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Room treatment

— By Paul McGowan —
A theater or music room is only as good as the equipment powering it and the room itself. Get either wrong and you haven't the best environment to enjoy music or film that simply disappears and lulls you into bliss. After spending all the time, money, effort and brain power to build a great home theater, it seemed nuts to not spend as much thought and energy on the walls. There are two aspects of the walls we wanted to cover: the acoustic treatment and the visual. For the acoustic treatment my designer Robert, and I, have always agreed; diffusors with partial absorption. Deadening the walls of a theater or music room is not something I like to do. No, you want the room to be live, yet not too directional when it comes to bouncing sound around from those walls. Instead of absorbing unwanted sounds so they do not reflect back to the listener out of time and phase, it is better to diffuse them so the brain considers them uncorrelated sound energy. This allows the room to remain live, not dead sounding as many theaters and music rooms tend to do. Yet, diffusing keeps everything proper without deadening the room. To accomplish this in my theater, Robert commissioned acoustic panels to be built that inside resemble that of an RPG diffusor, with varying lengths of reflective wood that scatters any reflective sound. Behind those pieces absorbing material to make sure the diffusor board doesn't generate vibrations on its own. We then had each of the panels covered in a nice, matching fabric that worked with the room's color scheme, and bing; a good sounding room. Here's what they look like in the room. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA The next task is the visual treatment, but several of you have asked about the projector and the decisions made for that piece. I'll cover that tomorrow and then the last in this series will show what we've done for visual treatment for the room.

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