Are you looking to EQ the room to make give it a more flat response? a 10x8 engineering room... is it rectangular or do you have diffusors in place to help break up your standing waves? Depending on temperature, altitude and humidity you will get natural boosts around 113hz and 141.25hz just by the size of the room. keep in mind that your early reflection could be a bear. You might try putting up diffusors where your throw hits the wall. Just an idea. However, if your looking to eq it, find yourself an RTA, an eq and have fun :)

Hope it helps,

Cheers,
-Ryan-

Diffusers are not a practical solution to dealing with standing waves. You would need five foot deep diffusers to deal with yoiur lowest standing wave, assuming your room is a 10' x 8' x 8' retangluar prism.

EQ is also not a good solution to the problem. EQ can make the immediate spectrum flat, but standing waves cause their associated frequency to ring out in the room long after the sound source has stopped. So, when the bass guitar plays 70 Hz and then plays 75 Hz 1/4 of a second later, it sounds like some kind of 70-75 Hz muddy mass instead of two crisply defined notes, and no ammount of EQ is going to fix that.

Acoustic treatment is the only good way to solve acoustic problems. I recommend paying the search function a visit. Search in the Acoustics and Design forum for 'treatement' 'small room', etc. If you can't find what you're looking for, ask a question in the forum.

One more nitpick about the last post, there are many more frequencies besided the ones that this gentleman mentioned. He only calculated the speed of sound / the room dimension, but that is only the second axial mode associated with that dimension. The way to calculate all axial modes is speed of sound (1,130 ft/sec) / twice the room dimension. Thsi is the fundamental mode. Then, there is twice that, three times that, and so on. For example, in your 10 ft dimension there is 1,130 / (2 *10) = 56.5, then 56.5 X 2 = 113, 56.5 X 3 = 169.5, etc. TO make matters worse, there are other types of modes called Tangential and Oblique modes which involve four and six surfaces respectively. They are not as trivial to calculate, but there's little need as the main modes that influence room response are the axial modes. In all actuality, there's little need to calculate any modes for most people, becuase this doesn't change the plan of action, which is the use of broadband absorption.

my forte is not acoustics, thanks for the quick lesson though. Don't want to highjack the thread, but any ideas/books where I can learn more about acoustics?

Cheers,
-Ryan-

Sure, Ryan. Probably the best first book to read is The Master Handbook of Acoustics by the late F. Alton Everest, ISBN 0071360972. There are many more great books, but start there.

David French wrote: Sure, Ryan. Probably the best first book to read is The Master Handbook of Acoustics by the late F. Alton Everest, ISBN 0071360972. There are many more great books, but start there.

Yes, I'm just diggin into this book. It's pretty incredible and covers just about everything you need to know. Read it and Yamaha's Live Sound Reinforcement Handbook and you'll have the science of acoustics grasped pretty well.

Also...
If you visit Auralex's website, there's a free room analysis that they'll do for you. It's a great starting point for treating your room.

Read it and Yamaha's Live Sound Reinforcement Handbook and you'll have the science of acoustics grasped pretty well.

If only! :wink: