For reasons of noise I need to move the HT out of the current living room into a recently vacated basement room ASAP. The room is currently completely bare (see pics) and I need to adapt it quickly. The whole basement will be renovated in about a years time, so any real construction work is out of the question, as everything will need to be removed again for renovation.

Now I have all the AV equipment already (the room even has the same dimensions as the living room, so pj, screen, distance etc work out just fine).

What I need help with is some ideas on how to make the room acoustically usable for HT use without spending a lot of money or work (as it's just for the 1 year duration until renovation). Currently the room is an acoustic hell (all echos).

For the floor some wall-to-wall carpeting will probably be the best and easiest solution, but what can I do about the walls and ceiling? Would hanging some curtain like cloth material all around the walls help?

What about the ceiling? Does that need acoustic treatment also or would simply painting it in a darker color be enough for the interim? I guess painting would be easier on the ceiling than attaching some cloth/other material, but I am open to all and any suggestions...

Oh and this is in Europe, so everything (floor, walls, ceiling) is concrete, so no easy drywall manipulation unfortunately.

The measurements on the floorplan are centimeters, the room is pretty much square, 4.9 x 4.9m, or 16 feet each, room height is 2.3m or 7.5 feet.

front view (screen will be on this wall):
http://www.obit.at/img/ht-front.jpg

view of front and left wall:
http://www.obit.at/img/ht-left.jpg

http://www.obit.at/img/ht-floorplan.png

Any ideas and suggestions are most welcome,

Thanks!

Quick and Dirty suggestions?

Something to completely darken the windows.

Flooring - carpet or tile so long as it is darker than light and non-reflective. We have brown carpeting.

Walls - paint them a darker hue with non-reflective, non-glossy paint or glue up inexpensive fake paneling if budget will allow. Our room is paneled.

Ceiling - like Mick Jagger said, Paint it Black! or a non-glossy, non-reflective darker hue. We have a drop ceiling and the tiles are off white and non-reflective and works great.

Acoustics? Bare concrete walls, floor and ceiling is what some recording studios used to use in room to create natural echo effects - so sound wise you DO NOT want the concrete.

I would look for non-reflective ceiling panels on sale or closeout and simply glue them to the ceiling. Carpet for the floor and maybe remaining concrete walls can work if painted but cheap fake paneling found on sale or closeout would help deaden the echo of concrete.

Since the room is going to have a formal re-do in a year or so you should be able to be more flexible in your temporary fix, not spend too much and be watching Home Cinema after a weekend of work - get your buddies to help.

thanks for your thoughts!

floor: carpet is a sure thing

windows: blacking them out is also easily done, might need to add some sound insulation, but we'll see.

ceiling: will paint it black. regarding acoustic non reflective panels: i don't think there's any place around here that sells that, and definitely no closeout sales. how important is that on the ceiling?

walls: i thought of just putting some thicker curtains around the front half of the room, would this work acoustically? what type of panels (what kind of material) would I need if curtains are no good?

well, the first step is done, the ceiling is painted. that was the easy one (well, selecting and buying the color at least, the actual painting wasn't that much fun ;))

Next step will be curtains and then selecting a floor (either buying a new wall to wall carpeting or just dropping in some old left over rugs).

http://deep.bla.net/gallery/d/14692-2/P1010351_resize.JPG

The major issue will be low frequency modes in the room, not to mention ringing in the lows and up higher. Curtains, carpet...both will help knock down the vocal-band decay time in the room, which will help some with speech intelligibility, but that will leave the low end a mess.

I understand that your budget might preclude buying premade panels, but you could DIY some very effective bass trapping for the corners and back wall using rigid fiberglass or mineral wool. There are a million DIY designs out there. Either way, it wouldn't be a waste of money as you could just take it with you to the new space and redeploy it.

Frank

thanks for your suggestions, when it comes to audio I'm pretty much clueless and dependent on the wisdom here...

do you have any suggested links to DIY solutions (if possible with generic material names/descriptions as US specific brand names don't help me much)?

What dimensions should these panels be and where exactly do I put them?

Thanks for helping make the room sound better!

thanks for your suggestions, when it comes to audio I'm pretty much clueless and dependent on the wisdom here...

do you have any suggested links to DIY solutions (if possible with generic material names/descriptions as US specific brand names don't help me much)?

What dimensions should these panels be and where exactly do I put them?

Thanks for helping make the room sound better!

Just google "home made acoustic treatment" and you'll get a billion hits.

As to placement, you'll want bass traps in all four corners, floor to ceiling if you can manage it. I know you have a window in the back left corner, so you may have to stick with one per corner, or cover that window up. You'll also want to hit the back wall with bass traps. You can use thinner, high frequency panels at the first reflection points to your right, left and possible above your head.

Frank

just finished with all the wall and ceiling fixings, hang the screen (too bad it has a white case, will need to figure something out as I don't want to paint it in case I'll return that to some "white" room again at a later time), added the front curtains (side walls yet to come), and put in some old rugs for now until I can get a good deal on some nice carpet. looks pretty different now ;)

http://deep.bla.net/gallery/d/14695-2/P1010363_resize.JPG

Will get back to you about your placement suggestions tomorrow, isn't all that easy in the room.

ok, all the stuff is working in a preliminary state now (need to find final seating area, get some seats, organize wires and surround speakers etc.). here's a view of the back of the room:

http://www.obit.at/img/ht-back.jpg

As you can see there is a window in one corner and a door in the other corner.

When you say "bass traps in the corners" would that mean a bass trap that has a 90 degree angle and sits on both walls of the corner (or 2 per corner, one for each wall), or just one flat piece that sits at a 45 degree angle to both corner walls? both of those wouldn't really work, because of the windows/corners. Would it help just placing a flat bass trap on one wall of a corner?

in the front left corner I could place it on the left wall.
in the front right corner I could place it on either right and/or front wall (only "free" corner).
in the back left corner I could place it on the back wall.
in the back right corner I could place it on the right wall.
(all left/right when viewing the front wall)

Would this asymmetric placement work at all, or bring more problems than it solves?

As for height you said as much as possible, what are good minimum widths and depths to consider?