Over the years, I have encountered audiophool products and contraptions I thought were absolutely hilarious.
When I first ran into the idea of room dampers....huge chunks of foam in the corners, or panels of acoustic absorption material, or round foam pillars placed here and yon....I laughed till I cried. But then a fellow from France who is one of the world's great DIY transformer winders told me that these were not audiophoolery at all, that they can tame room reflections to clean up the bass remarkably. So I repented
...at least on this one.Maybe because I have a preference for living in houses where there are ridiculously tall ceilings and large rooms and plenty of rugs and cushioned leather upholstery and bookshelves full of...books, mostly...I never really noticed this as a problem. But I have yet to be able to afford really good speakers....except for the AR's I had in BackBay Boston in the early '70's that fried my Heathkit transistor amp....wish I had 'em back! Now that I know how to build an amp to drive 'em!...so the cheap bookshelf units, set to point right at my head, not awfully far away, sound great, and I don't notice room "nodes"...places where the reflections, mostly in the bass I believe, either cancel or add, causing disturbing dips or peaks in frequency and destroying clarity in the bass...because I am practically wearing "open-air" headphones.
But, if you are handicapped by a smaller room, or a very (acoustically) bright room, or speakers with separate subs, or need to satisfy the desires of several people in different listening positions, or you like to "roam" while you're listening - and there's a clarity problem in the bass or maybe lower midrange - then "room treatment" might be just the thing for you. Because I don't know of any speakers or amp or equalizer that can really tame an awful sounding room....well, not within my budget, anyway, I'm sure there are some out there that claim they can do it...
but why not just make some cheap foam dampers yourself, have fun moving them around, give the cats something new to destroy, the dogs new things to pee on, the kids new places to hide while playing air-soft (ouch!), and give your loverly/handsomerly other a new reason to wonder why she/he ever married you?
Aaaaaaaaaaaanyway, I found this great group, an "Audio Circle", devoted to just this topic, and these DIY'ers are great! They know their stuff, they are FUNNY, and the forum is a delight to behold. Did I say they are FUNNY? I didn't find any insulting behaviour....well, except to manufacturers of REALLY EXPENSIVE STUFF....but it was reasonably good-natured, and when the manufacturer chimed in they treated him politely and some even offered to stop in for a listen...but I didn't examine each and every thread, so let me know if I missed something. I would lurk here at first; there's so much great info and links, if you're new to treating room acoustics, I'd bet an old AA-100 (before modding, not after...
) what you need is already there. And this place is better than any sit-com on TV (except your favorite one, of course).
By the way, those really expensive hand-turned wooden thingies for treating room acoustics, and stuff like that? If you are rich, please buy them, you'll help someone who can't hold a real job make a living (JUST KIDDING
...if you think that joke was mean, let me know, I'll take it out).
Actually, I do think one of the purposes of Rich People is to support pioneers, people who stretch boundaries...so I don't see a real difference between a Rich Person buying a painter's painting or a $3,000 hand-quenched room resonator. Just because I can't afford it, I really shouldn't put down products intended for....Rich People. Certainly not intended for me! (Hmmmm....
....if you are a Rich Person reading this, you really should contact me, because I have a research project I NEED funding for....not kidding there, either, but enough on that....)
If you're not a Rich Person, take chunks of wood from the woodpile and hack at them with a hatchet until you've rounded them up a bit, and gather nicely-rounded-by-nature rocks from a stream or the beach, and then place them hither and yon in your listening room - after a round-trip to the ER to sew your thumb back together - until whatever sound reflection that's bugging you is sufficiently busted up (just like it happens in nature, although I admit leaves, grass and open sky certainly help), and then please send me a photo to post. I'm not kidding!....but only if you really did it and it really helped...OK?
Now, that just gave me an idea....acoustically tuned "tall-grass" carpet to stop those floor reflections...teflon with micro-platinum crystals...complete with a stalking robotic ocelot programmed to find nodes and pounce on them, but with the Five Laws of Robotics included:
the fourth one being "Don't Eat Human Children, Even if They Do Look Like Rug-Rats";
and the fifth one being "Always Obey Will Smith"....
By the way, you know those anechoic chambers really big companies have, like JBL, I think, for testing loudspeakers in...so there are no nodes, nulling or additive? With the foam spikes sticking out from all the walls? Well, if you did that to your listening room, you'd hear your loudspeakers unadorned...but they'd sound kinda dull. A certain amount of room reverberation adds life to the sound; that's why guys like Linkwitz (see links on the right)...who is a genius...make dipole speakers, with big panels that are nonetheless open, not a ported box like a bookshelf speaker...so the reverberations will sound the same as if you had the Cleveland Symphony, with doubled violins, crammed into your living room.
Also by the way, you can approximate pretty well and anechoic chamber by simply putting the loudspeaker in question on the grass in a large space, seal around it somehow so you don't get the back-reflections, and point it at the sky! Or, you could mount the speaker in a big piece of plywood or plaster board and lay that on the grass, again, pointing at the sky. Then you put a mic on a boom over it at the distance you want, and take measurements. Or...it gets better...you could just dig a hole in the ground and "ground-mount" the speaker to be tested! (These two items I learned on the forum whose link is below....see what I mean about a little jewel of a forum?)
Here's the link:
http://www.audiocircle.com/circles/index.php?PHPSESSID=gm0bim2gl38ve4lhqnalngb794&board=73.0
Later on, maybe I'll post a list of links to stuff for "Rich People"....really! (blast it, I can't get bolding to turn off now, there's something wrong with this $&$#@@!! text editor for this blog-ware). It's fun to look, although I admit I get a tinge of jealousy sometimes, wishing I could just buy one of them just for the fun of it.
By the way, I THINK I've figured out how to enable comments with moderating....that is, I see them first, so: Note: nutcases just know that I'll delete at the first HINT of a nutcase comment and will not bother to read the whole thing....so tell me what you think of this audio-circle forum - if I got it right or not.
Best, Charlie
