Do Acoustic Panels Really Work? Surprising Results...
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- Опубликовано: 12 сен 2024
- Of course they work. But there are 2 conditions to meet:
First, they have to be thick enough. Minimum 6" is recommended. Mine are 5.5" and that's close enough. Thinner panels only absorb higher frequencies and have little effect on the lower midrange and practically no effect on bass.
Second, you need more of them to make a serious difference. I put a LOT of treatment in my room to get it to where it is now. Every bit helps, but don't expect miracles when you install 2 or 3 panels.
Even though I showed the measurable (and audible) difference that just 4 panels can make when placed at the first sidewall reflection point, to get major gains you need to use a lot more.
Treating the sidewall reflection WILL make an audible improvement to the sound quality, in particular clarity, and it's a great start. But if you want the kind of improvement I was able to get in my room, then you need to commit to doing a lot more.
As shown in the video, an untreated room is a veritable blizzard of reflections that take what could be a high definition listening experience, and make it into a standard definition mess. Stop fooling yourself into thinking that all you need is the right amp or the right speakers or (absurdly) the right cable to get the ultimate sound in you echo-chamber room.
Again, think of the headphones example. What do they say when they want you to listen to something very carefully? They say wear headphones. Why? Because headphones are the closest you can get to a reflection-free listening experience, outside of a real anechoic chamber.
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Of course they work. But there are 2 conditions to meet:
First, they have to be thick enough. Minimum 6" is recommended. Mine are 5.5" and that's close enough. Thinner panels only absorb higher frequencies and have little effect on the lower midrange and practically no effect on bass.
Second, you need more of them to make a serious difference. I put a LOT of treatment in my room to get it to where it is now. Every bit helps, but don't expect miracles when you install 2 or 3 panels.
Even though I showed the measurable (and audible) difference that just 4 panels can make when placed at the first sidewall reflection point, to get major gains you need to use a lot more.
Treating the sidewall reflection WILL make an audible improvement to the sound quality, in particular clarity, and it's a great start. But if you want the kind of improvement I was able to get in my room, then you need to commit to doing a lot more.
As shown in the video, an untreated room is a veritable blizzard of reflections that take what could be a high definition listening experience, and make it into a standard definition mess. Stop fooling yourself into thinking that all you need is the right amp or the right speakers or (absurdly) the right cable to get the ultimate sound in you echo-chamber room.
Again, think of the headphones example. What do they say when they want you to listen to something very carefully? They say wear headphones. Why? Because headphones are the closest you can get to a reflection-free listening experience, outside of a real anechoic chamber.
Only if they can reduce all noises from your environment can they be remotely like an anechoic chamber. Reflection free is not the same as dead quiet. A good sounding room requires a combination of absorption and diffusion.
Very interseting! How did exerience the stereo with or imaging after the treatment?
@@impuls60 Sound stage and imaging are the same with or without the panels, but there is an improvement in the clarity.
Material for a sound room is a complete total waste of money & will usually hurt the imaging. Speakers usually need to be placed 4 foot away from the walls, but the greatest upgrade possible that is totally amazing is to place speakers 4 inches from the back brick wall. The brick is an amazing diffusor, all other diffusors are totally worthless, except if you have a block wall heavily stucchoed. This setup creates so much bass that a subwoofer wont work. You heard that right, my subwoofer played great, but in this setup the sub played flubby, so I unhooked it. I dont care for subs anyway. The setup gave louder, lower extention, & clearer bass. Brick holds more bass in a room than a sheetrock wall. I have a brick fireplace also, I set my speakers directly on the fireplace. Between the speakers on my fireplace is a glass fireplace hole cover that greatly improves the imaging. or you can put glass or a miirror between the speakers on the back wall. The floor in my room is thin hardwood, that in a big room reverberates more to louden the sound. You know how a valley can echo or reverberate to louden the sound. Another thing that can louden the sound, there is a post office building in my town that has marble walls where you can hear a pin drop. a long hallway in a house with hardwood floors can amplify the sound, just like a flute amplifies the sound, just like a transmission line enclosure in a speaker is sort of like a flute that can amplify the sound. If you have 1 boat. there is 1 wave behind the boat. If you have 2 boats, you have 2 waves behind the boats, but the 2 waves hit each other causing a 3rd 3 dimensional imaging wave, just the same as 2 speakers cause the 3rd imaging wave between the speakers. In a small room you can place a wall or a mattress straight up between the speakers, just a few inches in front of the speakers that will cause a better stereo & imaging effect & make the sub have more bass. Your speakers need to have the bookshelf speakers 20 to 24 inches off the ground for more bass, any other length you will lose bass.
Room treatments hardly do anything.
The black support braces look very cool for the panels, and I like you'll maintain that with the other speakers. It's so fascinating how much it takes to get a space to allow you to hear the speakers as they reproduce your music, as opposed to hearing your room as it presents the music your speakers are throwing out!
I've started installing some treatment in my living room. I don't have a dedicated space other than that. I've installed 3 out of 4 "bass traps" from De-Fi Systems, so far. I've done the left front and rear corners and modified two of them to go on flat walls and installed one of those so far behind and slightly to the right of the right speaker. My left wall is closer and my right wall is farther and the right side of the room has three open doorways.. I've put two 24x48x2" 1d diffuser / absorber panels from GIK on the left wall, between the windows. My couch is up against the back wall which is only treated with a carpet pad and hanging tapestry.
The difference with the new treatment is night and day. The sound is so much more vibrant and alive. The stage is bigger and deeper and stray sounds wrap around the room, evoloping the listening position. My bass response is tighter, cleaner and more powerful, with seemingly explosive impact. I have no subwoofers, but a pair of massive, Tekton Moabs. My room is 13x15x9ish.
Nice and informative, I like it. Thanks John. Question, have you ever heard of or tested using any kind of big picture/poster canvas as sound threatment? I was thinking about trying these big five segmented canvas movie poster/pictures as both decoration and a litle treatment on three walls of my dedicated home theater room (a litle over 12'x12' square room).
Great room, I am jealous! ;-)
May I ask you what kind of finish you did on the side walls (dark teal blue panels)? Are these fabric-covered acoustic panels too?
your panels are easily the best looking on yt. every other diy panel on yt looks lazy hahaha
Help please:
I recently bought three 3” Rockwool panels for very cheap locally, $30ea (way cheaper than most others, or even raw materials).
They’re new and were in storage for several years… just weird colorful/loud/purple/pink/flowery fabric (prolly made for a female type store or dessert/sweets shop). Planning on just re-wrapping them with Harbor Freight canvas fabric, only $10 for 3-4 yards!
But… one thing I noticed right away (that I’ve never seen done before)… the backs are covered with a thin fiberboard or hardboard (brown, smooth, wall panel and furniture and drawer-bottom and peg-board material I think?)
Never ever seen this done before… I usually see fabric backs.
So… should I replace it with fabric?
Or, just re-use the hardboard backs?
I’m thinking that hardboard/fiberboard back will impede sound waves and flow, correct?
Or, is it acoustically transparent?
Lastly… If it is advised to replace that hardboard back w fabric, you have any recommendations for audio related things I can make from the hardboard scrap? Maybe wedge diffusers or something?, idk.
Any help appreciated!
Thanks for the video.
Can you post the REW .mdat file?
It is to see the RT60 ( Topt, T20, T30 ), ETC, Filtered IR before and with acoustic treatment.
What wool do you use as padding for the panels?
It is to see the value of the passage of the air flow.
written with translator
Greetings
Does “mount away from wall, no more than the thickness of panel” apply to ceiling mounted cloud panels too??
I see a lot of people hanging them with long cables/wire. Much longer than the panel thickness.
The air gap behind the panel makes it more effective, but there's a point of diminishing returns, and that's usually the thickness of the panel. And yes, it's all panels wherever they are.
Love your videos! Those panels are nice. What are your thoughts on Dolby Atmos? If you have any.
Atmos was developed for movie theatres, which are big rooms with pretty good acoustic design treatment to manage the reflections. In the average untreated and designed to look good home theatre, it creates an unholy mess of reflections from several more sources. Reflections are bad enough from two speakers, let alone 10 scattered throughout the room.
@@IBuildIt I'm in the recording industry and a lot of the major albums are being remixed and mastered in Atmos for home audio. I have a small studio so I don't have the room or the budget to make the move.
That makes sense - they can sell the content again that way.
@@michaeltablet8577 Correctly treating your small room and building a small Atmos rig can produce fantastic results that will allow you to accurately mix your content. This guy knows what he talking about in some aspects but on this one, he's off base.
I'm wondering if someone test his speakers in the fields, where is no reflection at all 😊
Yes
Both ground plane subwoofer testing ... and up high, rigging a loudspeaker for testing 20 feet in the air.
Good Video, I have similar 6 inch panels on my walls and ceiling and managed to have 18 inches on my whole front wall and rear wall, it works great for my low end which plays down to 17hz, It would be great if I could do this everywhere but I just dont have the space.
That thumbnail 😂
Why the emoji?
You CAN over-treat a room. Room is a 3-sided concrete bunker 11'6" x 14' x 7'6" open on one end.
Ceiling has 9" of fiberglass between the joists. The ceiling itself is fabric. Six side panels (three on each side) for reflections, corner bass traps, and a 4' x 4' diffuser on the front wall. Carpet tiles over concrete. "Acoustic" curtains on the open end.
Lost the center image and the sound was truly holographic to the point of being annoying. Not what I was going for. Added back some reflective surface in the front 1/3 of the room. Much better now.
FWIW - Running Magnepans
That's not over-treating the room, it's unevenly treating the room. If you have much more higher frequency absorption than mid and low frequency absorption, you wind up with a room that most people call "too dead".
To properly treat a room you need to run measurements to see what's happening and only use absorbers that are thick enough to work on lower frequencies as well.
there is definitely an effect. just add furniture to a previously empty room for proof.. but live music is played in all sorts of venues and it is the reflections and imperfections that convince the human brain of the realism. to perfect sounds artificial. of course this is all down to personal preference.
That live music is listened to in a reflective environment is used as the rationale for leaving your listening room reflective seems to make sense, until you look at all of the factors.
First, it's very unusual to have live music playing in a room as small as the average listening room. Sound behaves differently in small rooms, particularly low frequency sound. Small rooms are dominated by room modes - resonances in the low frequency range that big rooms don't have. Also reflection time is radically shorter and the shorter the reflection, the stronger it will be when it reaches the listener's ears.
Second, recorded music generally includes room ambience in the recording and doesn't need more added to it from the reflections and boomy bass of a small room. If it did, no one would use headphones.
Third, a live venue is only as good (acoustically) as they can make it. In other words, it will always be less than ideal and will always have either a positive or negative effect on the sound the players are trying to get. That's why studio albums sound (objectively) better than live albums.
Exactly
As an engineer myself, the last thing the perfect mix needs ... is an overlay of your mediocre room! No offense.
That said, it's all in the timing ....if the reflected energy incident upon the listener is sufficiently lower in level, over a period of time, i.e., 10dB over 20msec to 40msec, then that's fine.
Reflected energy adds to the experience of its not too soon and not too loud.
It can add spaciousness and immersiveness.
If it's too soon and/or too loud, it obfuscates the direct sound.
Frequency impacts the equation too ... but time and level are huge.
John ... Dig your content so much.
The snow’s disappeared since global warming🎉