Can you make a small room sound decent?

[dasdoing]

you need a lot of light and thick absorbtion at the backwall to get rid of all that deep LF pressure. the bass will move back to the music instead of vibrating the whole room like there is Godzilla beating on the walls.
I am treating my small room, too. this is where I am at: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...lp-with-spectrogram.30417/page-4#post-1088059

 

[mightycicadalord]

You solve the front wall but increase reflection on all other wall against the direct sound.

Is that accurate? Regardless of front wall position the speakers are still the same distance from the ceiling and side walls.

I don't want to discount people's advice, but the same thing is happening here last time I asked for help. Half the people dont read the thread and just chime in with general stuff. To make my goals clear, my low end is fine as shown in my measurement. My issue is with everything else, lots of echo in voice range and flutter.

I have to have a desk, and having it there barely sounds any different than removing it.

I'm going to record myself clapping in the room so you guys get an idea of how bad it is. I'm looking for some advice on tackling that but only one user has tackled that and everyone else is on fixing bass. I mean I have people suggesting I buy a measurement mic after I posted a measurement? I don't want to get frustrated but I swear it feels like half the users aren't reading and just want to pop in and give their entire treatment methodology for their space and not read th thread.

 

[nikosidis]

From my experience sitting close to the speakers help in small rooms.
Your speakers seam way to close to the front wall. I understand that give you more bass but mostly it will not be linear bass and colour the sound.
It also seams like very little furniture. I would buy a big sofa.
Next thing would be to add crossover at 80hz and put a Subwoffer in there with EQ.
I can recommend D-speaker anti-mode for Sub. EQ. Easy to set up.

 

[mightycicadalord]

I experimented with moving the 2" panels to sort of high up on the front wall near the top corners and it made a huge difference, so I'm going to keep those guys there and make two 4" panels to put on my left and right. I will probably move the ceiling treatment to the rear wall and see how that affects things. I think my echo and flutter is from the boundaries near the ceiling.

I ended up asking my partner how life would be if I moved out into the living room and her words were "dude I don't give a shit". I am truly blessed lol. Having done so and gone through the gamut of music, this larger space sounds considerably better without any treatment.

I'm going to build a new set of speakers for that small room and just have it as a secondary space. I think this will work better mentally for me as my expectations will not be so high for the small room.

 

[dasdoing]

I had a ceiling cloud in my old room. I wont use it again. my height mode solved itself on the spectrogram while I was treating the longitunal mode. it makes more of a diference on the ETC, but I have nice ETC without it. and the room stays more alive without it

 

[Vict0r]

I treated the cr@p out of my larger cinema space and put in a lot of effort to make that room sound good, but accepted that my small, basically square home office room won't ever sound "great" like that. I've moved to very near-field listening there, and treated the walls with thick polyesterwool plating (Akotherm D40), threw down a thick rug and called it a day. It's a compromise. It's fine.

 

[Doodski]

I ended up asking my partner how life would be if I moved out into the living room and her words were "dude I don't give a shit". I am truly blessed lol.

The WAF is strong in this one. Hehe.

 

[krabapple]

The OP is talking about *flutter echo*. Moving his speakers and LP won't help that. And his bass is fine.

Flutter echo happens between two bare parallel surfaces. The way to lessen/eliminate it is to either break up one or both of those surfaces (diffusion -- like furniture, bookcases) or add absorption (upholstered furniture, wall hanging, especially to either side of his listening position , and back of it if necessary.

I know this because my small rooms have suffered from this too!

If diffusion or adding furniture is not an option for the OP -- I like a minimalist room myself -- he could try hanging 4" of 'rockwool' type absorption ( I bought inexpensive Knauf 6packs from GIK , and built my own frames for the cost of a few pine boards from Home Depot and a few yards of burlap or other acoustically transparent fabric). That's 4" deep, not 2" , because you want the absorption to work in the lower above-Schroeder range as well as the higher.

When you do the clap test, do it from your seated listening position. That's where it affects you most. If you can knock down the flutter at that position, you've already made things way better. You will find that simply damping the walls at the two points on either side of your ears will be instantly effective in the clap test. You might need more elsewhere too, add to taste. Hanging one 4'x2' horizontally, centered home-made panel at ear level on either side, worked well for reducing reverberation (flutter echo assessed by clapping) at my LP in my otherwise minimalist, carpeted room.

Floor covering -- a good rug or carpet with a decent amount of underlayment -- is also very good to have, to reduce/eliminate top to bottom flutter. NOT thin rubber 'floor pads' for reducing transmission to your lower neighbor -- more like the clipped pile carpet/rug on thick felt underlay that Floyd Toole recommends.

 

[mightycicadalord]

I had a ceiling cloud in my old room. I wont use it again. my height mode solved itself on the spectrogram while I was treating the longitunal mode. it makes more of a diference on the ETC, but I have nice ETC without it. and the room stays more alive without it

I'm considering setting up a drum room for the acoustic kit I have and using the ceiling treatment in there.

 

[dasdoing]

I'm considering setting up a drum room for the acoustic kit I have and using the ceiling treatment in there.

for practicing or recording? cause for recording drums you traditionaly want some ambience for the over-head mics

 

[mightycicadalord]

for practicing or recording? cause for recording drums you traditionaly want some ambience for the over-head mics

Recording, I like my drums super dead and dry, my kick reso head is off and the beater head is super dampened for instance, the result is the drum sound like Men I Trust - Numb, well all their stuff really.

 

[Thomas_A]

Possibly, but I did end up putting a second rug in here that was the same size as the current one and didn't really hear any change.

If reducing echo further I would suggest treat the wall direcly behind the speakers with panels. Don’t know what is hanging between the speakers. Is it a window behind?

 

[Frgirard]

No serious pro will work on a room whose longest length is less than 20".
You have the response

 

[krabapple]

Do your 'serious pros' take into account whether the listener is
1) sitting in the near field or not
2) using a multichannel system or not
?

 

[sonitus mirus]

No serious pro will work on a room whose longest length is less than 20".
You have the response

I guess the hallway would work.

 

[Duke]

Is it possible to make small rooms sound anywhere near decent? I've been trying to get good results in some of my rooms but no dice.

I've got an 11'x14' and a 12'x13' rooms and man, I cannot get anything good out of either of them. I've got a good chunk of treatment I can utilize but it never seems to be enough. The 12x13 room is really lively so I scratched that. The 11x14 sounds a little better so I went with that. Ceilings are 8ft.

As far as room acoustics goes, imo the most important thing is to have the right amounts of the right treatment in the right places. By way of analogy, crossover design is based on using the right amounts of inductance, capacitance, and resistance in the right places in the circuit in order to give the desired end result based on the acoustic and electrical characteristics of the drivers. Likewise, optimizing room acoustics involves having the right amounts of reflection, diffusion, and absorption in the right locations based on the room's acoustic characteristics, the positions of speakers and listener(s) in the room, and the characteristics of those loudspeakers.

If this sounds like a lot of things to try and get right, IT IS! Imo this is a situation where the advice of a professional is the best possible investment you can make. Back to the crossover analogy, if I want to improve a crossover, simply adding more inductance or capacitance is a roll of the dice. What is needed is expert analysis and advice.

So my suggestion is that, if you really are serious, hire a professional acoustician. You can easily spend many times as much as his analysis and advice will cost on room acoustic products that are not the solution you need for your room.

I suggest Jeff Hedback of Hedback Designed Acoustics. He is a multi-award-winning acoustician who is still affordable.

I design speakers which take room interaction into account, and I used to readily dispense armchair-quarterback acoustic treatment advice, until I spent a little bit of time in a room that Jeff had specified the acoustic treatment for. That's when I realized what a professional acoustician can do with remote measurements and expert analysis vastly transcends the best room treatment advice I could offer.

 

[mightycicadalord]

If reducing echo further I would suggest treat the wall direcly behind the speakers with panels. Don’t know what is hanging between the speakers. Is it a window behind?

There is a window, I was planning a big thick set of curtains to cover the whole wall for the most part, I'd like to let some of the light in from the window.

No serious pro will work on a room whose longest length is less than 20".
You have the response

IME doing good work is more about getting great sleep and keeping yourself mentally healthy. I've gotten great results in small rooms, large rooms, and even headphones. This small room of mine is just much worse than the other small rooms I worked in for whatever reason.

Gotta head to the hardware store for wood and a different hobby lobby for fabric as I bought all the whole roll last time I was there.

Now to decide what speaker to build for the small bedroom.

 

[Thomas_A]

There is a window, I was planning a big thick set of curtains to cover the whole wall for the most part, I'd like to let some of the light in from the window.

It seems like the window is not center on that wall. True? If so difficult to get symmetry L-R if you cover with panels up to the window part.

 

[Duke]

Now to decide what speaker to build for the small bedroom.

In my experience a fairly narrow and uniform radiation pattern over much of the spectrum tends to work well in problematic rooms for four reasons:

1. With a fairly uniform radiation pattern, whether the room returns a little or a lot of reflection energy, assuming the room surfaces are not tonally skewing the reflections, the reflected energy will be similar in spectral balance to the first-arrival sound (which is desirable).

2. If the reflections have approximately the same spectral balance as the first-arrival sound, the room treatment approach doesn't need to include "fixing" the spectral balance of the reflections, something which is not easy to do.

3. With a fairly narrow radiation pattern, the direct-to-reverberant sound ratio will be higher, correspondingly reducing the room's influence.

4. A fairly narrow radiation pattern can be aimed to avoid or delay the early sidewall reflections, whereas "aiming" a wide radiation pattern may not have the same effect.

One of the arguments for delaying the onset of reflections where possible is this: One of the things the ear/brain system looks at when judging the room size is the time gap in between the first-arrival sound and the temporal "center of gravity" of the reflections. The farther back in time that temporal "center of gravity", the less "small-room signature" the room superimposes atop the recording. Therefore by delaying the strong onset of reflections, we can reduce undesirable "small-room signature".

 

[sonitus mirus]

I've wanted to this from the beginning but those materials are just crazy expensive. Anything for commercial spaces had such a massive markup.

I think my low end is pretty decent, I only have this on my phone at the moment, missing the db axis but still. Is that not flat? I've got that dip there but as I said my problem is really with everything else, like this space just feels crazy reflective.

I'm not ruling a sub out but I really don't have any complaints with the low end, it's really tight and goes low.

The measured response down low looks very flat, other than the obvious null where a 93 Hz frequency is reflecting off a surface and meeting to cancel itself at your listening position. I don't think reasonably priced absorption treatment would do much that low, but a subwoofer in a corner or some other spot in the room might do the the trick to both extend your bass a little deeper while potentially smoothing out the pit of despair at 93 Hz.