Indeed there are reflections bouncing from wall to wall in a room........depending on your room, the room size etc.

The dampers are usefull.

However, if the rest of your room is bare and reflecting, the effect will be less noticeable.

Combining with ‘natural’ dampening - such as carpets on the floor, curtains, pictures, book on the walls....- must be the way to go.

How about another set of Shape with dampers only ;-))))

MM

Thank you MM for your reply!

So, from what you wrote...while I'm there's some reflection from the front wall/behind the front speakers, my priority for managing room effects would be a throw rug and some books on the side walls.  That recommendation jibes with what I've read elsewhere.  And this sounds more affordable than a rig full of Shape dampeners 😎

More seriously, I'm a bit disappointed in B&O marketing -- and engineering -- on this point.

I think that the number 1 purpose of the dampers are the possible to make a bigger system "Cheap"

It would be impossible to get a large system without it and still have proper space between the speakers.

That they also are dampers is merely a plus for sound generel not only the sound from the system.

The acoustics in new houses are terrible, with dry wall all over. 

A way to test this, is to compare the acoustic behaviour of the room before and after installing the Shape.....without music playing.

I know that this is hard......we very fast loose memory of how something sounds, when compairing.

However, I am quite sure that the Shape installation will help making the acoustics in the room ‘better, nicer’ just by being there.

MM 

Emil Jensen wrote:

I think that the number 1 purpose of the dampers are the possible to make a bigger system "Cheap"

I believe this too.

But is there a possibility for the dampener to work "sort of" like the foam inside cabinets? To pad the whole Shape structure own vibrations?
I mean by nature the tiles are also working as reflection screens, no? Diamond shape, clothe, plastic cradle with lot of details in there. Can't be worse then books on a shelf and certainly better than a bare concrete wall.

Hi,

The placement of an absorber in a room is (or perhaps "should be") determined by what you want to do.

If the problem you're trying to fix is a specular reflection from a side wall, then you should put the absorber at the point where the reflection occurs.

At my house, I have a problem with a specular reflection coming from the wall directly behind me when I'm sitting on the sofa (that wall is directly behind the sofa - so if I lean my head back, I will hit it). To reduce the comb filtering, I put a fuzzy pillow on the back of the sofa, behind my head. This not only fixes the (very local) acoustical problem, it also prevents me from hurting my head... (I tried getting one of the cats to sleep there, but they just won't stay put...)

However, if you're just trying to reduce reverberation time, then the absorption can go anywhere - because reverberation is random, both in space and time. (That's why bathrooms have more reverb on laundry day - the towels are out of the room.)

If you're trying to reduce modal problems, then a thin, fuzzy absorber (like the pillow behind my head in my living room) won't help because it doesn't absorb enough energy at low frequencies. There are better ways to do this (look up "membrane absorber" or "diaphragmatic absorber" -  which has to be designed to absorb a specific frequency.

So, the moral of the story is that there is no "best practice" for absorption placement. It's a tool that fixes a specific problem - and that problem, in some (but not all) cases, has a specific location. 

Cheers
-g

My listening room is acoustical disaster.Placing (canvas) paintings on the walls made great improvement.

OldJack wrote:

My listening room is acoustical disaster.Placing (canvas) paintings on the walls made great improvement.

Back in the day when I worked in audio sales, fabric printed wall hangings, the kind stretched over a frame, were popular. We used to take them and place acoustic tile in them behind the fabric, it was a good tuning/absorption thing that didn't look like acoustic tiles for people who had wives and such. 🙂

Geoff Martin wrote:

So, the moral of the story is that there is no "best practice" for absorption placement. It's a tool that fixes a specific problem - and that problem, in some (but not all) cases, has a specific location.

Cheers -g