Home Theater Room Acoustics
Room acoustics are the most essential thing of any good sound system for your home theater.
If the acoustics in your home theater are not done properly it could make those awesome speakers you bought sound horrible and the sounds off the sub-woofer really boom. The room itself can make or break your home theater.
The sound that you hear from your home theater system is a combination of direct and indirect sound. A direct sound comes directly from the speakers to you and the indirect sound reflects off the various objects in your room. Sound always bounces. Unless you make it stop it travels through air and bounces off any surface that it comes into contact with and it keeps bouncing off surfaces unless you make it stop. Some of the sounds that bounce makes the audio sound more natural but too much of it will not sound as good. You will need to balance the bouncing sounds.
There are two types of materials that you can use for your acoustic panels, absorptive or diffusive. Absorptive are the most commonly used acoustic panels for the home theater systems which absorb the sounds that hit the panel. These panels do not absorb all frequencies equally. What determines the effectiveness is the type and thickness of the material. A thicker panel will absorb sound down to a lower frequency.
Understand this; there are multiple paths that the sound leaving your speakers takes to reach your ears. One is the direct path which makes the sound go directly to your ears, and then the other several longer paths which will come after the sound has reflected on one or more surfaces.
Understand the first reflection point. This is when the sound only reflects ones before reaching your ears. The same sound travels two different points before reaching your ears and it arrives at slightly different times. If the sound comes within 10-20 seconds of the direct sound it will affect your brain’s ability to perceive spatial cues and also problems with correctly containing the sound.’
A simple but effective trick for locating the first-reflection point is to think of sound as spreading it like a ray of light. So we can use a mirror to find the region on the side wall or ceiling where the sound from the speaker is reflected towards the primary seating position.
A panel that is few feet wide should do the job for you, hence there is no need to cover the wall.
It’s very easy to mount the panels in your home theater. You could either use metal mounting clips that screw into your wall and press the panels onto the clips or use a construction adhesive. The drawback of this is that ones it is dry and you want to remove it pieces of dry wall will also come off your wall. Another way you can put up your panels which will give more material thickness is to remove a selection of dry wall and fill it with acoustic-panel material. And then you can cover the hole with acoustically transparent fabric.
Too much of it will make the room sound dead. You need to use the diffuser to reflect the sound in random, multiple direction which will spread the acoustic energy around.
Although there are different styles of diffuser panels a cheaper way to diffuse your acoustic is to use a bookcase with differently sized books.
Remember that the key to a great home theater acoustic is balance. It’s best if you can use surface mount panels which you can place temporarily and mount them permanently after you have verified the proper placement. Now you can have the perfect home theater you have always dreamt of.
