How to Improve a Room’s Acoustics

Wooden Acoustics by odieguru.

Since you are going to have great acoustics after reading this, you should take a Sony ACID or GarageBand class so you have something to jam out to in your sound-perfect room. To sign up for a class see the STS Website.

This article is from the Wired.com How-to wiki.

No matter how great your stereo or home theater system is, if the room you have your system in is not optimized for acoustics, you will not be getting the best sound quality possible.

Understanding Room Resonances: A room’s resonances are basically the sound waves that are generated by the speakers. This will usually be from 20Hz to approximately 300Hz. The resonances will greatly depend on the dimensions of the room in which your system is located. The room’s resonance can either increase or lessen base frequencies. If there are problems with your room’s resonance, you will end up with either a heavy bass sound, or weak brassy bass sound.

Understanding Room Reflections: This is when high frequencies bounce of the surrounding walls, together with the direct sound that you hear from your speakers. In many cases the reflected sound will be heard before the direct sound. Too much reflected sound can degrade the quality of the sound in the room.

Determine Correct Speaker Placement: To determine the right placement of your speakers you must first measure the dimensions of your room and enter them into a room acoustics calculator, this will help to determine which frequencies are likely to be problems in that room.

Speaker Placement: In most cases speakers should be placed about 3 feet from the front wall, and from the sides walls they should be placed approximately 1.6 that distance. The speakers should also be positioned toward the listening position. This should help improve the bass sound of the speakers.

Bass Trap: This is a device that absorbs or traps bass, but only of particular frequencies. When you use a bass trap, it will absorbs the bass sound at certain frequencies, which in turn, improves the quality of bass in the sound system.

Finding a Room’s Reflection Points: To find the reflection points of a room you should sit in a normal listening position, and then have someone else hold a mirror up at different points of the room. While doing this they will position the mirror in different ways until you can see the speaker in the mirror. When you can see the mirror, these are your reflective points.

Solve Room Reflection Problems: One of the best methods of solving the room reflection problems is with acoustic absorbers and diffusers. When these are placed in the right position, you will be able to hear more of the speaker and less of the sound reflected from the room’s walls. This results in a fuller, less hollow sound and you will be able to pickup on many more details than you would otherwise.

If you are unsatisfied with the sound quality of your stereo or home theater sound system, before you decide to buy an upgrade you may want to consider experimenting with your room’s acoustics. There is a good chance that by simply addressing these problems, you can get the high quality sound that you want, without investing in additional sound equipment.

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One response to “How to Improve a Room’s Acoustics

  1. i have both DTS and Dolby Surround home theather system at home and the sound is superb ~.;

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