[howardmg]

Hi, I've had a DIY cinema room in a 5m x 4m brick-walled and concrete floored victorian cellar room for a few years.

Have some corner bass traps and wall tiles and bass traps on rear wall (see pics).

Am now thinking of a low-cost small upgrade.

Would it help to make my front corrner traps full height running from floor to ceiling?

And would it also help if I extended the area of foam tiles on the side walls?

Any help appreciated...

[dts77]

hi howardmg

unfortunatley i have no advice for you,but also would like to hear what other people have to say and can help with,as ive got a very similar setup to yours and need some help wih acoustics.

mine is also in a victorian cellar,slightly smaller than yours,but otherwise i thought i was looking at an old photo of the room,before i painted the ceiling matt black!so am keen to find out more about foam tiles/base traps ect and what they offer,or do for the overall sound as i also want to get the most outta my little "man cave"

also if you dont mind me asking,have you done any sound proofing to the cellar in any way,so to not disturb neighbours?or just like me,do you leave it to chance and hope they wont hear thru the thick walls?(i hope)

cheers in advance,hopefully we get some gd advice soon

[Avi]

Originally Posted by howardmg

Would it help to make my front corrner traps full height running from floor to ceiling?

And would it also help if I extended the area of foam tiles on the side walls?

Any help appreciated...

It depends on the actual issues exhibit by the room. If you have very low frequency issue foam corner/wall traps won't be very effective.

Looking at your photos it appears your room has large areas of hard reflective surfaces and treating early refection points with appropriate material may be beneficial.

Perhaps a good starting point would be to take measurement using something like REW to establish what problem exists especially at low freq.

Avi

[howardmg]

Thanks Avi. Don't know much about how to take measurements but will start doing some background reading. I think adding carpet and foam and bass traps has helped but guess I jsut want to make it as good as possible within reason.

Unfortunately I cant do much to ceiling as headroom very limited - unless very thin tiles helps...

Dts77 - on your question on sound proofing - no havent done any, mainly because there's a door and landing area between the cinema room and the adjoining wall. You can hear deep noise up in the living room above, but its not too bad...

[dts77]

cheers for that howard,was thinking about putting in a door,now i defo will!

[Ste2]

There is a school of thought that you cannot have too much bass trapping in a small room. although this mantra tends to come from musicians and sound mixers - quite how critical low-end control is to a home theatre depends to how obssesive compulsive you are!

Using graphs measurements will help you verify how effective your treatment is but it does cost time, research and money and potentially your sanity if you get caught up in chasing a flat response across the whole room... its probably best to start with what YOU personally would like to improve - slap echo, boomy bass, specific resonances etc

It is said that bass traps are 'most effective' in tricorners wall-wall-floor/wall-wall-ceiling. That doents meant to say they are useles elsewhere - just scientifically you should get more bang for your trap in the tri-corners.

If I had a dedicated room like that I would look at soffit traps (wall-ceiling), could look quite cool and 'cinema-ery' if done right.

just moving the listening position a couple of feet further from a boundary can 'cure' some issues at nil cost!

[Ste2]

Loads of potential in that room btw! Treatment in my living room is far more tricky.

also they say that a square room is the worst possible for modes at low freqs at 5x4 your not far off that. so it would be interesting to see whether thats your perception.

For cheap bass traps consider DIYing out of fibreglass insulation - google 'superchunks'