Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater I need some help with room analysis and treatment…

There are three companies that you can send room diagram to and they will suggest room treatments for your room (that they sell).

1. Echo Busters: it could run you around $4000

2. Media Specialty Resources: they have several levels of pricing but I think they are more expensive than Echo Busters in the end

3. Auralex Acoustics: it could run you around $4000

If you don't have a rectangular room, then I don't know if you will be able to figure much of this out on your own. Even if you have professionals coming on site taking measurements and such, the outcome won't be as good as if your room is rectangular to start with.

Keep us posted on the results when you actually start putting them together. This is something that I would like to do sometime down the line. I've only been lightly researching this.

- Nick

That old thread is good, thanks for pulling it back to the surface.

Thanks for posting the link Randy. I had forgotten all about that….. I have a lot of catching up to do.

Am I on the right track with this endeavor? Isn’t the first step to get the equipment and software to analyze the room? Then, based on that analysis, figure out what type of room treatments is needed and where to locate them?

My room dimensions are 12’ 2” wide X 13’ 6” deep, with a 2’ 4” X 8’ open area in the back of the room where I keep my equipment and DVD’s. The height is 8’ 6” with a soffet around the perimeter that’s 24” wide X 12” in depth. I have hard wood flooring, and am using a 8' X 10' wool rug.

I figured that I should start with the homework first, then ask specific questions as they come up. I plan to chart my progress through this as I go.

Yes, you are going about it the right way. You might also do some reading in this forum at hometheatershack as it is all about room setup. It will give you a lot of ideas about how to approach this whole thing.

Animal. That Roxul is fine for some things, but for the most part you want a high density material, at least 3lb per cf like the 703. I was lucky and was able to source some stuff from Ottawa Fibre at $60 CDN for 4 sheets of 2'x4'x2".

For instance, if you want to make a really monster corner bass trap, you could start with a 4-6" thickness of the high density stuff across the corner, and then backfill with something like Roxul.

Ethan's Realtraps website was one of the first sites I started learning about things. Of course, they manufacture their own products, but Ethan has always promoted DIY, for folks that would like to build their own.

Ethan's Acoustic Treatments and Design page also has tons of info.

You can also just google "DIY Bass Traps" or similar search..

In a nutshell, low bass collects in corners, that includes floor/wall and ceiling/wall. However, most of us can't apply bass traps to every location. The corners can either have panels stradling them (at least 4" thick), or superchunk triagles filling the void.

First reflection panels, are those that are placed on the wall/ceiling at the point where the first reflection comes from the speaker and bounces to your ears. This reduces echoing and the skewing of the sound arriving at your ears at different intervals. You don't want to completely deaden a room, but treatments are just as important in a HT environment as they are in recording studios.

I think Ethan's room has over 20 panels and he says it is about as acousticaly flat in frequency response as it can get. He can pretty much walk around the room and find very minimal peaks/nulls without multiple subwoofers or EQ. He is not a believer in EQ.

There are also companies that make very affordable great products, so you don't have to mess with making them and time required. RickF has purchased from GIK Acoustics and they make nice stuff fairly a affordable...

Those are some great links, Randy. Tks

Ya, thanks Randy!

I've got 6 sheets of 2x4" x 2" thick sheets of Owens Corning 703 that I didn't use, but not sure how I'd get them to ya.

Thanks for the offer Randy. This stuff is expensive here. $15 a sheet for plain and $18 a sheet for foil backed. (both 2" X 2' X 4')

I haven’t done a whole lot of studying other than read through some of the links provided. I’m beginning to think I’m opening a can of worms with this room analysis stuff…..

Regardless of whatever the room looks like on a graph, there doesn’t appear to be a whole lot that a person does differently. From what I have read, you still treat the room with the same things. Different insulation density for to tame different frequency spikes is about all the options available. And, it looks to me as if each room still gets the same generic treatments. Corner bass traps, ceiling mounted bass traps and traps on the forward walls at the first reflection points.

Considering all that, I think I’m just going to start with corner traps and hang a trap from the ceiling. Depending on how things sound after I build / install those, I may try adding some more treatments to the walls where it is practical to do so.

I figured I’d make the traps out of fiberglass rigid insulation, 4” think. I’ll use foil backed panels on the back side of the traps with the foil toward the walls / ceiling and un-faced panels on the room side. For the corner panels, I can’t really make them permanent like Randy’s. I’m thinking about making them 24” across the front and build them so they will be free standing with some means of attachment to the walls at the the top (chain or Velcro) to keep them from falling over. I’ll hang the ceiling trap from chains.

I’m going to buy the insulation next week and hopefully, time permitting, make and install them. The ‘store’ that sells this stuff is 300 miles away. That’s also where I’ll have to find some sort of fabric to cover them with.

Anyone see a problem with this approach? Should I just get enough of this stuff for side wall traps too? What is a good, reasonably priced fabric? Velvet is pretty expensive…..