DIY Room Treatments - Coverings

[Eric_C]

I am going to be redoing my setup at home in a little while and one of the speaker manufacturers I was looking at suggested room treatments for my room.

I am a DIY'er so I don't want something commercial(expensive).

I was sent a few links which unfortunately are on another computer but they were the polyfill/fiberglass/polyfill setups. Brown backer board with something like chicken wire over the top.

Covered with mislum and then burlap.

Wife and I went to JoAnn fabrics and she is not too thrilled with the burlap. Are there other materials I can use that are loose woven that might look a bit better?

Here are some pics of the room. Keep a few things in mind. One is the windows are uncovered right now. We just had them installed so the valances are not back up and we will have some kind of curtain over them on the sides, leaving the centers exposed. Second is the front speakers, Deftech 7002's will be replaced with line arrays and I'll either have a EB or 2 sonosubs located somewhere near them. The love seat is also going to move...just not sure where.

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Sorry I can't post pics yet, I'll fill in the image tag once I get 10 posts but you can copy and past those into a browser window.

I have not looked into traps, I'll get there but mostly what I am looking at are the wall panels. Where I should put them and how many.

On a related note anyone do wall panels of the type above to cut down on ambient noise? I read somewhere that the person said it really cut down on noise in the room. We thought of making some more decorative ones for the bedroom to make it a quieter and more relaxing area.

Thanks

[basementjack]

Guilford of Maine sells specialty fabrics designed for wall panels.

I used their "Anchorage" (style 2335) fabric on my panel, and it looks great.
Anchorage is available in close to 40 different colors, including about a half dozen browns/cream colors.

They are not as easy to purchase as going to your local fabric store, but they do have a huge variety of both fabric patters, and colors within each pattern.

You can order samples from thier website at no charge.

www.guilfordofmaine.com

[muse77]

I am in the same boat in trying to find a covering for panels. When I mentioned to my wife about accoustic panels, she wasn't thrilled with what the room might end up looking like. So I thought of using an area rug or maybe an afghan mounted to the front of the panel (if I can find nice pattern).

Bryan

[Eric_C]

We're going to sit down and check that site out tomorrow once the family is all gone and cleaned up after.

The page I read said it needed to be loosely woven material and we went to JoAnn's without much luck.

They do have muslin on sale this week though

Thanks for the tip. If anyone else knows of a locally available(national chain type deal) for picking up compatible material it would be appreciated.

[basementjack]

Theres a few things to consider for fabric...

the panel fabric that Guilford sells is all fire rated, and I think its all moisture resistant so it won't absorb the humidity in the air, then sag.

Wal-Mart sells fabric - and I've bought from them for a few non-permanent projects (like freestanding bass traps)

I think a reasonable test is to put the fabric over your ear in the store - if what you hear is the same, then It's reasonable to assume that it's letting the sound through - you can verify this again at home - have a friend hold the fabric right in front of your speaker - it should sound about the same - if the high freqencies roll off a lot, then you can assume those are being reflected and not absorbed, and you may want a different fabric.

[muse77]

Thanks for the tip on the fire rating of the material. :holycow: I never thought of that safety concern or smoke alarms in the room in case there is a problem. Hopefully other people installing HT rooms keep this in mind.

[JCD]

basementjack wrote:

I think a reasonable test is to put the fabric over your ear in the store - if what you hear is the same, then It's reasonable to assume that it's letting the sound through - you can verify this again at home - have a friend hold the fabric right in front of your speaker - it should sound about the same - if the high freqencies roll off a lot, then you can assume those are being reflected and not absorbed, and you may want a different fabric.

I've heard similar "Tests".. I was also told to fold the fabirc in half to be doubly sure that there wasn't any interference.

One other note, I've also heard that you should look for "natural" fibers as opposed to anything synthetic.

JCD

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

Eric,

I see from your pictures that you’re using a family room for your system, and not a dedicated room.

That’s both good news and bad news. The bad news is that so-called room treatments that you typically see in dedicated rooms – such as acoustical panels - usually don’t fly in a family room. The good news is that family rooms often don’t need a lot of treatment, because the normal household furnishings do a good job of dampening and diffusing the sound.

Judging from your pictures, it looks like you’re actually not doing too badly in the room treatment department, what with the carpet and the soft furniture.

The only thing that’s really killing you (assuming you do have some reverberation problems) is that vast expanse of sheetrock behind your sofa, that’s directly opposite the front speakers. Anything you could do back there would be an improvement.

You might consider something like ultra-low pile carpet, like the kind they use in office buildings. Maybe a large section of it in a contrasting color, glued to the wall starting say, 7 ft. up and extending to 12-14 ft. You could frame it out for appearances, maybe do it in 3-4 divided sections, something like that. It might not look as bad as you think, seeing as how right now you basically have a huge, naked wall. Tell the wife the wall needs to have some character added.

Also, some heavy draperies for the windows flanking the fireplace would both dampen sound and cut down on light in the room for daytime viewing.

Regards,
Wayne

[Josuah]

I'm thinking office carpet isn't going to do much, considering treatments for mid- or upper-frequencies need to be like an inch of OC703/704. ??? I put some carpet behind my fridge and it didn't help a whole lot.

There are two ways to approach the fabric covering though. One is to let as much air through, so that the stuff behind the fabric absorbs well. The other is to use fabric that doesn't let a lot through, but absorbs instead of reflects, and the stuff behind takes care of the rest. For example, sticking a thick wool sweater in front of an inch of semirigid fiberglass would probably only improve things, even though you can't hear as well through it or blow air through it as easily.

Also, depending on your decor, treatments can very easily fit in if you cover them in a way that makes sense. Even if they are sticking into the room, off the wall, by an inch or two. Covering the treatments on your back wall with an area rug or afghan could work very well.

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

Joshua,

I'm thinking office carpet isn't going to do much, considering treatments for mid- or upper-frequencies need to be like an inch of OC703/704. ??? I put some carpet behind my fridge and it didn't help a whole lot.

Eric brought that up when he said...

On a related note anyone do wall panels of the type above to cut down on ambient noise? I read somewhere that the person said it really cut down on noise in the room.

...but I forgot to address it.

Carpet is a great acoustical treatment because it reduces reflections by absorbing them. Obviously anyone who has been a room with a concrete floor before and after it was carpeted can testify to that.

What you’re talking about is soundproofing. Soundproofing is not about reducing reflections. It’s about totally blocking sound from being transferred to from one room (or structure) to another (as much as possible, at least). Obviously you can’t apply room treatments to “soundproof” against noises that are generated inside the room you’re in. That’s why the carpet behind your ’fridge didn’t work.

That said – Eric, if the “ambient noise” you’re concerned about in your bedroom are generated internally, you’d have to find a way to mute the source of the noise. If it’s an external noise source, what you’d do about reducing it will depend on what and where it is.

Regards,
Wayne

[Josuah]

I think I'm a little confused by your statements.

If carpet is great because it reduces reflections by absorbing (and yes, it's better than concrete walls) then it would be okay to address first reflection points with carpet instead of 1" of fiberglass. But I don't believe it works nearly as well.

And if it absorbed reflections so well, then sticking it behind my fridge should absorb some of the noise coming out the back of the fridge before it gets reflected into the room.

I don't doubt it's better than the bare drywall. But I don't think it'll be enough either.

[JCD]

I think Wayne brought up a good point -- soundproofing vs. treating a room. I actually couldn't tell what your ultimate goal was. I'm assuming you're going for treating.

I differ a little bit with Wayne on how best to accomplish "treating" a room. I'm more of a early reflection killer rather than going with an (and I may be misinterpreting him) all out assault. Possibly a slight exaggeration.

I've been in an overtreated room and it sounded awful. It was just too dead. I've also been in a room that had a significant amount of work done hitting the early reflections that left the rear of the room live (a bookcase with a bunch of knickknacks that acted as one big diffuser). It was really amazing how the music sounded, at least to me, in that room.

Regarding using carpet, I know it will kill some reflections, but it doesn't do well under 2000kHz (here is a link for the absorption of a lot of different materials).
Here are the the numbers for "Heavy carpet on concrete" vs "Fiberglass Boards: 5.1cm" vs. 2" OC703:
63......125.....250.....500....1k.......2k......4k......8k
0.02....0.02....0.06 ...0.14....0.37....0.60....0.65....0.65
0.17....0.17....0.55....0.80....0.90....0.85....0.80....0.80
??.......0.17....0.86....1.14....1.07....1.02....0.98....??

As for materials to use for covering your fiberglas, in addition to Burlap, I've heard Canvas, Non-tight Cotton Weave, Muslin, or any natural fiber in a somewhat open weave being recommended.

JCD

[Eric_C]

Wayne,

Thanks for the suggestion. I mentioned the new window treatments were not put up yet. We just had the windows replaced and are in the middle of picking everything out.

Its is our family/great room but its just the wife and I, she wants it to sound as good as I do. That wall looks way 'worse' in the pics than in person, we never notice the blank wall space because of at eye level you don't notice it as much.

The DIY wall treatments we saw were acceptable to us. We could do some kind of decorative pattern and frame it out. Is that a better or worse treatmen than carpet? I'm talking about the poly/fiberglass/poly frame ups you see on the net.

I only mentioned the idea about the room being quieter because one of the DIY websites mentioned that the room seemed quite a bit quieter after the treatment.
If we came up with something nice and decorative we would put a few up in the bedroom just to make it a calmer room all together.

I am in the middle of finishing up my Gainclone amp and next will be a set of speakers/sub for the bedroom which I hope will be on par with what I have in the great room right now so treating it still wouldn't be a bad idea. Its 17x15 with 12' trey ceilings. Thats a month or two off thankfully

[JCD]

Although you addressed Wayne, and I'm sure he'll pipe in, I thought I'd address some of your q's as well.

Eric_C wrote:

Its is our family/great room but its just the wife and I, she wants it to sound as good as I do.

You're a lucky man to have a SigOther that's into this stuff.

Eric_C wrote:

The DIY wall treatments we saw were acceptable to us. We could do some kind of decorative pattern and frame it out.

There are a lot of things you can do to make the treatments more aethestically pleasing. The best I've see was a 2x4 panel wrapped in a dark maroon fabric and framed with decorative twisted black metal. It looked really good.. at least to me.

Eric_C wrote:

Is that a better or worse treatmen than carpet? I'm talking about the poly/fiberglass/poly frame ups you see on the net.

OC703 or it's equivelent is significantly better (see numbers posted above) than carpet for treating a room.

Eric_C wrote:

I only mentioned the idea about the room being quieter because one of the DIY websites mentioned that the room seemed quite a bit quieter after the treatment.

It does make it quieter because you don't have as many echoes bouncing around the room. However, if it's done "right", it's not smothering.

Eric_C wrote:

I am in the middle of finishing up my Gainclone amp and next will be a set of speakers/sub for the bedroom which I hope will be on par with what I have in the great room right now so treating it still wouldn't be a bad idea. Its 17x15 with 12' trey ceilings. Thats a month or two off thankfully

I hope you share your experience with the amp. I love all this DIY stuff.

JCD

[Eric_C]

JCD,

Thanks for the info. The amp is "done", meaning it plugs in, lights up, and measures out correct. Can't go any further until I mount it in the box which should be this weekend.

What is OC703?

The wife is pretty easy on this stuff, heck she'll ok with putting the two sonotubes in that room although the look on her face when we picked up the tube yesterday was...interesting

[JCD]

OC703 is Owens Corning Series 703 compressed fiberglass panels. Their original purpose was to insulate HVAC units (if you want to get them locally, that's who'll you'll have to call to get them). Most pre-made and home made treatments are made of it. They generally come in sheets of 2'x4' in thicknesses of 1', 2" (usually used for treatments, and 4" (used for bass traps).
They look like this:


There are other manufactures (Johns-Manville, CertainTeed, Delta, etc) that make similar products, but OC703 is usually what gets mentioned.

And I can only IMAGINE what her face looked like when you showed her the sonotubes.

Sidetrack here.. when I was auditioning speakers during my last go around, I two pairs of floor standers (I had bookshelves before). She was in the bedroom/bathroom so she didn't see me bring them in or set them up. Once I was done, I asked her to come in to get her opinions. She walked in, talking to me, and while talking finally looked at the speakers. She LITERALLY jumped back like she was about to step on a snake. She relented and let me get what I wanted, but I was thinking I'd never get them past SWMBO.

Also, I hope you took lots of pics of the building process of your amp.. I expect a detailed "report" to be posted with lots of pictures. Especially after you get the thing boxed up.

JCD

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

Joshua,

And if it absorbed reflections so well, then sticking it behind my fridge should absorb some of the noise coming out the back of the fridge before it gets reflected into the room.

The problem is that your refrigerator isn’t really generating noise from the back. The stuff that makes all the noise - the compressor and the fan – are typically underneath it, so it’s radiating sound from the bottom in all directions.

Even if yours is actually generating noise out the back, carpet on the wall behind it would only stop upper-frequency reflections. There will still be sound escaping from the space between the back of the ‘fridge and the wall, because refrigerator noise is mid-to-low mid frequencies, which are more omnidirectional than highs. You would have to totally air-seal the back of the refrigerator to the wall to have any chance of totally blocking the sound. As you may know, “airtight” is one of the first rules of effective soundproofing.

If carpet is great because it reduces reflections by absorbing (and yes, it's better than concrete walls) then it would be okay to address first reflection points with carpet instead of 1" of fiberglass. But I don't believe it works nearly as well.

I’m not sure how to read Jacen’s chart, or the one on his link, but when I stuck a remnant of our carpet in front of my speaker playing pink noise, it was attenuating very well a full octave below 2 kHz. My RTA was showing that attenuation started below 500 Hz, and was 12 dB down at 1kHz. So basically, 12 dB/octave attenuation below 500 Hz.

What I’ve seen in the places we’ve lived over the years is that wall-to-wall carpet, along with regular room furnishings, is enough to sufficiently dampen and diffuse the sound, to the point that echo is zero. So carpet may not be as good as the fiberglass, but in many (if not most) cases it works fine. If you didn’t have carpet, or not enough of it, and you needed treatments, I can see where the fiberglass would be a good choice, mainly because the treatment won’t be near the square footage that there would be if the floor was carpeted. So obviously you want to get as much performance as you can out of the square footage you are treating.

But then, I’ve never had a situation like Eric’s with my speakers firing directly at a vast, uninterrupted expanse of sheetrock. If it was me, and if reverberation was a problem, I think I’d look into putting the system on the wall where the couch is now. The other side of the room has more irregularity in the walls, like the staircase and the staggered wall, that would help diffuse the sound.

Eric,

The DIY wall treatments we saw were acceptable to us. We could do some kind of decorative pattern and frame it out. Is that a better or worse treatmen than carpet?

By all means then, use the treatments! Wasn’t catching it that your wife was on board - I just threw the carpet idea out there as something she might go along with.

Regards,
Wayne

[Fincave]

Am no expert, lets make that clear from the start. I had a major echo problem in my room and decided to put up some panels. I covered my panels in a loosely woven cloth, was going to use speaker cloth but could not get hold of it in red. The rest of the panels were just left uncovered though they do have a treated surface and so no fibres should be released. The panels are made by a company called Ecophon, and are made from rigid fibreglass and were very easy to cut down to size, they could basically be cut into any shape. I am still very happy with the improvement in sound quality and the outlay was minimal. Here is a link to my thread where you can see some pics. Just my 0.02c

[Ethan Winer]

JCD wrote:

Regarding using carpet, I know it will kill some reflections, but it doesn't do well under 2000kHz

Exactly, this is the key, and I can elaborate a bit more.

Most "soft" materials absorb 100 percent at some high frequency, then the absorption falls off at lower frequencies. So a thick carpet might absorb 100 percent down to 2 KHz, where 1 inch thick 703 absorbs 100 percent down to 1 KHz. Now, if you make the 703 2 inches thick it absorbs 100 percent down to 500 Hz. And so forth. So it's not like thicker materials absorb more overall as much as they extend the same amount of absorption to an ever-lower frequency.

The reason this matters in a listening room is because uniform absorption versus frequency is needed to maintain a uniform response versus frequency. This is the main problem with thin absorbing materials. They might make the room seem dead enough at "hand clap" frequencies, but the bass and low mids are still bouncing around making a muddy mess of the music. And when there's more total energy at those low frequencies due to the longer decay times, the frequency response balance is also affected.

--Ethan

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

Great info, Ethan.