[sumone]

I'm lost at how to tackle this problem. I'm basically trying to turn my bedroom into my listening room (and still be my bedroom too!). All the furniture I have already is a clothes dresser, a computer desk, and my bed (TV too if you call it furniture). Don't have anything on the walls.

I live on the second floor of a 3-flat, so I'm right in the middle. I can hear the people above walking & moving stuff around, while the people below me can hear me moving & walking around, and not to mention both can hear my music.

This is an apartment, not a condo. Therefore I can't add/remove floors or take down walls (as mentioned in some web sites I've read regarding sound-proofing). Size of room is approx. 14'Lx7'Wx9'H. It's a 2 bed room, a living room, non-eat-in kitchen, and a bathroom. Rent is $750. I'm a college kid. So remember that before suggesting $10,000 solutions!

My first and foremost concern is sound enhancement, and then sound-isolation. I have a lot of reverberation occuring as is obvious with the mids & highs. The bass response I have now is horrible. Probably have huge cancellation issues. The one thing I absolutely hate is walking to one side of the room to hear the bass around frequency X and then having to go to another part of the room to hear the bass around frequency Y. And I really need my sub-bass! I probably don't get anything under 50hz! A good bass extension down to at leat 35hz would be optimal.

So my question is this: What would be the best, less-costly solution to sound-proof & sonically enhance a bedroom, in an apartment on the second floor of a 3-flat where modification of the structure of the walls, ceiling, and floors is NOT an option? Also, what should I look for in terms of fire-rating???

 

[bg4533]

Do you currently have carpet? If not I recommend getting it or at least some heavy rugs.

Are you locked into a lease? If not it might be easier just to move to somewhere more ideal.

 

[sumone]

No carpet.

Haha, I just moved here last week! 1 year lease!

 

[bhd812]

good and bad news...

the bad news is your in a apartment, in other words I guess you can not do nothing. condo's and apartments are a no no for anything speaker wise! (unless you own the building itself).


the good news is your on headfi, a place where you can find the best in headphone audio and come close to something your neighbors wont mind you having

 

[sumone]

I mean but what about fiberglas panels & sound proof foam and all those other products? Cause I know sound-proofing is gonna be hard if you don't own the building but there have to be some alternatives, although they won't work as well as if you tore down the walls & ceiling & floor. I just don't know what to get cause I don't want some fire-hazardous material lining my walls, you know.

There HAS to be some way....

Sound-proofing was my second concern. Reducing reflection, reverberation, and standing waves was my primary concern, which should be much easier than sound-proofing.

 

[Garbz]

Ok this is something i've been playing with all year and I've come to a pretty satisfactory solution.

There's allways a bit of sound cancelling in a small enclosed room (mine is rectangular listening down the room). I've started by placing my speakers in positions from the wall which causes as little screups to the bass. Currently i have a satisfying hump at the 80hz mark, but a little dip at 110hz. While bass isn't perfect this is as good as it gets in this room without some fancy sound tiles, and it is very full bodied.

When positioning speakers a movement as little as 1cm can make a world of difference, and my speakers have a curved solid cabinet so are probably less effected by positioning then most. (For reference they are 40cm from back wall, and 60cm from right wall, toed in.)

I had the same problem with reflections especially when listening to rock music. Find a friend and listen in your favorite position while he walks down the wall. Chances are there's only one specific position that is causing the sound to create nasty reflections off. In this place some cheap sound tiles can be placed to eliminate them, or in my case a tall box with a bathrobe over it. Some people also grab some cheap rugs and put them up on the wall in an artistic way. Remember they don't need to be walked on so money's not an issue. Also this spot on the wall is very dependant on the toe-in of the speakers. Rotating about 5-10 degrees meant moving the bathrobe assembly some 50cm closer to the speakers.

Btw what floor do you have? Tiles (shudders), carpet or even better wood?

The bass problem is the result of waves cancelling. There's a few good cheap ways to battle this problem. If you have a giant cdrack put it behind you and pull out every second cd. This creates a defracted surface to disrupt the waves, and is one of the ways a local sound studio handles it's acoustic issues. This is dependant on lots of cds though. A way that I'll be handling as soon as renovations start upstairs is to put a giant bookshelf behind me. If you have a girlfriend steal all her fluffy animals which should do wonders for reflections of the back wall.

Finally what are the dimensions of your room? A friend of min has a very small and square room about 4x4m. Square is bad, so he put a row of cupboards along one side to eliminate this. But since his room is small the best thing he's ever done for the acoustics is buy a giant reclining chair. The big fabric thing did wonders in his room sucking pretty much all of the nasties out of it.

Anyway if you want a bit more help, sketch a rough drawing of the room showing bed, desk, speakers, any other big things, and your ideal listening position.

 

[sumone]

attached is ms paint job of my room.

as for the bass cancelling / standing waves...does the foam on the walls battle that?

 

[GanChan]

My solution to this problem was...isolating headphones.

 

[sumone]

lol. do a search on me & senn hd-280s. I've got headphones! As much as I like headphones, I need some speakers...so I can really be into the music & have the bass hit me in my chest!

I don't need the BEST acoustic room in the world, just something decent where the response is as flat as it can get given my restrictions. the ideal listening place will usually be while laying on my bed.

 

[Garbz]

I'm the same, my headphones have more fidelity then the speakers but it's just not music.

Ok that room is ... nasty! There's a few things for this one.

Wood generally absorbs highs and mids, and bounces bass. This gives sound a nice whole roundess which rarely needs deadening. So you can probably ignore the floor.

One thing to figure out is what's cancelling, the sub bass or the bass output of the satelites. Try using one without the other to see what is causing issues. If using the sats without the sub smoothens your bass, and visa versa, then they are both interferring with each other.

The mids / highs reflecting is most probably the left speaker of the left and right walls. The right speaker wouldn't cause too many reflections being where it is in the mids/highs. In this case the left wall needs something. Play around with just hanging up some bed sheets or curtains to play around with untill you find something satisfactory before looking for a permanent solution like soundtiles. Something interesting I had going while I was looking for solutions to my wall problem was to toe the speakers in a LOT. We are talking about a 45 degree toein, which would point them about 1m in FRONT of my listening position. Since the speakers were firing at opposite walls reflections were considerably reduced, but it's a compromise since it looks strange and forces you to listen off axis.

The subwoofer under the desk is probably not a good move as far as fidelity goes and it would like other speakers perform better unobstructed and with a bit of room to breath. The bass bouncing around under the desk will make this sound especially inconsistent. In a friend's apparently the solution to all his bass problems was to move the sub out from under the tv cabinet and 50cm from each wall (back / left) which cleared things up a lot. It is important though if you move the sub that it still phases correctly otherwise you have a whole new set of issues to deal with. Lots of amps have a variable phase adjust on the sub though.

Dodgy bass response from the satilites (i'm assuming here your satilites are medium sized bookshelf speakers which can actually produce some mid/high bass?) is caused by them sitting in the corner and not being isolated from their bass. Unfortuantly you don't have a lot of options here, but still a movement of only a few cm can still make a world of difference. For isolation if the speakers aren't spiked, spike them, or place some kind of isolating foam in there. Once again another compromise. You want the steadiest speaker, but the least resonance from the box / dresser underneat to affect the driver.

A lot of bass problems are also caused by 90degree corners in rooms. There are some "Bass traps" which you could try which essentially turn these into 45 degree corners, have a gap behind them, are made of foam, and are ribbed like sound tiles too. A local company to me sells these http://www.cliff.com.au/products/fon...icproducts.htm but i'm sure you can find other solutions locally too.

 

[bhd812]

Well I believe in the speakers rule idea, headphones are no short come niether.

A great source,amp, and headphones can do something more then a speaker setup with small room - apartment setting can do.

I will not argue the speakers here, but senn 280's are noway near the real sound you can get off cans.

go to a headfi meet and try some good setups and youll see the speaker vs headphone for you and your apartment and the time and look of crappy isolation will be a benefit.

 

[sumone]

No headphones!!! I'm not willing to battle headphones vs. speakers because #1, I'm not concerned if headphones will sound better than a speaker-based setup. Not that headphones are bad, they're just not what I want in my room.

All I'm looking for in terms of sound, is not something spectacular. Just something that can #1, reduce reverberation in the mids/highs and #2, reduce standing waves/cancellation in the bass region (<100hz).

Forgot to mention, the speakers I have are the Klipsche ProMedia 2.1. I currently have my speakers angled so that I create that "triangle" image with that chair in the middle of the room as the third vertex.

The sats & subwoofer don't interfere with each other (as verified by trying each individually and comparing to when they're both playing).

If wood bounces sound more, wouldn't that be bad, since that could cause some reverberation?

I tried having the sub next to the left speaker (e.g., sub on top of my dresser in the back left corner of the room, left speaker less than 2 inches to the right of the sub). The bad thing is the chord that connects the sub to the speakers is short, so I can't really put the sub across the room from the sats.

Not sure what you mean by the satellites being isolated from their bass, and what "spiking" is. With regard to vibration/resonance under the satellites, on a scale from 1-10, 10 being a lot of vibration, I'd rate it 0.

One other thing I forgot to mention was that my back wall, (the wall opposite from my dresser, desk, speakers, etc.) has 2 windows that go from about waist-high to about 1 foot from the ceiling. They are centered on that wall so that they take up about 2/3 of the wall width-wise.

So when dealing with low bass (<80hz), the back wall is the main thing to be modified, not the side walls? Doesn't bass go in all directions though?

Thanks.

 

[Garbz]

Everything bounces sound differently, wood is one of the nicest ways to bounce sound. This is why all the seats in the sydney opera house are made of wood. They bounce sound as if a living person were sitting in there, so the sound is the same whether it's a sellout show or just a small convention. Lots of people put all sorts of isolation over wood, but my personal experience is that I would love to have a wooden floor instead of carpet. That said, try laying a rug or something, it may have the opposite effect for you. Remember audio is all personal preferences.

The chord is indeed a problem, any chance of getting an extention of sorts? Freedom gives choices, and choices will ultimatly lead to a better solution.

With isolation i mean do the boxes of the sub sit directly on the wooden cabinet / box? If so the cabinet contribute considerably to the resonance of the room. Many speakers are provided with spikes so when seated on carpet they are stable, and when seated on wooden floors the floorboards don't resonate with bass notes. Try putting some BlueTac (it's like chewing gum except it's actually designed to be stuck places) under the speakers, or thoes little rubber legs from the bottom of cutting boards. This should help isolate the speaker from the cabinet and may fix the problem.

You didn't mention were the sats or the sub the bass problem? Obvisouly the sub isn't mid's / high's problem.

The bass problems are caused by cancelling reflections. That is the bass wave bounces off the back wall and cancells with the incomming wave. Often it's the corners as well. Try putting something round or something fabric and 45 degrees in the corners of the room to rule out that problem.

GLASS GLASS! Why didn't you say so. Get some thick curtains on them quick. Glass is like having an extra tweeter placed behind you. It reflects ALL trebble and mids because of it's stiffness. This may be much more of a problem then a flat side wall.

And keep us up to date and we'll keep the ideas comming.

bhd812 we understand what you mean. But given the choice between a Sennheiser Orpheus and a set of speakers, unless it's night time the speakers win for me. Sure the headphones sound better, but do they sound real or do they sound like you are imagining music inside your head

 

[sumone]

While this is all going on, any recommendations for sound-proofing or not even sound proofing, just reducing some of the bass that travels through the walls. Didn't know how bad it was until my brother was playing some music while I was just about to unlock the door to enter the apartment (all the while thinking, "the idiot playing that loud music should be kicked out"). The music wasn't even loud, I guess the apartment was constructed with little thought to noise traversing the building.

 

[ooheadsoo]

I can't believe no one has mentioned rigid fiberglass yet. It's not going to cure all of your problems, but it's the only cheap thing with a chance in hell of doing anything about your bass issues, and without mountains of it in corners, it still won't fix everything. Unless you seriously pack the walls with fiberglass, it's not going to stop the sound from traveling around, but it's better than nothing. Foam only absorbs mids and highs, forget about anything under 250hz. And I don't think wood particularly absorbs highs and mids

Think violin.