The previous installment on room treatment appeared in Issue 218.
If you’ve already set up your system using the guidelines in The Audiophile’s Guide: The Stereo or The Loudspeaker, you’re ahead of the game. You’ve done the
hard work of finding the optimal speaker positions that give you the best imaging and soundstage, and you’ve figured out where your prime listening seat should be. The speakers are properly toed-in, you’ve dealt with the basics of room setup, and you’re getting good sound – but you know it could be better.
This is where room optimization comes in. Now that you have your sonic foundation in place, we can address the acoustic issues that are holding your system back. You’ll likely notice some common problems: maybe the bass is a bit boomy in one corner, or the soundstage isn’t quite as precise as you’d like. Perhaps the room has a bit too much life, causing subtle details to get lost in the wash of reflections.
These are all issues we can address without disturbing your carefully chosen setup positions.
Think of this process like fine-tuning a car that’s already running well. We’re not rebuilding the engine – we’re making careful adjustments to enhance performance. The advantage of working with an existing setup is that you already know exactly where the problems are. You can hear them. And more importantly, you can hear the improvements as you make them.
Let’s start by evaluating what you have and identifying which issues will give you the biggest improvement when addressed. You don’t need expensive test equipment to begin understanding your room’s acoustic personality. While professional measurement tools can be helpful, let’s start with what your ears can tell you, then move on to basic measurements anyone can make, and finally discuss more sophisticated testing methods.
The simplest way to begin evaluating your room is with a track you know well – preferably something with clean, well-recorded acoustic bass and vocals. Sit in your listening position and pay attention to three things:
Bass evenness: Does the bass sound consistent as the notes go up and down the scale, or do some notes jump out while others disappear? This reveals your room modes.
Image focus: If a vocalist is centered in the mix, does their voice seem to come from a precise point between your speakers, or does it feel spread out and diffuse? This tells you about your early reflections.
Room tone: Clap your hands once, sharply. Do you hear a distinct echo or flutter? This exposes problematic reflections between parallel surfaces.
Before we take any measurements, let’s make sure everything’s ready. Your system should be properly warmed up and playing in its normal position with the room in its typical state, furniture and all. If you have subwoofers, disconnect them temporarily, since we want to understand how your main speakers interact with the room first.
When we measure frequency response, we’re essentially creating a map of how your room handles different bass frequencies. Starting at 20 Hz and working our way up to 200 Hz, we want to see how evenly your room reproduces each frequency. Here’s what’s crucial: in the most critical bass region from 20 Hz to 100 Hz, measure every 5 Hz. Above that, you can spread out to 10 Hz steps up to 200 Hz. Take your time – let each test tone play for a few seconds to stabilize before recording the level.
What does good look like? A well-behaved room shows gentle variations between frequencies. Think of it like rolling hills rather than steep mountains and valleys. When you see changes of less than 6 dB between adjacent frequencies, that’s good news. The response should flow smoothly, without jarring jumps or drops.
Room size affects what we consider good bass extension. A large room should handle down to about 25–30 Hz smoothly, while medium rooms might reach 30–35 Hz, and smaller rooms typically manage 35–40 Hz effectively. Beyond these points, things usually get dicey.
Now, what raises red flags? When you see dramatic swings greater than 6 dB between adjacent frequencies, that’s trouble. It’s like having some notes boom while others virtually disappear. Really problematic rooms show variations beyond 10 dB – imagine some bass notes being five times louder than others! These severe peaks and dips usually show up between 30 - 80 Hz, where room modes are most problematic.
When plotting your measurements on a graph, pay attention to patterns. Regular spacing of peaks often points to room dimensions causing standing waves. If you notice the response changing dramatically when moving just slightly from your listening position, that’s a sign of strong room modes creating position-dependent bass response.
What’s realistically acceptable? If you can achieve variations within ±3 dB, that’s excellent, but rare in typical rooms. More commonly, ±6 dB variations are considered good and completely listenable. When you start seeing swings of ±10 dB or more, that’s when you need to consider serious acoustic treatment.
This careful measurement process gives you a clear picture of what you’re dealing with. It’s like having a map before starting a journey; you need to know where you are before deciding how to get where you want to go. Once you understand your room’s behavior, you can make informed decisions about acoustic treatments, speaker positioning, and possibly adding subwoofers to smooth out the response.
Measurement Tools
With just a sound pressure level (SPL) meter app on your smartphone and a frequency test tone generator (many are available free online), you can create a simple map of your room’s bass response:
Play test tones starting at 20Hz and moving up to 200Hz in 10Hz steps
Note the SPL reading at each frequency while sitting in your listening position
Graph these readings – the peaks and dips reveal your room modes
If you see variations greater than 6 dB between adjacent frequencies, you’ve identified problem areas that need attention.
If you’re ready to dig deeper, several affordable measurement systems combine a calibrated microphone with analysis software. The most popular include:
REW (Room EQ Wizard): Free software that works with various measurement mics
A USB measurement microphone (typically $100–200)
These tools provide detailed frequency response measurements, decay times, and waterfall plots that show how sound energy dissipates in your room over time. But here’s something crucial I’ve learned over decades of room tuning: measurements are helpful guides, but they’re not the end goal. I’ve seen rooms that measure perfectly but don’t convey the emotional impact of music, and rooms with “poor” measurements that sound magical.
Using REW software and a calibrated microphone to measure a room's peaks and dips. Courtesy of Adrian Wu.
Whether you’re using your ears or sophisticated testing equipment, here are the key indicators that will guide your treatment strategy:
Bass Problems:
Peaks indicate frequencies being reinforced by room modes
Dips show frequencies being canceled
Both need different treatment approaches, which we’ll cover in detail
Decay Times:
Mid and high frequencies should decay fairly quickly (under 300ms)
Bass frequencies naturally take longer to decay
Excessively long decay times at any frequency indicate needed treatment
Dealing With Peaks
Peaks are easier to fix because they represent an excess of energy that we can remove through absorption. Think of it like a bathtub that’s too full – you can always drain water, but it’s much harder to add water if the tub has holes. In acoustical terms, when sound waves combine constructively in a room, they create areas of high pressure (peaks). This excess energy can be absorbed, trapped, or redirected.
Here’s the complete arsenal for dealing with peaks:
Corner Bass Traps
Start with floor-to-ceiling traps at least 6 inches deep
Use dense materials (rigid fiberglass or mineral wool, minimum 6 lb./cu ft)
Straddling corners is more effective than flat-on-wall mounting
Leave an air gap behind the material for better low-frequency absorption
Consider double-depth (12-inch) traps for stubborn peaks below 50 Hz
Wall-Ceiling Junction Treatment
Install bass traps where walls meet the ceiling
Use triangular traps to maximize surface area contact
These locations are next most effective after corners
Membrane Absorbers
Particularly effective for specific problematic frequencies
Can be tuned to target specific peaks
Work well in combination with porous absorbers
Consider multiple membrane frequencies for complex issues
Dealing with Dips
Seems like an opening line to a joke...
Dips are much harder to address because they represent destructive interference where sound waves cancel each other out. Imagine two waves colliding in perfect opposition – when one wave pushes, the other pulls, effectively canceling each other out. The result is a point in your room where certain frequencies practically disappear. It’s as if someone punched a hole in the sonic fabric of your room.
This is why equalizers, despite their apparent promise, can’t solve these nulls. When you try to boost a frequency that’s being canceled by destructive interference, you’re essentially trying to amplify nothing. The fundamental problem – those opposing sound waves – remains unchanged. You can turn up the volume all you want, but the waves will still cancel each other out. It’s like trying to fill a hole in the air; no matter how much air you blow into it, the hole remains, because it’s de!ned by the surrounding air pressure.
Think of it this way: if you have two identical waves that are perfectly out of phase, doubling their amplitude doesn’t create sound, but just a bigger cancellation. Physics is stubborn that way. You simply cannot create energy where destructive interference exists. Any attempt to boost these frequencies with EQ usually results in increased distortion, as your amplifier works harder while the fundamental acoustic problem remains unchanged.
Strategies for dealing with dips include:
Position Changes
Move listening position in 6-inch increments
Map the null points in your room
Consider raising or lowering the listening position
Try moving speakers away from walls in 2-inch increments
Experiment with speaker toe-in angles
Strategic Subwoofer Placement
Creates a new sound source from a different angle
Bass wavelengths combine differently from the new position
Room modes affect the sub differently than main speakers
Multiple sources smooth overall response
Multiple Subwoofer Approach
Consider 2–4 subwoofers
Place them asymmetrically
Use different distances from corners
Adjust phase relationships between subs
Fine-tune crossover points
Room Layout Modifications
Try different speaker wall orientations
Consider a long-wall versus short-wall setup
Experiment with asymmetrical arrangements
Change room furnishing positions
Remember the golden rule: you can always reduce energy at a peak, but you cannot add energy at a null. This is why professional studios often design rooms from scratch with carefully calculated dimensions to minimize problematic nulls.
Early Reflections
These are trickier to measure but critical to control. Thankfully, you can locate these reflection points using nothing more complex than a mirror. The technique is beautifully simple yet remarkably accurate.
Have a friend slide a mirror along the side wall while you sit in your listening position. When you can see either speaker’s driver in the mirror, mark that spot – that’s your point of first reflection. The physics behind this is elegant: light reflects off the mirror at the same angle that sound will reflect off the wall. It’s exactly like the old pool player’s trick of visualizing where a ball will bounce.
The following YouTube video from GIK Acoustics demonstrates this:
In our Listening Lab, we did this exercise even though we had already calculated the approximate reflection points. Why? Because real-world conditions sometimes differ from theoretical calculations. For example, after placing absorption panels at these points in our previous listening room, we discovered that some early reflections were actually coming from the protruding window frames, something our calculations hadn’t considered.
But first reflections aren’t just about side walls. The ceiling and floor create reflection points too. While the floor reflection is often handled by carpet or a rug, the ceiling reflection requires special attention. In our Lab, after replacing that problematic acoustic tile ceiling, we’ll need to add treatment above the listening position. Again, the mirror technique works – just lie on the floor and have someone slide the mirror along the ceiling.
Remember, though, that not all early reflections are bad. In fact, some controlled early reflections can enhance the sense of space and realism in your system. This is why we often prefer diffusion over pure absorption at reflection points. Diffusion scatters the sound energy rather than killing it completely, preserving the room’s sense of life while preventing distinct echoes from muddying the sound stage.
The Choice Between Absorption and Diffusion
The old approach to acoustic treatment was simple: identify a reflection point and slap up some absorption material. You’ll still see this in many home theaters and recording studios – walls covered in thick foam or fiber panels that suck the life out of a room.
But here’s why that’s rarely the best solution for a music listening room.
Think about where you’ve heard the best music performances in your life. Was it in an anechoic chamber – a room with total absorption? Of course not. It was probably in a concert hall, church, or other space that preserved the natural reflections that give music its sense of space and life. Great concert halls don’t eliminate reflections; they manage them through carefully designed diffusive surfaces.
This is exactly what we’re doing in the Listening Lab. Instead of absorbing those first reflections off the side walls, we’re installing carefully designed diffusion panels. These panels, with their mathematically calculated wells of varying depths, take that first reflection and scatter it into many smaller reflections, spreading the sound energy both spatially and temporally (across space and time).
A Vicoustic Multifuser Wood MkII sound diffusion panel.
Here’s why this works better than absorption:
Preservation of Energy: When you absorb a reflection, that sound energy is lost, converted to heat. With diffusion, the energy remains in the room but is redirected in a way that doesn’t interfere with imaging. This maintains the natural sense of space and air around instruments.
Frequency Response: Most absorptive materials work best at higher frequencies, often leading to an unbalanced room response where highs are dead but mids and lows are still problematic. Quality diffusers work across a much broader frequency range.
Phase Coherence: This is crucial but often overlooked. When sound hits an absorber, some frequencies are absorbed while others bounce back, creating phase problems at the listening position. A well-designed diffuser maintains phase coherence while dispersing reflections.
In the Lab, we’re using what are called two-dimensional diffusers – panels that scatter sound both horizontally and vertically. The design is based on mathematical sequences that ensure even dispersion across a wide frequency range. We’ve found that placing these at the first reflection points gives us pinpoint imaging while maintaining the natural sense of space that makes live music so engaging.
The exception to this preference for diffusion comes at very low frequencies, where diffusion simply isn’t practical – for example, you’d need room-sized diffusers to scatter 50 Hz waves effectively. This is why we’ll still use some strategic bass absorption in the corners and behind the speakers. But from the lower midrange up, diffusion is nearly always the better choice.
This discussion will be continued in the next issue.
