Bryan Pape of Gik Acoustics
GIK Acoustics offers acoustical absorption and diffusion products
for direct purchase. Rapidly growing, GIK
Acoustics offers detailed application support for their products upon request
through their website.
Bryan Pape is the Lead Acoustical Designer at GIK Acoustics and he offered the following:
| Responder: Bryan Pape from GIK Acoustics | Answer ranking 1 - 5 |
| 1. Room design including sound isolation, room dimensions, and surface finishes? | 5 |
| 2. Use of acoustical reflection control devices such as absorption and diffusion panels? | 5 |
| 3. Use of acoustical low frequency control devices either passive or tuned? | 5 |
| 4. Acoustical measurements of the room actual or predicted? | 4 |
| 5. Acoustical coupling of speakers to surfaces, i.e mounting options (stands, in-wall, shelves, etc.)? | 5 |
| 6. Speaker positioning? | 5 |
| 7. Spatial response, meaning how the room responds at various positions not just a single location. | 5 |
| 8. Crossover adjustments. | 4 |
| 9. Phase response of speakers including subwoofer(s). | 5 |
| 10. DSP design: number of filter points, measurement points, etc… | 4 |
| 11. Aesthetics including surface finishes, furnishings and lighting? | 3 |
| 12. Consumer demand for innovative acoustical treatment products? | 4 |
| 13. Consumer demand for innovative active room correction products? | 3 |
| 14. Use of specially trained room calibration specialists? | 4 |
| 15. Video Quality? | 4 |
| 16. End user expectation is similar to control room environment? | 2 |
| 17. End user expectation is similar to a commercial cinema? | 4 |
| 18. Dynamic range of content | 5 |
| 19. Changes in musical composition and sound effect elements in relation to the advances in residential theaters? | 4 |
| 20. Changes in surround mix techniques due to advances in residential theaters? | 4 |
Proper room construction and isolation techniques are largely ignored. People do not realize that it is as or more important (from a performance perspective) to keep sound OUT of the listening environment than it is to avoid bothering other people in other parts of the home. Having a quiet environment with a low noise floor yields a ‘free’ potential dynamic range increase from an identical system. If the system will do 100db and the ambient noise level is 55db – the best I can expect is 45 db. If I can drop the ambient noise level to 35db, then the same system can be expected to have an overall dynamic resolution of 65 db.
Also, improper fixtures and furnishings can cause issues: track lighting can buzz and rattle, a nice hard coffee table between the listener and the speakers can cause reflection issues, etc.
Many people also only concentrate on frequency response-related issues. Frequency response is only a small portion of getting a room right. Impulse responses and decay time control are just as important if not more so for proper dialog intelligibility, deep tight punchy bass, and proper imaging.
Room dimensions are another area that is largely misunderstood. There are NO perfect dimensions. All one can do is to avoid particularly bad combinations. ALL rooms will have modal issues. Identify how the room will be used and how many seats you want (be realistic here and avoid seats by walls, etc., that will NEVER sound good no matter what you do.) From there, one can identify appropriate locations, proper screen size, dimensions with the fewest issues that will allow all of the above. All else equal, I’ll take more space every time. When I design a room, the seating locations come first and don’t change. Seating location drives everything else.
Lastly, in my opinion, to properly deal with most rooms, a combination of passive (treatments) and active (parametric EQ) solutions are required for best overall performance. If one spends the time to get the best frequency response possible simply by adjusting speaker, sub, and listener locations, they are well on their way to a good solution. Treatments can then be used where applicable and overall for reflection control and decay time control, which EQ cannot do. The trick is to also identify which responses are best.
For instance, if I have a choice between 2 response curves that are similar but 1 has 3 peaks that are all similar for all seats vs one that has dissimilar peaks or large nulls, I’ll take the one with the similar peaks. This allows passive treatment to be used for general decay control and the EQ as the finishing touch to tame the peaks (tough to EQ out nulls if not impossible).
Also, one needs to identify what is causing the response aberrations. Is it a null off the rear wall where corner treatments will not help? Is it due to the typical 70ish Hz hump from seating in an 8’ high room? Is it something that can be corrected by tweaking crossover spacing between sub and mains? Can we play with phase to ‘lie to it’ a little bit to get rid of a hump in the crossover region? Again, I’ll take the one that is easily dealt with in terms of the particular room I’m working on. For instance, if the room has issues off the back wall but the back wall is open to a kitchen so I can’t treat it, then I don’t want to deal with that set of curves – because I can’t fix it…
