What *does* make a difference?
Reply #6 – 2010-11-09 18:12:30
I agree with the previous answerers so I won't repeat what they said. I just wanted to point out that a blanket or quilt isn't a substitute for a bass trap. You can in fact get many of the benefits of acoustical room treatment using common furnishings -- CD and bookcases for diffusion, curtains for high frequency absorption, etc. Bass modes, unfortunately, are less amenable to that sort of treatment, but can be reduced with careful placement of speakers and listener, the use of multiple subwoofers, and equalization, or changes to the room envelope. Anyway, the differences in bass response are easily measurable and should be measured, not so much because of the placebo effect (although it could potentially affect a listener's judgment) as the sheer difficulty of juggling loudspeaker position, listener position, acoustical treatments, and equalization to get the best bass response. You can still use the old techniques if you have to -- listening to walking bass, swapping speaker and listener positions, using rules of thumb -- but I don't think you'll get the best results flying blind. When discussing an Ambisonics setup that i want to do, it was advised that i set up a subwoofer in each corner of the room to 'pressurize the room' and provide some cancellation of standing bass waves. Does that follow with your knowledge? Also, i still wonder if one couldn't just make ones own bass traps. It's just material placed in the room some where in a particular shape. Sure, they may advertise it as a space-aged patented mix of calcified nymph blood and gremlin brains, but i'm skeptical of such things.