Should I treat my room with Acoustic foam? Waterfall picture

[Jonathan=PC]

Hello everyone

I have some REW Waterfall data but don't know what to do with it.

. 

So for the experts around here. Should i treat my room or not?  

THE SOFA IS NOW AGAINST THE WINDOW! AND THE BED IS AGAINST THE DESK! 
 

[jaslion]

What is the problem that you need acoustic foam?

[Jonathan=PC]

3 hours ago, jaslion said:

What is the problem that you need acoustic foam?

The dialogue from music is hard to understand. Clapping sounds harsh and music doesn't feel as rich as it could

[jaslion]

17 minutes ago, Jonathan=PC said:

The dialogue from music is hard to understand. Clapping sounds harsh and music doesn't feel as rich as it could

Acoustic foam only absorbs noise and echo. This sounds like a reflection/speakers issue rather than a foam issue.

[Derkoli]

45 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Acoustic foam only absorbs noise and echo. This sounds like a reflection/speakers issue rather than a foam issue.

To reduce room reflections, you would use acoustic panels. Especially at the first reflection points. You want to either absorb or diffuse at these points.

 

OP's issue of clapping sounding weird is most likely dynamic smearing. Which is an issue caused by the first reflection points.

 

4 hours ago, Jonathan=PC said:

Should i treat my room or not? 

If you can afford it, absolutely. The room is the largest and most apparent component of any system.

 

I would take a look into some of GIK Acoustics Education stuff. They have excellent articles on basically everything to do with room treatment.

 

https://gikacoustics.co.uk/understanding-decay-times/

 

https://gikacoustics.co.uk/articles/

 

All a Waterfall Graph does is show you how long it takes for the sound waves within a room to decay away.

 

Here is an example of a Waterfall Graph, from one of my measurements. (I was testing DSP, hence the atrocious FR)

 

 

At the 0ms point (shown by the number to the right), this is essentially what the Microphone first hears.

 

As time continues, we can see the sound gets quieter. This is because the sound dies away from the acoustic impedance of the walls, ceiling, floor, air, etc.

 

If your room has a big issue at particular frequencies, you'd see the waterfall graph wouldn't be very smooth. At the 60, 180, 240 etc. points, you'd see peaks and valleys. This can be seen in the 2,750-4250Hz range on my example.

 

 

Your room is very lively. It's taking a fair amount of time for sound to decay away. At 7.5kHz, your room is still sat at 80dB after 300ms. Which is significant. I do suspect your microphone isn't dB calibrated to REW however, as I doubt you're measuring at up to 137dB.

 

Here are two examples from GIK Acoustics: The 1st one is before treatment, the 2nd is after treatment. We can see a significant change.