Place acoustic panels on all walls and on the ceiling to cover the most amount of reflective surfaces, minimise noise, echo and reverb.
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Prioritise placing panels on first reflection points, at ear level and in corners.
First Reflection Points
The first place youll want to put acoustic panels is where sound first hits prior to reaching a listeners ear. These areas are known as first reflection points.
Every room has spots where sound waves are most likely to be reflected, so its important to position acoustic foam or fabric in these areas. For example, if you know that people tend to talk in a certain spot in the office, then the sound of their voices is likely to resound off the wall theyre facing, making it a great candidate for acoustic treatment.
At Ear Level
Sound waves travel in a straight line until they encounter an obstacle, so its important to know how high to mount acoustic panels. Too high or too low can seriously impact the performance of an acoustic panel.
This will take some knowledge of your space and how people use it. In a classroom or office where most people spend the majority of their time sitting, youll want to position the panels about four to five feet up to line up with their ears. In rooms where theres a lot of standing, the panels should be around five to seven feet up.
In the Corners
Bass tends to build up most strongly in the corners of rooms, so treating these areas is a great way of minimising the noise. Please note that while standard acoustic panels are excellent at absorbing mid-range and high-frequency sounds, theyre not as effective at managing lower frequencies.
Bass traps, which are specifically designed to control low-frequency sounds, may be a more appropriate option for these areas.
Its also important to place sound absorbing across parallel walls to maximise acoustic treatment.
However, small budgets and physical obstacles in the room may make this unachievable. In this case, ensure that each set of parallel walls has at least one wall thats treated with acoustic material to alternate your panels with the opposing wall so that each gap on one side lines up with a panel on the other.
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Sound above 400Hz is considered to be directional. In fact, the higher the frequency, the more directional the sound waves tend to be. In a home theatre or 2-channel listening room, these waves bounce off the nearby walls and produce very noticeable second order reflections which compete with the direct sound from the loudspeakers.
You can easily control these reflections by strategically placing acoustic panels along the side walls to absorb them. As a rule, you should mount them at ear and/or speaker height and position them along the wall to capture the early reflections from the loudspeakers.
For optimal placement, the easiest and most effective way to position the panels is to use the mirror trick. To do this, you will need an assistant!
You can then mount your Primacoustic panels to the wall using Impalers. Note that you do not have to cover the full area; covering most of the surface will provide plenty of control. (If you are unsure how much treatment you need, check out this article.)
After treating the side walls, you can further improve control by absorbing the rear reflections on the wall behind the sitting position. For this, you would turn around while remaining in the listening position and then follow the same approach by marking the wall where you can see the speakers in the mirror. Primacoustic Scatter Blocks are a good option in this instance since they offer general area absorption without completely deadening the room. Too much absorption will remove the energy and excitement.
As a final measure, for those that want maximum definition, placing a couple of 3 thick acoustic panels behind the loudspeakers on the front wall will help eliminate comb-filtering caused by omnidirectional low frequencies emanating from the loudspeaker.
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