Nice stuff. I've used ATS a couple times; great value. They are always quick and accurate. I like their little hanger hardware.
I just installed bass traps in my small 10 x 15 room and feel like a total tool for not doing it sooner. Money well spent.
Absolutely a wise investment, the room is a big part of the sound even though most people don't realize it!!!
The two 36" x 24" will be mounted on the wall behind the speakers, om each side of the wall mounted TV. The 24" x 24" will be mounted on the small wall behind my listening chair.
JMT, I would not mount the panels until you have had time to move them around. You may find they perform better in a different location. Tim
Can't tell from the pics but get the 4 inch thick panels. You'll be happier with them as they provide better absorption and don't look all that much different when on the wall. Plus you can use them for knock knack shelves.
They need to be put at the 1st and secondary reflection points. These are relatively simple to locate with a friend, a mirror and a laser pointer.
My emphasis at this point is room treatments and I have been going crazy and the more extreme I am going the more and more my equipment's sound and the sound stage is improving. The first few panels brought on improvements but corner bass traps made a huge jump in sound and now I have just built two diffuser panels (24x72 ea.) and I just don't have the words to explain how much more improvement came about. The hard part was balancing between absorption and diffusion And not just absorbing one frequency range. My panels vary in the frequency range They address, so that the diffusion is balanced and I don't just suck the life out of a range. CDs that use to sound bright and or fatiguing to listen to are no longer. Putting on a CD is like a whole new experience between the additional information I am hearing and the improved and stable sound stage that I now have. I can't stress how important the room treatment is. I almost believe now that basic equipment can sound high end if the room is treated extensively.
I would only offer this minor change to make the statement a little more accurate. Extensive implies "many" and in my own room, I ended up removing treatments because I unfortunately did suck the life out of some of the music. Fatigue was better, sure, but the pop and dynamics from orchestra and even rock is improved, as is side-to-side width after removing my treatments on the side walls. I just put my rear wall treatment back up and honestly, I think it's because I have a high-backed chair, but I can't hear a difference whether it's in or out of the room. I'd like to try diffusion between the front wall treatments but haven't gotten around to it.
For what it is worth I will describe my room treatment / placement, and yes if you go with too much absorption in all the same frequency range you do dull down the sound. My front corners are floor to ceiling triangular bass traps, 24 inches across and they are impressive looking, and truly improve the bass quality. Between / next to each bass trap is hung on the front wall (24 x 72) QRD diffuser panels made of painted pine, one on each side. Between them is a window with side drapes, floor to ceiling, and wood shutters on the interior to cover the glass, which would reflect the sound too much. The side walls, right behind and right in front of the speakers are 2 inch thick (24 x 48) wall panels to handle early reflection of the higher frequencies, total of 4 panels. Toward the rear of the side walls, on either side of my seating position are floor to ceiling CD racks, which help to diffuse the sound hitting the walls there. My sofa is pulled away from the rear wall by 36 inches. In each of the rear corners are 24 x 48 x 8 inch thick bass absorbing wall panels and between them, centered on the rear wall is a 48 x 48 x 1 inch thick absorbing wall panel. The speaker front baffles are pull out from the front wall by 56 inches and the center of the tweeters are set 32 inches away from the side walls and the speakers are slightly toed inward. The room is lively, not dead, but certainly not overly lively. Snare drums are as realistic as I have ever heard as are cymbals. The bass is full and deep and the mid-range is beautiful. The sound stage, of course depending on the CD is unbelievably realistic and I can have instruments sounding as if they are in front of and to the sides of the speakers, along with any where between or in back of them. Pulling the speakers out from the front wall and side walls really opened up the sound stage. The diffusers hung on the front wall really was the icing on the cake, this took the sound stage to a totally new height of realism. Once the diffusers were added to the room the Flaming Lips CD, At War With the Mystics, became a psychedelic experience. I actually hear sounds that are projected to both sides of the side walls across from where I sit. I actually have to turn my head 90 degrees to reassure myself the instrument isn't really there. When I first heard this, it startled me, I wasn't sure what I was hearing. Of course this is the CD I play when trying to "show off" the system to someone and it blows everyone's mind, it's a repeatable experience, no drugs required. The diffuser also helped to better reinforce the reproduction of the acoustic space that the recording was made in. Now this level of sound detail is certainly not there for the majority of recordings, however CDs by Chesky and other really well recorded CDs just open up with this level of treatment. I am sure the dimensions of the room, the amount of carpet verse hard wood floor and thick heavy plaster walls all attribute to this sound stage, but without the diffusion and absorption it was just OK. It took about a year to purchase all the pieces and a lot of playing around to figure the exact locations out, but very well worth the time and money. My recommendation is bass traps in all corners, panels to pick up early side wall reflections and then use as much diffusion as you can. The diffuser panels need to be far enough away from your listening position or they will confuse the sound. The closer they are the shallower the wells have to be. Ideally they should be placed 6 feet or further away to fully diffuse before reaching your ears. I think if you go totally live-end / dead-end arrangement you will find that this creates too sterile of a sound, which is why I ended up placing my large diffuser panels in the front of the room between the speakers and I also believe this is why the sound stage is so convincing.
+1 I've got Real Traps bass trapping in various corners (some ceiling/wall corners, some wall/wall corners) pretty equivalently spaced out in the room, with thinner panels at first reflection points along the walls. My record collection stored in Ikea squares serves as diffraction - and the room sounds so very much better than it did before the treatments were installed. It's been a few years now - but the bang for the bucks is very high with room treatments, even if the panels take some explaining to guests.
The room is small and dedicated to music, it is 12 foot wide by 15 foot long with 8 foot 6 inch high ceiling. With the speaker so far out into the room and the listening position off the back wall it close to nearfield, 9 foot 6 inches to the speaker when sitting back into the sofa but as someone mentioned moving a bit forward in my sitting position so my head isn't against the back of the sofa my head is then 8 foot 6 inches and the sound stage is even better. What I learned is floating both the speakers and the listening away from wall boundaries is ideal for the best possible sound stage and having the experience of the speakers truly disappearing. It also helps to have minimal furnishings. I have a sofa and a narrow sculpted coffee table, that's it beside the CD racks against the wall and the amps, preamp and CD player. I experimented with removing the coffe table since people claim it interfers with the sound stage but it didn't really make a difference so I keep it in the room for the convenience. The top has a padded cloth mat, magazines, and a box so it's not just a flat hard surface which could reflect sound and have a negative effect. I also have a 5 foot wide pocket door on one of the side walls which I go between keeping open and closed. When open it increases the volume of the room which I like and removes that side wall as a reflected surface. The other wall has the absorption panels so it doesn't seem to unbalance the sound. When closed the door then has a sound absorbing panel to match the opposite wall.
I experimented with them in various places and found they had the most positive affect in the positions I originally described.
Got it - thanks! Mine is semi-similar, 12' deep, about 9.5' wide, and a 9' unfinished ceiling. I do have an angled door at the back of the room which I'm told doesn't help matters. I do hear a difference with the door open vs closed. It's almost as if it shifts the balance of the sound to the left a bit and collapses things for me. Because of my even more-limited dimensions, I only sit about 5' from the speakers which are also about 5' apart, leaving them 2' and some change out from the side wall. I had side wall panels up but taking them down has helped a lot. I'm actually toying with the idea of temporarily moving all of my gear out into my much bigger, completely unfinished space... It would make life better for my wife who is generally sleeping in the room above my current room while I listen, so I can't really get too crazy with the volume control (and darnit, when Vicarious shows up as the next track to play, I am instinctually grabbing for the remote volume UP!). I feel like I'll be going to the completely opposite end of the spectrum though if I move out into the bigger space. Tons of irregular dimensions, a *huge* space relatively speaking, so I'll probably lose a lot of the impact and "pop" that I currently have. Good news is I can try it for a week and put it all back the way I have it with minimal downtime, maybe an hour and change to move it all with the way I have it configured.
Great advise. In a few of my personal installations. I installed the panels on a track system so I could optimize the panels easily by siding them up, down, or sideways until I found the best location.
