walls and software (1 Viewer)

Hi, all,

1. I hate construction, tearing down walls, etc.. I want to make my walls to where they help make the sound better. Is there a material that can simply be "stuck" to the wall, like with self adhesive that will help?

2. What is a great sample music cd or dvd that I can use to show off my home theater sound? (Yes, I know if the ht is junk, the sample disc won't sound that great). I have an 4-year old JVC 5.1 receiver with DD and DTS. To me it sounds great.

Thank you!

What _exactly_ do you mean by "sound better"? Accoustics is a complicated mix of science and art. That being said, you can purchase absorbers that you can attach to your walls that can reduce reflections and enhance sound from compainies like http://www.auralex.com (If you don't like the foam look there are others, google accoustic absorbtion) The most important factor in how a room sounds is it's basic shape, and it sounds like you don't want to get that in-depth.

www.svsubwoofers.com has a list of DVD's with great bass, IMHO, and good action DVD sounds pretty good in a good HT. Your reciever is probably fine, but make sure that your speakers are up to the job.

Proper sound panels can't just be glued to a wall. Thin foam stuff can be, but that's not very effective as quality broadband absorption. Thick rigid fiberglass board is the way to go.

http://www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html

Chris W,

Thank you for the link!

I also highly recommend F Alton Eversts: Master Handbook of acoustics for a basic background of acoustics that will help you accumulate a much more solid background understanding and help you design your room.

Keep in mind that much of the information on line and in print is geared toward stereo rooms. Multi-channel is a different beast, and requires a somewhat different approach. In general, you can't go wrong with absobtion, and the lower frequencies that you can absorb the better.

In my HT, I used accoutic foam on the ceiling and a strip around the walls at ear level. I also have bass traps on the ceiling/wall junctures and a primitive bass trap built into my riser. My only complaint about my accoustics is that I have a null point at 50hz for my front row of seats. Unfortuantly, this is an artifact of the shape of the room, which could not be changed.

I would not really agree with this characterization at all. The only main difference between room usage is that multichannel in a generalized way depends on the room less for ambiance (since it is provided by speakers beside/behind you as well, unlike in a 2-channel system) which leads to HT or multichannel environments being generally a little more dead (shorter RT60 time). But the basics are all the same.

The basic physics principals are of course the same. The biggest difference is that in a stereo room, the listener is ideally in the "mid-field" hearing both direct and reflected sound, while in HT the listener is ideally in the "near-field" hearing much more direct, and less reflected, sound. This usually shows up in the design phase as stereo rooms having large diffusion arrays which are generally absent in HT, (leading, as you say, to being more dead, and with a shorter RT60) There are also practical effects to the additional speakers of HT. For example, a commen approach in a stereo room is to take a mirror and run it along walls and ceilings. From places where you are in the listening position and can see a speaker in a mirror, you place absobtion. Because we are in the near field in HT, and because of the great increase in speakers, this technique does not work nearly as well. When I was doing research for my HT I came accross dozens, if not hundreds, of designs and approaches for stereo rooms, and the vast majority did not translate to multi-channel (most had large diffuser arrays)