acousric panels near to soeaker

[morello777]

hi

did anyone try to place acoustic panels close to your left and right ear leve instead of puting them on the side walls? so that you are are almost surrounded by the panels. i find it kills the reflexions even more and bass seems tighter but maybe i‘m wrong.

appreciate any feedback thanks a lot

 

[Bjorn]

This would imply that you also need to hinder some of the direct sound to deal with part of the reflected energy. So that's not good.

Unless your listening position is close to a wall, the panels are generally not going to be effective in the bass. If they are, that would be pure luck and related to the bass having to move differently

 

[morello777]

thanks a lot. yeah i more meant to say the music sounds somehow clearer (the bass is already good because of the bass traps i got). but panels too near from me shouldn‘t do something negative vs puting them further back to the side walls?

 

[caught gesture]

Best thing you can do is take some measurements and compare. Measurements get rid of the guesswork and those pesky cognitive biases!

 

[morello777]

true words i guess i cant go wrong when measurements improve. i just never saw someone doing it in a studio

 

[Hipper]

I once put some effort into this. This was about dealing with the higher frequency reflections, not bass. Amongst other ideas I tried this:

At the time my thoughts were:

Instead of using absorbent panels on walls and ceiling to prevent reflections, why not place a hood made of similar materials over the treble and midrange drivers of a speaker. The hood would sit over the speaker top and extend forward from the speaker baffle by an appropriate distance covering both sides and top. This would deal with ceiling, and front and side wall reflections. You would still need panels on the rear wall, floor treatment (carpets) and of course bass traps. In effect it is a way of beaming the mid to high frequencies direct to the listener. The inner side part of the hood could be extended further if you accept the concept of Ambiophonics : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambiophonics

A logical progression of this idea is, instead of over the speakers, use a similar hood over the listening position. This would only leave the front wall and floor to deal with for reflections.

I can't remember the results but it wasn't very practical. I also discovered that in my circumstances there were no discernible reflections off the ceiling.

These days my set up includes panels to the outside of each speaker. This doesn't do much for the bass and it's not intended too (all those bass traps do that work). Their purpose is to stop reflections off the side wall and equipment. I like the effect as it seems to allow me to pick up a lot more detail in a headphone like way, but my sound is probably considered too 'dry' for most. Unfortunately I have no specific measurements that show exactly what these panels achieve in this position (they are GIK 242 panels).

 

[morello777]

ok many thanks