Help and thoughts needed

[theabbot]

Having had the lounge/music room refurbished which entailed having the walls and ceiling replastered the sound is now rubbish, mostly due to high frequency ringing/smearing, is the best I can describe it, and the louder the music the worse it becomes. I suspect its the nice new hard shiny plaster doing the damage. I've tried the clap test and the room sounds a lot more lively than before.

Please what can I do to redress the damage done.

Thanks

Mike

[struth]

try a lot of soft furnishings and drapes. maybe some sound panels in picture frames to break it up.

[Barry]

+1

Ideally you want the speakers to be at the 'lively' end of the room, and your listening position to be in a somewhat 'dead' acoustic.

[Macca]

More info required! Like a picture of the room as is. I assume after re-plastering you put all the furniture and kit back where it was? I'm surprised that the new plaster is so different from the old plaster, are you sure there is not something else wrong?

[agk]

More info required! Like a picture of the room as is. I assume after re-plastering you put all the furniture and kit back where it was? I'm surprised that the new plaster is so different from the old plaster, are you sure there is not something else wrong?

Yep. Assuming that you had plaster on the walls beforehand there is something else amiss.

[plastic penguin]

Concur with the others. Soft furnishings and curtains and carpet/rugs will help the problem.

Would also be interesting to know the OP's system. My system is suited to my living room: thick carpet, heavy drapes, bookcase and sofas. So my kit is on the lively side, whereas if my room was reflective I would (probably) tweak it somewhat.

[Light Dependant Resistor]

Hi Mike
Were the carpets removed to do the plastering ? anyway carpets and curtains are the usual cures

But also have your speakers on stands in their recommended position- if they are the type that suit stands.
usually a little bit out of the corner depending on their type, and elevated to your listening position.

Also check phasing of the speaker leads when replaced. A subject on its own, but requires knowledge
if your amp is inverting or non inverting. Refer to your product brochures to get this right.

Cheers / Chris

[theabbot]

Thanks for your ideas, The plaster before was a soft sandy type from the 1950's that you could rub away with your fingers, the new stuff is very hard and shiny, I also had the ceilings done as they were as bad. The floor is solid oak on battens with solid floor under the battens but that has been done for years so isn't new, there is a large rug on the floor. all furnishing and equipment are as before. The room is L shaped 5.9m x 5.4m with a 2.5m x 2.5m corner missing, the speakers are on the 3.4m wall firing along the 5.4m length. My speakers are either Amphion Krypton 1's or Wilson Watt/Puppy 7's I have the same problem with either speaker. The amps are MF Nuvista 300 pre/power had from new.

My thoughts are do I carpet the floor and put up heavy curtains to cover the complete wall behind the speakers or do I try acoustic panels that will be difficult to put in the correct place and could look strange/funny? and might not work. I don't have to worry about the wife factor as I'm on my own but I do like the room to look good.

If anyone fancies a trip to a little village near Bournemouth for a listen then please let me know.

Thanks

Mike

[Reffc]

Hi Mike

you're getting reflection from all those hard surfaces and it's entirely possible that the old plaster was acting to attenuate rather than reflect HF. With the new plaster, you're obviously getting lots of reflection.

This causes several issues. It changes the room power response by introducing the cumulative effects of reflection/comb filtering at the listening position. The direct sound from the 'speakers then has first and higher order point reflections mingling at the listening position which causes phase errors as well as the comb filtering where some frequencies are reinforced and others are reduced. That's a form of distortion that can make the sound "harder sounding" and smear notes, reducing clarity.

Fortunately, there's a lot you can do and my advice would be to start with the First Reflection Points. You can easily determine these. The side walls, exactly mid way between your speaker front baffle and your ear at the listening position is one example. The ceiling mid way is another. The floor mid way is yet another. You also receive reflections from the wall behind the speaker (strictly speaking still first reflection points but mostly of lower frequencies plus mingled with higher order reflection of mid and HF).

Start by introducing panels at these points. They don't need to be large. Some people buy prints on canvass from Jessops (send in a digital photo and they produce it for you) and you can have this printed also on cotton. Stretch the print over a 50mm deep frame about A2 or A1 sized. Turn it over and fill the inside with acoustic foam (buy the tiles) and staple a cotton retainer to the back to secure them. Hang on the wall so the centre of the print coincides with the centre of the first reflection point. Alternatively use rockwool or similar in place of the tiles.

Next, lift the carpet if it is a thin rug/carpet and place a standard 12mm wool felt underlay beneath it (I have done this over my laminate floor) and that really does improve acoustic damping in the room.

The rear wall behind the speakers can have some more arty panels made up at least as tall as the speakers plus say half a metre and at least 0.6m wide. Place these close to the wall (leave anything up to a 50mm gap or place tight to the wall).

The ceiling could have a plain white panel fitted to the 1st reflection point (cotton over acoustic tile/rockwool filler) or use white acoustic tiles. The panel size ought to be ideally 1m by 2m.

It's a lot of work but it will transform the acoustic. Also, adding diffraction panels to break up reflections works very well. True diffraction panels are expensive because each and every reflecting surface must be a different dimension to all others to work well. They can be bought from all good acoustic treatment suppliers.

[hifinutt]

yes some great suggestions . I bought a number of pictures from next and filled them with wickes insulation [high density] . also made some acoustic panels and filled with the same .

I was so shocked how the room changed recently when our 2 sofa s went . gosh the room changed so much . all went back to normal when the new ones came