If you could blanket your HT in heavy fabric, would you? (1 Viewer)

[John Royster]

My darn ears are telling my my home theater sounds bad. My room is a slightly live 15x15, half opened. It seems to be too base heavy in a very narrow range and the midrange just doesn't cut it.

My girlfriend (after I've been complaining about the acousitics of our HT) suggested draping the entire room in very heavy fabric comlete with draw back "screen". So after I said "do you realize how much I love you", I started thinking about if this could help. Am I getting too many reflections?

Can the "live" sound of the room be fixed? If so is a very dead room a good idea? My gear is a 65", denon 3802 and top of the line polk audio. Music just isn't the same with this room. DVDs just seem to have lost that spacious/airy feel. It seems like I can localize all speakers real easy.

Please help me before I run out and buy very expensive speakers that might still sound poor given the room acoustics.

 

[Anthony_Gomez]

Draping heavy fabrik would help and tame the "lively" sound by dampining out some high frequency reflections, but for the bass problem, I highly suggest building a couple of bass traps...no other good way to fix that part...well, maybe sub placement might help, but it is hard to say.

Out of curiosity, have you taken an in-room measurement of the room acoustics?

 

[Sean Conklin]

I use a big Blanket on the back wall, directly behind the seating where the center and main speakers fire towards, and this did seem to help eliminate high frequency reflections.

 

[Brian Bunge]

Merely angling my center channel downward (sits on top of a 53" TV) eliminated the echo I was hearing with female voices. A 2" thick chunk of acoustic foam did the trick!

Brian

 

[NathanP]

Like this dude?
Link Removed
Go for it.
Nathan

 

[Ron Shaw]

Room acoustics problems cant be delt with a simple 'one size fits all' solution, and keeps acoustical engineers employed. A live room can be helped with proper application of absorptive material. You may try the LEDE approach used by many recording studios (Live end, dead end). The dead end is the front (source), and the live end is the rear. The theory behind this is to stop early reflections from the main speakers from screwing up the soundstage. Reflections from the rear are usually not much of a problem. Heavy drapes across the front of the room, and about halfway back each side, as well as the floor (carpet takes care of this) and ceiling makes a LEDE enviornment. You may be able to ignore the ceiling, but if its still a problem, hang a lightwieght frame with material stretched over it. Hanging it at an angle improves appearance. This will take care of high to mid range problems. For low frequency problems, it becomes more problematic. Bass traps (as Anthony mentioned) are the best approach. These need to be designed (dimensioned) to absorb the offending frequency range. Moving the subs may be an easier approach, but try to keep phasing (arrival time) matched to your mains. Good luck.

 

[Jens Raethel]

I have put fabric on my walls to deadening (is this the right word?" the room and it worked out fine. The thing is not to get the room to dead!

The back wall in my HT is not coverd with fabric.

 

[John Royster]

Thanks a bunch for the info. I like the LEDE approach. I really didn't know of any accepted methods.

The bass attentuation is more likely to do with room size and the fact that it is pretty square, right? I'll let you know when it is completed.

 

[Mike Dr]

You may also want to think about equalization for the sub using something like a Behringer Feedback Destroyer (a lot of info on it in these forums). It's only about $140 and is well worth the effort.