Too much room treatment?

I'm considering getting a Vista setup for home theater to replace my 14 year old NHTs. My home theater has the screen wall completely covered in 1 inch linacoustic to minimize reflections.

I've read in some places that too much sound absorbing materials behind electrostats can be a bad thing. Even the Vista manual says "If the entire front wall consists of heavy drapery, your system can sound dull." I suspect my entire wall covered in linacoustic is worse than heavy drapery.

Does anyone else have a fully-treated front wall and can comment on how your ML's sound? Should I not even consider ML's in this type of room?

Thanks for any help!

Hi Joe and welcome!

I currently run Vista's in a treated room but only a 2.1 setup, check out my system pics to see.

I've had a room that had the rear wall covered in linacoustic as well as the side walls up 36" from the floor and treated walls above that and it sounded awful. Granted I didn't have the Logan's at that time but I did have tower Ushers that were very very nice...but in that room it was too lifeless and I fought to add reflections back in to liven things up. Too much of a good thing I guess.

i had heavy curtains behind my CLS trying to do a LEDE room and it was lifeless. removing the curtains and breaking up the wall with shelving and stuff helped a lot.

however, a nice big absorcer in the center behind the logans helped imaging a lot - but don't go crazy.

ALOT depends on how far into the room your speakers are, IMO (with the exception of corners) as you increase the distance between wall and speaker you increase diffusion over absorption.

How far are speakers off the wall behind them ?

Which wall do you consider to be the "front" wall?

robertawillisjr said:

Which wall do you consider to be the "front" wall?

Click to expand...

the wall 'behind' the speakers

I have a moistly reflective front wall behind the CLS, wallboard, windows with blinds, light drapes and small shelves. In my recent experiments with speaker position I've found that less than 3-1/2' from the front wall gives an increasing effect of "lifelessness" as distance decreases. Absolute dullsville even though the sound was crystal clear. I've returned the speakers to about 5' off the wall and got the ambiance back.
I had changed distance between speakers at the time and experimented with diffusion to no avail. These things would affect stage width and coherance but did nothing to alleviate the dullness effect.
So I've come to a conclusion that it is an issue with the sound wave reflecting to the listener off the front wall with the right (read "best sounding") phase in relation to the direct source, and absorption can only attenuate this effect whether it is phased well or not.

I've always been a firm believer in the use of acoustic treatments to solve problems....BUT ONLY TO SOLVE PROBLEMS...to summarily treat an entire room WILL make it dull and lifeless...which may be a good thing for a 7.1 or 5.1 theater setup where the multichannels recreate what the director thinks you should hear. But.....Not good for two channel where your own room ambiance will bolster the effect of the music hall.

Just when you think you know it all - along comes this thread!! Here is the conundrum. How does one ever know when one is squeezing every last ounce out of their system? The on-going theme in this forum has been treat the room...treat the room...treat the room. In fact do it above and beyond anything else. Now this!!

timm said:

Just when you think you know it all - along comes this thread!! Here is the conundrum. How does one ever know when one is squeezing every last ounce out of their system? The on-going theme in this forum has been treat the room...treat the room...treat the room. In fact do it above and beyond anything else. Now this!!

Click to expand...

Treat, yes. But overtreat......that's just silly (and expensive).

Y'see - the thing is, audiophiles get carried away with things that sound different but not necessarily better.

Listen carefully after applying treatments and ensure they actually make a positive improvement, not just a sideways (or worse, backward) step in sound. If they don't give you a positive improvement, REMOVE THEM!

Just because it sounds different doesn't mean you've made an improvement!

churchill said:

Hi Joe and welcome!

I currently run Vista's in a treated room but only a 2.1 setup, check out my system pics to see.

Click to expand...

You have a wonderful looking listening room. That's encouraging to see for my setup.

twich54 said:

ALOT depends on how far into the room your speakers are, IMO (with the exception of corners) as you increase the distance between wall and speaker you increase diffusion over absorption.

How far are speakers off the wall behind them ?

Click to expand...

I'm actually about to start a vacation, but I will post more specifics on room setup when I get back and add some pictures. Should be an interesting discussion.

DrJRapp said:

I've always been a firm believer in the use of acoustic treatments to solve problems....BUT ONLY TO SOLVE PROBLEMS...to summarily treat an entire room WILL make it dull and lifeless...which may be a good thing for a 7.1 or 5.1 theater setup where the multichannels recreate what the director thinks you should hear. But.....Not good for two channel where your own room ambiance will bolster the effect of the music hall.

Click to expand...

Your point about summarily treating might be good for multichannel is spot on. That's why people do it -- so the multichannels create the soundfield as opposed to the reflections.

My system will primarily be for HT -- about 80-20. So I'm trying to figure out if a multichannel Martin Logan system makes sense in a treated room.

robertawillisjr said:

Which wall do you consider to be the "front" wall?

Click to expand...

Good. That is my understanding. I was a bit confused by the earlier posts. I am a fan of minimalism for listening. Just correct what needs to corrected. There are a number of techniques you can use to do this. I don't have the links handy, but you can download spreadsheets that will assist in finding the reflection areas that can be problematic(this is a good idea). There are techniques using mirrors (you can find some somewhere in this forum). You can also send pictures of your room to a company like GIK Acoustics and get their advice.

My advice is to avoid the hocus pocus (of which there is a lot concerning this subject) and look to the following areas first:

1. Front wall
2. Rear wall
3. First reflection points on the side walls
4. front wall corners

Someone else here can determine what priority you should use.

joealtus,

Sounds like 'joeitis', coincidence, I am not sure.

Anyway, I have 3 Martin Logan Multi-channel systems. 2 have treatments and one does not.

If you look at the pics #275 on the CLX 5.1 MCH music system you will see that the system's room is quite heavily treated. There are floor to ceiling bass traps in the corners and there are mulitple absorbtion panels at reflection points along the walls.

And there are even panels on both sides of the bulkhead/airduct that cuts through the room on the ceiling.

With Multi-channel it is all about controlling the reflection points and letting the MCH source do the ambiance and sound stage, and if you are in to HT the effects.

In my main 7.2 HT system I use ML Stylos which have sound absorbtion built in behind the speaker but inside the speaker cabinet. The nice thing about this particular electrostat is the it can be mounted on the wall and tilted vertically as well as side to side. Because of the sound absorbtion built in reflections are not near as troublesome.

You can see pics of these two systems in the member system area at #275 if that helps.

Last I have a 7.1 HT/Music System in the master bedroom, it is untreated but because of the layout and carpeting, I have found that it really doesn't require treatment. Besides the boss would not allow it.

amey01 said:

Treat, yes. But overtreat......that's just silly (and expensive).

Y'see - the thing is, audiophiles get carried away with things that sound different but not necessarily better.

Listen carefully after applying treatments and ensure they actually make a positive improvement, not just a sideways (or worse, backward) step in sound. If they don't give you a positive improvement, REMOVE THEM!

Just because it sounds different doesn't mean you've made an improvement!

Click to expand...

Amen!

Get a bunch of bales of insulation from Lowes or Home Depot. These are similar in effect to the lower priced acoustic panels. Put them in your listening room to cover as many walls and corners as you can. Listen, Remove, Repeat...

joealtus said:

I'm considering getting a Vista setup for home theater to replace my 14 year old NHTs. My home theater has the screen wall completely covered in 1 inch linacoustic to minimize reflections.

I've read in some places that too much sound absorbing materials behind electrostats can be a bad thing. Even the Vista manual says "If the entire front wall consists of heavy drapery, your system can sound dull." I suspect my entire wall covered in linacoustic is worse than heavy drapery.

Does anyone else have a fully-treated front wall and can comment on how your ML's sound? Should I not even consider ML's in this type of room?

Thanks for any help!

Click to expand...

If this is a home theater, then the treatment is completely appropriate.

For multichannel soundtracks and music, you want the back wave of the speaker attenuated.

I did substantial research and measurements on this topic and arrived at a setup that features a front wall that is covered in absorbers.
This gives pinpoint accuracy for multichannel recordings of all kinds.

When playing well-recorded MCH music, like any Porcupine Tree album or their new BluRay 'Anesthetize', the sound-field is lush, full, and the artist is positioning the sounds at clearly identifiable places in the room.
A well setup system on these recordings will reveal sound positioning that moves from well within the circle of speakers to well beyond their boundaries.
An overly reflective room destroys the timing cues and smears location identification.

Good discussion.

My personal experience was that when I "reversed" my room setup to be a bit more in compliance with the WAF, the heavy drapery behind the Summits really sucked the life out of the music.

So, I'm now in the process of a double-reverse (back to the original setup).

Bottom Line: I guess there is something to the ML instructions...part of which states:

The Wall Behind the Speakers

"The front surface, the wall behind your speakers, should not
be extremely hard or soft. For instance, a pane of glass will
cause reflections, brightness and confused imaging. Curtains,
drapery and objects such as bookshelves can be placed
along the wall to soften a hard surface. A standard sheet
rock or textured wall is generally an adequate surface if
the rest of the room is not too bright and hard. Sometimes
walls can be too soft. If the entire front wall consists of
only heavy drapery, your system can sound too soft or
dull. You may hear dull, muted music with little ambience.
Harder room surfaces will actually help in this case."

Reminds me of what my Dear Old Dad used to say: "When all else fails, read the directions."

Len44 said:

... Reminds me of what my Dear Old Dad used to say: "When all else fails, read the directions."

Click to expand...

Good advice, but one I'm afraid I disagree with in this case.

For instance, following this advice, if placed a monopole speaker in front of a damped wall, is it going to be lifeless and dull?
No, it will not, as it radiates all energy out the front.

Now, if I follow their advice, and wanted to simulate the 'liveliness' of a ML (which is a dipole), I'd grab two identical dynamic speakers, strap them back to back, reverse the polarity to the one facing rearward, and put that in front of a reflective wall. Hum, I wonder why we don't see more audiophiles doing that?