Acoustic Geometry Curve System room treatments

By Erick Lichte • Posted: Feb 10, 2012


For a few weeks each year in the high summer of Minnesota, the corn sold from rickety roadside stands is so sweet and tender it is best eaten unadorned. For the wise and lucky nibbler willing to forgo condiments, the rewards of eating these naked kernels are the pure taste of Midwestern soil and sun transformed into a juicy, golden confection. I've begun to wonder if the yearly encounter with this magnificent and ephemeral sweet corn reminds Midwesterners of the joys of simplicity and plainness. Though my hypothesis is a stretch, it sure would explain a great deal about the Midwestern mentality. Perhaps Midwesterners subtly learn from this corn that if we get too fancy or try too hard, we can often screw up what nature has already made perfect. Conversely, we learn that no amount of fancy accoutrements will make a bad ear of bland, mealy corn come alive in the mouth. What I've learned from room acoustics, room treatments, and room corrections are very like the lessons I've learned from eating the sweet corn of summer. Like drenching in butter a starchy ear of corn, there's just no way you can make a bad room sound great. If your listening room's floor vibrates like a kettle drum, your walls are glass, and your ceiling only 6' high, all I can say is: Good luck. Every attempt I've heard to treat a fundamentally bad-sounding room with panels and equalization at best trades off one sonic problem for another. On the other hand, when a decent-sounding room is turned over to a company selling panels or corrective components, often the natural goodness of the room's sound is destroyed in a quixotic quest to even out the bass response or null every standing wave. Though such rooms might end up measuring better, they don't always sound better. Adding too many acoustic panels to an okay-sounding room is akin to ruining the perfect ear of corn with too much salt.
So it was with a sense of hope that I encountered Acoustic Geometry's new Curve System of room treatments. Unlike most products designed to treat rooms by absorbing sounds, the Curve System treats room acoustics predominantly through diffusion. I was intrigued by the approach, and as Acoustic Geometry products are made close to where I live, in Chaska, Minnesota, I thought it might be convenient and fun to see if I could get my room to sound a little better. I called John Calder of Acoustic Geometry, told him about my room's size and materials and what it's made of, and he sent a pallet of products to my door.


http://www.stereophile.com/content/a...oom-treatments