Hmm, good question. I'll experiment a bit and post back.
It didn't center the phantom image as much as center the "cloud of spaciousness" if you'll forgive the lame expression.
Bit of background. The listening area is now on one side of the living room, under one side of a 45 degree cathedral ceiling (so sound going straight up would bounce off to the left). I have walls & windows to the right and a big open space to the left, so I decided to leave the wall-mounted absorbers / bass traps (originally added for a different room orientation) in place, in the hope of balancing "absorbent on the right" with "open on the left".
I had to add a panel leaning against the RH window to treat the FRP, and the combination made the room seem fairly well balanced left-to-right.
The panel against the window on the front wall was originally placed at the left side of the window to treat what seemed like a bit of slap echo off the fireplace (actually a big-ass masonry heater) about 5 feet to my back-left when seated. The panel seemed to help with the echo (could be placebo effect 'cause I don't have time for any credible testing at the moment) but over the next few days I noticed that the room seemed a bit "unbalanced" again.
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I tried moving the panel over to the right of the window and that was too much, so after a brief binary search I ended up with the current position. It's probably obvious that I don't know the proper terminology for whatever I was adjusting, but I'm talking about whatever your brain uses to recognize by sound that there's a wall off to your right, for example. I guess it's basically the sum of reflected sounds from all around -- too much with the wrong delays and it mucks up imaging, too little and the room sounds dead, just right and everything sounds spacious & natural.
Whatever the name is, I unbalanced it a bit by adding that panel (in the hope of addressing slap echo that seemed to be hurting imaging a bit) and moving the panel to the right a bit at least centered the impact without losing too much of the benefit. The next obvious test would be with/without the panel in its current position to see if it is still helping, but I used up all my playtime for the weekend already.
EDIT - the fact that I could unbalance the sound by adding a panel on the front wall suggests that there's more energy reflecting off the front wall than I had expected. I don't really have a back wall in the usual sense -- the living room, dining room and kitchen are all part of one big area -- so I didn't expect much energy from the drivers to reach the front wall since there was not much for it to bounce off (other than the kitchen cupboards and the back wall of the loft, both 40 or 50 feet away).
Wonder if anyone makes quadratic residue diffuser window blinds ?
Last edited by bridgman; 09/22/14 03:46 AM.
