home theatre room is near the kitchen or dining
room, the cooking sounds and smell can hamper
the viewer’s entertainment experience.
Find a spare room and use common soundproof-
ing methods to insulate its walls and ceilings with
materials like acoustic foam and fabric, Rockwool,
or mass loaded vinyl (MLV). These
materials act as a sound barrier, thereby blocking
unwanted sound and enhancing the cinematic
experience. TAME YOUR ROOM’S SOUND
REFLECTIONS
The best of microphones, sub-woofers, preamps
and fancy monitors will fail to deliver the desired
home-theater experience if you overlook the room
acoustics. You may not realize but your room can
largely impact the sound frequencies. The sound
you hear is a mix of direct (straight from speakers)
and indirect sound (reflected from the walls, ceil-
ings and furniture).
Reflected sound can either make the movie
dialogues and the music fuller or distort the sound
waves, making them sound echoey and harsh.
Therefore, it is important to consider your room’s
acoustic properties, thereby improving the the-
ater’s sound delivery.
Good and bad
sound reflections
can be tamed by
absorbing the
waves or scatter-
ing them. For
instance, if your
room has plas-
tered walls and
ceilings and tiled
floors, these sur-
faces will reflect
and propagate
sound to people
seated behind. In
such cases, the
easiest way to improve sound quality is to move
the seating arrangement farther from the speakers
and screen, to the middle of the room.
Similarly, a large expanse of glass windows
can distort the sound. Installing heavy drapes
can help absorb the unwanted sound reflections,
thereby enhancing your home-theater experience.
Further, consider replacing the standard hollow-
core doors with solid wooden ones to reduce the
sound transmission.56 ExtremeHowTo.comSKILL SAVVY
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