We’ve recently replaced the downstairs carpet with wood, and the echo is driving me nuts.

I’m thinking about building some panels for the wall, getting these guys to print some photos on speaker grill cloth (http://www.bagsoflove.co.uk/products/fabric-printing.aspx) at 1.2m square and fitting them to a frame with some Rockwool acoustic wool behind. Probably four panels for the living room and so on…

It’ll be a lot cheaper than buying something done as a finished product, and I can’t really see there’s much to it.

Anybody done something similar, or have any suggestions?

Thanks

Craig

yeah, as you say it is not particularly complicated. I also put profiled foam from these people under chairs and tables and anywhere I could:

The fabric stretched over frames might do quite a good job without the Rockwool. It depends how ‘dead’ you want to go. If just the fabric, it still needs to be spaced off the wall

I never thought of putting foam under tables and chairs – I’ll do that.

I’d wondered that, dmorts, but the echo is so bad I think I’ll need something under it. I was thinking of spacing them off the wall somewhere between 50-100mm, depending on what I stuff inside…

I’ve made load for mates who have studios, yes they stand off the wall, and yes they are as you described,what is important in a studio environment is where they are placed, not sure how you would work that out in a house search sound on sound magazine, there was some good articles in at some point in the past

SOS guide to room acoustics here

Gearslutz guide to room acoustics and methods of treatment here

I’ve built them for my home studio using rock wool and acoustic treatment foam panels but they were to create a neutral listening/mixing environment. This was originally in a room with wooden floors. The room also needed to be soften up with rugs, curtain, a big sofa and lots of clutter. They’re easy to build but can be necessarily deep. Mine have an air gap at the back and I spent aged finding the right fabric to cover them nut do like them as objects. Like minimal canvasses on the walls.

Refit the carpet. This cold noisy wood nonsense must end. Idiots of Britain kidding themselves on!

Some more good reading there, thanks again. Lots of reading on the Gearsluts link.

Interesting that the suggestion is the lower frequencies aren’t really absorbed by carpet, and that’s what I feel we’ve seen the biggest change in. I need to get it sorted though, before I had kids I spent a really decent amount on hifi, cheap Belden 10 guage speaker cable before somebody judges ;), and it’s pretty much unlistenable.

I know you’re fishing, cbike, but what is it I’m kidding myself about? It’s not an aspirational thing if that’s what you’re getting at . We’ve got a 5 and 2 year old pair of boys. Pretty much every bodily fluid, food type, mud and oil has been on the carpet at some point already, and it’s only going to get worse. Frankly, I want a clean floor…

Ah I missed this, so it’s for Hi-Fi listening? Not just reducing the overall din?

Panels at first reflection points would be the best start for correcting sound stage imaging and if the panels are deep enough to attenuate lower frequencies then this will help with those too. You could also try tweaking the loudspeaker position and listening position for bass response.

Absorption under tables and chairs will be way down your list, think about how many surfaces sound has to reflect off before it reaches the underside of a chair. Quite a few!

Sound on Sound is a bit too generalist on acoustics for me but generally give a good start/intro. Gearslutz is a gold mine but requires a lot of trawling and reading

We also plan to do this since fitting laminate in our kitchen. I am going to make a vertical panel with display cabinets incorporated in it. The cloth will be something fairly coarse for sound absorbtion, covering some felt. I lined the inside of the roof of our ex-RAF Landy like this and the difference it made to the irritating high-frequency engine sounds was amazing.

I just used multiple layers of cloth from Ikea behind a large print. It works fine as long a you can get it spaced of the wall a bit. The frames and acoustic rockwool is probably neater though. I think that almost 20% of the wall had to be covered but it made a huge difference (there weren’t any curtains or soft furnishings in the room)

To be honest dmorts, it’s really just for the overall din. I suspect that to get it to a level I’d be really happy with for hifi would mean changing the wife too. If it just becomes a bit less ropey for the hifi then I’ll settle for that until I can reclaim the kid’s playroom for me…

Everything seems to suggest stepping the panels off the wall as suggested above too. I will get away with 4 or 6 1x1m panels if I can do something custom printed on them, whack a couple of corner units in and see how it sounds.

I’ll let you all know how I get on…