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General acoustic rules

Gridslayer

Gridslayer

This and that...
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So I'm going to eventually set up my basement as a theater/music room. Am I correct that in general, the back wall should be diffusion/diffraction with tube traps in the corners, and the side walls should be a combination of diffusion with absorption where the sound is hitting from the speakers?

I'm planning on making home made diffusion panels for the back wall, floor to ceiling DIY tube traps for the front corners, and alternate diffusion panels and absortion panels on the sides. The back wall is at the other end of our ranch home's basement so I'm not doing anything with that...
 
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Depending on the size of your room and the existing surfaces and furnishings, you may not want any diffusion at all. Sometimes absorption is all you need. I would put more emphasis on absorption than diffusion in any case. Diffusion is best when your room is already too dead or in special circumstances like with dipole speakers.

Side absorbers should be at the places where sound reflects between the speaker and your noggin. "First reflection points" they're called. There will be 2 on each wall, the floor, and the ceiling (assuming you have 2 speakers).
 
The front wall is drywall with concrete block behind it. The ceiling is typical old drop ceiling tiles. The sides are drywall as well, and the floor is all carpeted, so it's fairly dead to begin with... I guess I've always seen diffusion behind speakers, that's why I was thinking that would be good...
 
Gridslayer said:
The front wall is drywall with concrete block behind it. The ceiling is typical old drop ceiling tiles. The sides are drywall as well, and the floor is all carpeted, so it's fairly dead to begin with... I guess I've always seen diffusion behind speakers, that's why I was thinking that would be good...
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Sounds like right off the bat you'll need absorption...especially on the front wall since you have drywall/concrete there (a highly reflective combination). And like RevMen has mentioned before, just because you have carpet that doesn't mean the floor is no longer reflective....especially wrt LF waves. The carpet will help tame HF soundwaves, so will the acoustic tiles on the ceiling, but my guess is the LF soundwaves will go through the ceiling tiles and reflect off the subfloor and come back into the room to meet the basement floor reflections and then you'll get "standing" waves...which will kill bass. Tube traps are good, but most research I did said the superchunk broadband corner absorbers were more effective. There's a sticky at the beginning of this forum that shows how to make them.
 
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OK sounds good. I might be able to get some absorption panels at an auction coming up. I am familiar with the super chunk corner things. The trick is making them look good, which I suspect won't be too difficult...
 
tomlinmgt said:
There's a sticky at the beginning of this forum that shows how to make them.
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I've just gone back and re-read that. I do have a question or two on them.....

1. yours there are about 3' tall. Does the height matter? Is it better to have two stacked? One on the floor? One mid-way on the wall? What's the best use?

2. How wide does the front have to be to be effective? I think yours were 24" across the front (and 17" on each wall side). While I'm asking questions specific to my space in another thread, I'm dealing with windows at this point and the 24" would cover that -- not that this is a window issue since the blinds are mostly closed. My question is whether a 12" front width that was much taller is more effective than a 24" that's 3 feet tall...
 
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