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If Room Treatment is difficult, expensive and often ineffective, why are so many on reddit in love with it?
- Thread starter Mort
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Oh, um… well, happy to see there’s a clear consensus on the effectiveness of room treatments! I’ve also been curious if cables make a difference - think I’ll look into that next.
jokes aside, seems the most sensible way to approach the matter at home (assuming you have well engineered speakers to start) is to measure the room and see if treatment helps any issues found. If they don’t make a difference, nix the treatments and enjoy your system.
jokes aside, seems the most sensible way to approach the matter at home (assuming you have well engineered speakers to start) is to measure the room and see if treatment helps any issues found. If they don’t make a difference, nix the treatments and enjoy your system.
A somewhat common mistake with treatments is to use way too little. You don't hear much difference, and don't see much difference in the measurements either. Then it's easy to conclude that it doesn't work.
In the hypothetical scenario in my post, it’s assumed that one is applying adequate room treatments with correct placement, not just throwing some absorption panels on the wall. That would be my approach at least. Do it right or don’t do it al all.
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YouDontHaveEnoughBass
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That's far more treatment than most have
Sure, I was referring mostly to "the most sensible way to approach the matter at home is to measure the room and see if treatment helps any issues found".
Truth Ness
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I can see that. But it is not conclusive and leaves many questions open, i.e. crucial information which would be required to recreate the experiments Dr. Toole made; which led to his conclusions. Research needs to be verifiable. I'm also not sure what to think of his personal immersive audio home entertainment room (2019).
On the other hand there is verifiable data from opposing parties, which matches with my own experiments. Plus, I know by objective data that I still have intact hearing and surely my musical background influences my own perception.
The thing is, I just get more questions than answers when reading said early reflections research and I just went through the otherwise excellent 4th edition of his "Sound Reproduction" book again.
Of course I meant one would use the measurements to assess where treatment might help, then testing to see if it helps or not; not that the initial measurement tells you if treatments will help. Measurements would be the first step in the process.
Okay, I'm not saying you don't know how this works, and I apologize if my reply was misplaced. I was trying to comment that while what you are saying makes sense, a common problem with this approach if one does not know what one are doing, is to treat way too little to have meaningful effect. Then measure/listen, and conclude treatment doesn't work.
4" / 10cm of rigid fiberglass, density 96kg/m3. In my opinion that is perfectly acceptable thickness for an absorbing layer.
It sounds the same everywhere, including in the next room. ART neutralizes the room, at least how I have everything set up. In my opinion, ART is revolutionary, requiring only modest effort beyond conventional DSP.
That is an amazing result which is much better than DIRAC claims for ART. In my case, which is a 2.4 system, ART works very well at the LP but away from it the sound changes quite rapidly. The phantom center is also noticably less defined but the bass is very much improved. My ART experience is leading me back to trying to add some room treatments and then using ART.
From what I have read, I don't think that ART works as well as Dirac claims, for smaller systems. That makes sense, with more speakers, the software can more precisely address the room. Dirac tries to be all things for all people, and I believe that they set the minimum requirements lower than what is optimal for the software. In my opinion it is a marketing strategy for very expensive software. I'm happy enough, but with a smaller system, I would not expect the same result as I got. I'm also dubious on Dirac's minimum certification standards for the hardware, based on some complaints I've read in some other threads. I'm using a Tide 16 which was purposefully designed for ART, results may not be equivalent with other hardware.
DY2
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The room treatment worked for me, even though the attic is made of wood and OSB, I added foam panels with some black fabric on top, and the final result is visible in the graphic.
Those of you who are skeptical to acoustical treatment. Do the following experiement. Cup your hands around your ears to block much of the reflected energy when you listen to your setup. Notice the major difference in clarity and detail. The difference is the result of specular energy making everything more fuzzy.
Actually, all high gain reflections in a room have a negative contribution on accuracy. But that doesn't mean we absorb all of those reflections. And enjoying music at home can be different from a studio or mastering room when accuracy is crucial (or should be!).
Actually, all high gain reflections in a room have a negative contribution on accuracy. But that doesn't mean we absorb all of those reflections. And enjoying music at home can be different from a studio or mastering room when accuracy is crucial (or should be!).
Curvature
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Point me to the location of this datasheet. I know JH Brandt is a studio designer.
I'm a mod on r/BudgetAudiophile.
We definitely tend to discourage room treatment, especially for beginners.
A "normally-furnished" room does a pretty decent job breaking up high-frequency reflections already. Rugs, bookshelves, furniture, curtains, etc. Your brain does much of the rest. Bass problems are almost always better-handled by EQ and subwoofer placement. It's not that room treatment is necessarily wrong or anything, but it's usually not where a person with a limited budget should be spending their money.
Sometimes I link to that picture Toole posted of his living room. No room treatments.
We definitely tend to discourage room treatment, especially for beginners.
A "normally-furnished" room does a pretty decent job breaking up high-frequency reflections already. Rugs, bookshelves, furniture, curtains, etc. Your brain does much of the rest. Bass problems are almost always better-handled by EQ and subwoofer placement. It's not that room treatment is necessarily wrong or anything, but it's usually not where a person with a limited budget should be spending their money.
Sometimes I link to that picture Toole posted of his living room. No room treatments.
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