Interior Room Acoustics
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Interior room acoustics means the things that are added to the room on
top of the walls surfaces, i.e. sheetrock, wood, or the unfinished
floor. Room dimensions and construction primarily determine the
performance of a room's low bass, with some exceptions, so adding
surface treatment is for frequencies above low bass.
Commonly used acoustical tools, diffusers or absorbers, always have some
depth. The deeper the product the lower the frequency it will be
useful. There are some narrowly frequency focused devices that are
exceptions to the rule.
Corrective treatment in a small room, like in a home, comes in generally
two types; treatment that makes a room sound better in general and
treatment that solves a specific problem. Hopefully, we can add
treatment that will contribute to both issues because there usually is a
limited amount of surface area that can be treated.
An example of a general room treatment is carpeting. Carpeting is
a weak absorber that effects higher frequencies only. Wall-to-wall
carpet takes some of the zing/ring/harshness out of a room. Even
though it doesn't absorb very well there is a lot of carpet in
proportion to the total surface area of the room. A lot of
something that isn't very effective may work well in some cases.
An example of a treatment that helps a specific problem would be adding
an absorptive panel to the side wall of a speaker that's too close to
that wall. When the speakers output strongly reflects off a surface
a false second speaker highly distorted in time and frequency response
from the original, is created coming from the close reflective surface.
The effect are often harsh midrange and high frequencies that make that
speaker's sound different than when the speaker is not next to the wall.
Adding an absorber at the reflection point will reduce or eliminate the
problem.
noise control ∙ small
room acoustics ∙ home theater design ∙ project management ∙ a/v
consulting ∙ room testing and setup