Room Optimization — The Wallflower of Hi-Fi
By Rob Johnson, Senior Contributor, TONEAudio Magazine
Several years ago, I moved into a small loft and delighted at the prospect of having my space dominated by hi-fi gear. The first boxes opened after the move contained the stereo equipment. One needs to prioritize, right? Pesky items like my dishes, bed sheets, and toothbrush could wait patiently in their shipping boxes until music could appropriately welcome us into our new home.
After unpacking, re-assembling, and powering up the sound system, I chose to christen the new residence with the song “Everything Must Belong Somewhere” by Bright Eyes. I hoped that theme might inspire my lengthy move-in process over the next several hours. I moved a chair to a good listening position where I anticipated breathtaking sound to engulf me. I started the record. Within the first few notes, my anticipated joy turned to horror as the realization of my loft’s terrible sonics took hold. It sounded bad. Really bad. Like yelling into an empty oil drum bad.
In retrospect, I should have anticipated that. The room is, for lack of better description, a big box with a lot of hard and reflective surfaces. Concrete, glass, gypsum board and hardwood floors do not inherently enable stellar acoustics. As a result, the parallel walls slap-echoed sound back-and-forth to such a degree that music sounded like a muddled mess. I could barely tell if the speakers emitted AC/DC or Vivaldi. The stereo needed some serious help!
The right room for the job
Some lucky audiophiles have the financial means to build a dedicated listening space designed from the ground up for great acoustics. For the rest of us, some form of room treatment is critical for getting the best sound from the room we have available. Failing to optimize a room’s sonics for your stereo gear is a bit like buying a sports car and never taking it out of second gear. Why spend the money on components if you will never enjoy all the capability they can deliver?
Many audio fans face these issues, and great suggestions for better room sonics come from audio magazines, user forums, and other online sources. Below are a few approaches which have helped solve my room optimization challenges. However, please keep in mind that there is no simple, universal solution for everyone’s room. Each stereo setup is different. For this reason, any generalized advice — including any I have to offer — should be evaluated through your own a trial-and-error process. Always trust your ears!
Room correction software and hardware for digital music
Today, digital music playback services like Roon — and even some audio components like Sonos speakers. Micromega M-One integrated amplifiers, and Anthem receivers — can optimize your room’s sonics by “listening” to the room through a microphone and using the resulting data to create an equalization filter for a flatter frequency response. Harsh highs get tamed. Muddy bass becomes clearer. Once set up, the microphone is no longer needed since the filter is applied to music automatically.
If you wish to use Roon’s software-enabled room correction capability, purchasing a calibration microphone (about $100) is necessary. However, that small investment can empower a dramatic improvement to your digital music enjoyment.
Unfortunately, those who prefer vinyl cannot benefit from this approach since the room correction filter exists in the digital domain. In cases of analog playback, tips further below in this article can prove more helpful. For those who enjoy both digital and analog sound, it is important to consider the below approaches first since you will want to optimize sound for all your music regardless of source. Once those steps are completed, undertaking the digital room correction process will likely offer additional sonic improvement for your digital music playback.
Cost-free ways to improve a room’s sound
Room treatment is not just about “deadening” the room to absorb pesky frequencies. It also involves empowering an appropriate degree of reflection to help the music pouring into the room seem lifelike.
Before delving headlong into more purchases to correct sonics, always experiment first with free options available to you. Once you have a general plan to treat the areas of the room that need the most attention, try hanging artwork on the walls, putting a throw rug on the floor, and drawing the curtains if your room has them. A little mood lighting is always better for music, right?
As an alternative or supplement, using common items around the home can serve a dual purpose. Put cut foam pieces behind paintings on the wall. Keep your coat rack full of jackets in the corner of the room. Try stacking a few of your record crates in a corner, or behind the speakers. Experiment with the furniture and room decorations you have available and be creative with their placement. Listen to your favorite music periodically during the process to determine which additions make the room sound better and which do not. Taking these steps can improve room sonics dramatically and help an audio fan identify where professionally-made acoustic solutions may be desired to fill the gaps effectively.
Professional help needed?
Many fantastic room treatment solutions manufactured by innovative companies today can reduce echoes, sonic reflections, bass boom, and other undesirable artifacts. Recording studios depend heavily on these products to make the recordings we love. For the average audiophile at home though, purchasing room treatments may feel lackluster in comparison to buying new audio gear and music. Thinking about room treatments as a system component — just like an amp or turntable — offers an important frame-of-mind for the acquisition. Think of sound treatments as a long-term investment in your musically-induced happiness. Once you get the room acoustics dialed in, room treatments can stay in place indefinitely regardless of audio components that may change over time.
In my listening room, investing in professionally-produced treatments offered exceptional acoustic improvement. I saved money and bought the treatments a few at a time, prioritizing the biggest sonic issues first. For instance, the bass buildup in the upper and lower corners of the room — both behind and in front of the speakers — contributed dramatically to the degradation in the room’s sound quality. For that issue, Cathedral Sound Room Dampening Panels placed in corners and edges of the room where the walls meet the ceiling offered a profound improvement. As a bonus, the Panels are paintable to match the wall color, making them less visually-obtrusive.
While moderately expensive, Acoustic Sciences Corporation (ASC) Tube Traps offer another very effective room treatment solution and often find themselves at home in recording studios. Tube Traps feature a sound absorptive element as well as a reflective one. They may look like a cylindrical cat scratch post, but the sonic benefit they offer can prove stunning. Twisting the ASC Tube Trap column clockwise or counter-clockwise changes its sound absorbance and reflection ratio, giving Tube Traps a great deal of versatility for tuning a room. If you choose to add some Tube Traps in your own home, a few tips may help: Once you have experimented with Tube Trap placement to enable the best sound in the room, (start with the suggestions on ASC’s website) put a piece of painter’s blue tape on the floor right in front of the ASC label. If the Traps ever move, the tape marker will make it easy to reposition them. Traps can also stack atop one another for additional sound tuning and twisted in different directions to get ideal acoustic improvement from each one. To “mark” that unique placement of one trap relative to the other, place a push pin or tack near the top of the lower trap. Align the second trap where you want it, and add a tack near the bottom of it, so the two tacks on the pair of Tube Traps line up with each other.
Don’t be afraid to consult the experts
Some audiophiles feel that one must spend thousands of dollars to have a good audio system. That is not true. Many audio components and speakers available today offer marvelous price-performance, and fall within a budget that most audio fans can afford. The key is balancing your audio purchases — including gear and room treatments as a whole — to ensure everything synergizes. If you seek input to identify sonic challenges, a local audio shop can offer a huge benefit. Most shops have the expertise to help customers optimize sound from existing gear. Down the road, if a stereo enthusiast chooses to upgrade, those same shops often let customers audition new pieces of gear at home before a purchase. Doing so lets a customer hear how the component sounds in their personal system rather than a setup optimized on a showroom floor.
In the end, always let your ears be the judge for what sounds best to you, and never be afraid to experiment. Above all else, enjoy your music! That’s what this hobby is all about.
