ROOM ACOUSTICS in general

The acoustics inside the building is an important factor that must be considered in the design and creation of the building depending on its use. Room acoustics is concerned with the physical properties of SOUND, with respect to its effect on the inside of a building and how this effect can be altered to suit with the room/buildings intended use.

Factors that Affect Room Acoustics

Room Size (dimensions) Room Shape Room Symmetry Materials Used Acoustic Treatments

Room Size and Shape

The size and shape of a room determines its natural resonances often called room modes. Every rectangular room has three sets of primary modes, with one each for the length, width, and height.

If you have an irregular room shape or angled walls, you can average the dimensions to get a rough idea of the mode frequencies.
Rooms with irregular shapes, such as an alcove, have more than three sets of modes and are more difficult to calculate. Generally speaking, larger rooms are better acoustically than smaller rooms because the modes are spaced more closely, yielding an overall flatter response.

Room Symmetry

Symmetry matters!
In a typical stereo mixing room, the loudspeakers are spaced equally from the walls and corners, and form an equilateral triangle at the mix position. The arrangement shown on the left above is better than the one on the right because it's more symmetrical within the room. The layout on the right also suffers from a focusing effect caused by the wall-wall junction behind the listener.

Room Sound Combinations

The sound you hear in a room is a combination of direct sound and indirect sound. Direct sound will come directly from your speakers while the other sound you hear is reflected off of various objects in the room.

Good and Bad Reflected Sounds

When sound is reflected, it is fuller and louder than it would if it were in an open space. So when sound is reflected, it can add a fullness, or spaciousness. The bad part of reflected sound occurs when the reflections amplify some notes, while cancelling out others, making the sound distorted. It can also affect tonal quality and create an echolike effect.

Three Types of Reflected Sound

Reflected Sound (Reflection)

Reflected sound waves, good and bad, affect the sound you hear, where it comes from, and the quality of the sound when it gets to you. The bad news when it comes to reflected sound is standing waves. These waves are created when sound is reflected back and forth between any two parallel surfaces in your room, ceiling and floor or wall to wall. Standing waves can distort noises 300Hz and down. These noises include the lower mid frequency and bass ranges. Standing waves tend to collect near the walls and in corners of a room, these collecting standing waves are called room resonance modes.

Absorbed Sound (Absorption)

The sound that humans hear is actually a form of acoustic energy. Different materials absorb different amounts of this energy at different frequencies. When considering room acoustics, there should be a good mix of high frequency absorbing materials and low frequency absorbing materials. A table including information on how different common household absorb sound can be found.

Diffused Sound
Using devices that diffuse sound is a fairly new way of increasing acoustic performance in a room. It is a means to create sound that appears to be "live". They can replace echo-like reflections without absorbing too much sound. Some ways of determining where diffusive items should be placed were found on this website. If you have carpet or drapes already in your room, use diffusion to control side wall reflections. A bookcase filled with odd-sized books makes an effective diffuser. Use absorptive material on room surfaces between your listening position and your front speakers, and treat the back wall with diffusive material to re-distribute the reflections.

Acoustic Treatments: Materials

DIFFUSORS AND ABSORBERS Diffusors are used to reduce or eliminate repetitive echoes that occur in rooms having parallel walls and a flat ceiling. Diffusion is often used in addition to absorption to tame these reflections of sound. Such treatment is universally accepted as better than making the room completely dead by covering all of the walls with absorbent material

The simplest type of diffusor is one or more sheets of plywood attached to a wall at a slight angle, to prevent sound from bouncing repeatedly between the same two walls.

Alternatively, the plywood can be bent into a curved shape, though that is more difficult to install. In truth, this is really a deflector, not a diffuser.
However, a deflector is sufficient to avoid flutter echoes between parallel surfaces.

Real diffusor designs use an irregular surface having a complex pattern to scatter the sound waves even more thoroughly.

A true diffusor scatters sound waves in different directions based on their frequency, rather than merely redirecting all waves in the same direction. This is an important distinction because a flat surface that is angled or curved still fosters the boxy sounding response peaks and dips known as comb filtering. A real diffusor avoids direct reflections altogether, and thus has a much more open, transparent, and natural sound than a simple flat or curved surface.

Absorbers
the most effective absorber for midrange and high frequencies is rigid fiberglass.

"Optimum" Room Dimensions

The standard modal approach for designing a room with good acoustics is to create as many different resonances as possible, and to spread them as evenly as possible across the frequency spectrum

Dimension Width Length

Design #1 1.14 x Height 1.39 x Height

Design #2 1.28 x Height 1.54 x Height

Design #3 1.60 x Height 2.33 x Height