Any possibility to "hang" acoustic treatments?

[Lid9497]

I am starting to treat my room because it's bad: it's basically a square - 410x430 with 260cm ceiling. I put some very basic 2 inch acoustic foam on a wall behind me just to get rid of an insane echo while talking, clapping etc, this helped immensely especially with vocals which became much more pleasant to listen to.

I now determined my LP is simply bad with that bare wall behind me, even with the panels, so I decided to put wall with windows and curtains behind me, which I read is a best practice. Now this got me thinking: what if I install a curtain rods on every wall and cover all walls from ceiling to floor with some heavy curtains like those in a cinema: will this achieve anything? I am mostly dealing with nulls, especially 55-75hz and 90-110hz range (10 db drop), peaks when EQd down were fine, at least to my ears, graphs looked way worse than it sounded. I know treatments won't solve nulls, I have made peace with it, I just want to get best possible sound considering circumstances.

Thanks for reading and have a great day

 

[Todd Anderson]

Hopefullly someone with more experience in treatments will respond, but I don't think broad treatment with something like curtains is going to do much. I think you're much better off going with a more broadband approach of traditional traps.

 

[Lid9497]

Hopefullly someone with more experience in treatments will respond, but I don't think broad treatment with something like curtains is going to do much. I think you're much better off going with a more broadband approach of traditional traps.

I thought so, I don't think I can sensibly treat bass, I did some reading - The Complete Guide To Bass Traps And Bass Trapping
Jesco Lohan | AcousticsInsider.com - and based on that, I would require an enormous amounts of bass traps to even make a dent, I was looking at bass traps on https://midnightacoustics.com/bass-traps/ Seems priced okay, looks like what I probably need, but that won't still solve nulls, and it may even make those nulls worse if it actually absorbs those frequencies right?

 

[Travis Ballstadt]

Start here: https://www.bobgolds.com/Mode/RoomModes.htm

The quickest way to fix room modes is with proper speaker and seating placement. Put in your room measurements, this will identify which frequencies will suffer from the worst room modes, and it will also tell you right where those will occur. Basically, don't put your seating there.

Curtains aren't going to do much. What you're seeing in a commercial cinema is curtains in front of the real acoustic treatments.

Hanging absorption can be a very effective method, but curtains won't do the trick. If you hang absorption with an air gap behind it, it will actually work twice, once when the sound passes through it and again when it bounces off the wall and passes through it again.

Different frequencies are treated with different materials, techniques and placements.

 

[Todd Anderson]

Yes... Treating down into the 55 to 110Hz range is extremely challenging. Your best bet is to maximize sub placement and your main listening position... and then pack the corners of your room with thick, professional (or DIY made from professional materials) traps. You may ultimately need to reflect/diffuse some in those areas.

Honestly, my recommendation would be to reach out to reputable manufacturer like GIK (tho, I'm guessing you might be outside of the US, so it might be best if you look for a retailer/supplier like GIK) that can analyze your specific circumstances and develop a plan of action.

 

[Lid9497]

Start here: https://www.bobgolds.com/Mode/RoomModes.htm

The quickest way to fix room modes is with proper speaker and seating placement. Put in your room measurements, this will identify which frequencies will suffer from the worst room modes, and it will also tell you right where those will occur. Basically, don't put your seating there.

Curtains aren't going to do much. What you're seeing in a commercial cinema is curtains in front of the real acoustic treatments.

Hanging absorption can be a very effective method, but curtains won't do the trick. If you hang absorption with an air gap behind it, it will actually work twice, once when the sound passes through it and again when it bounces off the wall and passes through it again.

Different frequencies are treated with different materials, techniques and placements.

I used the website, but I can't understand most of the things, is there an explanation page somewhere?

Ok so would hanging the foam I already have, let's say 50 cm from the back wall, make a notable difference? Or I could slap two 10cm foam panels together to make it 20cm, and hang it 50cm from the wall, does that make any sense?

Yes... Treating down into the 55 to 110Hz range is extremely challenging. Your best bet is to maximize sub placement and your main listening position... and then pack the corners of your room with thick, professional (or DIY made from professional materials) traps. You may ultimately need to reflect/diffuse some in those areas.

Honestly, my recommendation would be to reach out to reputable manufacturer like GIK (tho, I'm guessing you might be outside of the US, so it might be best if you look for a retailer/supplier like GIK) that can analyze your specific circumstances and develop a plan of action.

I was considering reaching out to some retailers that specialize in acoustics, but honestly, I am only ever going to use my system to consume content - games, movies, music, no creative content, and for that, UMIK and some DYI treatment is probably enough for me. And have you checked that midnightacoustics website? Any opinions?

I will move LP and speakers to hopefully better position and do measurements on Friday, I am hoping to at least minimize the nulls with sub placement, mains will hopefully even out.
And if we talk speaker placement relative to a listening position: I am sitting near my screen because I have curved gaming monitor, so I have speakers very close to me (90 cm) but since the monitor is ultrawide, I have them very far apart (110cm). I checked some drawings and even with screen basically in your face, they had the speakers placed BEHIND the screen. Now I tried that but it made voices sound like they were coming from behind the screen and not from a human speaking those words. I did that because I can't really follow equilateral rule, 110cm is simply too far from the screen. And when I pushed them closer to the edges of the screen to create the triangle, the stereo imaging was worse, maybe because the screen is in the way?

 

[JStewart]

You have the UMIK already? That with REW should show where the problems are. Armed with that you should be able to take care of the lowest frequency peaks that you can’t treat with reasonably sized bass traps, by using the app for your SVS PB1000Pro.
I see you also use a Soundblaster card, so your source is computer audio? You should check out Equalizer APO for the rest of the audio band up to 300Hz or so (see Schroeder Frequency) and broad tonal adjustments above that is best practice (without very specific information being measured and published for your speakers).
If you get the low frequency peaks done with EQ then much thinner traps can be used or even acoustic panels for the higher frequency issues such as decay times, first reflections and others.
You can also check out GIK Acoustics for a free treatment recommendation based on your input and measurements. Their products are reasonably priced. They also sell DIY supplies.

 

[Lid9497]

You have the UMIK already? That with REW should show where the problems are. Armed with that you should be able to take care of the lowest frequency peaks that you can’t treat with reasonably sized bass traps, by using the app for your SVS PB1000Pro.
I see you also use a Soundblaster card, so your source is computer audio? You should check out Equalizer APO for the rest of the audio band up to 300Hz or so (see Schroeder Frequency) and broad tonal adjustments above that is best practice (without very specific information being measured and published for your speakers).
If you get the low frequency peaks done with EQ then much thinner traps can be used or even acoustic panels for the higher frequency issues such as decay times, first reflections and others.
You can also check out GIK Acoustics for a free treatment recommendation based on your input and measurements. Their products are reasonably priced. They also sell DIY supplies.

Yes, I am on Win11 with USB sound card. I am using EQApo along with PeaceGUI extensively, upmixing and downmixing, digital crossovers, parametric EQ, channel delay for mains, negative pre-amplification to minimize chances of digital clipping, I tried convolution in an attempt to fix impulse response but couldn't get it to work.

Yes I have UMIK, and yes I know problematic frequencies, it's in the first post (55-75, 90-115), room modes calculator alongside a measurement confirmed this. I haven't tried ideal LP yet, that's the plan for Friday, I will share the results then.

I think deep bass (sub 40Hz) is pretty good in my room with peaks measured and EQd down, maybe decay could be better but I am still figuring out proper LP before doing more expensive treatments. Schroeder Frequency is 126Hz according to https://www.bobgolds.com/Mode/RoomModes.htm, so no point EQing past that?

 

[ddude003]

Heavy curtains do little to absorb or block low-frequency (bass) sounds. For effective bass control, specialized acoustic panels or bass traps are needed...

First steps are to use physical treatment, bass absorbers, wide band absorbers and diffusers...
Next steps are to use EQ to fine tune things...