Mobile Acoustic Treatment Experience

Accessories and Tweaks
1

I stopped purchasing HiFi equipment at one point. I realized even if I was gifted $300,000 worth of gear, it really wouldn’t improve my sound. I maxed out my room. I needed acoustic room treatment. But like many, I don’t have a dedicated two channel listening room and a dedicated home theater. Very few people do.

My room is a living room with lots of issues. The left wall is 3/4 complete as it opens to the dining room. The right wall has a mantled fireplace. The front wall has a huge arched topped window. The best thing about the room is that it’s a shoebox, has rounded ceiling corners, and has carpet. Being a living room, I could not destroy my decor with hideous acoustic treatment. What to do?

I opted for mobile freestanding acoustic panels. I purchased five 4" ‘FreeStand Bass Traps’ from GIK Acoustics. To my surprise, my fireplace, partially open left wall or early reflection points were not my biggest sound issues. It was actually the huge glass window behind my equipment. Treating that window made an instant audible improvement! The bass from my stereo REL subwoofers sounded richer and I could now feel the bass in my chest area. Imaging also notably improved. During TV and movie viewing, my center channel speaker suddenly sounded markedly better. It had a more forward, deeper rich sound.

Thanks for reading.

Yours,

Byrdmn

Stellar M700 monoblocks, DirectStream DAC, Dectet Power Center, INTEL NUC Roon Rock music server, ELAC Adante AF-61 Floorstanders Loudspeakers, ELAC AC-61 Center Channel Loudspeaker, REL T/7i Subwoofer (2),
Marantz AV7705 AV Surround Pre-Amplifier/Processor, Emotiva XPA-5 GEN3 amplifier, Oppo UDP-203 4K Blu-ray Player

2

I’ve done the same. I have 2 membrane bass traps that live under and behind a couch and 3 absorbers panels that are stored in the front coat closet when I’m not listening critically. I also have a 4x6’ piece of art printed on acoustically transparent fabric that hides rock wool on the wall closest to my nearest speaker.

Right now I’m enjoying the evening with one panel between my pulled away from the wall standmounts preventing the reflection of the 65” display.

Works great and yet I still have realized improvements by moving up the PS Audio ladder of gear.

As long as the dimensions of the space are not bad, like a perfect cube, I think any room can sound good even great with enough time, effort and fine tuning.