SonoSuede Acoustics Overview and Ordering

Many people think that the secret to a great home theater is great gear. And when you ask them what that gear consists of, it will usually be a display, speakers, components, and cables. But the ingredient that can often make or break a home theater is the room itself. My room is an excellent case in point, which is why I chose to bring in the good folks at Auralex.

When I moved into my current home almost five years ago, I had some tough decisions to make. My old house back in Nashville had a dedicated room for my theater. Moving to the coast of SC, I lost almost 1000 square feet, and indeed my dedicated room. For almost a year we kept our projector under a side table, and at night would bring it out and set it up on a coffee table and use the wall of our great room as a screen. It actually took me that long before I realized that the sitting room (we call it a "Carolina room" in these parts) off of the great room might be a great place for our theater. The room did not have much going for it - a fireplace, a cathedral ceiling, hardwood flooring, and two walls of windows. But after weeks of deep thought and measurements, we came up with a plan.

I called on my buddy Gary to drive up for the weekend and we set out to create the ultimate multipurpose room. We built a shelf over the windows in the rear of the room for the projector, then created a nicely trimmed out box in the front of the room for the retractable screen I sprung for. Before long, we had a room that was shaping up quite nicely. I covered the walls with music and movie memorabilia, added a fantastic couch and ottoman, purchased room-darkening honeycomb shades, threw down a nice Turkish rug, and we were in business. The room is filled with great gear and a fantastic image on screen, but has always been missing something. I have always had bass problems with the room, and I knew that the only way to fix it was to correct the room itself.

Room Treatment Overview and Ordering Process

Auralex Acoustics offers room treatments for everything from home theaters to recording studios, and recently introduced their SonoSuede Systems. These room treatment systems are cost-effective, and provide a do-it-yourself option that delivers excellent acoustical performance in a visually-pleasing package for most any circumstance.

I knew my room would provide not only a challenging opportunity, but also an example of the type of situation many homeowners face when installing a home theater system in a less-than-ideal room. The process began with Sean Bowman from Auralex contacting me to request photos and detailed measurements of the room. He explained that Auralex offers any of their customers a free acoustical analysis of their room so they can suggest the proper product and placement in the room.

The form asks you to choose a budget level, describe the type of room, and list any preferred products. It also asks for a description of the walls, ceiling, floor and any existing acoustical treatments. Finally, there is a section on observed or measured acoustical problems, broken down into two categories: Room Acoustics (things like slap-back, boomy bass or excessive reverb) and Sound Isolation (disturbing neighbors, HVAC noise, or unwanted external noises). Next there is a sheet of graph paper for you sketch out the room and its measurements, windows, doors, etc.

If you are worried that you might not be "technical" enough to fill out the form properly - don't be. That is what the team at Auralex is there for. I was very brief in my descriptions. Other than making sure I measured the dimensions of the room and windows properly, I pretty much just checked the box by "Bass Build-up (boomy lows) and/or Cancellation" (bass drop-outs), as my room is definitely plagued by excess bass. I faxed the form back to Auralex and emailed the digital photos of the room.

Later that day, Sean had emailed me back with an email that said, and I quote, "Wow, that's quite a room!" He said he would work up some recommendations and get back to me in about a week.

As promised, a week later I found an email one day from Sean describing in detail the "number of acoustical problems" that my room presented, which were somewhat "atypical of what a dedicated home theater might encounter." Some of these problems included the sloped ceiling and large amount of glass windows (not to mention the picture and poster frames) that would make reducing harsh reflections and taming frequency response irregularities a bit of a challenge. He explained that in order to improve sound quality, we would need to strategically place absorbent and diffusive materials throughout the room to break up parallel wall/ceiling reflection and smooth frequency response across the listening positions on the couch.

The SonoSuede series panels are a great fit for the room due to their broadband absorption. Certain panels will help to address the low frequency inconsistencies throughout the room while others will minimize flutter and reverb in the mid-high frequency bands.

The cathedral ceiling was creating a small, focused sweet spot that we wanted to expand, so Sean suggested using SpaceCoupler diffusers suspended from the ceiling, hung parallel to the floor. This will break up reflection and decrease the focusing from the angled ceiling while keeping the energy in the room, which ultimately should result in a more open and natural sweet spot for listening.

All of this sounded great - but would it work? I called Sean back to discuss color options and clarify some of the suggestions. Auralex offers the SonoSuede Pro and SonoSuede HT systems in several colors that can be custom ordered, and keeps four standard colors in stock. Red, Tan, Brown and Black are the stock colors, and for my room I chose to go with Tan and Brown.

Within a day or two of emailing Sean my color choices, I received tracking information from FedEx, and a few days later I was helping the delivery guy unload four sizeable boxes into the garage.