Home Theater Geeks 475: My Home Theater: Acoustic Treatments

Summary

Home Theater Geeks 475: My Home Theater: Acoustic Treatments – Detailed Summary

In episode 475 of Home Theater Geeks, host Scott Wilkinson delves deep into the intricacies of acoustic treatments within his home theater setup. Joined by renowned electrical engineer and acoustics specialist Anthony Grimani, the discussion uncovers the philosophy, techniques, and practical implementations that transform an ordinary room into an immersive auditory haven.

---

1. Introduction to the Episode

Scott Wilkinson welcomes listeners to another insightful episode of Home Theater Geeks, focusing on the vital role of acoustic treatments in enhancing home theater experiences. This episode builds upon the previous discussion about speaker setups, now shifting the spotlight to the environment in which these speakers operate.

---

2. Meet the Expert: Anthony Grimani

Anthony Grimani is not just an electrical engineer; he is a stalwart in the fields of audio electronics, acoustics, and speaker design. As the head of multiple companies—including Grimani Systems, PMI Limited, and MSR Acoustics—he brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table. His expertise ranges from designing high-fidelity speakers to consulting on room acoustics for diverse spaces like restaurants and professional studios.

---

3. The Philosophy Behind Acoustic Treatments

Anthony begins by drawing an analogy between cooking and acoustic treatments to illustrate the importance of balance:

“There is just the right amount of salt and the right amount of pepper and the right amount of paprika to put into a dish to where it all works. Put too much of it, and the dish is ruined. Same thing with acoustical treatments.”
— Anthony Grimani ([04:10])

He emphasizes the necessity of balancing three key elements in any room:

• Absorption: Materials that convert sound into heat, reducing reverberation.
• Scattering: Surfaces that break up and disperse sound waves, preventing echoes.
• Bass Absorption (Bass Traps): Specifically targeting low-frequency sound waves to control bass decay times and standing waves.

Anthony underscores that every room demands a tailored approach, ensuring that these elements are harmoniously integrated to suit the space’s unique characteristics.

---

4. Automatic Room Correction vs. Manual EQ

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around the efficacy of automatic room correction systems like Odyssey and Dirac compared to manual equalization (EQ).

Scott poses a critical question:

“Why is it a good idea to just take buy an AV receiver or something that has a room correction in it like Odyssey or Dirac and just run that?”
— Scott Wilkinson ([07:39])

Anthony responds by highlighting the limitations of auto EQ systems:

“If the room has severe acoustical anomalies... there's no way for the receiver to know that. It compensates for that and you can end up with an error.”
— Anthony Grimani ([07:59])

He elaborates that auto EQ systems often fail to account for complex room behaviors, leading to suboptimal sound quality. Instead, Anthony advocates for a manual approach:

“If you've treated the room with the right acoustical materials or you've measured it and you spend the time to get it right, at that point you probably deserve to do the equalization manually because you've already done a lot of work and spent a lot of money to get here.”
— Anthony Grimani ([12:59])

Steps for Effective Manual EQ:

1. Speaker Selection: Choose speakers with an even off-axis response to ensure consistent sound dispersion.
2. Room Treatments: Implement appropriate acoustic treatments to balance absorption, scattering, and bass absorption.
3. Measurement Tools: Utilize tools like Room EQ Wizard and quality microphones to analyze and adjust the room’s acoustic profile.
4. Iterative Adjustment: Continuously measure and tweak the EQ settings to achieve the desired sound quality.

Anthony emphasizes that manual EQ, while requiring more effort, allows for a more precise and tailored sound environment compared to automatic systems.

---

5. Implementing Acoustic Treatments in Scott’s Home Theater

The core of the episode showcases the specific acoustic treatments applied to Scott's home theater:

• Mid-Frequency Absorption: Initial setups included large absorbers made from drapes on the left and right walls, effectively reducing mid-frequency reverberations.

• Bass Absorption: To tackle low-frequency issues, Deco Sorbers were installed on the front wall's upper and lower corners. These polyester foam panels, backed by perforated wood panels, efficiently absorb frequencies down to 60 Hz.

• Diffusers: To introduce scattering and prevent the room from feeling too dead, diffusers were strategically placed:

  • Above media cabinets to scatter soundwaves and enhance the room's sense of space.
  • On the back wall to diffuse reflections, making the room acoustically spacious.

Scott shares visual insights, describing the placement and aesthetic integration of these treatments:

“You'll notice this window here that is covered by a fairly thick drape... The term that's often used as clouds.”
— Scott Wilkinson ([28:36])

Anthony explains the functional benefits, such as making the room feel larger and improving soundstage immersion.

---

6. Enhancing Sound Quality: Results and Experiences

With the acoustic treatments in place, Scott reports significant improvements in sound quality:

“Once he did, and I started listening more critically, the room just sounds phenomenal.”
— Scott Wilkinson ([30:37])

He recounts watching films like Harry Potter and Gravity, noting how the immersive sound fields enhanced the viewing experience. The precise placement and balancing of absorbers and diffusers allowed sounds to emanate naturally from their sources without unwanted coloration or echoes.

---

7. Technical Insights: Diffusers vs. Scattering Devices

A nuanced discussion unfolds around the terminology and functionality of diffusers versus scattering devices:

“It's just a semantic thing... diffusers usually look like these graded devices... these devices you have are not. These are much more straightforward scattering or re-reflecting devices.”
— Anthony Grimani ([32:42])

Anthony articulates his preference for straightforward scattering devices in smaller rooms to avoid coloring the sound:

“Aggressive diffraction based diffusers end up coloring the sound a little bit. ... I generally prefer devices that are more of just a regular redirecting sound that's scattering it around, which is what you got.”
— Anthony Grimani ([34:00])

This distinction highlights the importance of selecting appropriate acoustic treatments based on room size and desired sound characteristics.

---

8. Conclusion and Final Thoughts

As the episode wraps up, both Scott and Anthony reflect on the collaborative journey of optimizing the home theater's acoustics. Scott expresses his gratitude:

“I want to thank you so much for, for doing that, for being with me on this journey and, and making it come out so good and for being on the podcast to explain it to everybody.”
— Scott Wilkinson ([37:08])

Anthony shares his enthusiasm for such projects, comparing the creative process to fine-tuning a high-performance machine:

“Working in your room is like taking a convertible Ferrari and driving it down through a motocross track and making it work.”
— Anthony Grimani ([35:44])

---

9. Connecting with Anthony Grimani

Listeners interested in exploring more of Anthony's work or seeking professional acoustic consulting can reach out through the following channels:

• Sonitus Acoustical Treatments: www.sonytusa.com
• PMI Engineering (Performance Media Industries Ltd): www.pmiltd.com
• Grimani Systems Speakers: www.grimani.tv

Anthony emphasizes the importance of tailored acoustic solutions, encouraging listeners to invest in quality treatments and professional guidance to achieve optimal sound environments.

---

10. Closing Remarks

Scott concludes the episode by inviting listeners to engage further:

“If you have a question for me, just send it along to HTGWIT TV and I'll ask. I'll answer. I may ask some questions, but I'll also answer as many as I can right here on the show.”
— Scott Wilkinson ([38:57])

He also promotes the availability of TWiT shows on YouTube and encourages joining Club Twit for ad-free experiences and exclusive content.

---

This episode serves as an invaluable resource for home theater enthusiasts aiming to refine their acoustic environments. Through expert insights and practical examples, Scott and Anthony illuminate the path to achieving outstanding sound quality, proving that with the right knowledge and tools, exceptional home theater experiences are within reach.

Transcript

[Scott Wilkinson]

In this episode of Home Theater Geeks, I talk about the acoustic treatments in my home theater with Anthony Grimani.

[NerdWallet Ad]

So stick around listeners. Are you looking for a shortcut to better auto insurance for you? Something that takes all the research off your plate. Something that's easy. Something that matches you with lower rates. Something genius. That's where NerdWallet comes in. Their nerds already did the work for you. Just answer a few questions and ta da, you'll be matched with top insurance providers in your area. Find the right rate for [e-mail] after all, using NerdWallet is more than smart. It's genius. Not all applicants will qualify for the lowest monthly payments. NerdWallet Insurance Services, Inc. California resident license number OK 92033 trading shouldn't have barriers When Robinhood started, it was built to make trading more accessible. Now Robinhood offers more sophisticated trading tools. Experience the future of trading on Robinhood Legend, the all new desktop platform that harnesses intuitive design to deliver a seamless experience for traders. Free to use with a Robinhood account, Robinhood Legend is designed for how you trade with powerful charts including custom intervals down to the tick and over 80 indicators and drawing tools. Trade all your favorite assets including popular stocks and ETFs all in one place. Take your trading to the next level by customizing your layout in seconds and even enter and exit positions in one tap right from the chart. With up to 8 charts per layout, the future of trading is fast, powerful and precise. Experience it now on Robinhood Legend. Sign up today. Investing is Risky. Robinhood Financial LLC Member SIPC is a registered broker dealer. Other fees may apply.

[Podcast Promo]

Podcasts you love.

[Anthony Grimani]

From people you trust. This is twit.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Hey there Scott Wilkinson here, the home theater geek. In this episode I continue my conversation with Anthony Grimani, this time about the acoustic treatments in my home theater. Now Anthony is an electrical engineer. He specializes in audio electronics, acoustics and speaker design and he's also a home theater designer and the head of several companies including Grimani Systems which makes speakers PMI limited Which is a design consultation firm that does everything in room design for home theaters and commercial spaces like restaurants and professional studios and integrated media and living spaces. And he also heads MSR Acoustics which is a resource for acoustical materials which is what we're going to talk about today. And they market, among other things, the Sonitus line of cost effective home theater acoustical treatments. Hey Anthony, welcome back to the show.

[Anthony Grimani]

Hey Scott, it's good to be back with you.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Yes in our last episode, we talked at length about the speakers that were installed in my home theater, which you provided. And I'm very grateful for that because they sound amazing. And we went into a lot of detail about how they were placed, the fact that my room is imperfect with one wall missing, and. And how to compromise intelligently for that. Now we're going to talk about acoustic treatments, which are, generally speaking, panels that you put up on the wall to affect the acoustical behavior of the room. So I want to start by asking you, what is your general philosophy of acoustic treatments, and how does that philosophy intersect with your thoughts about what's often called automatic room correction, like Odyssey and Dirac and stuff like that?

[Anthony Grimani]

Right. So I always like to talk about either cars or cooking, because this is stuff we all know about and the analogies. I think in cooking, there's all these spices you can use. There's, of course, salt and pepper, and then there's cumin, and there's, you know, the list goes on and on and on. And there is just the right amount of salt and the right amount of pepper and the right amount of paprika to put into a dish to where it all works. Put too much of it, and the dish is ruined. Same thing with acoustical treatments. There's just the right amount of either absorption, which is materials that suck the sound, actually converted into heat through friction. There's the right amount of scattering, which is materials that the incoming sound waves get scattered back out into little pieces. And then the other category, usually that people call bass traps, I just like to call them bass absorbers. There's the right amount of bass absorbers so that the. The bass decay time is controlled the right way, and the standing waves are controlled the right way. So every room, just like every dish, requires the right amount of treatments. And the really interesting thing is a bunch of research was done a while back on what listener preferences are in terms of acoustical character of rooms. And it's been found most people tend to like a certain amount of. Of reflection, a certain amount of absorption, a certain amount of scattering on listening to music, listening to films, listening to dialogue. And there's a pretty good statistical center to that. So with that in mind, you can take a room of a certain size and you can go, hey, given that size, in order to make most people enjoy the sound, I need to have so much reflection, so much absorption, and just run the calculations and go, look, this is what you need.

[Chumba Casino Ad]

Attention sports enthusiasts. Keep the adrenaline pumping and elevate your game day with Chumba Casino it's completely free to play. No purchase necessary. Whether you're cheering from the stands, on the move or relaxing at home, Chumba Casino brings the thrill of social casino directly to your fingertips. Experience the ultimate social casino adventure. With reels of casino style games. Offering hundreds of exciting options to choose from and fresh new releases every week, there's always something new and thrilling to explore. From action packed social slots and classic black Jack to engaging bingo and solitaire, the fun never stops. Plus, enjoy generous daily login bonuses and a fantastic free welcome bonus to kickstart your social gaming journey. Dive into the excitement. Discover a world where you can play for your chance to redeem some serious prizes and have a blast along the way. Don't miss out. What are you waiting for? Join now and immerse yourself in non stop fun and adventure with Chumba Casino. Get in on the action [e-mail] and make every day a Chamba day. No purchase necessary. VGW Group void war prohibited by law.

[Podcast Promo]

18/ DNC supply I'm no tech genius, but I knew if I wanted my business to crush it, I needed a website. Now thankfully Bluehost made it easy. I customized, optimized and monetized everything exactly how I wanted with AI. In minutes my site was up. I couldn't believe it. The search engine tools even helped me get more site visitors. Whatever your passion project is, you can set it up with Bluehost with their 30 day money back guarantee. What do you got to lose? Head to bluehost.com that's B L U E H O S T.com to start now.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Now a lot of people will just take buy an AV receiver or something that has a room correction in it like Odyssey or Dirac and just run that. Why? Why is that a good idea?

[Anthony Grimani]

It. It is a good idea up to a certain point and the the. There are several points. The point number one is that if the room has severe acoustical anomalies like too long of a reflection decay time at some frequencies and too short at other frequencies, there's no way for the receiver to know that. What it's going to do is try to try to adjust everything to where there's an equal amount of sound, regardless of whether the room is reverberant at some frequencies or not other frequencies. So it's going to compensate for that and you can end up with an error. And it's an error because the microphone. I actually found my microphone here. The microphone is mightier than the sword. No the microphone listens linearly. The human ear brain, and probably most animals ear brain does not listen linearly. It has the ability to separate the direct sound from the speakers from the reflected sounds in the room. And it does so and it adds it all up in a really complicated way that I'm not going to get into over here. But there's a field of study called psychoacoustics where they worry about that. And the people who practice that professionally are psychoacousticians. Yes, I'd love to be able to say I'm a psychoacoustician. This guy walks into a bar, sits down and tells somebody they're a psychoacoustician. Everybody leaves. The issue is, if you have a room that has really bad acoustical character, which means either too much reflection, decay time, just too many reflections, or unbalanced reflections over time, then those Auto EQ systems are going to yield a flawed result. And I have found that myself. Doing either auto EQ or manual EQ using microphones like we talked about in the last session, where you adjust everything, you draw a nice even target curve on your computer, following all of the rules, using good analysis and good microphones, and you listen, you go, that doesn't sound right. And you go, what's going on? Well, if you happen to be using Room EQ wizard, which is one of my favorite programs, you can actually look, using certain types of measurements, you can look at the reflection decay time, you can actually look at what they call RT60, but there's a whole bunch of different ways to look at it. And you can see that things are not smooth at all frequencies. And you go, aha. Over here I have much longer of a decay time and over here I don't. So really my target curve should follow that. And you can adjust your target curve that way. The auto EQ systems don't do that. Also beyond that, if you have uneven acoustical character, or if you have speakers with an uneven dispersion, also known as sound power with frequency, it's going to be very hard for the auto EQ system to work their way around that. So if you want a chance that auto EQ works well, you want to first pick a speaker system that has even radiation patterns. So even off axis response response with frequency, also known as sound power, that's the term of technical expression. And power over time is energy. That tells you what the energy bubble in the room is going to be. So you start with a speaker like that and then next you make sure that the acoustical character of Your room has an even decay of sound for all the frequencies that you're playing. Pretty much even at low frequency, it's okay for it to go rising up a little bit and at high frequency to fall off a little bit. But relatively, even if you have both of those things, chances are your auto EQ is going to work well. So you really do want to do that.

[Scott Wilkinson]

But if not.

[Anthony Grimani]

But if not. So I was going to say that if you've taken the effort to choose speakers with an even off axis response, so where the sound going directly to you has a certain character, and the sound going off 10 degrees, 20 degrees, 30 degrees is even, you've probably sprung for a pretty expensive speaker because it costs more money to make a speaker that way. The topologies of the speaker usually have to go to three way. The drivers have to be really good with really wide dispersion, the crossovers need to be good. It's a bunch of stuff the manufacturer has to do to make speakers that have really even dispersion with frequency. If you've treated the room with the right acoustical materials or you've measured it and you spend the time to get it right, at that point you probably deserve to do the equalization manually because you've already done a lot of work and spent a lot of money to get here. Why would you go, you know, to 90% of the way and then hit a button and tell the robot to finish it? You know, take, take, take that ball all the way to touchdown, put it.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Down and, and what you would do to take it the rest of the way to the touchdown is to adjust the acoustics of the room with treatments.

[Anthony Grimani]

Well, let's assume in this, in this scenario that you've chosen speakers that have a good off axis response, which, by the way, it's a little hard to know if they have or not. If the manufacturer shows you their chart, and there's a few out there, including ours, that shows you the sound power and the off axis response in the polar plots, the ones that care about it are going to show it off. You choose that, and then you actually choose an acoustical treatment package that was either designed for you or that you experimented until it gave you a smooth decay.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Oh, I see what you mean. I see what you mean at that point.

[Anthony Grimani]

It's sort of funny because while at that point you could more effectively rely on an auto EQ because it's going to work better, right? I would contend that if you've done all that work just do a manual eq, it doesn't take that much work to do that. And how do you do that? Well, the interesting thing is that with. Oh, look who showed up.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Look, it's Alessandro.

[Anthony Grimani]

It's my director of engineering, our chief designer.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Hey, Alessandro, how you doing?

[Anthony Grimani]

It's Scott. Hey, Alessandro. We're doing a whole live thing. We have hundreds of people watching us. So I'm going to ask you to go play with, I don't know, your car is an iPhone, something. And I'm going to continue this. Okay. All right. You can stay there if it's not bothering everybody, but. So that's my wide dispersion tweeter right there. The point I was trying to go. This is only mildly distracting. The point I was trying to say is at that point, you've obviously put a lot of effort into this. Why don't you just give yourself the right to do a manual eq? You're actually controlling the end of the cuisine.

[Scott Wilkinson]

The final seasoning, if you will.

[Anthony Grimani]

The final seasoning. So how do you do that? Well, first thing is you go out and spend 80 bucks or 100 bucks on a good USB driven or USB interface test mic, which you can buy from several people. The two common ones are either UMIC1 or the Dayton Audio. I'm forgetting the model number, but Dayton Audio makes one that's a USB interface. Oh, my God.

[Scott Wilkinson]

I can't believe.

[Anthony Grimani]

And then you plug that into your laptop, you download room EQ wizard, you give them a little bit of money as a donation for doing a great product. You learn how to use it, there's tutorials online, and then you feed signals into your system, either using either a test disk and there's a bunch of different ones out there that work well, or. Or using an HDMI feed directly from your computer over into the system. And then you adjust. Now, how do you adjust?

[Scott Wilkinson]

There's the road.

[Anthony Grimani]

So you either have a really sophisticated system where you have separates, where there's a decoder, there's an equalizer, there's an amplifier, or you have a system with a decoder that has built in manual EQ and an amplifier, or you have a system that has a decoder and. And a digital amp that has adjustments. But wait, wait. With a number of the programs out there, there is actually utilities that allow you to go in manually and adjust bands manually. So Odyssey has a computer app, an iOS app that allows you to go in and manually adjust the bands, not just let it do its thing on its own. Going automatically. Yeah. With Dirac, you can actually do a Dirac eq and you go, okay, well it's doing this, it's doing that, but I really want a little more. 2Khz, you can change the target curve. You go and edit the target curve. In Dirac, you go, look, I want a little more of this. Go ahead and recompute the eq. You don't have to remeasure it. It'll just does the thing and then it gets you the result. But you need to be measuring and listening and you got to hope that your acoustic treatment package is good and your speakers are good. If all of that works out, you're going to end up with with really good quality sound, which I have to.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Say, I did, thanks to you. You did. So, so what treatments did you end up specifying in my room and why? And we have some graphics to show the the plan, right?

[Anthony Grimani]

Not a huge amount. So let's see. Your room starts off with a fair amount of acoustical absorption. The whole left wall, when you draw the curtain is a giant absorber. On the right wall you have a curtain that's or drape that's also an absorber. You have a drape on the back. So you start off with a fair amount of mid frequency absorption. We don't need to add a whole lot more. And we can calculate that and we can measure it. And the measurements I did when I came to visit before the acoustic treatments were up confirmed the calculations. So now what's missing? Well, what's missing is a bit of mid bass and low frequency absorption because those drapes and all those things only absorb the mid frequencies and we need to absorb lower frequencies that have bigger wavelengths. So we added on the front wall we added these things called deco sorbers and decotraps, which are that absorb low frequencies. They're thick chunks of actually polyester foam that have a wood panel that's perforated on the front that acts a little bit as a flexural absorber and it absorbs well down into the 60 Hz region. So we added some low frequency absorption to balance out the decay time of the room.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Right. And so we had put four on the front wall, right? Two in the upper corners and two in the lower corners.

[Anthony Grimani]

So the other thing is your room had, by the time we're all done with the first session, your room had absorption, some reflection and then no scattering. All the sound either reflected back to you or was absorbed. And I usually like some amount of scattering in a room, some amount of energy that's floating around like a nice Gentle mist of sound. And so we added some diffusers.

[Scott Wilkinson]

So if you go on, like, if we go to the next picture, we can see the plan. Well, this is the sidewall.

[Anthony Grimani]

This is the sidewall.

[Scott Wilkinson]

So on the other DEC absorber down below there.

[Anthony Grimani]

So one thing we did, shown in maroon here, dark red, is an absorber. Even though the room was already pretty well absorbed, we added one more absorber on that right wall to get rid of that first reflection. That was pretty close to the speaker. You don't always need to get rid of first reflections. That's a fallacy.

[Scott Wilkinson]

And a lot of people talk about that on AVS4. The first thing I did was to put an absorber at the first reflection point.

[Anthony Grimani]

Yeah. And it's a good idea to do it if the speaker's pretty close to that wall where the first reflection point is. But not always necessary. In the case of your room. We listen to it. We listen to it two ways. First, we played pink noise on the right speaker. And you move your head back and forth. If you hear a changing comb filter, something that's sort of phasing back and forth going, that means you're hearing the speaker and the reflection beating against each other. Gotta treat it. That's a really simple test. Don't need a mirror. Don't need to get, you know, just. Just listen to the effect of the reflection on pink noise coming out of the nearest speaker. So we did that. Then we also listened to two channel stereo going, hey, let's listen to the sound image of the left and right speakers. Let me add the panel. In this case, it was the right wall. And I hope I'm doing this the right way. This would be the right wall for you guys.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Correct.

[Anthony Grimani]

Do you hear a difference between the panel on and off? Is the imaging better, yes or no? And we decided, yeah, that was worth having an absorber there. Now, we didn't have an absorber that.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Day, so we used a yoga mat.

[Anthony Grimani]

Same thing. Big chunk of foam.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Big chunk of foam. It was good enough for the test.

[Anthony Grimani]

So originally I was suggesting to put two diffuser panels that are two foot by two foot on, on that right wall. But then you decided to put a bookcase there.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Media cabinets or media cabinet. I still like physical media. I have CDs, I have Super Audio CDs, I have DVD audios and I have Blu Rays and Ultra HD Blu Rays. And I wanted someplace to put them.

[Anthony Grimani]

I was waiting for you to say laserdisc.

[Scott Wilkinson]

I do have a few of those. I don't have Anything to play them on.

[Anthony Grimani]

I have a spare laserdisplayer I can get you if you want.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Oh, okay.

[Anthony Grimani]

I actually still have a bookcase probably two or three, two or three tall of LaserDisc that have not been played in decades at this point. Yeah, they're all probably rotten. So you added that media cabinet there, which actually by its shape tends to scatter sound out. It's not a very even scattering, but you know it's going to scatter it. So I recommended putting a single diffuser panel above the media cabinet, which is, which is a two by two panel that's got an interesting broken shape that looks a little bit like the contours of a skyline. The sound waves that hit that would get scattered out in multiple directions and fill the soundstage of the room towards the back.

[Scott Wilkinson]

We're going to see the picture of that in a little while.

[Shopify Ad]

When you think about businesses that are selling through the roof, like Ello or Allbirds or Skims, sure you think about a great product, a cool brand and brilliant marketing. But an often overlooked secret is actually the business behind the business making selling simple for millions of businesses. That business is Shopify. Nobody does selling better than Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. And the not so secret with shop pay that boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning way less carts going abandoned and way more sales going. So if you're into growing your business, your commerce platform better be ready to sell wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling on the web, in your store, in their feed and everywhere in between. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout Allbirds uses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com try all lowercase go to shopify.com try to upgrade your store selling today. Shopify.com try.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Okay then on the back wall, which is the next graphic, we can see the same thing. A diffuser, a scatterer right in. This is the blue square thing there. You had originally planned for a diffuser.

[Anthony Grimani]

So I originally planned for two two by two diffusers. Media cabinet landed there. So we, we just went down to one diffuser up there so that that pass you rather than reflect back or just get absorbed out. Instead they're staying in the room, but they're diffusing out. Now the effect of a diffuser on your perception of the size of the room is that it just makes everything feel bigger. Why? Because instead of having these strong reflections that ping you very near, they're just small little reflections that your ear brain Interpret as what happens in a bigger space. So it just increases the magnitude or the sense of magnitude of the sound field and tends to erase how close the walls are in the room. It's a good way to go.

[Scott Wilkinson]

And you'll notice this window here that is covered by a fairly thick drape.

[Anthony Grimani]

Right. So you have a big absorber in the middle of the back wall. Yeah.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Right. And then the final picture of this series is the overhead view.

[Anthony Grimani]

Right. So originally I was thinking, you know, before we did the measurements in the room, I was thinking you would get four absorber panels on the ceiling. And then it was like, okay, all of your drapes are adding a lot of absor. We don't want that much more absorption. So I recommended to put the two green panels that are towards the top of this image between the speakers and between the front speakers, between the front wall and the top channel speakers to get rid of energy that's in the front of the room bouncing off the ceiling. And then I suggested putting three diffusers over your seating position, essentially between the top speakers and back speakers to again give you a bigger magnitud and better immersion character to the speakers that are trying to fill in the three dimensional sound field.

[Scott Wilkinson]

So after, after making an initial attempt or an initial prescription, if you will, and then doing some measurements and seeing, oh yeah, we can do something a little different. That is, that's what happened. I assume that this kind of reiteration process is kind of normal. Right? I mean you.

[Anthony Grimani]

It is, yeah. It happens a lot.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Yeah. You figure something out and then you go in and you measure and go, oh, it should be something else.

[Anthony Grimani]

Yeah, yeah.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Well, let's take a look at the final room. Got a few, few photos for you. Here's the front wall and I even have some artwork up a little bit. So you can see the front up speakers. You go ahead.

[Anthony Grimani]

Panel that's in the middle of that. Is that a TV?

[Scott Wilkinson]

That's a TV. It's a 77 inch Sony, a 95L. Beautiful picture. What a great picture. Here's, here's a view from the side there. And you can see, I was interested. You can see the, the decosorbers on the front wall, upper corners and lower corners. You can see the absorber on the sidewall and the. That's a fifth with a deconsort deca Sorber there under it. What I found interesting were these absorbers on the ceiling which you specified as being floating. So they're actually tied to hooks in the ceiling and they're actually away from the ceiling away a ways.

[Anthony Grimani]

Right.

[Scott Wilkinson]

What was the reason for that?

[Anthony Grimani]

So the absorbers that are on the ceiling are 2 inches thick, which absorbs down to 500 hertz. I'd like you to absorb down to a little bit lower. By putting an air gap behind it, you get an effectiveness down to, in the case of what you got there, probably about 150 or 200 hertz. And that's really useful is to get a broadband absorption character. Now, also looks like you put some lighting behind there, right?

[Scott Wilkinson]

Well, actually, those are the can lights that were there to begin with. And they. They look like they're behind those, but they're actually a little bit in front of them.

[Anthony Grimani]

Yeah. That looks cool from here, though.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Yeah, it does. I agree. I agree. Okay, looking at the next picture here, we can see the scatterers, diffusers, right? Yeah, Two, one. One above one of the media cabinets, one above the other, and three on the ceiling.

[Anthony Grimani]

Right.

[Scott Wilkinson]

And you can see their shape. They really, whatever sound wave hits them gets reflected in a three or four different directions.

[Anthony Grimani]

Right.

[Scott Wilkinson]

And so there's. There's a look from the corner, the front corner of the room, you can see the floating clouds. You call these the. The absorbers.

[Anthony Grimani]

Yeah, the term that's often used as clouds. Yeah.

[Scott Wilkinson]

And. And then the absorbers. And you can see some artwork on the wall, but you also see the big drapes, which act as pretty good absorbers. And also you can see in this picture, we. We actually in. In addition to the two main theater seats, we got three bar stools that are actually quite comfortable to sit in. So next time you and Ingrid and Alessandro come to visit, we'll have a movie night and we'll have seating for everybody.

[Anthony Grimani]

Excellent.

[Scott Wilkinson]

So. And I will tell you now that I've had a chance to be in the room and listen to some stuff. It's just gorgeous. It really sounds fantastic.

[Anthony Grimani]

So did you notice this is. We didn't talk about this, guys. We didn't rehearse any of this. This is live. No, Scott, you heard the room after I got done with an initial calibration and kind of the raw acoustics that sounded already very good. And then you went the extra step of adding not that much money in acoustic, a few hundred dollars or whatever. And what. What did you notice? Was it worth it? Was it not worth it?

[Scott Wilkinson]

Well, I. I think it was worth it. I will tell you this. I. I didn't spend a lot of time listening to, critically listening before the acoustic treatments went up. I wish I had.

[Anthony Grimani]

Yeah.

[Scott Wilkinson]

So That I could have set a definitive difference, but I didn't.

[Anthony Grimani]

Okay.

[Scott Wilkinson]

I. I wanted to get the treatments up as soon as possible. And I have to give a shout out to Barry Willis, who is in fact in your office right now doing some work for you, who installed all those acoustic treatments.

[Anthony Grimani]

Right.

[Scott Wilkinson]

And I think he did a great job on that. And once he did, and I started listening more critically, the room just sounds phenomenal.

[Anthony Grimani]

Good.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Phenomenal. Great. My God nephew, if you will, the grandson of some very close friends of mine who live in town, was over with his parents and grandparents and we listened. We watched the first Harry Potter film. And boy, the, the surround sound, the immersive sound field was phenomenal. Really just wonderful. You know, during the Quidditch game, you know, where they're flying all around the room. It. It was really impactful. Really, really good. I also watched Gravity, which, as you know, is one of the best Atmos mixes out there, and. Beautiful. Just great.

[Anthony Grimani]

It's a very. I'm going to call it very active. Active being. There's a sound in front of you and then there's a sound behind there and it moves here, which is unusual. Right. Most film directors are really afraid of that. They want your attention focused on the screen and only sounds in front and everything else is very subdued because they're paranoid about the sound taking your attention off the screen.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Right.

[Anthony Grimani]

But in this case, it's just like, nope, you're in space. She's here, he's there. The sounds follow exactly where you imagine the different actors would be or protagonists would be. And it works very, very well.

[Scott Wilkinson]

It does. And in this room, it worked really, really well. Like we were talking about on the last episode, I was amazed at how the side and rear sounds actually were not coming from the ceiling.

[Anthony Grimani]

Right.

[Scott Wilkinson]

You know, they were coming from a little above ear height, you know, maybe a little higher than where they would have have had the speakers actually been placed in the. On the side walls. But the, the effect was still very hemispherical, shall we say?

[Anthony Grimani]

Right, right. So the diffusers help that a lot. By the way, those scattering devices. I should be careful about the. The term of art. Also, there's.

[Scott Wilkinson]

What do you mean?

[Anthony Grimani]

There's a semantic in acoustics of what's a diffuser? What's a scattering device?

[Scott Wilkinson]

Technically, they're different.

[Anthony Grimani]

It's just. It's a semantic thing. These devices are all scattering devices. Their role is to have an incoming vector of sound wave that gets scattered out. The term diffuser usually means has. Has become synonymous with A device in which the scattering process is through diffraction. And they usually look like these things that have slots this way and. Or this way and the sound waves go in there, they rotate and then at their resonance frequency, they bounce out and diffract. And as they diffract, they change their phase and it creates an effect of scattering and it's just. Again, it's a semantic thing. So strictly speaking, a diffuser is a thing that looks like these graded devices, which these devices you have are not. These are much more straightforward scattering or re reflecting devices. They both have their advantages and disadvantages. In my finding in a small room, and I don't mean to insult your room, it's not a very big space.

[Scott Wilkinson]

It isn't. It's no insult whatsoever.

[Anthony Grimani]

In a space like that where you have the panels not very far from you regular. I am finding this is a matter of experience with this stuff. I'm finding that aggressive diffraction based diffusers end up coloring the sound a little bit. They have this sort of little zippering character. If you have enough space in a bigger space, like a big recording studio or a performance hall, they work great. But in more kind of, I would say near field from the device, they end up coloring a sound. And I generally prefer devices that are more of just a regular redirecting sound that's scattering it around, which is what you got.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Right. I was going to say, I've seen these diffraction based scattering devices in recording studios a lot.

[Anthony Grimani]

Right.

[Scott Wilkinson]

But they're quite a bit larger rooms.

[Anthony Grimani]

Right, exactly.

[Scott Wilkinson]

So. Well, this has been quite the adventure putting this room together and I sure appreciate your help. Is there anything else you want to add?

[Anthony Grimani]

No, I. It was really fun working with you on this project. What I like about projects like this is that they tax creativity. Tax in a positive way. What we do a lot of is these dedicated screening rooms. So the rectangular space, the ratio from the front to the side to the top is all predicted. The panels are about the same speakers. Everything is basically follow the recipe. The challenges. There are always interior design, construction schedules and things like that. But really the electroacoustic creativity is. You know, I almost want to joke, it's like building another Formula one race car. It's, you know, it's whatever. It's this year's model.

[Scott Wilkinson]

I've done it again.

[Anthony Grimani]

Oh, my God. But working in your room is like. Was like taking a con. Taking a convertible Ferrari and driving it down through a motocross track and making it work.

[Scott Wilkinson]

I like the analogy I like that a lot.

[Anthony Grimani]

And you know, just trying, trying all of the different tricks to make what ultimately is a convertible media lounge environment. You know, when you're not watching a movie in there, it's your living space, it's your living room. And taking that and being able to make it be a living room and then close the curtain and now it's a screening room and then open the curtain, it converts back, makes the creative juices really flow. And I'm really happy that you gave us the trust and space to like, mess around with this. And I'm really happy with how it turned out. Bottom line is it can be done. You given enough energy and figuring it out and iterations, you can make a mixed use space like this work really well.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Yes, exactly. And that's really the goal that I had in mind, other than having a nice room for myself, is to be able to show people that you don't need a perfectly proportioned and isolated room to do something good.

[Anthony Grimani]

Right.

[Scott Wilkinson]

That you can do something good if you have a less than ideal circumstance.

[Anthony Grimani]

Right.

[Scott Wilkinson]

If you know what you're doing or you hire someone who knows what they're doing.

[Anthony Grimani]

Right.

[Scott Wilkinson]

So I want to thank you so much for, for doing that, for being with me on this journey and, and making it come out so good and for being on the podcast to explain it to everybody.

[Anthony Grimani]

Oh, my pleasure, My pleasure.

[Scott Wilkinson]

So tell us again where everybody can find out about you, all the stuff.

[Anthony Grimani]

You do, but all y'all, all y'all. The acoustic treatments we used in your.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Room.

[Anthony Grimani]

Largely came from our Sonitus brand, which you will find by going to www.sonytusa.com and that's s O N I T U S U s a all1word.com. The engineering thinking and consulting comes from our engineering group, which is PMI Engineering, which you'll find online at www.pmiltd.com stands for Performance Media Industries Ltd. And the speakers that we used in your room, which we didn't talk about much here but in the previous episode, are all made by Grimani Systems. It's my last name. You can find that under www.grimani.tv g r I m a n I dot tv. You'll have the whole list of all the different things we, we make and some examples of installations, etc, and, and.

[Scott Wilkinson]

There are some beautiful installations in there, I will tell you that for sure.

[Anthony Grimani]

Thank you.

[Scott Wilkinson]

So anyway, thank you so much again for being here on the show and, and helping us understand what happened and getting me my relatively close to dream Home theater.

[Anthony Grimani]

Excellent. Excellent. Thank you Scott.

[Scott Wilkinson]

Thanks. Thanks Anthony. That's Anthony Grimani here and we appreciate his work very much and any anybody who has heard his speakers knows what I'm talking about. They are phenomenal. So thanks a lot for watching. If you have a question for me, just send it along to HTGWIT TV and I'll ask. I'll answer. I may ask some questions, but I'll also answer as many as I can right here on the show show. And want to let you know also that all of the Twitch shows are now available on YouTube to watch for free but with ads. If you want to go ad free, all you have to do is join the club. Go to Twit TV Club Twit and join up for ad free shows and access to the Discord channel and all kinds of cool stuff. So until next time, geek out.

[Club Twit Ad]

Hey buddy, are you a geek? Are you a tech enthusiast? Then I would love to invite you to join a tech community like no other. You can gain exclusive access to our incomparable quality tech content for just $7 a month. With Club Twit as a member, you'll Enjoy all twit TV shows ad free plus access private video feeds for insider shows like iOS today, home theater geeks and so much more. Dive into the members only Twit plus bonus feed for behind the scenes content, club discussions and special events. But here's the best perk. Join our incredible Discord community to watch live show productions, chat with hosts and participate in exclusive members only activities. It's your backstage pass to the world of twit. Whether you're a tech enthusiast or a lifelong learner, Club Twit elevates your knowledge while entertaining your interests. Get two weeks free when you sign up now for $7 a month and unlock unparalleled access at Twit TV. Club Twit. That's Twit TV Club Twit. And from the bottom of my heart, thank you and welcome to the club.