Acoustics solutions for home cinema

  An all-round successful film experience is not just a fantastic picture, but also a great sound experience. However,
not only movie discs and speakers are responsible for satisfactory sound quality. Room acoustics in particular play a decisive role in sound quality.
In addition to the budget for an attractive loudspeaker ensemble, you should therefore always budget enough for measures to optimize the room acoustics
in your home theater. Below we present you with 10 tips on how you can acoustically optimize your home theater room with little effort.

Tip1: Avoid first reflections
For real movie enjoyment in our home theater, we expect the perceived sound to fit the spatial environment in the film. In a church scene,
voices should sound correspondingly reverberating, while a voice echo in desert scenes would rather irritate.
Now it is the case that the original soundtrack on the Blu-ray or DVD is always influenced by the peculiarities of our home cinema space.
For example, because of the reflections of sound on the walls, we perceive the dimensions of the space in which we find ourselves.
In order to hear as much as possible the original soundtrack and minimize the influence of the peculiarities of the room,
it helps to minimize early reflections of the sound through the absorber. We opted for the visually appealing solution in the form of acoustic images .

Tipp2: Optimal floor covering for the home cinema
All the cinemas I've been to have been carpeted. Above all, carpet in the cinema ensures that frequencies in the high-pitch range are absorbed.
In addition to these acoustic properties, a cinema carpet also contributes to a cozy cinema atmosphere. When choosing a cinema rug,
it's all about the pile height of the rug. The lower the pile, the fewer pitches are swallowed.
Of course, it is not always possible or desirable to lay a cinema carpet as a flooring for the home theater.
Especially those who have integrated their home cinema into the living room will have to compromise. Disadvantages are, for example,
hard-reflecting surfaces such as tiles or granite. For such flooring, it helps to lay a rug between the front speaker and the listening position.

Tip3: The perfect wall covering for your home cinema
The wall covering plays just as important a role for the room acoustics of your home cinema as the floor. As a rule of thumb:
Smooth surfaces such as tiles or adhesive wallpaper are hard reflective in the middle and high frequencies and lead to a room with long reverberation times.
Voices in the film can overlap and sound washed out. Much more suitable surfaces for your home theater are wallpaper with rough texture (rough-hued wallpaper)
or even acoustic plasters. In our home cinema "Kinoschmiede" we have processed cotton plaster for the walls and are highly satisfied.
In addition to the acoustically positive properties, the cotton plaster ensures a pleasant indoor climate.
The basement wall feels warmer thanks to the cotton plaster than ordinary plaster or Rauhfasertapeten.
We advise against covering the walls partially or even completely with carpet, fleece or velours. These materials mainly absorb high frequency frequencies.
As a result, especially voices in films sound subdued.

Tip4: The ceiling sail
In Tip1 we have already described the avoidance of first reflections. Acoustic images can reduce the initial reflections on the walls between
the front speakers and the listening position. A ceiling sail fulfills the same purpose, but only for the upper ceiling area between the viewer and the screen.
In our home cinema, we have installed a ceiling sail, which consists of two melamine resin foam panels.
The 7cm thick melamine resin foam panels are covered with an anthracite-colored acoustic fabric and stretched in a wooden frame.

Tip5: Use diffusers to keep the sound alive
In the implementation of a home theater, it can quickly happen that the room is stuffed with too much sound-absorbing material.
The result is a low-noise room in which the sound arrives muffled in the audience. Violent film explosions seem more like little firecrackers,
voices sound as if the actors speak behind closed doors. A livelier sound experience can be achieved by integrating elements into your cinema room
that throw the sound back in different directions. Natural diffusers may be, for example, Blu-ray shelves or a projector mount.
In order for the Blu-ray / DVD shelf to reflect the sound as diffusely as possible, a slightly chaotic arrangement of the Blu-ray films is an advantage.
So you offer the sound an inhomogeneous area. Of course you can also buy professional diffusers. But these are usually disproportionately expensive
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