To get the best sound from your system, you need the right acoustic treatment.But which kind should you use? We remodeled our NY listening room using different approaches to find out.

by Brent Butterworth, CFG Labs

've advised maybe 2,000readers on what speakers to buy,but I can't remember a singlereader asking me what kind ofacoustic treatment they shoulduse. That tells me that thousandsof people are spending thousandsof dollars on audio products, andgetting, at best, mediocre sound. See, the acoustics of yourroom can affect the sound ofyour home theater almost asmuch as the quality of yourspeakers does--and roomacoustics have a far, far biggereffect on the sound than thequality of your electronics orcables. I guess a hunk of foamjust isn't as exciting or sexy as abeautifully crafted cabinet full ofdrivers, chokes, and capacitors,or a black box with a coupledozen buttons on the front. But Ihope that after reading thisarticle, you'll be inspired to starttreating your room fight.

Acoustic SciencesCorporationASC has earned an excellentreputation in both pro andconsumer

I audio, and the products theysupplied for this Face Off provedthat their reputation is extremelywell deserved. ASC started us off with four$739/pair Cube Traps, whichmeasure 37.5 by 14.5 by 14.5inches. Each Cube Trap ispacked with fiberglass, and ishollow in the middle so that ittraps bass frequencies. On twoadjacent sides, there's acousti-cally reflective tape between thefabric and the fiberglass. Whenyou place the Cube Traps in thecomers, you can turn them sothat two, one, or no reflectivesides are exposed. Complementing the CubeTraps were 16 Sound Panels,which cost $398 for a set ofeight. Each Sound Panel is madefrom fiberglass, with reflectivetape between the fiberglass andthe fabric. They measure 48 by 8inches, and they're about 2inches thick, so according toASC, they're absorptive atfrequencies above about 200 Hz,but the tape makes themreflective above about 1.5 kHz.The Sound Panels are framed inthin sheet plastic. The backs of

the frames have notches so you canhang them vertically or horizon-tally-just pound ina small nail andhang the panel.We found thesethe easiest toinstall of all theproducts we tried.We also foundthem the mostattractive. WhenA1 entered theroom, he en-thused, "Wow!This stuff looksgreat!" Joe and Ivery much agreed.ASC offers theseproducts inseveral neutralcolors (the oneswe tried are in anoff-white color called quartz), andalso offers 60 custom colors at extracost. Although all three of the manu-facturers featured in this Face Offoffer consulting services, ASC takesit to new heights by allowing you totake a "measurement" of

FACE OFF

Home Theater / February 1998

Reprinted from the February 1998 issue of Home Theater Magazine

FACE OFF

your room that they can thenanalyze. To take the measure-ment, you play a test CD withASC's Music Articulation TestTone over your system, andrecord the results on a cassette orDAT deck. You then send thetape to ASC, and they'll analyzeit so they can make specificrecommendations for you.ASC also provided us with aú couple of thin reflective sheets,which you place along the sidewalls to find the points of firstreflection--the place where thesound from the speaker reflects

directly at you.The points offirst reflectionare usually themost importantplace to putacoustic treat-ment. You canalso use anymirror for thispurpose; just sitin your normallisteningposition andhave a helpermove the mirroralong the leftwall until youcan see the leftspeaker, thenrepeat theprocess for theright speakerand the fightwall. At ASC'ssuggestion, wepositioned theCube Traps inthe comers, with

the reflective sides out in theback, and the absorptive sides outin the front. This gave us a live

Panel at each, then placed threemore Sound Panels on each sidewall, spaced about 5 inches apart.We placed four more Sound Panelson the rear wall, and two morebehind each of the main speakersup front. This setup gave us outstandingresults right away. The sound wasreasonably controlled, but verylively and airy, with the broadestsoundstage and the best trebledetail we heard in this test. "TheASC stuff tended to bring the sonicimage into focus," Al said. Thedynamics were also excellent,particularly on high frequencysounds like gunshots and the tablasfrom Trilok Gurtu's Living MagicCD. Al and I thought the basscontrol offered by theCube Traps was justright. “The bass is thebest I've heard in ourlistening room,” Alsaid. I found the lowend very strong, yetvery well controlled atthe same time. Joe,however, consideredthe bassunderwhelming fromhis listening chair. "I'dhave liked more bass,"he said, "so I think itwould have soundedbetter if we'd

ASCASC

have taken out acouple of traps." All threeof us found thetreble a littleemphasized withthe ASC products,though; the word"bright" shows upoften in my notesand in thepanelists' com-ments. We thinkthat with maybetwo more Sound

Panels on the side walls, we'dhave achieved near-perfection. Value-wise, the Sound Panelsseem very reasonably priced.The Cube Traps are a little -

expensive, but we thinkthat for their efficacyand flexibility, they'reworth it. Overall, wefeel that the ASC CubeTraps and Sound Panelsare super-recommend-able products thatcombine great looks,ease of installation, andoutstanding perfor-mance.

A. Our NY listeningroom treated theASC way. Not onlydid it sound good, itlooked great, too.B. The ASC SoundPanel (left) andCube Trap.

CFG Labs Measures: ASCWe measured the effects of the ASC products byplacing a microphone in the listening position toperform real-time spectrum analysis and RT60 (reverbtime) measurement--the time it takes for a sound todecay to 60dB below its original level. These chartsshow the changes the ASC products caused comparedto a measurement of the same room with no acoustictreatment. From our listening chair, the ASC productscut the bass considerably, by as much as 3.4 dB (at80Hz). Between about 200 Hz and 10kHz, they cutthe response by 1 to 2 dB. Except for a slight increasearound 60Hz, they decreased the RT60 by about 0.1sec. across most of the audio band, and caused a bigdrop in reverb time--as much as 0.55 sec.--between1,000 Hz and 6,700 Hz.

Home Theater / February 1998