I personally hate flutter echoes. to me it completely screws up the upper mids and blurs the image. If they are there, you are hearing them unless your listening very quitely. If you go into places like sterling, they have relatively live rooms with hard surfaces. Not my personal taste but it seems to work for them. The rooms however do not have any noticeable flutter echoes, more uniform. From my experience, dispersion really helps. I had a flutter echoe in the back of my room when I first built it and I corrected it by putting diffusors on the back wall and putting some compressed fiberglass angles around that. It eliminated the flutter and improved the sound tremendously. The imaging snapped back into place and the midrage focused more.

I have small flutters comming from the side walls in the back of the room.
In both ends I have bass traps with curtins covering them.
...I will try out some diffusors on the side walls.

What have you used, are they selfmade?

Not self made, they are made by rpg, they are called skyline diffusors. you can probably make them yourself.

My acoustical designer, Don Mitchell, came up with a very interesting solution to flutter echos.

The floor is carpet over cement and the wall and ceiling in my room are dry wall. What he did (besides all the acoutical design) was to suggest hanging Berber rugs on the walls covered by drapes. These are spaced around the room at intervals so there is some reflective and some non reflective surfaces. The drapes are about 5 inches into the room over the Berber carpeting and they take away the flutter echos without getting into problems with frequency absorption. If you want to see a color picture of our room shot with a fish eye lens go to http://www.dsmassociates.com/
and the section #6 under Who We Are. Hope this helps. It sure works GREAT!

Thanks Thomas,

But what is Berber rugs and drapes?
I'm not familiar with these words :-(

/Regards

Ammitsboel wrote: Thanks Thomas,

But what is Berber rugs and drapes?
I'm not familiar with these words :-(

/Regards

Berber rugs are rugs that are basically knoted fiber. They are sometimes called oriental rugs but berber is much courser and a lot less expensive.

Here is a link with pictures http://www.lowes.com/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=174497-102-748-26

Drapes are curtains or window coverings made out of cloth

Here is a link with pictures http://www.potterybarn.com/cat/pip.cfm?sid=PBW26ZXLKYMYYJWGVQ1F00FTSPOJR3TD200403221430&refurl=&gids=p4306&ftest=1&cm%5Fven=MSN&cm%5Fpla=Datafeed&cm%5Fite=All%20Products&cm%5Fcat=Shopping&bnrid=0460012&flash=on

Hope this helps.

NO. The room that micmics a normal living room or audio listening room in a normal household is the way to go.

Dead room mastering = too much boost above 5K

Eaches own I reckon.

Dead room mastering = too much boost above 5K

What did you use to get a boost above 5K :-)

"Sonic dead rooms" refers to rooms that have no reflections and are designed to give the speakers more of a "flat response" no bumps or boosts anywhere.

what's a normal living room? So if I live in the southwest I should build my room with terracotta tiles. or maybe I should build a log cabin room for those in colorado. Maybe have a really tiny room for new yorkers. what about those that listen to music in the shower? or on headphones, on a plane, in an elevator, or in a car? this can get really expensive to mimic all of these rooms. I know, i'll build a neutral room and it'll translate to all of them.

Haha, I'd like to see a headphone room. That would be neat-o.

Berber rugs work for me as well. I probably don't hear a tenth of what you guys do, but they helped clarify everything to me.

me three

Thanks!
I looked into some different rugs but I find them all too absorbing for my room.
Then I just lovered one of my two 100x60cm rockwool modules and it fixed the flutter echo.... :wink:

I've tried having more absorbtion in my room than there is now and that gives to me something that seems like a clearer sound but it is also "rock dead" and cant reproduce microdynamics and image width correctly, so that's why I have settled for a few but good modules that have been placed carefully after several tests with my sound system.

Best Regards,
Henrik

My room has a nice balance to it. George A. designed it. It's hardly dead but what was more interesting about it is how he came to the final design. It was not as much math and measurement but more listening. He had the basic design and then employed 3 different acoustic wall hangings (for lack of a better term) of uniform size each one having a different type of surface under the cloth which is placed over it. Then, we listen to music and balanced the room by moving these panels. He was able to kill unwanted reflections and at the same time create a room which breaths (my term) with the music. 2 things about this, a: The front of the room is hardly dead even though there is a area rug in front of the desk nor is the back of the room very live. b: The room itself doesn't hold for different types of monitors. I was recently checking out new speakers and we employed George and he changed the room up a little. It speaks to the different ways speakers "speak".

Mark Wilder
Sony NY

Mark,
what kind on monitors do you have now?

turtletone wrote: Mark,
what kind on monitors do you have now?

Duntech Princess, Sherwood Sax amps (Bi-amped). I've had these speakers for almost a decade. I never switched over during all the auditioning last year.

MarkWilder
Sony NY

Mark,
Not familiar with the sherwood amps, but the Duntechs are great. I was looking at the Cello console you guys got rid of. Seemed very nice but was a bit pricey for my wallet. I haven't been to Sony for awhile but if I remember correctly, they are pretty live rooms. Did you find it too live and dampen yours down a little?

The Sherwood Sax amps are designed by Doug Sax's brother. These are 150W monoblock tube amps.

The colsole...I still have the monitor section which the console was paired to. The amps in the A bus started to sound different than the amps in the B bus and it was hard to maintain it, so it went. The last I heard it was being transformed into a LCR mixer for 3 track work.

I have never found my room too live and it's always fun to have George come back and listen in the room. He finds it to be a special place.

Mark Wilder
Sony NY

Thanks Mark for your interesting coments on room design!

I have a fairly hard and "not as big as i would like it to be" room, but I really feel that I've done a very good job in using as little absorbsion as possible and used the right places.
I started with a fine B&K analyser i used for a month only to find out that my ears was doing a much better job in placing different modules the right places and getting rid of others.

So you are using tube monoblocks too! :-)
That's a rare sight in here... not to speak of the whole industry!

Best Regards

I have just changed rooms (and facilities too). I have just moved across the river to Masterdisk in NYC. My room here is smaller than what I was used to before, but better designed. I have Dunlavy SC-V monitors. The side walls have proper absorbtion and the rear wall has diffusers. The overall acoustic is on the slightly less reflective side but not dead. I am doing a lot of listening to "known" program material to get an understanding of the room / speaker ineraction and acoustics. I have already done some sessions and checked out the EQed masters at home, etc. and they sounded fine. I am expecting the transition to be a smooth one.