When it comes to acoustic treatment, utilizing your living room’s best aspects can accentuate and provide a richer sound. Understanding how sound travels throughout a room can completely change your home’s auditory experience. Before getting started with acoustic treatment, however, it’s a good idea to understand basic room acoustics.
Understanding Sound Travel
As we install your sound system, we will take the time to understand how sound, itself, travels through the room. When sound is created in a room, it projects outwards in all directions. A portion of it—which is known as direct sound—travels in a straight line. The remaining sound—known as reflected sound—bounces across a room’s surfaces.
Because direct sound doesn’t interact with a room’s parameters, its frequency balance stays pure. Its tone is unaltered. Reflected sound, meanwhile, can change a theater sound system’s original sound ever so slightly. Depending on a room’s size, as well as its reflective surfaces, these changes can be either small or large. To maximize your room’s acoustics, you’ll need to ensure its reflective surfaces are conducive to ease of sound travel.
Improving Your Room’s Acoustics
Whether we’re setting up a theater room, a recording studio, or a simple meeting area benefitted by audio entertainment, you can improve a room’s sound in a few ways. Check out the following home acoustic treatment tips, and make your home sound awesome:
● Tip One: Close Off the Windows
First, reduce your home theater’s number of windows. Glass really messes with acoustics. Consider closing off your windows with large acoustic panels. If you can’t, install some heavy drapes. Damper the glass as much as possible, and reduce any auditory feedback.
● Tip Two: Eliminate Corners
Corners are your enemies. Put bass traps in your room’s corners. In doing so, you’ll greatly reduce your home’s trapped sounds. Plus, you’ll know where your home theater’s bass is coming from.
● Tip Three: Utilize Furniture
Large furniture items, like couches and chairs, can work as bass-traps, too. Bookshelves work similarly well. If your room has ‘runaway’ acoustics, utilize these furniture pieces to reduce and level out the sound. That said, don’t rely on them. They can boost a room’s acoustics, but over-application can lead to a deafened environment.
Learning about your own space not only can create a unique sound for your home it can also help us when we come to install your brand new sound system. Take some time to learn about acoustics online, and consider rearranging your home theater to maximize overall sound quality. In general: Practice leads to perfection. Every home is different, and every home theater requires a different setup. To have your home theater sound system installed today, give us a call at 763-420-1070.