[AndyST]

The Current Room



Due to it's relatively small dimensions the room suffers quite badly from reflections. When playing at higher levels things can become overpowering as standing waves build up. I've therefore come up with this design for further room treatments to hopefully create a more pleasant listening environment.







Having a larger distance between the panel and the corner should create a decent amount of bass absorption compared to standard wall panels.

The whole thing is designed to be as light as possible considering it needs to be mounted to the ceiling. There's no way I want to risk them coming down.

Once completed they will be wrapped in acoustic fabric and held up by heavy duty velcro along the black shaded areas. Finding some white fabric at a reasonable price is proving difficult though, the cheapest I've found is more than triple what the black cloth from Maplin costs. The rocksilk will also have some straps across it at the back to stop it moving once in place.

At the moment I'm still gathering materials and considering the design. Splitting them into 2-3 smaller panels may be easier to handle...

Has anyone else done anything similar to this with success? I've seen a few ceiling corner mounted panels on american sites, but could never figure out how they held them up. So this is what I came up with as a solution.

The Planned Result



More to come soon...

[AndyST]

Refined Design:





3 separate pieces using a modular design so they can be linked together:

• 1 to fit in corners
• 1 to fit along edges
• 1 to slope off at the end of an edge if an object is in the way (doors, etc.)

Only awaiting the cara fabric to begin work on prototypes of each one, samples received and will be ordering 15m next week.

[albriscoe]

Hi Andy

I`ve just done a similar upgrade to my cinema room as regards panels and acoustic absorbtion material.

my ceiling panels were for light reflection only but I made some of the wall panels dual purpose, light reflection and sound absorbtion, if you check my blue sig at the bottom pics are all on their.

The ceiling ones are very light and I fastened front/back with velcro but managed to locate the ceiling joists and used headless nails to fix them more securely. The walls panels floor to lighting pelmet I made to an interference fit and hold themselves up.

The one thing and I`m sure you`ll know this is to make 100% certain that the covering material is acoustically transparent

As to do they work then yes they do

[AndyST]

Finally have a prototype finished after a few further design changes.









It's held up by 2x 50cm heavy duty velcro strips. These are insanely strong compared to regular velcro. The theoretical weight limit of this amount is 140kg, so it's very well anchored.

After reading an excellent article by Ethan Winer I decided to fill as much of the air gap with Rocksilk as possible. This will ensure it absorbs a wider band of frequencies compared to a single slab with an air gap.

I'm now going to further extend along the wall with more of these panels before finishing the row off with a end piece. The rear area which looks quite messy won't be visible once the array is complete.

[AndyST]

[Pulsar]

Hi Andy,

Great project you're undertaking - from the research I've been doing over the last few months I truly believe that money spent on correctly treating a room pays bigger dividends than upgrading kit (to a point).

Can I ask what density rocksilk you're using? Also, where did you get it from?

Keep up the good work and let us know your thoughts on the effect on the sound of your system.

Cheers

Rob

[AndyST]

Originally Posted by Pulsar

Hi Andy,

Great project you're undertaking - from the research I've been doing over the last few months I truly believe that money spent on correctly treating a room pays bigger dividends than upgrading kit (to a point).

Can I ask what density rocksilk you're using? Also, where did you get it from?

Keep up the good work and let us know your thoughts on the effect on the sound of your system.

Cheers

Rob

Hi Rob,

The slabs have a density of 45kg/m3, from B&Q. I was considering some 100kg/m3 from Acoustipro, but as density increases the panels become more reflective to higher frequencies. I wanted some fairly broadband absorption so this should be a good compromise at the expense of reduced lower frequency effectiveness.

I've yet to properly sit down with familiar soundtracks to judge the differences so far. What's interesting is the auto-calibration graphs from my amp. I redid the test sweeps and a few peaks have noticably disappeared from the correction graphs. Whilst I don't have any advanced measuring tools these at least show they are having some effect. I'll try get some of them up at a later stage.

[rigman]

Hi Andy good project and probably cost a fraction of what they would have cost from an 'Acoustic design' company.

Do you plan on treating teh lower half of the room too to deal with the higher frequency first reflection points.

keep up the good work

[WonkyEwok]

Originally Posted by AndyST

The Current Room
...
Finding some white fabric at a reasonable price is proving difficult though, the cheapest I've found is more than triple what the black cloth from Maplin costs. ...

The chapest material I found was dust sheets / work sheets at Wickes and Aldi. It's a natural cotton colour, a bit beige, with slightly open weave - I think I've read that it helps to let the sound through into the stuff inside if you can breathe through the material.