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I just ordered some spot panels from GIK for my ceiling. Maybe your room is different but I'm surprised they didn't recommend full absorption panels. That's what they've always suggested to me, as well as others, for the first reflection points. I wonder if that's why you're not noticing much improvement. I'll be installing mine in a couple weeks, but many people on the HT FB groups claim ceiling treatment made the biggest treatment in their room, so I'm hopeful! Thanks for the video, as always!
I went with these cause I was looking for something a bit simpler than more 242 panels. I still need to get REW running and run the decay measurement. I'm sure these panels are adding some value to that.
I didn't notice but do you also have panels on the walls? My recollection when I did DIY panels is that you have to control first reflections there as well as ceiling. When I did it, I did the mirror trick where my wife sat in each listening position and I slid a mirror along the side walls. Every time she could see one of the LCRs in the mirror, that was first reflection off the wall for that speaker. The reality is I ended up treating 5' wide x 4' tall sections of the wall with Ones corning but it made an obvious positive difference.
I recently built some acoustic absorption panels for my theater room using rock wool, along with making my own ceiling panels for my drop ceiling. I think a common misconception is that acoustic panels will make your frequency response better (not saying that was your thought process, but unfortunately it was mine for many years). Typically, the before and after impact on frequency response will likely be minimal. However, as others have mentioned, the biggest difference you’ll see is lower decay times. You’ll need to do some REW measurements to see this, but my before and after decay times are pretty insane. Can’t wait to share that in a later video on my channel. If you need some help getting REW up and running, don’t hesitate to reach out. Also, any chance you’ll be at CEDIA?
Good points, thanks! Other folks are mentioning the decay times as well. I'm overdue to get a mic and play with REW and will keep your offer in mind. Love your content, by the way, and congrats on getting to work on the new room! We have some same friends in this space as well. :) I did Audio Advice and wasn't planning for CEDIA this year, hopefully next. Some new opportunity to go might have just came up, but I still think it is unlikely to work out.
@@Techthusiasm thanks man! I appreciate that. The room has been a massive project that I still kind of can’t believe I got myself into haha. Seeing the results though I’m more than happy, though I spend most days in my office editing the videos together instead of using the room. Haha. I remember subscribing to you after talking with Tarrus, and at the time I think you had under 100 subscribers. Awesome to see your channel grow man! Keep it up. If by chance you happen to make it to CEDIA, hope to be able to hang and chat with you. I’ll be there with Michael/Youthman helping him film his booth coverage.
It's fun to build the room, but of course it never ends. :) Yeah, when we did that Fun Waste of Time podcast, that was just before I launched the channel. I think I was in the process of setting things up for it at the time. I'm pretty happy with the results for a year! Hoping and planning to keep going! For sure, if I end up at CEDIA we can meet up. I'd guess there'll be more live streaming again like at Audio Advice too. :)
This is such a good video showcasing that you really need to hire a professional audio calibrator. Audio is super complex and the first thing would be to identify the problems in the room and then adress those. Thank you for the video and the honesty showcasing the true result of the purchase and installation.
Yeah, if I could back for the space I would do a consult for sure. I took recommendation from GIK and then adapted to some other requirements of my own. Maybe not the most effective way to go, and I'm not afraid to admit or show my mistakes. I want learning and honest sharing to be a cornerstone of the channel. :) Assuming we end up in this house for the very long term, I can see myself gutting the space someday with pro design and labor. We'll see. It'll be a while for that.
Where do you find a professional audio calibrator? I genuinely have never been able to find one for home theatre. Video calibrator was easy but not audio. I’m based in Ontario, Canada (in case that helps).
I don't know, but I'm getting to know enough folks around this hobby that when the times comes I'm sure I could get a referral. I think there are a few folks around the country recommended regularly on AVS Forum too.
Would you consider switching the panels to full absorption and seeing if that's helps at all??? Also, do you know of a specific scene where you have trouble hearing the dialogue? I would be willing to try the same scene and let you know if I also have trouble hearing dialogue, then you know it's just the sound mix and not anything in your room.
I don't have a specific scene in mind. I'll have to think about that. I don't expect to change these panels out, until some day maybe farther in the future. I'm sure the panels do help the overall sound presentation of the room though, more than these graphs might show.
I think looking at curve's is one thing you can do. But when looking, I would have them the curves on top of each other, so you can see the db plus or minus improvements in the valleys or peaks. But, I think a better takeaway project you can do is to measure the room RT60. RT60 measurement done through REW, usually measured 200 hz to 2000 hz. If you measure this, you'll have your RT60 time after the mod, but you won't have it before. Landing in an RT60 of between 0.2 to 0.5 milliseconds is good treated room.
The ARC software used for this didn't allow placing those curves over each other, so I opted for the side-by-side, but for sure an overlay would much clearer. I'll be grabbing a mic here at some point and checking out REW first-hand. Thanks!
Hey Tech, wanted to ask you question regarding Anthem AVM 70 ARC Setting. I am using one Movie profile as it was set after running ARC - default setting. I wanted to create Movie2 profile for more deep heavy chest thumping bass. I got two SVS SB2000, and towers are Arendal 1723 THX which go down to 40 hz. In the ARC setting - looking at Deep Boost bass and Deep bass boost Center Frequency - what can I set these two for that big heavy bass? For my main Movie default setting - Deep boost bass is set to 2.5 and Frequency to 50 hz.
It not a lot off movement but u do get flatter across all speakers just at different frequencies of each part of your room and it seems your speakers are damn good at what they do
Jean recommended dominiqiue fils almes. Spent the evening listening to their stuff and it tore my room apart, found so many reverbs etc. Yeah it ruined the listen but next up fixed and relisten over a beer. Same with Wickes games by Anna naklab, destroys any system but geez I live it. No need for a umic (which I have) you can hear the impact of room treatment. If you get through them and don't have you reaching for your wallet for more treatment, your done and can have another beer.
I’ve been waiting for this video. I haven’t done any room treatments other than what is a natural placement of items(floor to ceiling window curtains,large cloth painting and rugs). I’m using my Living room as a Media area and foam panelings will not work with the aesthetics of the room. Yeah,looking at the graphs really told the story especially since you can’t hear a difference. That’s ashame but you wouldn’t have known if the panels makes a difference until you tried. Maybe next time you can hire a professional to come in and evaluate the room and tell you the key areas to place the panels and if they will make an audible improvement. What is your next step with room treatment or are you truly done? 👴🏽
I think I’m treated fine for now. I don’t think these are a waste. I need to another type of decay measurement and make a video avoid that. Treatments are well worth it, IMO. But a real consult next time might help a lot.
Yep, at least they do look cool up there, and they aren't overbearing. I like them. I won't be taking them down to try something else, at least for quite a while. I have other stuff I need to do and tweak up next!
I was going to recommend measuring room decay with REW, not frequency response with ARC but I see others have made that same recommendation. Let us know if you are able to do that as the idea is great.
I had the same comment, but see that others already mentioned it- RT60 decay would be a more interesting measurement. But given all the adhesive issues you had with getting the GIK panels to stick on the ceiling, I understand if you wouldn't want to re-do the before and after RT60 times. I also wonder if a combo panel like the GIK is better or not compared to a purely a absorptive panel like ones made of OC703. I suppose this is room and personal preference. I got my HT treated with acoustic panels on the walls. Made a big improvement particularly with dialog intelligibility and also with being able to hear my speakers as more distinct sound sources (when called to do so by source material). I haven't treated my ceiling yet, because finding first reflection points in the ceiling is harder, and installing panels in the ceiling is much more of a pain (higher up and need to deal with lights, smoke detector, etc). But given the improvements provided by the wall treatments, the ceiling treatments should help, but haven't decided if the effort is worth it (maybe I'm a few months after enjoying more content).
I think its about being reasonable with expectation with stuff like this. They arent large panels and they are combo panels placed on the ceiling so I dont think you're going to see a huge difference in the measured FR. Definitely not going to see any results below the panels capabilities which my guess would be around 300 hz. However, Erin did a review of these focal speakers and you're response is pretty close to what his data showed. So, I think you're measurements are pretty good in that regard. There aren't really any major anomalies that could be attributed to the room so I think it could be assumed that the room is well treated. Based on your measurements and Erin's the speakers seem to naturally have that smiley face curve with the mid range scooped and the bass & treble elevated. I would think its a preference if you like that sound or not. If not, its probably not the best starting point but I'm sure it can EQ'd to taste using ARC.
Right, I chose these panels over the probably more impactful panels for specific reasons knowing they might be less effective. That's the way it goes sometimes with different requirements. ARC did pretty well with these, cleaning up the natural response pretty to my target curves. I'm happy with their performance in both of my rooms after ARC. Great comment, thanks!
I recently did my ceiling with two 36x48x4 cloud panels and didn’t hear much of a difference. I feel like after you get the main issues handled then anything else will be a minor change. The bass traps and reflection point panels made such a difference that I figured I had to keep going which is why I did the ceiling. I assume you’re in the same boat as you’ve pretty much got it all covered treatment wise. I guess can always tweak a bit for fun and experimentation.
I considered the bigger cloud panels like that too, but opted for something like these being smaller and simpler. I agree with your other assessments 100%. We are very much in the same boat.
Im really questioning the effectiveness of those panels. At least for lower frequencies... You need at least 100mm panels unless you are just chasing very high frequencies. One thing you could try is to hang the panels so you have some space between the ceiling and panels. This increses the effectiveness.
why control don't you measure with REW first i have experimented with attenuation and ARC and get no changes in the measurements and i have used amounts of attenuation in my tests
I'll get into REW here before long. Yes, I opted for glue. Spray glue is a common recommendation for mounting foam or similar type panels. GIK has spray glue in the add-ons for these very panels.
If I had to re-do the acoustic treatments in my room, I have to admit I would do some more research. GIK stuff works and it is value in terms of the price, but they really need to step up QA.
You used combo panels which really attack the midrange (look at their absorption coefficients). And you had a decent leveling in the midrange. Also, for acoustic panels, you need to be comparing RT60 decay times. Not frequency responses. You’re trying to correct echos. Not response. Measure with REW. Sorry, but no value to this video. And those Focals measurements don’t look so good on their own 🫣.
I agree, not my best video as I conflated a few things. I’ll get to a decay time measurement on the room at some point and share that. I might go ahead and just pull this video down in the meantime. On the Focal measurements, yeah, they have some hitches. They are pretty consistent with what Erin (Erin’s Audio Corner) measure with them. I was fairly disappointed with those results relative to the pedigree and the price of the speakers. ARC does a good job with them though and the in-room use is nice. I won’t be pulling them any time soon, but I also don’t expect them to be my last speakers either.
Panels are about $60 each plus shipping. I hadn't been super enthused with their build or quality control. I did this vlog on their installation: ruclips.net/video/C5kGqgxJmVc/видео.html.
If you are interested in purchasing Anthem gear, check out Audio Advice with my affiliate link or give them the referral code "Techthusiasm" directly. You will receive great pricing and service, and the channel receives a bonus at no cost to you. Thanks! www.audioadvice.com/shop-by-brand/anthem/?referral=techthusiasm
I just ordered some spot panels from GIK for my ceiling. Maybe your room is different but I'm surprised they didn't recommend full absorption panels. That's what they've always suggested to me, as well as others, for the first reflection points. I wonder if that's why you're not noticing much improvement. I'll be installing mine in a couple weeks, but many people on the HT FB groups claim ceiling treatment made the biggest treatment in their room, so I'm hopeful! Thanks for the video, as always!
I went with these cause I was looking for something a bit simpler than more 242 panels. I still need to get REW running and run the decay measurement. I'm sure these panels are adding some value to that.
I have low ceilings and have quest acoustic treatments on them plus got professionally calibration it did make a big difference.
Sweet!
I didn't notice but do you also have panels on the walls? My recollection when I did DIY panels is that you have to control first reflections there as well as ceiling. When I did it, I did the mirror trick where my wife sat in each listening position and I slid a mirror along the side walls. Every time she could see one of the LCRs in the mirror, that was first reflection off the wall for that speaker. The reality is I ended up treating 5' wide x 4' tall sections of the wall with Ones corning but it made an obvious positive difference.
Yep! The panels overhead should be in the first reflection area for the LCRs.
I recently built some acoustic absorption panels for my theater room using rock wool, along with making my own ceiling panels for my drop ceiling. I think a common misconception is that acoustic panels will make your frequency response better (not saying that was your thought process, but unfortunately it was mine for many years). Typically, the before and after impact on frequency response will likely be minimal.
However, as others have mentioned, the biggest difference you’ll see is lower decay times. You’ll need to do some REW measurements to see this, but my before and after decay times are pretty insane. Can’t wait to share that in a later video on my channel.
If you need some help getting REW up and running, don’t hesitate to reach out. Also, any chance you’ll be at CEDIA?
Good points, thanks! Other folks are mentioning the decay times as well. I'm overdue to get a mic and play with REW and will keep your offer in mind.
Love your content, by the way, and congrats on getting to work on the new room! We have some same friends in this space as well. :) I did Audio Advice and wasn't planning for CEDIA this year, hopefully next. Some new opportunity to go might have just came up, but I still think it is unlikely to work out.
@@Techthusiasm thanks man! I appreciate that. The room has been a massive project that I still kind of can’t believe I got myself into haha. Seeing the results though I’m more than happy, though I spend most days in my office editing the videos together instead of using the room. Haha.
I remember subscribing to you after talking with Tarrus, and at the time I think you had under 100 subscribers. Awesome to see your channel grow man! Keep it up. If by chance you happen to make it to CEDIA, hope to be able to hang and chat with you. I’ll be there with Michael/Youthman helping him film his booth coverage.
It's fun to build the room, but of course it never ends. :)
Yeah, when we did that Fun Waste of Time podcast, that was just before I launched the channel. I think I was in the process of setting things up for it at the time. I'm pretty happy with the results for a year! Hoping and planning to keep going! For sure, if I end up at CEDIA we can meet up. I'd guess there'll be more live streaming again like at Audio Advice too. :)
This is such a good video showcasing that you really need to hire a professional audio calibrator.
Audio is super complex and the first thing would be to identify the problems in the room and then adress those.
Thank you for the video and the honesty showcasing the true result of the purchase and installation.
Yeah, if I could back for the space I would do a consult for sure. I took recommendation from GIK and then adapted to some other requirements of my own. Maybe not the most effective way to go, and I'm not afraid to admit or show my mistakes. I want learning and honest sharing to be a cornerstone of the channel. :)
Assuming we end up in this house for the very long term, I can see myself gutting the space someday with pro design and labor. We'll see. It'll be a while for that.
Where do you find a professional audio calibrator? I genuinely have never been able to find one for home theatre. Video calibrator was easy but not audio. I’m based in Ontario, Canada (in case that helps).
I don't know, but I'm getting to know enough folks around this hobby that when the times comes I'm sure I could get a referral. I think there are a few folks around the country recommended regularly on AVS Forum too.
Would you consider switching the panels to full absorption and seeing if that's helps at all??? Also, do you know of a specific scene where you have trouble hearing the dialogue? I would be willing to try the same scene and let you know if I also have trouble hearing dialogue, then you know it's just the sound mix and not anything in your room.
I don't have a specific scene in mind. I'll have to think about that. I don't expect to change these panels out, until some day maybe farther in the future. I'm sure the panels do help the overall sound presentation of the room though, more than these graphs might show.
@@Techthusiasm Aren't those the ones that have the removable wood to convert them to absorption???
The ones I have now? No, it's a 2" thick foam with a thin "wood" facia where the diffusion patterns are cut out.
@@Techthusiasm My bad... I thought all the GIK hybrid panels had removable faces to convert them to absorption.
I think looking at curve's is one thing you can do. But when looking, I would have them the curves on top of each other, so you can see the db plus or minus improvements in the valleys or peaks.
But, I think a better takeaway project you can do is to measure the room RT60.
RT60 measurement done through REW, usually measured 200 hz to 2000 hz. If you measure this, you'll have your RT60 time after the mod, but you won't have it before. Landing in an RT60 of between 0.2 to 0.5 milliseconds is good treated room.
The ARC software used for this didn't allow placing those curves over each other, so I opted for the side-by-side, but for sure an overlay would much clearer. I'll be grabbing a mic here at some point and checking out REW first-hand. Thanks!
Hey Tech, wanted to ask you question regarding Anthem AVM 70 ARC Setting. I am using one Movie profile as it was set after running ARC - default setting. I wanted to create Movie2 profile for more deep heavy chest thumping bass. I got two SVS SB2000, and towers are Arendal 1723 THX which go down to 40 hz.
In the ARC setting - looking at Deep Boost bass and Deep bass boost Center Frequency - what can I set these two for that big heavy bass? For my main Movie default setting - Deep boost bass is set to 2.5 and Frequency to 50 hz.
You can bump deep bass boost and room gain to add lower end power back. I add a few dB of room gain and like one dB of deep bass in my room.
@@Techthusiasm What does center frequency do? Its set to 50 hz? Does setting that up higher - allows subs to take over bass more from towers?
The center frequency options controls when the options they are named for are apply in the frequency range.
It not a lot off movement but u do get flatter across all speakers just at different frequencies of each part of your room and it seems your speakers are damn good at what they do
A little, yeah. I need to check out the decay measurement that others are mentioning.
Well, whether they make a difference in the sound are not, they definitely look cool.
Yup! I think they have more positive impact than these specific measurements show as well.
GIK sells the cloud brackets which create a small gap ! Do you think this makes a difference?.
The cloud brackets they have are for mounting panels more like the 242 on a ceiling, not these smaller/simpler 2A models.
Jean recommended dominiqiue fils almes. Spent the evening listening to their stuff and it tore my room apart, found so many reverbs etc. Yeah it ruined the listen but next up fixed and relisten over a beer.
Same with Wickes games by Anna naklab, destroys any system but geez I live it. No need for a umic (which I have) you can hear the impact of room treatment.
If you get through them and don't have you reaching for your wallet for more treatment, your done and can have another beer.
Noted!
I’ve been waiting for this video. I haven’t done any room treatments other than what is a natural placement of items(floor to ceiling window curtains,large cloth painting and rugs). I’m using my Living room as a Media area and foam panelings will not work with the aesthetics of the room. Yeah,looking at the graphs really told the story especially since you can’t hear a difference. That’s ashame but you wouldn’t have known if the panels makes a difference until you tried. Maybe next time you can hire a professional to come in and evaluate the room and tell you the key areas to place the panels and if they will make an audible improvement. What is your next step with room treatment or are you truly done? 👴🏽
I think I’m treated fine for now. I don’t think these are a waste. I need to another type of decay measurement and make a video avoid that. Treatments are well worth it, IMO. But a real consult next time might help a lot.
You need to run REW and do a decay , audioholics has a video and shows in room response and you can see what is happening in the room
Yep, per other comments as well, that's on my list of to do items.
With the poor off axis performance of your LCR, you would likely benefit from more absorption and less diffusion/reflection from your ceiling panels
I went with a combo. 2" foam and the diffusion is the faceplate cut outs. It's a really minor panel overall.
If nothing else, it added a nice aesthetic
Yep, at least they do look cool up there, and they aren't overbearing. I like them. I won't be taking them down to try something else, at least for quite a while. I have other stuff I need to do and tweak up next!
I was going to recommend measuring room decay with REW, not frequency response with ARC but I see others have made that same recommendation. Let us know if you are able to do that as the idea is great.
Yep, I'll update when I have this info measured.
@@Techthusiasm Did you ever do an updated video on the room decay?
I had the same comment, but see that others already mentioned it- RT60 decay would be a more interesting measurement. But given all the adhesive issues you had with getting the GIK panels to stick on the ceiling, I understand if you wouldn't want to re-do the before and after RT60 times.
I also wonder if a combo panel like the GIK is better or not compared to a purely a absorptive panel like ones made of OC703. I suppose this is room and personal preference.
I got my HT treated with acoustic panels on the walls. Made a big improvement particularly with dialog intelligibility and also with being able to hear my speakers as more distinct sound sources (when called to do so by source material). I haven't treated my ceiling yet, because finding first reflection points in the ceiling is harder, and installing panels in the ceiling is much more of a pain (higher up and need to deal with lights, smoke detector, etc). But given the improvements provided by the wall treatments, the ceiling treatments should help, but haven't decided if the effort is worth it (maybe I'm a few months after enjoying more content).
Not yet on the decay measurement.
I think its about being reasonable with expectation with stuff like this. They arent large panels and they are combo panels placed on the ceiling so I dont think you're going to see a huge difference in the measured FR. Definitely not going to see any results below the panels capabilities which my guess would be around 300 hz. However, Erin did a review of these focal speakers and you're response is pretty close to what his data showed. So, I think you're measurements are pretty good in that regard. There aren't really any major anomalies that could be attributed to the room so I think it could be assumed that the room is well treated. Based on your measurements and Erin's the speakers seem to naturally have that smiley face curve with the mid range scooped and the bass & treble elevated. I would think its a preference if you like that sound or not. If not, its probably not the best starting point but I'm sure it can EQ'd to taste using ARC.
Right, I chose these panels over the probably more impactful panels for specific reasons knowing they might be less effective. That's the way it goes sometimes with different requirements. ARC did pretty well with these, cleaning up the natural response pretty to my target curves. I'm happy with their performance in both of my rooms after ARC. Great comment, thanks!
I recently did my ceiling with two 36x48x4 cloud panels and didn’t hear much of a difference. I feel like after you get the main issues handled then anything else will be a minor change. The bass traps and reflection point panels made such a difference that I figured I had to keep going which is why I did the ceiling. I assume you’re in the same boat as you’ve pretty much got it all covered treatment wise. I guess can always tweak a bit for fun and experimentation.
I considered the bigger cloud panels like that too, but opted for something like these being smaller and simpler. I agree with your other assessments 100%. We are very much in the same boat.
Im really questioning the effectiveness of those panels. At least for lower frequencies... You need at least 100mm panels unless you are just chasing very high frequencies.
One thing you could try is to hang the panels so you have some space between the ceiling and panels. This increses the effectiveness.
why control don't you measure with REW first i have experimented with attenuation and ARC and get no changes in the measurements and i have used amounts of attenuation in my tests
I need to and will be doing so before long. Thanks!
Too bad you didn't measure the room reverberation (RT60) with REW before you glued?? the panels to the ceiling.
I'll get into REW here before long. Yes, I opted for glue. Spray glue is a common recommendation for mounting foam or similar type panels. GIK has spray glue in the add-ons for these very panels.
@@Techthusiasm "Gravity always wins...." 😀
Ha, for sure! We'll see if 3M Super 74 Foam Glue has anything to say about that... :)
What that tells me is the GIK panels are not worth the money.
If I had to re-do the acoustic treatments in my room, I have to admit I would do some more research. GIK stuff works and it is value in terms of the price, but they really need to step up QA.
You used combo panels which really attack the midrange (look at their absorption coefficients). And you had a decent leveling in the midrange.
Also, for acoustic panels, you need to be comparing RT60 decay times. Not frequency responses. You’re trying to correct echos. Not response. Measure with REW.
Sorry, but no value to this video.
And those Focals measurements don’t look so good on their own 🫣.
I agree, not my best video as I conflated a few things. I’ll get to a decay time measurement on the room at some point and share that. I might go ahead and just pull this video down in the meantime.
On the Focal measurements, yeah, they have some hitches. They are pretty consistent with what Erin (Erin’s Audio Corner) measure with them. I was fairly disappointed with those results relative to the pedigree and the price of the speakers. ARC does a good job with them though and the in-room use is nice. I won’t be pulling them any time soon, but I also don’t expect them to be my last speakers either.
$5-$600 for those panels they are recycled materials that you were actually paying the $500-$600 for me it’s not worth the money
Panels are about $60 each plus shipping. I hadn't been super enthused with their build or quality control. I did this vlog on their installation: ruclips.net/video/C5kGqgxJmVc/видео.html.
@@Techthusiasm I understand