On the cover of every fashion magazine, we’ve all seen that image of a sleek, minimalist living room, filled with reflective, shiny surfaces and a very large flat-screen TV screen centered on the wall. Whisper-thin drapes billow in the breeze as sunlight plays on the bright white furnishings and laminate flooring. This is the look we aspire to achieve in our own homes, isn’t it?
Now imagine that you have gone to a romantic dinner. You’ve got a table at that chic restaurant that’s all the rage in town and where everyone wants to be seen. Imagine your annoyance when instead of muttering softly to your partner across the table, you are forced to raise your voice to be heard over the noise around you. That’s when you notice the wooden floors and tables, the lack of curtains on the restaurant’s windows, the mirrors on the painted walls…
By now, you may already have a clue as to where I’m headed with all of this. The fact is that hard surfaces are bad news for good sound. The restaurant example above perfectly illustrates how sound bounces off hard surfaces, creating uninviting volume and resonance. If we extrapolate this to our image of the ‘ideal’ living room so often depicted in glossy magazines, we can see that this minimalist look, with lots of hard surfaces, won’t seem as desirable once surround sound is turned on.
So how can we maximize the sound quality that can be achieved with existing home theater equipment in our modern living rooms? It doesn’t matter if we have a sound bar, a full set of Dolby 5.1 speakers or just the sound produced by the TV, there is a lot that can be done just by setting up the living room correctly and with minimal if any expense.
First of all, if you have hard floors in your living room, that’s generally bad news for sound! However, by placing a large, fluffy mat halfway between your system’s front speakers and your seating positions, you’re providing an “absorption mat,” giving a cleaner quality to any sound that’s coming through. project downward from your speakers. A subwoofer (woofer) should not be placed on a hard floor, as it can cause a rumble that will overwhelm the subtlety of the low notes, so if you have a hard floor, try placing it on a rug.
At your local movie theater, where the surround sound is usually quite impressive, you may have noticed that the walls are covered in curtains. If they are not, they will be covered with a specialized non-flat acoustical finish. This would be too expensive for most of us to consider for our living rooms, but having good quality lined shades on the windows that you close when using surround sound will reduce echo considerably. Of course, most of us wouldn’t want to hang curtains against the walls either, like in a movie theater, but for large wall areas, placing furniture like a large bookcase will help diffuse and break up sound. Alternatively, hanging a large tapestry or canvas, particularly on the back wall, can greatly reduce sound reverberation and other distracting resonant noise. Very attractive upholstered panels can also be made and hung to provide your own decorative touch to what is essentially a sound deadener.
Simply by adding a few soft touches of furniture in just the right places in our own living rooms, we can greatly improve sound quality, even from the most basic of sound systems. The added benefit is that we can still maintain a minimalist “clean look” in our home space by understanding how different surfaces affect and modify sound waves. A combination of ‘absorption’ surfaces (curtains, rugs etc) and ‘diffusion’ surfaces (shelf, wall unit etc) will make all the difference, and the beauty of this solution is that you can move and change positions of most of these suggestions. until you find the right mix for your room. Go ahead and try it at home!