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Thank you for that video👍🏼 A lot of people don't understand yet that room and its treatment is a huge part of listening experience. Upgrading speakers and amps and DACs is the battle for inches whereas adding treatment in an untreated room is a leap in miles.
My humble view of the importance of elements in the digital hi fi chain starting from the most important. 1 The room. 2 Speaker placement. 3 Speakers. 4 Amplifier. 5 Dac. 6 Cables. 7 Main.
Room treatment definitely helps. My room used to be quite reflective, and playing music that had a lot of reverb in it was beyond irritating. It was unlistenable. Absorbers took care of that and now it’s just a recording with reverb in it. I would say the soundstage is more focused now, with better localization of the players in the recording, although narrowed. I can play music for longer periods of time and not get fatiguing. I’m happy I did it. I didn’t have to use ceiling treatment, which I consider going too far.
Having been to a good few concerts, Wembley , Albert hall etc I was allways impressed how good the ceiling curtaining was. So I tried tapestries, ceiling skirts and the like and was very very surprised how easily dampening could work. Callways
One of the acousticians I worked with had the opinion that a room full of books is the best way to treat a room. Maybe a ceiling cloud to deal with first reflections and maybe a diffuser somewhere to fill a hole but that's pretty much it
Love this topic so much. Currently, I have 2 panels on my side walls, 4 hexagon panels on my ceiling and 2 floor to ceiling bass traps. I’m lucky since it is a basement room, but the results are stunning so far. I had no lasers or precise placements other than where they looked right but love the effect on music and dialogue. I have 2 more wall panels on the way and 2 more ceiling hexagons.
As a record producer and mix engineer working through 80s working In the best studios in the world seeing the demise of tape to digital I can say you speak so much sense it’s really refreshing. Your room is everything, I can destroy a great mix and wreck the sound of potentially great gear ... nice work .. I now follow you ... ps I am in the market for a streamer with a dac
I would like to say You Make Me Sick in the most positive way ever. You are as happy as a cat or dog being adopted from a shelter. The joy on your face, in your voice & expression say it all. I want what you have pure joy of a complete system i.e. room included. Love the video & update, the information is priceless. Keep it coming but tone down your happiness your making us jealous.
Need to do a fair bit of this myself. But unfortunately living in Australia is difficult to find a accompany to do a holistic approach treatment set up. Love your room it looks fantastic.😁🎧👍
Awesome and looks great, as I was watching the last video my first thought was that double sided tape was an ambitious piece of the ceiling installation puzzle, but otherwise looks awesome and gives me one more thing to add to my dream list, fantastic mate !
I love your videos and I'm chuffed that you like the results of the treatment. I personally love near-field listening. I find it more immersive and engaging. I love my very "entry-level" system. Music is The Best. And thankyou for introducing me to some great new-to-me music.
You are right that if a piece of hi-fi hear would bring as much positive change as a room treatment, everyone would rush to buy it… What is really going to be a challenge is comparing gear from the past to something you listen now in the treated room…
I have for me good sounding equipment but my living room isn’t ok but I can live with it. The last few years I was streaming Spotify in premium quality with my IPad using a dragonfly cobalt dac with a Hifiman Sundara headphone and I stream with Apple Airplay 2 to my stereo streaming receiver but I wanted more. I have seen your videos about Apple lossless music and I was inspired. But for the settings of the music I couldn’t follow so I contacted Apple Help and they helped me fantastic, so now I’m listening to Apple Music in lossless to Jethro Tull the album Songs from the wood and I can hear the difference. Thank you so much for your fine videos and be assured that I keep following you. Kind regards, Ludo Belgium
In response to John's previous comment regarding this treatment of the room potentially bringing his experience when reviewing products further from the ordinary consumer... I believe that having a treated room better allows the listener to better judge the difference between different pieces of gear. It takes the room (at least to some extent) out of the equation, thus yielding a better informed review. Although products will sound different in different rooms, this allows the reviewer to give an honest opinion on how products sound in relation to one another. I for one applaud this effort.
I totally agree with you; the room has to be treated well before even considering any upgrades. Have you heard of Still Points Aperture panels? I’ve heard so much good stuff about them but they are quite pricey.
Thank you thank you thank you. We spend so much time thinking about what kind of cabinets and baffles and wave guides our drivers are operating in. But, the room is the real cabinet. Think of the entire loudspeaker as the driver, and the room is the cabinet and waveguide. I think the thing about audiophiles is that there are no bragging rights or ego boosts to room treatment the way there are with name dropping or bragging rights about different brands, or how much money was spent on a specific component. But, the room is where the sound happens. Thank you for taking this on and taking this seriously. Hoping your efforts help shift the conversation. Much appreciated!
@@bobb.9917 You realize, of course, you can expect to pay much more for those "limited-edition,pre-worn tees in their unwashed,sweaty natural state-perfect when listening to your Blue Note original pressings(mono only)." John,I think I've just stumbled over a way for you to really maximize your sites profitability... 🤔
For most partnered up men … dream on the female in your life will 99% say no.. While single, I’ll look at doing a scaled down version when I move into my new place. Currently my daughters ask me why I have so many sets of speakers!! Can’t wait to see their reaction when I do something similar to this 😂 Another great video and continues to educate and give ideas..
My rank of infuence on sound is as this: Master recording.. room.. speakers pleacement... speakers ... amp...DAC .. signal cables..mains cables and the electical instalation from the main switch board to the outlet... and finaly speakers cables. P.S. BSc electrical engineer and audiophil for some 40 Years Best regards ... and kudos to John Darco... Great job has been already done!
@@DANBOOO DIY - wood 1X6X48 - each with 2 rock wool panels. Cover with material of your choice. Made 24 of them to take care of reflection points including 4 on ceiling. Thick wood carpet on wood floor. My dedicated room is 11X17X8.
John, perhaps your minimalist aesthetic would've been better served via all uniformly white treatments. I share your minimalist leanings, yet unfortunately I'm near drowning in clutter.
But wait! John! Are you relatable? Yeah, you are. Thanks for sharing this part of the journey with us. It would be great to understand what something like this costs, I'm in the US so I'd need to find a local expert, and impact to the ear(s). Cheers Dr. Jeff One other thought. I wonder if there is anyone who can measure how an individual "hears" and measures room acoustics and then comes up with a room treatment that optimizes sound for the individual. And I say the individual because as a married man with children, music is largely an individual experience and less so a social one. So the investment would be about how I hear, not how the rest of my family hears.
I have a very modest hifi, quad s2s, m2si, ifi dac, good chord cables. Prob no more than 2.5k. What I do have is home made bass traps/diffuser behind speakers, no first reflection points, large rug on the foot under speakers and a giant rug on the front wall. It sounds 10x better with those few bits than nothing at all. Room treatment is a very powerful tool, not to mention proper speaker placement.
Yup, no two rooms "sound" alike. Room size, shape, furnishings, speaker placement, standing waves and room nodes all effect what we hear. Inexpensive fixes can really help. Just don't be afraid to experiment. Glad you've found nirvana.
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Hi Darko audio, I didn't realise how much room treatment can do. I live in a quare boxed living room. Little small house. Lucky I have got neighbours and they are quite deaf. But the sound quality isn't for them 😊 so I did cheap soundproof foam, course mainly I got it for free. Placed a 2x2 meter thin wood and glued the foam on to it. Placed that panel behind my listning position. Did the same on the ceiling but only a view tiles with open concrete spaces. A big floor carpet on the floor between speakers and listning position. Unbelievable that so little do so much. My stereo is much more focused and a detailed soundstage. Little sounds from far behind the speakers. I keep this for what it is. Next house will be getting a better angled room and full acoustic treatment. I bet this treatment is far more valueble the all my cable upgrades and sourses upgrades combined. Thank you for the great video. Cheers
Another factor is certain speakers exacerbate room problems more than others. Dipole or open baffle speakers seem to excite room modes less but paradoxically are more visually intrusive. Pick your poison, visually intrusive loudspeakers or visually intrusive room treatments.
I also despise clutter and I feel like the balance and flow of a room is paramount to me being productive and clear-headed. That said, room treatment passes the test because I look at it and the appeal of its function can over-ride much of my design squabbling. So it’s not just design, it’s also function that brings me calm and clarity. I don’t feel at all like a control-freak but more a lover of taming chaos. Great videos. Much to think about.
Those panels and install look good and the mid to high frequencies are going to be much better. The hard part will be low frequency absorption since 20 Hz waves (not that you have ever reviewed speakers that go that low, if I recall correctly,) are close to about 12 meters long. In my next (and “final”) room I’m going to start with low frequency treatment, I think. The other good thing about your room is that with concrete walls and floors noise from the exterior is reduced.
Agree that the room messes up our music when we have large speakers and play loud enough. Suggest you also try PSI Audio AVAA C20 bass traps and also Trinnov Amethyst for room optimisation.
Since I invested in GIK bass traps and mid-high absorbers I have come to realize that your speakers talk to your room, and your room in turn talks to you. Acoustic treatment can make a massive difference.
Bravo - interesting perspective, and spending sense-check. Have used GIK panels before and they really did help tame the higher frequencies. What was surprising was how much it improved soundstage - really tightened it up. Worth noting that GIK, and I'm sure other companies, do absorption panels with pictures on them too - like a canvas print. Can even use your own image. Might well make the difference for domestic acceptance.
That’s what I’m doing. I have two 2’ x 3’ Art panels and we like them so much I got authorization from the wife for two more! The GIK panels turned out awesome, and not much more than a piece of framed artwork.
Looks great. Big chunks of fudge. I think it works well with the room size. Unfortunately I think it would be too dominant in our much smaller room. Look forward to hearing more about it.
hello Darko sorry if you know this but when you get rug make sure is made of pure wool one is more healthy and is good to stop reflection from the floor and one more time hello o hola from MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA but i am originally from URUGUAY
Us minimalists suffer the most in this domain. If you're a hoarder that packs stuff floor to ceiling you'll probably have a decent sounding room. At least reflections will be handled. But the desire for a room free of clutter and lots of bulky furniture and cabinets is such an echo chamber that will destroy your hifi system.
I have curtains of different materials installed on all 4 walls of the room. They can open and close to expose part of the walls. Behind the curtains there are sections of the walls with other material attached flat against the wall. The floor is covered in thick carpet. The only true reflecting surface is the ceiling The room is also a home cinema with 120 inch motorised screen. Heavy motorised velvet curtains open and close in front of the screen. With the speakers placed about 3 feet in from the side walls and about 4 feet from the front wall I get a very non-fatiguing sound image where i can definitely hear the natural reverberation of the instruments in the recording giving an almost 3 dimensional soundstage
Great Video. I also ordered 8 6" deep GIK panals for my room. Since mine is a Living/home theatre/ stereo room all in one I had to really think it out so it would look less like panals and more like modern art works.
Roomtreatment is surely one of my dreams and possibly my next step in the "upgrade virus". Yours looks really neat and the materials used are very nice. I unfortunately noticed that some panels were not placed strait next to each other. With this kind of minimalistic looking treatment this will stand out. This should have been done properly; especially for the money and done by specialists. I definately don't want to spoil anything or mean be blunt, but they should correct it. (it's my opinion; compare it with hanging a painting a bit off axis).
Great video mate. Any chance we can please get a video on those Vivid Kaya's? Am thinking some Kaya s12's or the floorstanders might be the end game speakers for me and would love to hear your thoughts on them!
I was thinking just that when I saw they were using adhesive tape to fix the panels on your ceiling. Unless it's some NASA grade stuff, how long would it last - a month? Turns out I was too optimistic :-)
In 99% of residential listening rooms/home theaters what is the one common component of an audio system which was NOT built to provide the best audio quality at a given price point???........... the room. Reducing high-frequency reflections is great, but if the low frequencies are not treated, the results will be less than desired.
There are places in my room where the bass sounds great but those 2 places are impractical & far from my listening position or anywhere even close to it. Only if i stand with my head a foot or less against a side wall half way down my room's length is the bass deep & natural when the music calls for it to be. Even bass harmonics of higher pitch instruments, especially oboes, cellos, bassoons & baritone saxaphones suffer greatly i.e. unless i stick my head onto a side wall to hear how they should sound, where instruments sound lifelike or very close to as if played live in the concert hall or chamber. I like all genres from A... (good band) ...to Zulu mass charts & the low end is seriously compromised on all genres, deep bass dissapears compared with standing with my head against the side wall. I've tried everything allowable (by the misses) to fix it but cannot, i have 13 (yes 13) inch bass drivers on my B&W proffesionally restored 1973 made hybrid electrotatics (B&W DM 70 Continentals) B&W's best speaker to present date according to many who've heard all B&W's made, i havent but next to my recently unusable 15" Tannoys DC's (1 speaker's driver suddenly started a concophonous msgnet rubbing sound i'm well familiar with from decades of many soeakers) those 2 speaker types are easily my all time fave's & the B&Ws esp' are capable of fast, tight & ultra deep bass that i heard in the accoustically treated hi-fi shop showroom where i bought them s/h (naturally) but i cannot hear them like that at home where my living room is the limiting factor. P.S. Bass wavelength at 20 Hz is well over 100'ft at zero db loss. The single longest cathedral organ pipe (for deepest pitch) is somewhere in Germany & 2 or 3 centuries old, it's bass pipe is 128 ft tall & dips to 16'hz but at 3 db down (256'ft pipe would be zero db loss i presume) while all other deepest bass pipes of cathedral organs are 16, 32 & very rarely 64'ft feet long, they still do around 16'hz but at 12, 18 or 24 db down kength depending i.e. 1/4 or 1/16 or 1/32'nd the full wavelength. I may have the maths slightly off from reading old books on accoustics decades ago, but that is approx correct & the accurate trend, meaning we'd need impossibly** massive rooms for true deep bass. **i.e. impossible if your surname isn't Rothschild or Musk (or even Hunter B.)
It seems that an over treated room sort of equates to closed back headphones whereas a less treated room equates more to open back headphones. I'm an open back headphone person. I like ambience as long as the music doesn't suffer. Anyway, a great couple of videos so thanks. I appreciate the production value of your content.
I like the white color of the ceiling mounted one. The wood jobs with the black slots would look better if they were all white. I always see those in the wood with speaker cloth looking slots and think they look ugly. White cabinet with white grill cloth would look better and provide a better backdrop for any art on the wall.
Great. Now work on the important issue, which is the mains.{ And I'm not talking Conditioners}.Experience tells me this is more important if you have an average room.People have different ears and room colourations can effect what their ears perceive. A lower noise floor is way more important. Dynamics and presence. I've been preaching this since the 80's. Amazing how many people just wave it away. I laugh at how many people have huge amps but a basic power circuit.
The new panels look great! Also, I see you've got the Meze Audio Liric there. Can't wait to (hopefully) hear your thoughts on it. Because I'm a renter that moves regularly and often live in spaces that are acoustic nightmares, I have a small collection of panels that do help, but there's only so much you can do when your space is changing every couple years. Owning a room that I can treat to the nines and turn into an ideal listening space is at the top of my audio bucket list.
After having to sell off all my really decent 2 channel gear due to lack of employment from this pandemic I'm at the point I would like to start to rebuild. The room I have is absolutely terrible acoustically and now after watching this video and considering the costs it may take for my room to sound decent I've kind of lost complete interest in rebuilding. Maybe I'll just get a Sonos speaker.
Hi John, your voice is softer and clearer now in the "new" room. Actually, I had to turn the volume up a little, but that is not a bad comment, it just compensated for your softer voice. BTW Apparently books (on bookshelves) have great reverb-damping properties.
Such a real guy…I loved the presentation and your obvious enthusiasm. I’m new to the idea of acoustical treatment of my own listening space, I have always just managed to stick my head in the sand and try to deny any flaws existed because this was MY wonderful hi-fi gear in MY comfortable home! So just now watching this video caused a spark of comprehension: practical and strategically placed acoustical solutions really do appear to provide a remarkable improvement of sound quality in the listening space, considering the amount of effort involved. And there’s the rub: the kind of treatment shown in your video uses some very expensive acoustic panels. Beautiful to be sure, but rather costly. I’m going to have to do my room treatment more in a DIY manner (sure would be nice to have some of those DC2/DC3 diffusers) and my main question is how do I determine placement of panels, diffusers and traps? Is there some rule of thumb on this, or do I need to have some electronic measurement taken? I think I have the right ideas concerning construction of the panels etc, and since I would be building them myself the subject of “how many” and “where” comes into play. Any and all recommendations on this topic are welcome, it will be knowledge that I don’t currently have. -Thank you -
Once again a very useful and clever vidéo. It gives me some ideas and willingness to dig into this topic. I'm a little bit afraid of the investment, but it is something I will care about now (like loundspeaker placement on which I took sometimes to understand how key it is). Thanks again. Eric
We treated 2/3rd of our ceiling with stretch material, with sound absorbing material above it. It costs €100 per m2, so for 45m2 that was quite an investment, but we got rid of the reverb in our room. Music sound improved a lot. It was a difference of night and day, really. Best investment ever for getting better sound. I don't think that we will treat the part of the ceiling that was not treated. The room now sounds about right. I think there's a risk of overdoing it. At one point it may start to sound too dry, where all sound is being absorbed. Determining the sweet spot is difficult. I must say that our ceiling looks better than the stuff you've got up there. It looks just like a regular white ceiling, so there's no offers to made there. There's also an aesthetic factor to take into account. I still want some art to decorate the walls.
Excellent video. Working on my room now bits and pieces at a time. It make such a big difference with every new thing I buy. I can't wait until I'm done. I really love this channel. It's very informative but also weirdly calming... May be the accent. Ha. Keep up the great work
I really enjoyed these two reviews. Everything you say makes perfect sense. Our ears are the most important component of any system and we can tweak things to make the system sound better through speaker positioning, better cabling etc etc. I can still remember the first time I found the sweet spot for my speakers, it was as if I had upgraded my whole system. Thanks for sharing John, keep them coming.
you touch a very important point: room treatment is extremely important... is much more important then a change from a good level component to a very good component... but the point is that all those audio-maniac can't talk for days and days about acoustict treatment and, more important to them, can't compulsive continuosly change room treatments just to feed their desire to have something to talk about in the forums (but they can do with components!)... it seems they exist because they say something in the forum, not because they enjoy music, do hope somebody after your video will start looking at his approach to hi-fi in more critical way... but I would not bet on that
