LotusFool
Well-Known Member
My living room is 17' x 16' = 272sq. feet. The first trail was 3 ea. - 2'x4' = 24sq. feet panels, which I though was too much. Looking at your photos it seems like way too much for my taste. But you must also take furniture into account plus ceiling material (mine is that old 1970's acoustic tiles) carpet etc. My main concept here is there is no calculator, coefficient of sound absorption, and or formula that will exactly predict what you need or more importantly like. I view them as only guides. I've hung enough pictures on the wall to know you through away the level. I don't care how accurate the levelness is on the picture, if it doesn't appear level to your eye you will never be satisfied. Make the picture please your eye and forget about absolute levelness. The same with your room sound. Make it please you, not me, or satisfy some formula.Thanks Gary for sharing your experiences. This is very helpful info for myself and anyone else who decides to go down this path and reap the HUGE rewards.
I now have a total of 80 sqft of absorption which equates to 13% of the total wall and ceiling surface area of 606 sqft. The room itself is 12' x 13' or 156 sqft and on the Acoustimac Website their room calculator recommends 7 nr 4' x 2' panels. For me the addition of the rear panels brought everything into perfect focus and I think I am at the point where I no longer need anymore panels.
Can you recall how much surface area of absorption you had when you noticed the room becoming lifeless. I have not noticed any drop off with adding the remaining panels but I certainly won't be adding anymore as I feel I have addressed all the reflection points that I need to for my room. See below.
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One of the things I tried was to put my sound absorbers right at the "first reflection points" on the left and the right side. This should of worked well in theory, but I hated the sound of it! Even with no music playing the sound of the quiet room with those 2' x 4' panels on each side of the room was terrible. I know the first reflection points are very important, but the only thing I can deduce is my Khorns each point at the center of the room in a criss-cross fashion, and so a lot of what I've read does not apply to the Khorns. Such as there is no space behind the speaker as they go right into he corner of the room. So I'm kind of on my own here and throw away the books.
My advise is to listen to acoustic music and vocals. You know what voice and guitar is supposed to sound like as apposed to all those wonderful "electronic" sounds. My aim is to make the system sound like the musicians are in the room. I bought a turn table a few years ago from this guy in my neighborhood. The good news is I could go to his house to hear /addition it. He prided his system for sonic clarity which it was! Crisp and clean in the extreme! But there was hardly any bass which to me sounded awful and artificial, but he loved it.
Gary