Square room setup.

[escapeR1]

Hi Everyone,

First time poster after months of trolling these forums.

The room I am working with is a completely square at an 11'x11'. On one wall, I have a Samsung 52" with a Yamaha YSP-4000 soundbar. On the opposite wall, there is a couch (7'5" width). The floor is wood with a 6'x9' rug in the middle. The walls and ceiling are currently bare.

Currently, I have not selected a subwoofer for the room and wanted to wait to do so until I had a better understanding of (1) a good size (make/model) and (2) placement which will best fit my seating location. Furthermore, (3) I am also curious as to the need/placement of acoustic foam to best create an accurate sound environment. I was considering adding foam boards to each of the three doors.

While I am not an audio expert, I would like to try and get the room setup correctly. Thanks for your time and any suggestions that might be added.

James

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by escapeR1

The room I am working with is a completely square at an 11'x11'.

A square room means that bass peaks, nulls, and ringing will be a big problem.

I am also curious as to the need/placement of acoustic foam to best create an accurate sound environment. I was considering adding foam boards to each of the three doors.

Besides needing bass traps to reduce issues from having a square shape, the next big problem I see is you have a reflecting wall right behind your ears. So absorption is needed on that wall, as well as on the side walls (and optionally on the ceiling) to control reflections. This article explains the basics, and shows graphically how the frequency response is harmed by these reflections:

http://www.realtraps.com/rfz.htm

This short article will help further:

http://www.realtraps.com/art_room-setup.htm

--Ethan

[Jonomega]

Here are some ideas, you may or may not like them.

1. Bring your sofa 3' away from the wall behind it. This places your head roughly 4' away from that wall and minimizes the problems with respect to the listening position. The idea is to get your ears to be roughly 4' away from the rear wall. Depending on what sofa you have, this could be moving it anywhere from 2-4' away from the rear wall. (This also opens that area up for potential placement of subwoofer where movie effects may be enhanced by the subwoofer being so close to your sofa, but see bottom for more details on subwoofer placement) (This also opens up the possibility of future surround sound by allowing the speakers to be placed to the sides and behind the couch without encroaching on the sofa).

Now, if you want to keep your soundbar (not upgrade to separate speakers), then in a standard budget, you might not want to spend anything more on the following few suggestions which are expensive compared to the price of your Soundbar. If you have a budget, please let us know and we can point you in the correct direction.

!!!! If you have a budget for room treatments, read suggestions 2,3,4.

!!!! If you do not have a budget for room treatments and just want to buy a subwoofer, scroll passed them

2. Floor to ceiling bass traps in the rear L and R corners. Something like Gikacoustics (myfipie) or RealTraps (ethan winer), or if you want, you can make your own from fiberglass and GOM cloth, or acoustic cotton (recycled bluejeans). The DIY material could be found at your local home depot/lowes or www.sensiblesoundsolutions.com (pm the user bryan pape for more info)

3. Rear wall broadband absorption meaning both bass traps and high frequency absorption. See idea #2 for people to talk to.

4. First reflection points on your side walls need to be taken care of. These go in between your listening position and the speaker midway on both side walls. There are other acoustic trap needs, you can talk to the aforementioned people for more advice, or read their websites as ethan linked.



If you just want to buy a subwoofer, answer the following questions:

1. What is your budget?
2. Is this for movies only? Music sometimes?
3. Do you need wood veneer on the subwoofer?
4. I would say from the typical companies (ACI, SVS, HSU, AV123, Axiom, eD, epic, etc.) any subwoofer from $200-$1000 will suffice. If you have particular "needs" (like high bass output, very low extension, nice woods, nice looks, etc.) the price will be at the mid to upper end of that range.

Finally, are you willing to go to radio shack and purchase their SPL meter? This will allow you to calibrate the subwoofer against the speakers to make sure you have appropriate balance between them. This will cost 50$ or less.

Once you get the subwoofer, it is generally recommended to put it at your listening position, and crawl around the floor to find the area where the bass sounds most even. I typically have only 4-5 realistic areas where I can place the subwoofer, so I run sine sweeps and record the measurements at each spot and pick the most even one.