When I think about diffusers, it kind of blows my mind. This happens because of the variety of materials that could be used, and their arrangement. Of course, that makes me wonder what would be best and why. I get overwhelmed and switched another thought. Why don't I just buy magical cables, and all of my problems go away?

I got my jig made last weekend, but I've not had time to start cutting tops and bottoms for my fleet of diffusers. I hope to start that this weekend. I'm thinking some hardwood and plywood ones to start. Basically whatever materials I have on hand. Make a few prototypes, get into the swing of cutting. Next, I have to make an assembly jig. This will basically be a panel with wood or foam blocks set to the correct depth needed for each well. That way, I take all my parts, set them on the assembly jig, and simply start gluing it all together. If all goes well, (and I can afford it) think I could start making two of these a week.

The Jig for step one!  :)

I had to put my duffers on pause for house projects. We are demoing our basement, and further working on replacing the aluminum wire we found in our house with copper. All this has pretty much trashed my garage workshop since half the basement got stored in the garage.

My design is pretty amazing, nobody makes anything this broadband (off the shelf). It's also very complicated to build. I've got two version I'm working on to see which is easier to build. Once I get a build method down, I need to build about 24 of these 12" (deep) 30" X 36" diffusers, and at a cost of approximately $115 each, not including replacing/sharpening table saw blade, glue, screws and whatever. If I wasn't pushing myself to make such a crazy-complex diffuser, I'd have had these done a year ago.

Over-engineering/Overbuilding is a fault of mine.

Diffuser placement is pretty easy to start with.

IMHO, you should have diffusers on *all* first reflection points, including the ceiling. At every least, I would have diffusers between the speaker on the front wall, on the back wall, and first reflections on the side wall.

What's great about covering those four points, is that you're getting more than just 4 reflection points, because the diffusers will catch secondary reflections from other diffusers, as well as untreated parts of the room...which is often why ceilings get left alone.

Then you build yourself several sound absorber panels to cover other areas, act as bass traps, and you can do most of your fine tuning by ear.

I threw some (similar) ideas at Palomino, and he's cobbled together some traps and poly-cylindrical "diffusers" (using the term very loosely), and I think he's even done a couple small skyline diffusers for fun, and through some suggestions, and mostly his tuning by ear, he has some of the best imaging I've ever heard. And I swear to you his *whole system* costs less than what I paid for my ZMA!

Sound treatment is where I'm failing miserably. I need to either move my system to a dedicated room, and wing the sound treatment like he did, or get off my arse and build a fleet of diffusers to help fix my dreaded "L shaped room"

11 X 16 is a very respectable room. If you were saying 9 X 8 or something, then I'd say yeah, you've got problems.

The only thing to keep in mind with diffusers, is that you need a few feet between them and your ears for them to disperse the sound evenly. Otherwise you could get some peaky diffusion. The diffusers Steve sells (or maybe only sells plans to now? I've not looked in ages) are a great compromise as they cover the upper ranges where diffusers are most effective, and they only need a couple feet between them and your ears.

https://www.decware.com/p1312.htm

Don't get scared off from diffusers, they can do so much more then absorbers, and they help keep the sound energy in the room, rather then dumping it into an absorber. They also help keep your frequencies even while keeping the room live.

If I had the cash, i wouldn't even flinch from paying twice what my speakers cost on room treatment. It makes that much of a difference.

Lon, I hear you there.  I've spent >800 on absorbers and will now add diffusion. It's a 2 + year project (retiring mid 2016'). I hope to have everything set by then so I may sit, listen and enjoy!  Diffusion, better cartridge, power regeneration, nos tubes all on the wish list with 18+ months to go.

Acetone, that sound like an awesome plan!

Keep posting about your progress in the forums!