Acoustic Treatment for Echoes

[Yelamanchili manohar]

Hey...a nice room u hv there..

I've recently ventured into some acoustic treatment for my drawing room as well which i set up as a listening room.

In short, to go the treatment route there are many ways to do it from DIY to ready made beautiful panels. But that will be a bit costly and require a lot of panels given the space. But they do have colour options from wooden to white and grey etc.

The best way is to get a big carpet first and throw it right in front of ur speakers to absorb immediate dispersion. As a carpet would cover more area compared to panels etc.

For the big windows u can install rollable ultrathin wooden/bamboo blinds u can pull done while listening while maintaining transparency for decor and light when suitable weather.

Last would be to add few acoustic panels in one by one like a pair of two on one wall, then two on another so on until u feel it's enough.

I got some wooden panels for myself from a Mumbai based co.called aural exchange. Mr. Ashutosh is the owner. He will also suggest you somethings if you ask n prolly ask u to share ur room pics for analysis. If u don't like wooden n think might spoil the looks u can also consider white panels.

In my case i asked him to customize the John Darko design as it was not available and GIK acoustic is expensive. To my surprise he was able to do so at default price as his existing panels. So basically i gave him an idea about the design how it can be in demand as many beginner audiophiles follow him. So he has the same design added to his collection now at the fraction of cost to the GIK ones. Super expensive. These are much much cheaper.

Pic below is a sample of my panels. 2 each on a single wall and rest a medium sized carpet in middle. As not a very large room. Later i put two small carpets in front of speakers too.

Check out the website

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Explained Perfectly:

I do believe if u put ur set up on the opposite wall where the sofa currently is and sofa where u hv set up currently. It will be very good for the set up as ur speakers will get equal/more space on either sides from the wall and keep them further apart from the cabinet to make space and then toe-in 10-30° firing at ur listening position. U can stand behind the speakers while u do that. Keep the speakers minimum 30cm away from wall or 1.5 - 2 feet. It will create a beautiful imaging effect.
Cabinet might be cancelling the inbetween field also. Mine is rounded on the edges. Hope it helps Try out all the best.

Thats a lovely looking room ...Enjoy

 

[Yelamanchili manohar]

Thank you in advance for my fellow forum members for choosing to ready this lengthy post.

Lets get right to it -
My problem is that I don’t have a dedicated listening room and I don’t want to hang random acoustic panels and diffusors in my living room (I love my family, I don’t want them to throw me out). Also, I don’t want to draw a lot of attention from guests, don’t like explaining why I have used what. The intent is to keep the entire room treatment subtle and easy on the eye. I have also not used any room measurement software like REW. So need your expert advice.

I will add some photos so that it's easy for us to address the problem.

I am using MusicHall a30.3 + Quad 22Ls, great combination - because I had auditioned the speakers with this amp before I bought them used.
However, my living room has lot of echo and reverberation because of hard surfaces - huge glass window (dont want to add curtains) , granite floor, and there are other glass surfaces too.
Below is how the room is set up.

View attachment 69286

Coming to the room treatment.
I always wanted to build a skyline diffusor, however, I learnt the difference between diffusor and absorber recently. I reckon absorber is what I need. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Now the plan is to add absorbers on the entire wall (at least 8 feet from the floor) that is opposite to the speakers.
There are two options to do this -

1. Custom absorption panel using Rockwool or Geowool from Aural (50mm) - this requires a lot of work, like building frames, fitting the material, choosing proper cloth material and making provisions to hang them
2. GeoDeco PET FELT collection from Aural (9/12 mm) - Its available in 4'x8', I can just stick it to the wall using double sided tape or Fevicol HeatX. If I can make up my mind, I can even create some patterns etc.

https://www.auralexchange.com/produ...pet-polyester-fiber-felt-acoustic-panel-12mm/

The front wall has some wooden furniture and center table, this can act as diffusor. And since I am covering entire wall, I hope this is enough to absorb echo to a reasonable degree.

As you can see, I am leaning into this GeoDeco thing, It would be really great if anyone can share their experience of using GeoDeco PET FELT material for acoustic treatment.

Wall where the TV is set up
View attachment 69287

Opposite wall where the furniture is placed - this is the wall where the absorber would be added
View attachment 69288

And finally, here's the huge glass window, where we are not adding curtains for aesthetic reasons
View attachment 69289

Very nice and pleasant room ...But definitely looks like a echo chamber. There is not one, but plenty of contributing factors here. Having a thick carpet to cover as much area as possible will be a big help. And if you sit in the center of the sofa at the back, then having a absorber wrapped in some acoustically absorbent painting mounted right behind your seating position, will make a big difference. And if done nicely, can be a unique design statement too. Next will be to add lots of soft furnshings to the room, like cushions and curtains etc ( You did mention that you dont want curtains ). But considering the bare concrete walls, hard granite floors and large glass area, you will need all the help you can get. There are more suggestions like pulling out the speakers farther from the wall, if possible, or possibly rearranging the orientation of the room, to have the speakers in front of the glass doors. This will atleast give two parallel walls on the sides, to do something. And the listener will have free space behind his back, so that back wall flutter and reflections will be much reduced.