Since yesterday afternoon or so, I've been actively researching something I've never bothered with before, treating my room which is said to be more effective than swapping equipment, which I can completely understand.
Naturally, the first company I looked at is GIK Acoustics. I was prepared to be shocked at the prices of the various panels and such, and I was, but shocked in a different way... Shocked at how affordable their products are! Granted, they're not bargain basement cheap, but they're certainly not expensive either. Think of them price-wise to a pair of decent interconnect upgrades, and more than likely much larger sound improvements than those new interconnects.
So anyway, after looking around on GIK's site, I went ahead and filled out their "Free Advice" form and submitted it with a set of pictures of my current 11.5' x 15.5' x 8' room setup. One thing I forgot to mention on that form was the fact that this is an old house, so all of the walls and ceiling are plaster, which obviously is harder than regular drywall. But I did mention the wood floors and the fact that I put down a 6' x 8' shag area rug to help reduce/eliminate those first reflections off of the floor, which it did quite well. That and that I have IsoAcoustic ISO-200 subwoofer isolators under the subs which definitely helped clean and tighten up the bass.
I run open baffle loudspeakers (GR Research X-Statik's) and dual subs. Surprisingly, everything sounds pretty darn good, especially after adding the area rug, but there's still just that last 10% that I want to chase down. I still have minor imaging, sound staging and phasing issues which I can hear as I move a foot or so forwards or backwards in my listening position. Some of it sounds a little bit like out of phase echo. And as for bass, I sit in a bit of a null. It's a little quieter and weaker where I sit, but move a foot forwards or backwards, the bass gets a little stronger and possibly a little deeper, but not boomy.
Again, I've never dealt with room treatments before, but one thing I picked up on pretty quickly is that behind the speakers, I would want absorption/diffusive panels to still get the benefits of the rear wave of the open baffle loudspeakers. But other than that, I'll leave that up to the ones in the know.
Here's the pictures that I submitted...
Naturally, the first company I looked at is GIK Acoustics. I was prepared to be shocked at the prices of the various panels and such, and I was, but shocked in a different way... Shocked at how affordable their products are! Granted, they're not bargain basement cheap, but they're certainly not expensive either. Think of them price-wise to a pair of decent interconnect upgrades, and more than likely much larger sound improvements than those new interconnects.
So anyway, after looking around on GIK's site, I went ahead and filled out their "Free Advice" form and submitted it with a set of pictures of my current 11.5' x 15.5' x 8' room setup. One thing I forgot to mention on that form was the fact that this is an old house, so all of the walls and ceiling are plaster, which obviously is harder than regular drywall. But I did mention the wood floors and the fact that I put down a 6' x 8' shag area rug to help reduce/eliminate those first reflections off of the floor, which it did quite well. That and that I have IsoAcoustic ISO-200 subwoofer isolators under the subs which definitely helped clean and tighten up the bass.
I run open baffle loudspeakers (GR Research X-Statik's) and dual subs. Surprisingly, everything sounds pretty darn good, especially after adding the area rug, but there's still just that last 10% that I want to chase down. I still have minor imaging, sound staging and phasing issues which I can hear as I move a foot or so forwards or backwards in my listening position. Some of it sounds a little bit like out of phase echo. And as for bass, I sit in a bit of a null. It's a little quieter and weaker where I sit, but move a foot forwards or backwards, the bass gets a little stronger and possibly a little deeper, but not boomy.
Again, I've never dealt with room treatments before, but one thing I picked up on pretty quickly is that behind the speakers, I would want absorption/diffusive panels to still get the benefits of the rear wave of the open baffle loudspeakers. But other than that, I'll leave that up to the ones in the know.
Here's the pictures that I submitted...
