Ok let’s go in deeper now. Assuming I am new and I want the best for my room. What types of diffusors or bass traps should I use ? There are 1001 panels out there.
Again we cannot stop anyone from hanging anything they want in their rooms. That’s their room, their $, their choice for treatment, their call, as $$ also plays a part.
But what I can share is that, a good quality diffusor, makes a hell lot of difference to the set up.
If you had just bought one from China/India, from an unknown source, say something like the above ,
u might want to pause, and do a bit of a research, and probably ditch it for a quality one. Or if u haven’t got any, make sure you do a thorough research, or even if u decide to diy, make sure you get the mathematical calculations correct
Or even this below, a polyfoam skyline diffusor
U wanna make sure it really is effective, before hanging it onto the walls. Remember space is precious, when u hang the above, u no longer have space to hang another absorption or diffusor
Now, having used both the SMT wings, and the bass traps with BAD in front. I must say they both function differently, very different.
In dialing in the system, I always like to maintain a specific pattern of consistency . Maybe that’s how we have been trained, consistency being either you are consistently wrong, or consistently correct. We don’t have a situation where we put in a debit, but not a credit. It’s only one way, either the debit credit is correct or the debit credit is wrong.
Anyway, back to subject. That’s how I like to do it, consistency. And they work wonders indeed. When we approach the room acoustics, what we want to achieve is a consistent decay, be it in the lower frequencies or upper frequencies.
Although we are working to improve the decay times in the lower octave to 0.2 to 0.3ms , we want the decays extended at the higher frequencies to take advantage of the physchoacoustics where our brain interprets the room as “bigger” or more “spacious” . A consistent “reducing decay times” from 20-200hz, is very pleasant sounding indeed. Similarly, a consistently “extended decay time” in the upper frequencies, makes it very pleasant , about 40ms extension is really pleasant especially for stereo. This also suggests why a lot of the high end rooms are fitted with mostly diffusors . Quality ones
So ya, if I was to recommend, I would highly recommend confidently to go For the SMT wings. As far as my testing goes, this is one of the best acoustic diffusors one can get, it’s calculated, proven to be effective. No horse run indeed
The bass traps with BAD ply, cannot give me that type of extended high, liveliness and extended decays in the upper frequencies where stereo can be very pleasant . They were instead, more effective with the upper bass frequencies only
And the answer is yes, we need at least a few SMT quality like diffusors, or equivalent in our room, especially for stereo, the stage, airiness, space, it’s just unbeatable. They really bring the entire system up to another level.
A hybrid approach, absorption- diffusion, is really the way to go. They supplement each other well.
If you are still using foams like this below,
My advise, really is Ditch it ! Oh boy… hope I’ve not started another war…
… No 1 diffusor that one
absorbers work harder
