Treating a Cape Cod

[BoomieMCT]

My theater room is in my basement. I have spent some time treating it and have gotten it to the point where it almost sounds how I want it to. However, I do most of my music listening in my office which is in the top floor of my cape cod style house.

For those who don't know what a "cape cod" is, it is a house where the walls of the top floor is the sloped room (i.e. no attic). So the room is very non-traditionaly shaped! For starters, I don't have normal corners like a box shaped room. Furthermore, since most of the walls are sloped, I can't easily hang wall panels.

What I'm curious about is whether this is beneficial or not, and what I should think about doing to improve it.

[basementjack]

Well one nice thing is, since the walls are sloped, I think you could get good milage out of some form of corner traps down where the walls meet the floor.

If they slope to a point, then go straight down, you could shove a ton of insulation in that attic space.
I would expect the room to have decent low frequency response. due to those characteristics. So all you should have to deal with is echos.

Have you downloaded and used REW before? It would probably be a good idea to measure the room now so you know what you're dealing with in finite terms...

[BoomieMCT]

basementjack wrote:

Have you downloaded and used REW before? It would probably be a good idea to measure the room now so you know what you're dealing with in finite terms...

I have, and the only time I've used it in the room can be seen here. As you can see, there are quite a lot of dips and peaks (although, to be fair the sub and mike were not in optimal locations for this test).

[basementjack]

A new version of REW was just released - I played with it for a bit last night - it looks MUCH easier than the last version.

[Ethan Winer]

BoomieMCT wrote:

since most of the walls are sloped, I can't easily hang wall panels. What I'm curious about is whether this is beneficial or not, and what I should think about doing to improve it.

There are good and bad points. One good point is the angled ceiling avoids flutter echo (that "boing" sound) between the floor and ceiling. One bad point is a peaked ceiling focuses sound to the area under the peak. But mostly that shape is neither terrible nor great. And you'd approach treating a room like that pretty much the same as any other room by adding:

* Broadband (not tuned) bass traps straddling as many corners as you can manage, including the wall-ceiling corners.

* Mid/high frequency absorption at the first reflection points on the side walls and ceiling.

* Some additional amount of mid/high absorption and/or diffusion on any large areas of bare parallel surfaces, such as opposing walls or the ceiling if the floor is reflective.

--Ethan

[basementjack]

Ethan Winer wrote:

... One bad point is a peaked ceiling focuses sound to the area under the peak. ...
--Ethan

Sounds like the peak of the roof would be an ideal location for a set of Traps!

[Ethan Winer]

basementjack wrote:

Sounds like the peak of the roof would be an ideal location for a set of Traps!

Yep, just like this:

[BoomieMCT]

If only the peak was as high up as that! The room has a flattened / filled peak. At it's tallest it is about 7.5 feet.