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5 Room Acoustic Mistakes to Avoid

When it comes to room acoustics, there are many adjustments that can be made to achieve optimum results.

In this article, we use 5 typical room acoustic sins to show where you can begin the acoustic optimization of your home studio or hi-fi room before worrying your head about what acoustic modules to get.

1. Your room is not an optimal listening room.

When talking about room acoustics, the actual room is an essential aspect! The nature of the room, for example, determines how useful it is to install a monitoring system in it.

For example, compromises usually must be made when “uniting” the studio and living environment. There are rooms that are not suited for achieving high quality sonic results, be it in the context of music production or consumption.

Said rooms might be asymmetrical or very angled, structure wise. Also, rooms that are rather small or even quadratic are rather unsuitable.

Fig. 1: square room; offers little usable depth.

The main problem here is the standing waves or room modes in the bass frequency range. These usually occur in the form of major low end boosts close to the walls that go hand in hand with dips in rooms center. Rooms that are particularly small or lack depth due to a square structure, complicate finding a sweet spot where the low end can be perceived somewhat balanced. In case your room’s dimensions appear to be rather suboptimal, consider consulting an acoustics-expert to plan your room. With the help of appropriate acoustic treatment, your monitoring situation can be heavily improved. 

2. Your listening position is asymmetrical.

As mentioned above, symmetry is key when it comes to room acoustics – especially when determining the right listening position. Not only is the exact positioning of your monitoring-setup between front and rear wall important, but also the placement between your side walls.

Fig. 2: best case; spatial symmetry is provided.

The early reflections are the most crucial factor here. As the direct reflections between your monitors and your ears, these are influential regarding the perception of your stereo image and can heavily affect the sound reproduction. Therefore, the sound source and listener should always be centered between the side walls; hence, any deviation may cause problematic delays between the early reflections.

Fig. 3: worst case; no spatial symmetry is provided.

Further, the best case requires symmetric treatment of said reflection spots, utilizing absorbers and diffusors in order to achieve a projection of your direct signal as unadulterated as possible.

As part of our service, we happily consult you with determining the acoustic modules that suit the planned use of your listening room.

3. You’re using the wrong monitoring system.

You’ve set up a small home studio in your study and now desire to exhaust the entire performance spectrum of your sinfully expensive 400-Watt monitors and subwoofer? 
Or did you transform your laundry kitchen into a HiFi-cave and are now firmly convinced that your speakers must be at least the size of a refrigerator in order to worthily project the highlights of your record collection? 

Take it easy because this will almost certainly backfire!  

Grand studio speakers usually have a very wide dispersion angle and therefore have to be positioned with a certain distance both to each other and to the listener. The keyword here is: stereo triangle. 

Fig. 4: equal-sided stereo triangle.

This should be as equilateral as possible to allow a precise perception of your stereo image as well as the general audio being played. Hence, placing your monitors 2.50 meters apart from each other, while sitting just 40 cm in front of them is as good a solution as placing the setup equilateral, yet compressed to an area that is way too small.  

In neither of these cases, an optimal projection of your audio can be achieved. 

So, the bottom line is:
Not every monitoring system works well in any room. As we have already learned, small rooms and compromise solutions between living and listening can take their toll. Hence, working in the near field is often the way to go, and this is something you have to accept for the sake of the result. 

4. “Acoustic modules? Nah, I’m good! I’ve got a carpet already.”

The logic of “carpet = fabric and fabric = absorber” is unfortunately incomplete. The concept works to the extent that a carpet does absorb sound … 
… but only at the upper end of the frequency spectrum, and effective absorption takes place over a wider range.  

Thus, by covering the entire floor of your listening room with carpet, you’re basically putting a “high cut” onto your room acoustics. The room’s sound loses its brilliance and clarity, while your low-end and mid-range remain “boomy”. In addition, flutter echoes between the walls and resonances in the room’s corners can still build up.

So, are carpets “bad” across the board? No! But should they be distributed inflationary in every room in which sound is monitored? Also, no. As with a good recipe, the dosage is decisive for the result in acoustics. A small, deep-pile carpet at your listening position, for example, can be a good addition to the rest of your acoustic treatment.

5. You’re using acoustic modules, but you’re missing the mark.

Egg cartons in the band rehearsal room to reduce reflections?
Extensive studded foam for sound insulation? 
A victory over room modes with the help of space-saving corner bass traps? 
… and look at these stylish wooden panels! I bet they’re great absorbers! 

In terms of acoustic treatment, there’s a wide range of both methods and products to choose from.  Especially nowadays, there are many acoustic modules that promise optimal results while also being space-saving and aesthetically subtle. 

While this may sound convincing, people tend to forget the principles on which effective absorption is based. In the previous point, we’ve already talked about broadband absorption and its importance for a well-balanced room sound. To ensure this broadband effectiveness, an absorber requires a certain depth or material thickness in addition to a suitable material with a correspondingly high air resistance. Cardboard or porous, thin foam can therefore already be ruled out here. Even wooden panels on a 1 cm thick felt mat are far from being able to effectively dampen sound-distorting reflections and reduce the reverberation time of a listening room, despite their appealing aesthetics. 

Where the principle of material thickness is already important for absorption in the mid to treble range, it is essential in the bass range! Bass frequencies make up the lower register of our frequency spectrum and are characterized by long wavelengths. In order to counter-act effectively and provide efficient absorption, modules with a certain volume are required. A volume that is capable of slowing down correspondingly long sound waves. It is most effective here to work in the corners of the room, as bass frequencies tend to accumulate here. So, the motto now is: Don’t save on mass!  

Bass absorbers, which are designed to nestle discreetly into the corners of a room and take up as little space as possible, leave a lot of unused potential behind and generally only scratch the surface.    

Do you want to make sure to get the right acoustic modules for your room and receive well-founded advice? Then we recommend our professional room acoustics planning and our non-binding consultation offers by email, phone or video call. 

We plan your room

Just send us a sketch and some pictures of your room. Our acoustic experts provide you with an individual plan for the room’s acoustics. It will show you which measures will improve the acoustics of your room.

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