Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Acoustic Panels

Well i may also have to do some manual measurements unless i can find software that will actually take readings of all frequencies in a sweep and record them in a manner in which i can plot it properly.
I don't want to have to measure 1000 times for that data either, but i will if i have to!!

Just for the record, I have no problem with room treatments. I agree that any given room will have dramatic effects on the sound and that treating the acoustics in the room can improve the sound quality.

Just like anything in life though, there always seem to be trade-offs involved. There seems to be one with regard to aesthetics when treating a room. Currently, I would never get away with strapping absorbers all over our livingroom. When we move to a bigger place I am told by the Minister of Aesthetics (my partner) that I will get my own room to do with what I please. I fully intend to treat this room.

I know that treatments don't all have to be hideously ugly but if you intend to install 8 mini-traps for example I don't know how you could pull that off and make it look good (my subjective opinion).

Cheers,

Jordan

Hey Royce, I have been trying to build a graph in Excel I can use with my realtraps results. You would think an IT guy could figure out Excel. I feel like telling those "Wizzards" where to go.

The first time I used Realtraps CD, I actually printed off the supplied graph and marked the locations on the graph, while my other hand would occasionally have to reach for the SPL meter and change from 70 to 80 to 90 to 70, etc...

I actually found it easier the second time take a piece of paper, on the left side I made a column where I had 20-29hz, 30-39hz, etc... and then I just wrote the decibel readings across the paper, jumped down a line, etc...Then I used Microsoft Paint to actualy enter the dots on their GIF graph.

So, if you figure out how to create a similar graph in Excel, help me out man.

Freakin' nerds.

Randy I haven't received my Tri-Traps yet, I called yesterday and was told by Glen that my order somehow got missed. No biggie, they should be here Monday and the folks were very cool about it.

>>So, if you figure out how to create a similar graph in Excel, help me out man.

I'm going from memory here (misplaced my Office CD in the move) so you might have to interpret the menu items a bit.

I normally enter the FR data (other people's data, I'm too damn lazy to measure my own room) in columns, where the first column is the frequency and the second column is the measured SPL.

Start in the top left hand cell with actual data (eg. your lowest frequency) and select down to SPL for the highest frequency, ie select the data you want to graph.

Insert => Chart, then pick whatever option gets you a new worksheet instead of embedding the chart in the middle of your data table.

I think a little wizard pops up here. It lets you pick what kind of graph style you want. I vaguely remember picking X/Y but that doesn't seem right for an FR graph -- maybe start with a line graph first. You are given all kinds of options for smoothing the lines etc..., stay with "simple".

Other than legends & grid lines, you should be pretty much done at this point.

[EDIT] As long as I'm here, just wanted to say for the record one more time that a single frequency response graph is *not* sufficient to show more than a fraction of the improvements that you can get from good room treatments.

An EQ can fix response at a single point in the room, but you need room treatments (bass traps) and/or speaker relocation to get decent response across a listening area of more than one seat. You would need to measure response at a number of locations and plot them all (before and after) to show this improvement.

Similarly, many of the improvements from room treatment simply won't show on an FR graph at all. Reductions in echo need a more complex graph (spectral decay ?) to see the change. For changes like getting the right level of diffusion (which can open up the sound of a room in a similar way as going from direct surrounds to QS surrounds) I have no idea *how* to measure the results in a graph.

Regarding appearance, it's worth taking a spin through some of the sample rooms on the Rives Audio site to see what you can do. While I prefer the look of rooms with dramatic and highly visible treatments (as, I suspect, do most guys ) they actually design most of their rooms with hidden treatments right down to embedding large Helmholz resonators in custom-built furniture. It's really worth a visit to see what can be hidden in walls and ceilings.

For practical budgets, this translates into "don't hang ugly stuff on the drywall, use the space between the studs".

Thanks John, that was all the help I needed. I am now transferring my data from the manual method to this new spreadsheet. Then I can try to figure out how to add another line with a different color for stats with the bass traps in place for comparison purposes.

We quiver with antici....... pation.

Glad to hear that, G-Man.