new room I just remodeled over the past month and I'm still in a state of shock and awe at how many steps backwards I did in the sound quality department. I kissed my precious headphone level detail and clarity goodbye and if it wasn't for movie watching, I would just give it all up and go back to 100% headphone listening where you're free of all this BS, hehe.

I was going to order ATS panels but I lack so much confidence in my acoustic skills and this room at this point I've totally shied away from potentially wasting my money on the panels. Even after watching all of Ethan Winer's acoustic videos I still feel somewhat clueless.... Yea they gave me a lot of insight, but, every room is different and those videos won't tell you exactly what to do in your own room and I'm afraid I might make it even worse than better...

Headphones... You just can't beat the simplicity of getting true hi-fi without the rigmarole of room setup not to mention it's exponentially cheaper. :

[Kal Rubinson]

I was going to order ATS panels but I lack so much confidence in my acoustic skills and this room at this point I've totally shied away from potentially wasting my money on the panels. Even after watching all of Ethan Winer's acoustic videos I still feel somewhat clueless.... Yea they gave me a lot of insight, but, every room is different and those videos won't tell you exactly what to do in your own room and I'm afraid I might make it even worse than better...

So use him. Ethan will advise you about exactly what to use and where to put it if you email him with all the details and your goals.

And, just to be fair, so will many of his competitors. You don't have to go it alone.

[wettou]

That's right a lot of good free advice when t come to room design and acoustics and you don't have to sell your first born to hire a design firm

Once all is done get some one to calibrate the system :T

[SPACEMANRICK]

That runs counter to expectations. Fabric upholstery will absorb more high frequencies which would be reflected by the leather. Consequently, one would expect such a change as you have made to result in a brighter sound.

There are, of course, other factors including the additional chair between the speakers and some changes behind it. Surprising, nonetheless.

Kal I kind of expected more reflection also with the leather.

I had read on a website that leather has a sound absorption rate of 50%, cloth fabric of 70%, and carpet on a pad of 55% (the higher the number the less sound is reflected....hardwood floor for example is 8% and concrete floor is 1%). My guess is the new leather couch is much larger than the last couch and also as you have alluded to, the new leather chair between the speakers.

Interesting how the sound can be affected so much by the furniture placement and composition of the materials. When we first moved in to our house the floor had no carpet and the room was too bright with my 804'S. The carpet made a huge difference :T

[BassThatHz]

I recommend you focus on treating the areas between the speakers and the listening positions first (mid points), corners second, rear wall third and everything else last.

If you have an external microphone you can measure the acoustics with REW 5.0

My room is 3900 cubic feet / 1700 square feet of surface area...
and it took 64 cubic feet / 112 square feet of material.
Roughly 2% of the total air volume. (I'd almost recommend 40% more than that.)

It wasn't until I got above 0.5%/0.9% that I began to hear any significant difference from untreated.

Don't expect to treat frequencies below 200hz, short of anechoic it just ain't happenin'. (Everything above 200hz is fair game.)

[emig5m]

If you have an external microphone you can measure the acoustics with REW 5.0

Do you do your measuring with absolutely no EQ'ing (i.e. Audyssey for example) in direct mode? Will any MIC work? Would even the Audyssey MIC from an AVR work? Can you also measure using Audysseys results just for comparisons sake? Honestly, I like Audyssey for movies, but not so much for music.... I thought Yamaha's YPAO sounded much better than Audyssey for music. But I'm getting side-tracked here... I'm definitely interested in doing some proper measurements before tackling room treatments. I'm not looking for flat down to 11hz per-se, but optimize what my system should be capable of.

So use him. Ethan will advise you about exactly what to use and where to put it if you email him with all the details and your goals.

And, just to be fair, so will many of his competitors. You don't have to go it alone.

Unfortunately I'm laid off work until march/april so RealTraps prices is out of the question right now. I would use them if I could just out of principle that they're videos are so informative.