I received a query from a friend asking about the scenarios in which the products in our catalog can be used. An excellent question. So here goes a blog on room acoustic devices and how they can be used.
Concrete, brick, and cement are the most common raw materials that go into the making of your walls, ceiling and floor. Very durable stuff, but not the ideal from an acoustical point of view. Such hard surfaces reflect and resonate the sound produced by your speakers and the tonality of these reflections are harsher and displeasing in comparison to natural surfaces like wood.
Now imagine a speaker system in one room whose walls, ceiling and floor are made out of concrete and the same speaker system in another room with the same dimensions, except that the walls, ceiling and floor are made out of wood. Your psychoacoustic listening experience in the wooden room will definitely be more pleasing. This is exactly why many acoustic stringed and wind instruments are made out of wood rather than other materials!
But let’s face it. Most of us, don’t have log cabins by the lake for that dream acoustical experience. So what if you could have the same acoustical listening experience in any room, be it concrete, or brick, or drywall? Enter room acoustic treatment devices.
The 2 kinds of room acoustic treatment devices.
Room acoustic treatment devices can be broadly classified into Absorption and Diffusion devices.
Absorption devices absorb sound over a frequency range of concern. Diffusion devices reflect sound in ways that improve the ambiance of the room to best suit the speaker system and the purpose of the room it is in.
Why do we need these products and what do they do?
Too much echo in the room? You need Absorption.
Absorption devices capture the excessive unpleasant ambient sounds produced by the original sound generated from your speakers as they reflect and resonate off the boundaries of your room. This reflection and resonance caused by your room boundaries haze the authentic sonic image presented by your speaker system and with so little of a time delay between the original and the reflected sound reaching your ears, it is almost unrecognizable for the untrained ear.
Absorption devices in designated positions depending on the purpose of your room (live room, recording room, home studio, control room, home theatre) are designed to absorb most of these reflected and resonating sounds and dampen their relative volumes in relation to the original sounds, so that your ears hear only the sound coming from your speaker system, and hear them more clearly. The kind, number and efficiency of absorption devices should be customized to the purpose of your room, or you could end up with either a room that sounds unnaturally dead and makes speech and listening harder (with you having to subliminally talk louder to be heard the same), or a room that doesn’t really sound any better than before treatment!
Need more clarity? It is time for Diffusion.
Diffusion devices are more complex in how they work. Simply stated, they are devices that create a sense of spaciousness and hugely improve the quality of the reflections from the boundaries they are arranged on. They facilitate this spaciousness based on their surface topography, and the improved quality of their reflections by virtue of their design in rectifying the unpleasant coloration of sound (comb filtering) caused by a plain wall.
The reflections caused by a plain wall are called specular reflections. The improved quality of reflected sound is of two types, diffused sound and scattered sound. An reduction/re-direction of specular reflections and/or replacing them with diffused or scattered sound is essential in creating an ideal acoustic environment. Again, customizing the design, number and layout of diffusion devices to the purpose of your room is paramount to having your room either sound just marginally better, or sound so good that it awakens you to a surreal dimension of sonic clarity and fidelity that you’ll wonder how you managed all along without them thus far!
All this might seem a tad complicated. It’s because there is more than meets the eye when it comes to absorption and diffusion devices and understanding their functionality. A more detailed delve into the science behind these devices is required for any blog to do justice to them. A clear understanding of how they function is crucial to knowing what combinations of the two are required to equip any room to meet its desired purpose!
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