Panel and sub measurements

[Anthony]

Below is a summary of my measurements this evening. My basement home theater (Magnepan speakers and dipole sub). No treatments, other than regular aesthetics. Based on a CARA room model, the room was pretty well "absorbed" to begin with (probably due to the rug, riser, and big stuffed couches).

Yellow trace is the original. No eq on sub, no panels, levels set with pink noise and a C weighted meter.

Black has two GIK 4" panels, one across the floor front wall corner sideways below the screen right behind the dipole sub. The other is straddling the front right corner.

Purple has only the floor/frontwall trap, no corner trap. The sub was retuned, instead of boosting the bottom octave with the amp EQ, I flattened the peak. Much better sound and no need for a BFD (which has been humming in the power supply for a while).

Overall I'm happy with the setup now. I was surprised I didn't need more panels. The response with the corner panel was nice, but because only one speaker is in a corner, the "sparkle" was killed by the panel on the right and sounded unbalanced to the left. Also, a panel hung in the back of the room did zilch. No measured effect and even deadened the room a bit (which is in line with the CARA prediction, but it was nice to confirm).

Oh, and the REW spectrum feature is great for tuning a single notch filter. Dial in the center frequency, then widen the bandwidth, and voila!

I am open to new suggestions for improvement, though, so fire away.

[BoomieMCT]

Can you take a picture of the panel in the room? I've been there and I'm having trouble imagining what you're telling me.

[Anthony]

I can't now (at work). But if you face the front of my room. you have the projector screen, left and right speakers flanking it and subwoofer between them.

The panel is sideways, behind the subwoofer, under the screen, at about a 30 degree lean between the front wall and the floor.

The corner one didn't work, because the right speaker is in a corner and the left is open to the bar area of the room. It had a measured difference in the mid-bass, but killed the indirect highs from the right speaker, which made imaging very weird.