Recent content by Ethan Winer

You took the words out of my mouth. :D

Forget "acoustic" paint. That's not going to do anything useful for you. There's no getting around the need for proper room setup and placing absorbers and/or diffusors in the right places. If the appearance of permanent panels is an issue, you can put them on stands and bring them in for...

Yes, that's my understanding too. --Ethan

Corner bass traps are typically two feet across. Anything substantially less won't absorb to a low enough frequency. Maybe you could build a soffit? Then you can make large bass traps for those ceiling corners, but frame them (only) with wood and cover with fabric to look good. Or make the...

Corner bass traps need to be large to be effective. So while wall-ceiling corners are a fine place for bass trapping, they'll need to be larger than anything I'd consider "molding." --Ethan

It's good to put some amount of treatment on each wall, but you don't want or need to cover the entire surfaces. --Ethan

A room where musicians play sounds better with some amount of non-resonant ambience. But when that is recorded and played back through loudspeakers, you don't want the playback room to add its own ambient sound on top. --Ethan

Take some large bath towels and fold them over once or twice to be thicker. Then you can tape them to the wall (and ceiling if you want) at reflection points. That's not as good as real panels that absorb to a lower frequency, but soft towels are definitely good enough to be able to hear an...

Is it possible for you to post a photo of the front part of the room taken from the back? That would help a lot. In the mean time, symmetry is important for good imaging, and clarity in most rooms is best achieved with absorption panels on the side walls (and ceilings) at the reflection points...

Maybe I'm blind, but I didn't see any speakers at all in those photos. --Ethan

All room acoustic problems are caused by reflections. Absorbers are placed on surfaces to stop sound from reflecting at all. Diffusors do reflect, but they scatter the sound in many directions. This keeps some liveness in the room while avoiding the "boing" sound you get from reflections between...

Speakers are usually best set up to fire the longer way down a room. If that's not practical, and you have to sit in front of a reflecting wall, then you'll need some sort of absorption (or possibly diffusion) on the wall behind you. The photo below may seem a little extreme, but it gives...

I can't see the data clearly, especially the vertical deviation. Regardless, I'll try to let you down easy. :D The best way to measure the response at low frequencies is at a very high resolution. Like 1/24 octave or even higher. Spot checking the response at 1/3 octave frequencies hides the...

Yes, and the response is way down above 10 KHz, depending on which way it's pointed. Much more here: Comparison of Ten Measuring Microphones --Ethan

I'd start with a cardboard box. Seriously. Live with it for a few days and make sure you agree the sound is good in that location. I'm sure it will be! But better safe than sorry before investing in a nice stand. --Ethan