New listening room - need advice

[maser]

The kids have all moved out and I'm converting a 12 x 13 basement bedroom into a listening room. (8' ceiling) The floor is carpet. Walls are painted drywall. The wall behind the main speaker has a window that's covered with a 6' wide sound deadening curtain. The rest of the walls are bare. As far as furniture is concerned, there will only be one recliner in the room and an end table.

What kind of acoustic panels do I need? How thick? Where do I place them? Do I need bass traps.... in other words, I don't have a clue where to start.

Here is my current system: Yamaha R-V905 Receiver; Yamaha SW150 Sub; Harman/Kardon FL8400 CD; Bose 301 mains (25 yrs old) and Bose cube rear channels.

Once I get the acoustics taken care of I plan on upgrading the entire system but until then, this is all I have to work with.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

[bpape]

Hi Bob

There are a couple of things that need to be addressed. The front corners would benefit from broadband bass absorption certainly.

With the room being close to square, probably a couple of 4" thick panels on the rear wall centered behind the listening position will also help to deal with modal buildup and nulls off the rear wall.

After that, it's side wall reflection control though for one seat in a smaller room like that, you may be able to get by with 1 panel hung horizontally at around ear level on each side wall.

Bryan

[maser]

Thanks Bryan,

I was thinking about wrapping 2 2x4 panels and stacking them in the corners. Should I use 703 or 705 for the front corners? Do I leave the triangular space behind them open or should it be filled as well?

Would 1" panels be sufficient on the side walls or should I use 2". Also, when picking out fabric to cover them, will any fabric from the fabric store work or do I need to use special acoustic fabric. If I can buy it from the fabric store, how do I determine which fabric would work best?

I'm sorry if I'm asking questions that have already been asked and answered on this forum but I haven't had a chance to look through the posts yet.

[bpape]

No problem at all.

1" is OK for side wall reflections in most cases. In smaller, squarer rooms, I'd prefer 2" to get a little extra midbass control while you're at it.

For the corners, make them a minimum of 4" thick. 703 is fine. For the price of 6" of 703, you can build solid 17x17x24' chunks of the same height.

As for fabric, as long as you can blow through it relatively freely, it will be fine. If you can't, it will tend to reflect upper mid and high frequencies somewhat which is OK for the bass absorbers, but not OK for the reflection panels.

Bryan