Nest Theater Part Twelve - Acoustic Wall Treatments 28Jun20

Today I installed acoustic wall treatments in the Nest Theater. Ok, they are cheap Amazon rugs hung on cheap Amazon rods - but they do what I need which is to reduce aural reflections (for such a small space) and deaden the room a bit. To do this I measured a bunch of stuff carefully and purchased then hanged black out curtain rods in the places intended for the carpets. The front wall was a snug fit to a potential TV so I double checked measurements and installed the rods. To hang the carpeting from the rods I fashioned a long block of wood with a 45° cut on one side and stapled that to the top of the carpet from the face of the carpet. I added a smidge of tape to assure the carpets stayed in place. Then, duh, I hung all the carpets and shimmed where they were not hanging straight. In the end it looks and sounds good to me.

UPDATE: My hanging design above failed; it put too much torque on the rod and would ultimately rotate the rod and fall off. Hmmm... I redesigned to a loop (made of ribbon) and block hanger and the rugs are all stable and continue to hang.

The wall treatments help tame the room a bit and then I remeasured and re-EQed the Nest Theater. The light blue-green line is that after EQ and is very close to the my ideal room curve. It is a bit painful but right now I am having to attenuate the 7dB "shout" from 1K-3KHz range with DSP - I am still searching for a way to do this with an alternative method but everyone using this driver seems to have this issue in the raw and no one I've found have done tweaks to the driver itself which tame it. My next steps are to dampening the interior of the BLHs some more.

Here's evidence that the "shout" exists from use of the driver, not my cabinet or system... it's someone else's freq SPL curve for a different speaker which employs the Fostex 168E∑ driver. The same "shout" is evident. It is heartening though that my bass & sub-base, as well as my high-end, are better.