Forums - ok ready to start...

Tripwr1964 Seasoned Member Posts: 435	ok ready to start... 05/07/17 at 14:38:21 think i am to the point i need to start working on my room. what do you all think for starting point and incremental steps? i know nothing about sound treatment... it's a basement 15x20x8. i am guessing removing the picture frames from the walls would be first order.
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Ace-Tone Seasoned Member 8+ years with Decware gear and Loving it!!! Posts: 775	Re: ok ready to start... Reply #1 - 05/07/17 at 17:41:30 Best to start with Bass Traps in the corners behind speakers. GIK makes some nice ones (4' tall) that you can stack..or go DIY. And, perhaps triangular traps up in the ceiling corners.
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Jeff of Arabica

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Posts: 974

Re: ok ready to start...
Reply #2 - 05/07/17 at 18:00:05

Trip,
I am in the same spot as you. I actually just placed and order with GIK for my Phase 1 setup. They have a form you can fill out and provide images of your room. With that info, an acoustician will reach out to you with what he recommends for your room. Great advice, and very helpful. My rep was Bryan Pape who is apparently their Lead guru. Although he was having a bad day when I spoke with him on the phone, so he didn't have the best attitude, but was helpful nonetheless. Worth filling out their room advice form and seeing what they say. Their stuff looks nice and is pretty reasonably priced.

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Tripwr1964 Seasoned Member Posts: 435	Re: ok ready to start... Reply #3 - 05/07/17 at 23:41:02 alright i'll take a look at those. thks for the input guys!! i am way behind the curve wrt room treatments.
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jpv

Seasoned Member

Cause inside
everyone is a heavy
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Posts: 170

Re: ok ready to start...
Reply #4 - 05/08/17 at 01:14:29

There are some basic things that will help right away. With that said you need to measure your rooms frequency response. Download REW. It is a free program..
You need to know what needs to be fixed before you start adding treatment.
Your room is very close to mine. mine is 14 x 19 x 8. You will be very surprised to see just how far from "flat" your room really is. REW will aid you in getting your speaker located in the correct spot for bass and integration with your main speakers. Plus a lot more.

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Tripwr1964 Seasoned Member Posts: 435	Re: ok ready to start... Reply #5 - 05/08/17 at 15:07:11 jpv makes sense. i have REW and a dayton umm6 mic. what are the basics for measuring room modes? (i.e. what kinda signal, mic position, what tool used to analze it...) or a good link to study? sorry i am a beginner. thks
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jpv

Seasoned Member

Cause inside
everyone is a heavy
metal kid

Posts: 170

Re: ok ready to start...
Reply #6 - 05/08/17 at 20:14:31

Go to the The home theater shack web site. There is tons of info there to read.
I can guide you thru the procedure and look at your data. REW has a steep learning curve. Basically after you have the program set up, your computer will be connected to your stereo. You run a freq. sweep and you review your data. REW will show you the response in Db., spectrogram to see how long freq are lasting, RT60, RT30, ETC data, etc...
Put your umm6 mc where you sit. ( be sure to mark the spot so you can go back and run more test and repeat ).

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Lonely Raven

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Posts: 3567

Re: ok ready to start...
Reply #7 - 05/10/17 at 19:21:51

REW is awesome - lets you *see* things to confirm what you're hearing. It's tough to get into it though. I've not used it in years and have forgotten almost all of it. You'll find threads on how to use it, and there are many forum goers who know it well and can help your interpret your findings.

You'll need a computer of some sort to plug that mic into, the program, and a way to send sound from the computer out to your system. The computer sends the test tones to your system, and the mic picks it up and displays what it hears, and compares it to what was sent. From there it's all about reading the measurements and deciding what to change, making the change, then retest and prove the results.

In the mean time, you can try to mitigate as many issues as you can.

Get as much stuff out of the room as possible.

Make sure everything is balanced left to right (I use measuring tape and lasers)

Make sure speaker and seating placement are the best you can do (REW will also help with this later)

Just do your best with what you have as you learn. IMHO, you can throw diffusers in there and they will only help, but absorbers aren't the same thing since they are only subtractive. For example, let's say you've got a big dip at 250hz, and you add a whole bunch of bass traps, and they cover that same frequency...you could take a 20db dip and make it a 26db dip!! Instead, mitigate that as best as you can with speaker and seating placement (since you can't really/easily change the dimensions of the room!) using REW to guide you, *then* bring in absorbers as needed.

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