Hi Fran, Ethan, Guys,
I'm currently going through my mastering room to see where improvements can be made, especially as I recently went from a console-less setup to a console in massive laminated wood. Gotto love ergonomics
Due to the new furniture, I notice a slight flutter echo as well as some 'ringing' noise in the mids at high levels. I'd also like to better tame the low end of the room as well. It's not bad, but it can always be better, right?
Roughly speaking, the room is 570cm wide by 750cm long (actually there is a row of cupboards forming a kind of room divider here, they reach almost to the ceiling - about 2 meterss high, the room continues behind them for another 4 meters approximately) with 250cm ceiling height.
There are absorbtion panels hung 30cm from ceiling to catch primary reflections, and absorbers placed at primary reflection points on both side and back walls, as well as a heavy curtain to (I hope) attentuate HF reflections from cupboard wall behind listening position).
My monitors are dipoles, which may or may not influence the best way to go about treating the room.
I expect at minimum I'll want to put some sort of absorbent or diffusive panels above the listening position (and console) to kill the reflections there, as well as some sort of bass trapping in the room corners behind the monitors. Sound reasonable?
Anyway, while reading up on things at RealTraps, Auralex, RPG, and other similar sites, it seems that each company advovates treatment based on their main product (not suprisingly). I.e. RealTraps seems to emphasise absorption (esp. at bass and low mid frequencies), RPG focuses on diffusion and diffraction, and Auralex would like to sell you foam. Lots of foam.... None of them seem to advocate all three (RPG perhaps coming the closest with their trinity approach: imaging, spatial and bass managment tools). However they seem to focus on specific bass frequencies when using membrane absorbers, while Ethan seems to advocate more broadband designs.
From the collected experience in acoustical design here, is there any reason to favor one approach over another? Perhaps a combination of bass trapping and diffusion provides the best results in smallish rooms? Ethan's site seems to demonstrate pretty clearly what happens, yet most any high end facility you find on the net is usually using RPG and/or Aralex (albeit in much larger and purpose-built rooms).
Cheers,
Thor
p.s. Yes, I know I should get a professional in to assess the room. I'd also like to learn more about it myself.