room's acoustic treatment

[phier]

Hello,
going to renovate the flat, there is option to design everything including power-wall cables etc.
I am struggling where to start... could you guys recommend some threads.. the main concern is to design room with the best acoustics detail.
Anyone has any experience with software like CARA (http://www.rhintek.com/cara/cara21desc.php);
or REW;
or https://www.sarooma.de/en/apps/windows.html ?
I also found kind of service ie they can design something

https://vicoustic.com/project-request
but have no clue how good it might be.
happy for Any ideas where to start, dig etc ...
The room will include hifi listening, and other hw for 7.1 for movies etc.
hifi hw ~ rpp 10k euro (old components)
b&w 805
musical fidelity nu vista m3
auralic (streamer) + lin adaptor
DAC - Burson Conductor http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/burson10/1.html
7.1 hw ~ rpp 3k euro
marantz avr 6012
6x b&w m1 (1. serie)
1x center b&w htm7
sub BK XXLS 400 Subwoofer (http://www.bkelec.com/HiFi/Sub_Woofers/XXLS400FF.htm)


Thank you

 

[Pano]

Anyone has any experience with software like CARA or REW;

Yes, quite a bit. CARA isn't supported now, is it? I still have it though.
Non-parallel surfaces are going to be the biggest help in a room, bit of course they will be expensive and may require major work that you might not be able to do on that floorplan. If you can't get away from parallel surfaces, then you'll want to adsorb a lot of sound and diffuse some of it. That's easy to do at short wavelengths, but gets more difficult and expensive as the frequencies go down.

 

[phier]

@Pano it still works somehow on old win or with the latest patch?

what do u mean by non-parallel surfaces?

still no idea where to dig.../start.

thx

 

[Pano]

I run CARA on Windows 10. I think there is a patch on the website, can't really remember.

By non-parallel I mean flat walls, ceilings and floors that directly face each other allowing sound to bounce back and forth between them. In other words, just about all the rooms we live in these days. If you have a trapezoidal room or a sloping ceiling, it helps your acoustics a lot. Otherwise you have to do a lot of room treatment to reduce those back and forth reflections.

 

[AllenB]

Unfortunately the software you mention isn't going to make these decisions for you. You might want to read through Dr Geddes book on Home Theatre since it covers topics during construction.
http://gedlee.azurewebsites.net/Books/HomeTheater.aspx

( Thread moved to Room Acoustics)

 

[phier]

Otherwise you have to do a lot of room treatment to reduce those back and forth reflections.

dont have anything just standard room, so thats what i precisely needs to "somehow" manage,
but have no idea where / how to start.


thanks

 

[Pano]

I suggest that you look up LEDE, which is Live End Dead End. Basically you want one end of the room to be acoustically dead, the other to be live (reflective). There is some debate about where to put the speakers, but usually it's the dead end, so that you don't get early reflections. The other end of the room has some reflection to give it ambience. You will see this discussed often in forums about home recording studios and rooms.

LEDE will get you started and make you familiar with the terms and allow you to see what other people are doing in rooms the size of yours.

https://hofa-akustik.de/en/post/room-acoustics-live-end-dead-end-explained/
https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/lede-live-end-dead-end/

 

[IWC Doppel]

I have done a fair bit with room acoustics and real world performance. My advice for what its worth is

1. More absorption towards the front
2. avoid slap echo by uneven panel matching across the room (minimise two opposing surfaces with no treatment and echoing)
3. Carpets, sofas rugs and curtains are treatment
4. Diffusion helps mitigate an overly damped sound, care needed to assess before committing, especially if close to the listening position
5. Aim for RT60's around 350/400Ms at 200 Hz dropping to 250/300 at 20KHz, more and it can be overdamped especially around the 200-500 Hz
6. You cant easily treat bass so using DSP and EQ to take some of the energy out of room nodes will assist with RT60's and obviously SPL traces
7. Easier in some ways to evolve rather than plan definitively and measure assess as you go (some panels can be put up after measurements)

My Cinema room and output, I use REW (free and very powerful software and a £100 mic and £30 stand), GIK panels and Vicoustic