Why You Must Acoustically Treat Your Hi-Fi Room

Holy crap! My DIY acoustic panels (following Jon Rischs recipe, my own how to experience coming soon) have improved my listening experience like nothing else. You have got to try these. I wish you could borrow mine. For the price of two sets of Black Diamond Racing Cones you can change your whole music listening experience for the better. This is the most noteworthy upgrade I have ever made.

So, what am I hearing thats got me so excited? Clarity. Attack. Depth. Smoothness. Scale.

The acoustic panels broke through the wall of sound type recordings that have never sounded great on my system. Last night I listened to the Decemberists Picaresque. The opening track, The Infanta, features massive instrument congestion, I think the whole song is a crescendo. Without the panels the mix of multiple acoustic guitars, constant and heavy bass guitar organ and drums, tom and snare drums, cello, electric guitar, piano, organ, tambourine and male and female voices sounded like a mush of music where I would hear hints of greatness that would then be obscured by all the other instruments. With the acoustic panels in place the song comes alive. The drums congeal into a single kit, pulling the extra wide cymbals back to a realistic size and relative distance. Acoustic rhythm guitars gain body and string strumming textures like Ive never heard before. I can imagine the Decemberists tambourine slapper standing in front of my right speaker keeping my head bobbing.

These improvements are so pronounced because the acoustic panels have absorbed a wide bandwidth of first reflections from behind the speakers and two points on each of the side walls. The first reflections arrive at your ear within a small enough time window that your brain confuses these delayed reflections as part of the direct sound and blurs the two together. So, your stereo imaging suffers. From the blur, it loses back to front depth, singers and drums fight to occupy the same space, guitar and bass stack on top of each other and lose their body and scale. The panels can also help room interactions that can obscure and exaggerate certain frequencies changing the timbre and scale of the instruments. Cymbals crash outside of the stereo images stage, distracting you from the musical presentation.

You need the acoustic panels to shape and smooth your music listening experience. The less acoustic anomalies your brain has to track the more it can suspend its disbelief and let you experience the music emotionally.

For under $100 and a little DIY elbow grease you can treat your listening room and fall in love with your music collection again. You will be so involved in discovering your music again that the only reason youll stop listening is from your spouses reminder that its midnight and she needs to go to bed.

Father, Husband and Geek. My geeky interests have not changed since I was a kid. I still love comic books, anime, role-playing games, console video games, indie rock, imported toys and mecha models, bad American and great British sitcoms, and all the tech that lets me experience these hobbies to their fullest. Now that Im married with children, Ive had to strike a balance between supporting and pleasing my family and feeding my geekery hunger. Lucky for me, my wife is very accomodating and even geeks out with me on occasion (the ladies love Joss Whedons "Firefly"). My two year old likes anything that moves on the front projection screen and makes noise, so far she is easy to please. Geekwithfamily.com exists to enrich the lives of fellow geeks and the friends and family who put up with them.

5 Hi-Fi Listening Room Habits for Healthy Audiophiles
Ive made major improvements to my music listening experience over the last year, some at no cost. The following distills the top five guidelines Ive followed to optimize my enjoyment.1. Rip your CD collection: The last CD I played through my Pioneer DV-47ai Universal Player sounded flat, thin and hard; the last album I played through Airtunes sound...

Acoustic Treatment Overview
Is soundproofing the same as acoustic treatment?Acoustic treatment products treat the room the absorbing materials are placed in. The materials treat the room by reducing reverberation, echo and standing waves etc. Absorbing materials such as acoustic foam and mineral wool do not stop sound from leaking out of the room. Acoustic tiles, for examp...

The Elements of a Successful Home Theater Design
So youve purchased a forty inch widescreen TV, a surround sound speaker system to compliment it, and a DVD player with DTS and Dolby Laboratories compatibility firmware. What you have is basically a home theater system, designed to emulate a movie theater environment, making movie watching at home an experience.In the realm of major step categories...

Home Theater Design Suggestions
Planning a home theater design is both exciting and challenging, especially to people who are not so inclined to technical and/or aesthetic matters. Nevertheless, anyone with the budget who wishes to set up a home theater can do so either on his own, with the help of knowledgeable relatives or friends or with the help of a professional. The latter ...

Herbs Used In Handmade Soap
Handmade soap is made of natural ingredients, including many herbs that make it healthy and replenishing for the skin. Aloe, for example, is one of the main herbal ingredients in handmade soap. Aloe comes from the inner part of an aloe leaf and is a wonderful healing agent. Used to treat burns, rashes, insect bites, Aloe is also used to heal wou...

Home Theater Room Design Get Professional Help
Do you want to design a home theater, but have no clue on where to start? If this sounds like you, you are definitely not alone. There are hundreds of people that want to have a home theater, but are at a loss when it comes to the proper design features. This is where professional interior designers come into play. Home theater room design prof...

Home Theater: Choosing and Preparing Your Home Theater Room
So youve finally decided to venture into the exciting world of home theater? Well one of the first steps in getting started is deciding on a room for your new system and preparing it for the optimal home theater experience. Preparing your room can be an expensive and time-consuming endeavor and for those interested in an ultra high-end system, this...