 
|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
|
|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
203.212.159.6
In Reply to: RE: Comments or tips from actual users of the DIY or original Roomlens please posted by cdc on June 18, 2007 at 11:46:22
1- You can get a nice, soft gloss finish by sanding off any printing on the pipe with a fine grade sandpaper and then polishing the pipes using an automotive polish designed for plastics. This does leave the pipes with their natural colour. I haven't tried painting them.
2- Normally you would keep the units flanking the speakers in the recommended positions and only try variations with the third unit because of the TV placementt. One option is to build 4 units and place one on each side of the TV, basically parrallel to the sides of the TV, and experiment with placement. If there's space behind the TV and you're only using 2 units, you could try fitting the 3rd unit in there, otherwise try placements behind the listening chair.
3- When you're missing one wall, a lot depends on which wall. I had that problem with a side wall in my old home and, really, they do need a wall behind them to work at full effectiveness. You didn't say which wall is missing but if you have both L & R side walls, use normal placements for the units flanking the speakers and try the 3rd midway along the remaining wall. If it's a side wall missing, then I guess you could try placing the one that flanks the speaker on that side opposite the mid-wall one or do what I did and double up with the one on the speaker which does have a side wall. You really do need to be prepared to play around a fair bit yourself, especially when your room is asymmetrical. The best solution then will definitely relate to the size and shape of your room and any associated areas that the room opens into. I don't think you can come up with standard recommendations for such situations. Just start experimenting and be prepared to try odd locations including even placement in corners. You will probably find some surprising results when you do.
David Aiken
Follow Ups:
I won't repeat what you've probably already read of my DIY room lens clones experiments, other than to say that after years of use, they are still an excellent acoustical addition to my room!
I have an odd config on one side and I use long wall placement as well. So the usual outboard frontal placement didn't work as well for me as behind the speakers. This is strictly a matter of experimentation; in fact the Argent recommendations were also tilted toward experimentation, as each room is different.
My upright piano is between the 2 mains and the lenses. This is not ideal, but WAF prevented a third lens in front of the piano. Still, I did experiment with that and found taht it can be another useful addition to the pair behind the speakers.
No brightening or dulling of any freq range that I can hear. Just focus, soundstage and imaging improvement that's immediately apparent, even to the rest of my household (who are NOT audiophiles), including my son who is experienced with sound engineering.
I bought speaker grill cloth to cover them, but simply haven't gotten around to it. That's another way to change the "look".
Mine cost me less than $30 for the pair. Don't know why yours cost you more, but they're still cheap enough to DIY that you can build 5 or 6 sets and experiment as Argent suggested with other positions, such as behind your listening position.
Follow John's instructions on the basic triplet. If you add another pipe to a triplet, follow the outside stuffing instructions, again per JR. You can ask David for all his handy and intriguing configurations (he got really creative!) and his room is about as odd as yours sounds. This is NOT a one size fits all device by any means.
FWIW, make sure you DO stuff them per instructions. I found that unstuffed they had pros and cons, but stuffed they had only pros. I think I posted that so won't repeat here.
Have fun.
Excellent info, thanks! How did you finish or paint the exterior of the tubes? I want a professional finish look, with the tubes matching the stand and top bracket in black. The footers will be chromed brass adjustable cones, I have several sets not being used. This will all match my decor (WAF).
One last question, regarding the stuffing, how exactly or what did you use to keep them in place? Thorsten posted the amount to use per pipe, but I have not seen anywhere how to keep them in that configuration, or the stuffing from falling to the bottom of the pipe.
Thanks again,
Chris
On stuffing, Thorsten gave out the dimensions for stuffing you should follow religiously. I believe he took them from the originals.
I followed Jon's suggestion to use rolled up polyester batting, available in any fabric store; it stays in and up all by itself at the proper compression ratio. Look up Jon's post on that, because what he advised me to do worked like a charm. Even had to sort of ram it in a bit (not hard mindy you).
You can use fiberglass (I suspect the original did). If it doesn't stay up it may not be compressed properly, but consult Jon on that one. Unless I'm mistaken, the originals have a combo of sort of a nylon stocking type mesh and an open spongy thing (coarse and holey, not tight) in the bottom of the tubes only, which I suspect was there to keep the glass from leaking out the bottom and causing a health hazard. Could be wrong. Follow what Jon suggests in any case.
As to finish, I didn't do anything! Mine are still in the crude state, not even fixed in the bases. Have been lazy about it. Planned to cover them with grill cloth, paint on a Sumi-e type mural on the front, cover the wood bases and caps with bamboo - make the whole thing look a bit like a mock hanging scroll in a bamboo frame for WAF. But.....haven't gotten around to it.
FYI there are specialized plastic spary paints, as Jon says, and there are also specialized plastic primers for them. YOu have good advice on that here.
Don't feel that you have to imitate the black pillar Darth Vader look of the originals, unless you and your W like that! The originals also came in stark white, you can paint them any color or design you like, and you can even reasonably let some loosely vining plants grow on them. Be creative.
....
Thanks for the info David, much appreciated. From my sitting position, the room is missing the left side wall.
Something I am wondering, in your setup, did the roomlenses tilt the overall system presentation in a warmer or more neutral direction? Alan Maher mentioned that it would make my system brighter, where I have also read the opposite mentioned. Please, any other info/tips or experiences would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks again...
best Regards,
Chris
They're diffusors and that means they spread sound over a wider angle. Spreading it reduces the intensity of the sound at a given distance and spreading it over a wider angle means that it's may decay a little faster, especially at the top end. A 'warm sound' is associated with a slight roll off in the top end and diffusion may tend to promote that to a small degree. How much it does that is going to depend on how bright and reflective your room is and, in a bright room, you might not notice any increase in warmth and, depending on where the room lens is placed, you may actually feel that things are going slightly in the opposite direction if they spread sound away from some absorptive surfaces and towards more reflective surfaces. I would have thought that any change towards warmer or brighter would be very slight and room rather than system dependent. Tonally my feeling is that they are fairly neutral overall.
The standard Argent placement is basically used to break up and weaken early reflections somewhat plus promote the earlier development of a diffuse reverberant sound field. That tends to give you the feel of a larger and more natural space in which the music is situated, and it's those sort of aspects which I think are more characteristic of their effect.
David Aiken
Thank you David, this info is very informative and your explanation is very clear and easy to understand.
I understand this is a subjective question and will depend on my room, system, level of tweaking my system has gone through, how the system sounds now, etc, etc... BUT, in your opnion, do you think these room lenses are worth the time, expense and space they take up?
Thanks for your time David...
Chris
Do I think they're worth the time, expense and space?
Basically yes, but I think some added comments are necessary.
The room lens units were the first acoustic treatments I dabbled in. I built four 3 pipe units and used them for about 2 years in my previous house. I eventually added some bass traps based on Jon Risch's quick and dirty bass trap recipe.
Then I shifted to my current house some 5 years ago. The room here was quite different being L-shaped, carpeted instead of polished floors, large bookcase filled with books instead of bare walls with pictures, larger window space and lots of heavy curtain area. A very different acoustic environment to the previous room. The bass traps went into the corners behind the speakers with no problem, but I could not find a decent placement for the room lenses and put them in the garage for several months. I eventually brought them back into the room and started playing with them in the space behind me, the toe of the L for want of a better description. I ended up with them in the corners, one unit in the corner behind me to my left as I faced forward, and the other 3 in the opposite corner which is almost directly behind me but slightly to the right. I found I got better results with more units in that corner, probably because of the asymmetric shape of the room and the fact that there is an open archway in the side wall just in front of where they were. They were in an open U shaped arrangement facing towards the wall behind me and they helped to balance some of the sense of an asymmetric space placed like that. That lead to me reconfiguring them into 2 units, an 8 pipe unit and a 4 pipe unit, with radically different pipe placements based on other diffusor designs. Several years later, they're still in use and I have no desire to remove them.
I don't think they'd be my first choice for trying to tame early reflections—I'd choose absorption for that. I also don't think that these days they'd be my first choice of treatment—I'd probably go for bass traps first if they were an option. I do think some diffusion is good as an addition to absorption and I think the room lenses make a great DIY diffusor that doesn't take up a lot of space and is relatively easy to make and flexible to place. I don't think the standard 3 pipe design is the most effective way to build them but other designs use more pipes and are bulkier so they're not going to be as easy to build or as flexible. You definitely need to play around with them to get the best results in an asymmetric room or in a space where you don't have walls on one side. It can take quite a bit of time and effort to find a placement that works for you in a non-rectangular room and you may have to consider what looks like some very odd placements compared to the stock recommendations. Against that, it's physically easy to play with them and try options.
As I said, I wouldn't be without mine and I'm still using them, though now in radically different layouts and placements, after 7 years. I think they're great for what they do, but you may have to play around a bit to get the best results and what they do may not be quite what you want or expect.
David Aiken
...
What I found is that they "focus" the high frequencies. If your system is already a little on the harsh side you wind up with focused harsheness, which is not very pleasant. If you have clean high frequencies it won't make it brighter. What can happen is that the original recording ambience winds up being where it is supposed to be which can let you hear more of the harmonic structure of the primary sound source (singer, instrument, whatever) which I think sounds richer, which may be confused with warmer.
John S.
My system is not harsh. Leans a tad to the warmer side. Then again I am doing so much modding and tweaking...anyways that is one of the key things I wanted to know. Thanks so much!
John, do you use DIY clones or the Argent original roomlens? If DIY, how did you finish the PVC pipes?
Thanks again!
Best Regards,
Chris
They should do quite well in your system.
I bought black plastic pipes, cleaned them and used as is, no other surface treatment. I just made sure the writing on all the tubes was pointing in the same direction so I could position the whole thing so no one could see the writing!
The one mistake I made was making the base too small, they tended to wobble or fall over as people walked by. I had to add a bigger base onto the original ones to make them stable. The first time you see one of these things start to fall over right into your turntable with a brand new cartridge is not a fun feeling.
John S.
...
| FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
Top of Page ]
[ Contact Us ]
[ Support/Wish List ]
[ Copyright © 2025, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]
