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Most people know the importance of starting with quality recordings and quality equipment if they want high fidelity music reproduction. Accurate speakers, clean amplifiers, and good source components are the basic starting points for the would-be audiophile. Lesser known, however, is the importance of the room itself in determining the quality of the music that listeners will experience when it’s all put together and fired up.

While a good or well designed listening room cannot do much to overcome bad equipment of speakers that are distorting the sound, the room is quite capable of destroying the performance of even the highest quality audio equipment. Echoes, resonances, standing waves and other acoustic artifacts of the room can act like a badly calibrated equalizer and worse on the sound that is played within the room.

A room’s pre-existing design need not disqualify t from use as a music or home theater room. With the proper acoustic treatments, a room’s acoustic performance can be largely corrected. The goal of acoustic treatments in a room is to eliminate pre-existing problems. If a room wasn’t specifically designed for audio performances, then it almost certainly has acoustic problems that require correction.

Some of the basic problems of room acoustics stem from our predilection toward making rooms perfectly rectangular with parallel walls and ceilings of uniform height. We like our rooms to be solid and have walls made of strong, unyielding materials. We also have a tendency to place loudspeakers in room corners where they offer less intrusion into the living space. All of these things run counter to good acoustic design, but all can be corrected with the proper application of expertise and acoustic treatment products.

Pulling the speakers out of the corners helps to eliminate unnatural boosting of the bass tones, for starters. To further alleviate this problem acoustically absorptive bass traps can be placed in the room corners. Strong primary reflections can reduce the clarity and vocal intelligibility of the audio being played in the room. To knock down these reflections, acoustic panels can be placed along the walls at points where the reflection from the original sound source would be directed to the primary listening positions within the room. A listening position is simply anywhere that a person would usually sit or stand in order to hear the performance. In a home theater room this may be well defined by sofas or other seating. In a multi-purpose or recreation room, listening positions are often less well-defined.

Ceilings and floors can also cause unwanted echoes and distortions. Carpeting and acoustic tiles can help to calm these surfaces acoustically. Any loose ductwork, curtain rods, or other items prone to rattling when subject to a certain resonant frequency also need to be insulated from the room to prevent them from “singing” when music is played at volume.

Most room conditions that affect audio quality can be corrected, but only if the room’s owner understands its importance to the overall performance.