Mar
13
Basic Room Acoustics
Filed Under Room Acoustics
Room acoustics is a topic unto itself but no time like the present to delve in and get started. As I hinted before all the equipment in the world can’t correct a deficient room (in the world might be a stretch but not by much). Simply put, if your room isn’t optimized for sound your audio system can only take you so far. With our limited time here today I’d like to focus on the two most common problematic room types and then I’ll give a few pointers for each.
The first room-type is the reverberant, empty, we haven’t gotten around to doing any decorating in this room yet, room. Err just reverberant will do actually. As you might guess these rooms are prone to echo and well for lack of better term, reverberation. Luckily this cavernous effect can be managed with what are often inexpensive additions to the room. Number one on the list for taming a reverberant room is carpet, even if it’s just to a place rug in front of or near the main speakers, carpet makes a difference. From there obvious things like drapes, throw pillows, other chairs, books, magazines and just about anything else you can throw at a reflective surface will surely help.
The second room type would exhibit just the opposite characteristics as the first. It would be dead, lifeless and require quite a bit more amplification to drive to the same levels as the first room. For lack of a better term these “dead” rooms are a bit harder to snap into shape but some of the same principles apply as the reverberant rooms. Start by trying to reduce the amount of absorption in the room, replace huge overstuffed pillows with smaller, denser ones. Are there any absorbent items in the room that just don’t have to be there, throws, stuffed animals, pretty much anything that doesn’t serve a purpose? After all this is a home theater right?
Once you’ve hardened the room it’s time to look into the receivers frequency range settings, obviously if the treble is cut low bring it back up to adequate levels. If the receiver has an auto-calibrate function go ahead and try it again now that the room is less “soft”. From there, things like lighter drapes that allow more sound to “strike” the windows and adding flat, hard surfaces back into the room are some of the first things I’ll try to get the room lively again. This is a gross oversimplification of what can be a tricky problem but hopefully this will at least get the ball rolling.
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