I used to work in the audio industry for an importer that no longer exists. I was once tasked with tuning a room at an audio show using nothing but Stillpoints Apertures (Gen 1). These are a very expensive yet portable version of what Paul calls an "Abfuser"(an amalgam of Absorber and Diffuser). I could sit in the "Sweet Spot" I had created; and be able to tell when a person walked behind me in between the stack of Apertures I had placed at the back of the room. This tells me room treatment is important on ALL sides of the room. As for Michael Fremer's house.... I was in his basement and got to sit in his chair because of that job.....It is truly FILLED with AMAZING vinyl....Some of that is placed STRATEGICALLY behind the listener position on a shelf to be used as an abfuser (this can also be accomplished with a bookshelf full of books of varying sizes placed behind the listener). Also when I was there he had quite a bit of traditional "room treatment" but it was mostly in front of the listener.
I have followed Paul's advice here. My listening end is absent of reflections with AST acoustic products, and my speakers are located in a live area. I DO have first and second reflection sound panels also made by AST. They are all 3x2' and 2" thick with Owens Corning product. Very happy with the sound, and so are my listening guests 😊.
Bean bags make great bass traps. And you can sit on them too. For large people, the trick to get off a bean bag is to roll on your side onto the floor, then crawl on all fours and use furniture as support to get on your feet.
If you have a wall of CDs in the back wall you can stagger them (some in some out) and create a diffusor that way. The goal is to prevent having a flat wall that reflects the sound.
Correct! As another example, bookshelves should only be about half-filled to be most effective. The goal is to create as many reflection points as possible, with varying sized "gaps" so as to be effective at the broadest range of frequencies.
Maybe not exactly what's discussed, but there is a picture somewhere online with a frequency plot and description of peaks and dips along it, and how we perceive them. Together with a microphone it gets really clear when you change something. You'll both notice and see a change in reverb instantly as well.
I have a square room about 3x3m with an angled wall on the lhs window on rhs... I have treated the window with decorative panels as per both sides on custom bracket to not compromise lighting😮 two pairs of acoustic curtains hanging on each side too get the angle of the lhs Retrofitted with led drop lighting to achieve the acoustic symmetry and place my cd collection behind the wall curtain wall where its square massive improvements bass traps at the two points diffuser in the middle amazing performance Abfusers at the rear ✌🏾
I thrown some large cushions behind my listening position as of late and it changes * the sound SO much! It seems now like my hifi thinks it can do these quick changes in its bass, like a really expensive set up. Can’ t be bothered to continue with this.
Glass is the nastiest sounding material in a room. It can ruin the sound of state of the art purist equipment. A big glass window on the back wall behind your speakers add an ugly coloration to the sound, even if your speakers are 6 feet away from them. As the sound gets louder the glass adversely affects it more. If you play nothing but classical quartets, you might be able to stand it with your speakers 4 feet away from the glass. Louder stuff, you might need your speakers 6 to 7 feet away from the galss.
As a follow up, I'd like to mention that headphones are the only sure way to entirely get around problems with acoustics. If you ever want to hear how your room colors your sound with it's many different unpleasant colorations, listen to music you've been playing, but with a good pair of headphones. "If you can handle the truth". For someone like myself, who does many mods inside equipment, headphones are indispensable. If I made a sound quality improvement with my mods, that is audible through headphones; only a certain percentage of that improvement will be audible through speakers. Even if you like speakers more than headphones, as most people do, there is no better way to hear just what's on your recordings than listening to them on good headphones.
The best speakers Ive ever heard (and now own), are the EPI 100v (with the upgraded tweeter version). They were playing at my friends Slot-Car business... located 1ft in front of a massive glass window. He was playing "Earth Wind and Fire" (Disco)... and it sounded like the band was actually in the room, playing live. I spent a good 15 minutes, trying to find the speakers. I knew they were within a 15x15 ft area, as after that distance... the sound started to trail off. But due to my buddies various arcade games, magazine piles, and other junk... I simply did not see, nor could pinpoint where these speakers were. In fact, the EPI's have this magical quality, that makes them "Vanish"... and the sound that comes out of them, is sort of Holographic in nature. When he showed me where they were.. I was blown away by them. So small.. yet such deep bass. One of them was laying flat on its side, with 2 piles of magazines stacked on top. The other was about 6 ft away from it... vertically oriented.. and partially blocked by a sit-down arcade racing game. Despite this being some of the worst possible ways of setting up a pair of speakers... they STILL sounded fantastic. In fact, better than ANYTHING that Ive ever heard, in my entire life. Glass is an excellent blocker of sound.. which is why they use thick glass in mall store windows. Furthermore, nobody ever notices bad acoustics within any of these stores.
I have glass French doors on one side and a large window on the other. An acoustician measured the room, and he suggested thick curtains to cover the glass plus corner bass traps from floor to ceiling. So far, I've added the curtains, and it's a huge improvement.
@@alex_stanley That is what I should do. I have a large glass walk out to a patio beside the left speaker with only some light fabric blinds in front of it. But I'm happy with the sound so its one of those ignorance is bliss kind of things:)
@@johndough8115 Yes, sound waves will bounce off glass from speakers and travel a long way. Especially subwoofers. Some have made devices that attach to glass that turn the glass windows itself into a speaker.
What about when the seating is against the wall? I see a number of reviewers that use the short length of the room instead of the depth and sit right against the wall with the speakers not that far away. even big expensive ones. Or because of the distance the speaker needs from the (front/back 🙂) wall pushing the seating spot way back to the other wall.
How about subwoofers behind the listener? In car audio that's where the subs are behind the listener. Obviously that's the only place they fit in most vehicles. Is that also the best sounding location and can it be applied in home audio as well?
Unfortunately my listeningis position is up against a wall My speakers are eleven feet away and nine feet apart I do have a 4x6 diffuser panel on the wall at my listening position
The "live end, dead end" method traditionally calls for the speaker end to be dead, and the listener end to be live. It's stated backward in the video. Also, one needs to understand that diffusers can be broadband, but most act within a narrow band of frequencies. So be careful (and be informed) before trying to set up a room. Absorbers are also mostly narrow band. As far as the back wall (behind the listener), whether absorption or diffusion is called for depends on how close you are to it. Under 5 feet, you almost always will be better off with absorption. Over 5 feet or so, diffusion is better. Why? Because diffusion, especially in the lower frequency ranges, require adequate space to sufficiently randomize reflections. Read Dr. Floyd Toole's book "Sound Reproduction" , which is all about acoustics in small (residential sized) rooms. About a third of the book talks about his decades of experience studying absorption and diffusion products and how they work.
Maybe I'm wrong, but If you have a big bass trap, it will absorb the bass but also everything above that, including highs and mids, so it must be considered wideband I guess. unless your absorption is not large enough and can't absorb the bass
The "room treatment" behind me, when I'm listening, is THE ROOM ITSELF! As a Hi-Fi enthusiast with 45 years experience, in my view this is nonsense! EDIT: Don't forget to colour the edges of your CDs too, for better sound! (rolleyes)
@@johndavidson5075 Elaborate what exactly? All I'm saying is, if somebody is daft enough to "treat" their room, to make their Hi-Fi sound "better," then they should colour the edges of their CDs too, because THAT also "improves" sound quality! (Not!) Basically, if a Hi-Fi enthusiast is daft enough, and has enough money to waste, they'll believe anything!
@@johndough8115 People can be an Audiophile just using soup cans as speaker cabinets. Be it the small store cans or the much larger restaurant type cans.
Have you considered commissioning local artists to go to work on your room treatment? They're literally blank canvases, except the ones on your left here look (sorry, there's no getting around this) truly hideous! Good luck
Every acoustic expert on the entire planet will tell you that "glass" is the worst sounding material acoustically. I can hear the bad effects of glass even when the speakers are 7 feet away from the glass. Fortunately I can move my speakers out further away than that. They EPI 100 near glass might sound good to you; but then again you hear deep bass from little EPI 100 speakers; which don't have any deep bass.. A store used to have them on sale every weekend in the newspaper ads for $59 each. That a $59 speaker is the best sound you've ever heard? No. You run into better sound than EPI 100s by sheer accident all the time. Glass NEVER sounds good, EPI 100s never sound like the best speaker ever. This is an instance where it all comes down "the observer". I don't think I'd be tempted to buy anything based on your perception. Which I'm sure is not only faulty, but very fantasy land. Should people with EPI speakers that were much higher up models, put them to the curb for the garbage man to pick up? I think we've all had our piece of fiction for the day.
I used to work in the audio industry for an importer that no longer exists. I was once tasked with tuning a room at an audio show using nothing but Stillpoints Apertures (Gen 1). These are a very expensive yet portable version of what Paul calls an "Abfuser"(an amalgam of Absorber and Diffuser). I could sit in the "Sweet Spot" I had created; and be able to tell when a person walked behind me in between the stack of Apertures I had placed at the back of the room. This tells me room treatment is important on ALL sides of the room. As for Michael Fremer's house.... I was in his basement and got to sit in his chair because of that job.....It is truly FILLED with AMAZING vinyl....Some of that is placed STRATEGICALLY behind the listener position on a shelf to be used as an abfuser (this can also be accomplished with a bookshelf full of books of varying sizes placed behind the listener). Also when I was there he had quite a bit of traditional "room treatment" but it was mostly in front of the listener.
I have followed Paul's advice here. My listening end is absent of reflections with AST acoustic products, and my speakers are located in a live area. I DO have first and second reflection sound panels also made by AST. They are all 3x2' and 2" thick with Owens Corning product. Very happy with the sound, and so are my listening guests 😊.
Charge $50.00 Audiophile admission fee for each guest..😀
Bean bags make great bass traps. And you can sit on them too. For large people, the trick to get off a bean bag is to roll on your side onto the floor, then crawl on all fours and use furniture as support to get on your feet.
If that's the case, spend a lot more time crawling and a lot less time sitting.
Start an Audiophile Aerobics
Exercise Class for your group guests. Dance those pounds away.
@@dougdavis8986 Or if you cannot make it to the furniture, call 911.
@@davidfromamerica1871 You mean a jelly belly wobbling club?
I’ve used cement forming tubes on chairs a bit behind me to reflect sounds and give me a surround effect.
If you have a wall of CDs in the back wall you can stagger them (some in some out) and create a diffusor that way. The goal is to prevent having a flat wall that reflects the sound.
Correct! As another example, bookshelves should only be about half-filled to be most effective. The goal is to create as many reflection points as possible, with varying sized "gaps" so as to be effective at the broadest range of frequencies.
Textile curtain it’s an excellent sound absorbing , easy and simple solution. Just try and it will surprise you.
Maybe not exactly what's discussed, but there is a picture somewhere online with a frequency plot and description of peaks and dips along it, and how we perceive them. Together with a microphone it gets really clear when you change something. You'll both notice and see a change in reverb instantly as well.
I have a square room about 3x3m with an angled wall on the lhs window on rhs...
I have treated the window with decorative panels as per both sides on custom bracket to not compromise lighting😮 two pairs of acoustic curtains hanging on each side too get the angle of the lhs
Retrofitted with led drop lighting to achieve the acoustic symmetry and place my cd collection behind the wall curtain wall where its square massive improvements bass traps at the two points diffuser in the middle amazing performance
Abfusers at the rear ✌🏾
Fully agree, you can do a simple test by placing a pellow behind your head then remove it.
But the result depends on the distance from the back wall.
I thrown some large cushions behind my listening position as of late and it changes * the sound SO much! It seems now like my hifi thinks it can do these quick changes in its bass, like a really expensive set up. Can’ t be bothered to continue with this.
Glass is the nastiest sounding material in a room. It can ruin the sound of state of the art purist equipment. A big glass window on the back wall behind your speakers add an ugly coloration to the sound, even if your speakers are 6 feet away from them. As the sound gets louder the glass adversely affects it more. If you play nothing but classical quartets, you might be able to stand it with your speakers 4 feet away from the glass. Louder stuff, you might need your speakers 6 to 7 feet away from the galss.
As a follow up, I'd like to mention that headphones are the only sure way to entirely get around problems with acoustics. If you ever want to hear how your room colors your sound with it's many different unpleasant colorations, listen to music you've been playing, but with a good pair of headphones. "If you can handle the truth". For someone like myself, who does many mods inside equipment, headphones are indispensable. If I made a sound quality improvement with my mods, that is audible through headphones; only a certain percentage of that improvement will be audible through speakers. Even if you like speakers more than headphones, as most people do, there is no better way to hear just what's on your recordings than listening to them on good headphones.
The best speakers Ive ever heard (and now own), are the EPI 100v (with the upgraded tweeter version). They were playing at my friends Slot-Car business... located 1ft in front of a massive glass window. He was playing "Earth Wind and Fire" (Disco)... and it sounded like the band was actually in the room, playing live. I spent a good 15 minutes, trying to find the speakers. I knew they were within a 15x15 ft area, as after that distance... the sound started to trail off. But due to my buddies various arcade games, magazine piles, and other junk... I simply did not see, nor could pinpoint where these speakers were. In fact, the EPI's have this magical quality, that makes them "Vanish"... and the sound that comes out of them, is sort of Holographic in nature. When he showed me where they were.. I was blown away by them. So small.. yet such deep bass. One of them was laying flat on its side, with 2 piles of magazines stacked on top. The other was about 6 ft away from it... vertically oriented.. and partially blocked by a sit-down arcade racing game. Despite this being some of the worst possible ways of setting up a pair of speakers... they STILL sounded fantastic. In fact, better than ANYTHING that Ive ever heard, in my entire life.
Glass is an excellent blocker of sound.. which is why they use thick glass in mall store windows. Furthermore, nobody ever notices bad acoustics within any of these stores.
I have glass French doors on one side and a large window on the other. An acoustician measured the room, and he suggested thick curtains to cover the glass plus corner bass traps from floor to ceiling. So far, I've added the curtains, and it's a huge improvement.
@@alex_stanley That is what I should do. I have a large glass walk out to a patio beside the left speaker with only some light fabric blinds in front of it. But I'm happy with the sound so its one of those ignorance is bliss kind of things:)
@@johndough8115
Yes, sound waves will bounce off glass from speakers and travel a long way. Especially subwoofers.
Some have made devices that attach to glass that turn the glass windows itself into a speaker.
What about when the seating is against the wall? I see a number of reviewers that use the short length of the room instead of the depth and sit right against the wall with the speakers not that far away. even big expensive ones.
Or because of the distance the speaker needs from the (front/back 🙂) wall pushing the seating spot way back to the other wall.
Im covering this in an upcoming video myself some people are completely missing the logic and spend far too much on what is a rather simple solution.
How about subwoofers behind the listener? In car audio that's where the subs are behind the listener. Obviously that's the only place they fit in most vehicles. Is that also the best sounding location and can it be applied in home audio as well?
Unfortunately my listeningis position is up against a wall My speakers are eleven feet away and nine feet apart I do have a 4x6 diffuser panel on the wall at my listening position
The "live end, dead end" method traditionally calls for the speaker end to be dead, and the listener end to be live. It's stated backward in the video. Also, one needs to understand that diffusers can be broadband, but most act within a narrow band of frequencies. So be careful (and be informed) before trying to set up a room. Absorbers are also mostly narrow band.
As far as the back wall (behind the listener), whether absorption or diffusion is called for depends on how close you are to it. Under 5 feet, you almost always will be better off with absorption. Over 5 feet or so, diffusion is better. Why? Because diffusion, especially in the lower frequency ranges, require adequate space to sufficiently randomize reflections.
Read Dr. Floyd Toole's book "Sound Reproduction" , which is all about acoustics in small (residential sized) rooms. About a third of the book talks about his decades of experience studying absorption and diffusion products and how they work.
Maybe I'm wrong, but If you have a big bass trap, it will absorb the bass but also everything above that, including highs and mids, so it must be considered wideband I guess. unless your absorption is not large enough and can't absorb the bass
absolutely 100% correct@@Ilove1073s
CDs are great, the audiophiliac uses them to absorb
The "room treatment" behind me, when I'm listening, is THE ROOM ITSELF!
As a Hi-Fi enthusiast with 45 years experience, in my view this is nonsense!
EDIT: Don't forget to colour the edges of your CDs too, for better sound! (rolleyes)
Please elaborate.
@@johndavidson5075 Elaborate what exactly? All I'm saying is, if somebody is daft enough to "treat" their room, to make their Hi-Fi sound "better," then they should colour the edges of their CDs too, because THAT also "improves" sound quality! (Not!)
Basically, if a Hi-Fi enthusiast is daft enough, and has enough money to waste, they'll believe anything!
Save a lot of money.
Phone=DAC=Headphones.
i love ur vedios!
Bose 901 would not work this way, just reflect everything through the walls it will be fine.
Bose are not Audiophile speakers. They have no part in this discussion.
@@johndough8115 Everyone says Bose is the best and I should buy it.
@@RoderikvanReekum
“Everyone” meaning Bose Fans. They like that Bose sound Signature.
@@johndough8115
People can be an Audiophile just using soup cans as speaker cabinets. Be it the small store cans or the much larger restaurant type cans.
@@davidfromamerica1871 There marketing teams say they are the best aswell, so it must be true!
Have you considered commissioning local artists to go to work on your room treatment?
They're literally blank canvases, except the ones on your left here look (sorry, there's no getting around this) truly hideous! Good luck
Every acoustic expert on the entire planet will tell you that "glass" is the worst sounding material acoustically. I can hear the bad effects of glass even when the speakers are 7 feet away from the glass. Fortunately I can move my speakers out further away than that. They EPI 100 near glass might sound good to you; but then again you hear deep bass from little EPI 100 speakers; which don't have any deep bass.. A store used to have them on sale every weekend in the newspaper ads for $59 each. That a $59 speaker is the best sound you've ever heard? No. You run into better sound than EPI 100s by sheer accident all the time. Glass NEVER sounds good, EPI 100s never sound like the best speaker ever. This is an instance where it all comes down "the observer". I don't think I'd be tempted to buy anything based on your perception. Which I'm sure is not only faulty, but very fantasy land. Should people with EPI speakers that were much higher up models, put them to the curb for the garbage man to pick up? I think we've all had our piece of fiction for the day.