Drop ceilings: good or bad?

Mr. Green and all in Tuneland,

I have a drop ceiling in my audio/video room. There once was an article in Widescreen Review magazine that stated that drop ceilings were to be avoided as it caused some deleterious effects to bass response.

Anyone else in Tuneland have a drop ceiling? The panels in mine are not rigid. They are flexible, but today it occurred to me that perhaps that alone may cause an overabundance of "burn." I'm thinking of taking some or all of them out to see what happens soundwise.

Hi Robert

Sonic has seen the effect of drop ceilings....they aren't good for musick but things can be done to help. You see nearly every audio store in a commercial building in Singapore has drop ceilings with some form of tile and above that run the aircon ducts, wiring, fire system and such like. Some stores in the same building with the same tiles and frame system can sound pretty good. So all is not lost.

This is not likely the only determinant of how your room sounds. I got a reinforced concrete ceiling, so hard that it can break drill bits and it can cause a hard sound but with Shutters and Michael's gear the effects can be reduced or negated.

Sonic is of the view that there are relatively few things/room environments that the Tune cannot get around. I hmean look at my bookcases...and I get decent ambience.

By all means try removing some of your tiles. What size are they. You could remove them in the form of a chess board. What are the tiles made of? It seems a drywall material may not be too bad. I remember seeing an article of a store that Mr Green ran that had the ceiling tiles removed with all the pipework/intestines showing and the music was really good with bass that was unbelievable.

How are your MG1.6s coming along? If you frequent the MUG, you may be tempted to bypass your speaker fuse. IMO don't. It didn't work for me, sound got weird and Michael said it would take a long time to burn in for the bypass to work. You could blow a fuse then solder some of Michael's Bare Essence as a bypass (that is what i did to the fuse in my subwoofer) and it may work nicely in your system.

Sonic

In the past

I have seen people (including myself) treat drop ceilings in different ways. One way that has giving surprisingly good results is to cut out panels of painted drywall or OSB and place these where the ceiling panels are. You don't need to replace the panels you have just push up and place these in the grid.

The reason I even thought about the ceiling tiles was because I decided to remove the thin black fabric from the tiles in the front of the room. I covered several of these tiles back in the days when I used video projectors as the side facing down was white and I wanted to cut down on ambient light reflections. I had a Harmon Kardon unit firing up onto a 78 inch curved Kloss Nova Beam screen from 1988 to 1993 and then a Zenith unit firing up onto a 100 inch flat screen from 1993 to 1998. After that, I went retro and downsized to direct view Sony TVs, a 36 inch 4:3 tube unit until about 2003 and currently still have a 34 inch 16:9 tube unit.

I removed 5 of the 8 covered tiles and placed them in another part of the basement, out of the audio/video room. One of my reference discs is a DVD of "Star Trek: The Motion Picture." This is not the one that came out last year, it's the original cast movie from 1979. With just those 5 tiles removed, I noticed some truly subterranean bass during the scene where the starship Enterprise is soaring through a wormhole. I have had that cavity below my rib cage massaged before, but this time it was rattling my internal organs!

So, I will pursue the removal of more ceiling tiles in the near future.

Hi Robert

Make sure your hangers can hold the weight as you add to the mass up there. When I put up drywall I painted them satin finish to clear the attack.

Hi Robert

As your room and system is getting into the Tune, might Sonic suggest you post some pictures of your room and system? This can help Michael and others help more precisely in the discussion of how to get more musick out of your gear.

Sonic

Hello, Mr. Green and Sonic,

I wasn't sure what those 2' by 4' ceiling tiles were made of. They felt like straw. But, I found some leftovers in the loft of my garage and the package was marked "fiberglas ceiling tiles." As I said, they are lightweight, so I am thinking that the hanging rails might not support anything that weighs more. Some areas of the rails are buckling as it is. Plus, I'm not really enamored of the look of the room without them, so I will put them back up again (without that black fabric covering). Aside from that subterranean bass, I didn't notice anything else that helped out, soundwise.

My number one problem is still that damn right side "splash" of out of phase energy, usually only noticable when watching movies with surround effects. If I put on the XLO CD track with "Stormy Weather," mono and out-of-phase, I can hear the reflection off the right side and rear corner when I turn my head that way. When I turn my head to the left, I still hear it coming from the right wall.

I don't have a camera, so I can't show you pictures of how goofy my room is. I will try to describe it. The front wall is the north wall of the house itself, partially submerged below ground, it being a basement. The right side wall is the east side of the house, with a short height, long width window covered by vertical blinds. The rear wall is the south wall of the house, with the left and rear corners coming out a couple of feet from the rear and sides.

When the house was built in 1978, the basement was left unfinished. Walls were put up down there in the early 1980s, drywall with a covering of thin simulated wood grain panelling. except in the laundry/HVAC room. So, as you came down the stairs from the back of the house (west wall), you walked into a L-shaped area extending all the way to the east wall and turning toward the north wall. The southeast corner is where the water pipes come into the house, so the contractor made that area a little closet with a full size access door, hence the 2 corners there.

At the end of the 80s or early 90s, I had the contractor return to enclose my audio/video area, wherein I had the chairs facing the north wall. I didn't care for that big opening on the left side of the room going all the way back to the west wall. I also wanted him to make a matching corner in the rear right of the room to match the water pipe access closet. He suggested (for reasons of economy) to use 4 sliding doors to complete the left wall of the room, with a simple frame and panel covered matching right rear corner, so that's what he did. And, that my friends, is why I have four corners in the rear of the room.

Regarding the drop ceiling, it has 2 levels. Just off the center of the room, a section about 4 feet across the length and the entire width comes down about a foot to allow for the original placement of the HVAC duct, now covered by that section of ceiling with a vent near the center.

The length of the room is about 22'2" and the width near 12'6". I'm not sure of the ceiling height(s), but it can't be more than 8' feet with the tiles in place (I'm at work right now so I can't be more specific about that or the size of the window area).

I'm currently "rubbing my chin" on my options of what to do to improve things. For one, I haven't asked you, Mr. Green, for any specific recommendations because my annual net income is only $30,000, so I wouldn't be able to spend the sums that many other tunees can. That's why you see me mention so much DIY stuff. So, please don't be offended that I have never actually bought any of your products. I believe in you and think you are a genius. Once I figure out a few things, I'm sure I could allocate about $1000 towards, say, some of your interconnects, speaker cables and a pack of Tuning Squares. We will discuss this in the future.

Right now, I am mulling over how near field listening would require me to leave out one of my 3 recliners, because with all of them in the room, the left and right recliners are too close to the speakers. I may even go with leaving one recliner and bringing in a second only when I have a guest.

Well, thanks for reading all of this and also, many thanks for all of your previous helpful replies.

Sorry. Had to do some work.

To finish, my house is a ranch style. The north, east and south walls behind the panelling and drywall are concrete block and brick, with the latter what you see on the outside. The floor is concrete with shiny white tiles on top.

I feel like The Boob, that character in the film "Yellow Submarine" who was always complaining about how he had so much to do and so little time.

My recent experiment was to take all 3 recliners out of the room, plus the 7 foot square piece of black carpet (a leftover from the video projector days) which had been on the floor between the chairs and the TV stand. I brought in a small fabric chair with a short height backrest, which I had bought several years prior (I took it out of service because I literally wore it down), flanked by 2 TV snack trays. The result was instant EchoRama. And here I had thought maybe the room was too quiet before!

After a little moving around, my chair wound up almost exactly where my listening position has been, 1/3 length from the back wall (furthest point, not counting the corners which stick out) and half the width. The speakers are still against the side walls, near half the room length, which puts me about 4 and half feet from the plane of the speakers.

Last Saturday, while at work, I discovered 2 unused shelves (appoximately 48" L, 12" W and 1" thick) in the store room, so I brought those home, along with some brackets normally used to hold the stalls together in the toilets. The latter were used as makeshift feet for the shelves, allowing them to stand upright. These I intially placed alongside my listening position, up against the walls (actually, a sliding door on the left side). After some listening, I moved the shelves a foot further toward the back of the room. Next, I tried angling them toward me. This provided a huge headphone effect. Another move of a foot further back and the sound arc went back with them.

Last night, taking a cue from Sonic's early days, I put up some cardboard slats, one each on the side walls, halfway between the speakers and the front wall, as well as 2 more on the front wall, each positioned halfway between the side wall and the edges of the entertainment center. I watched the first episode of the Japanese anime series "Paranoia Agent" (great sound mix) before putting up the cardboard slats. I then watched it a second time with the slats taped to the walls and suddenly more low level background sound effects were apparent. The bass went lower, also.

Sonic mentioned how his sound stage was in the form of a boomerang in his early days. I still get that same effect, where the center image goes up to the front wall, but arcs back towards the speaker locations as they progress hard left and right. Angling the side wall slats brought the center image closer toward me, but only helped a little on that right wall splash problem of mine.

I listened to some New Age music, a compilation available commercialy titled "Pure Moods," as well as my own "mix" CD. It was the same result with these; before the slats, the center went to the front wall, and with the slats, the center was closer to me, an effect which I didn't mind at all, by the way. There were other sonic effects, but I'm not sure yet if they are better or worse. And, there is still that echo, which makes male voices sound like they are coming from a barrel. So, as I always say, it's six of one, half a dozen of another.

Again, my acknowledgement to Mr. Green and all the products he is constantly coming up with. I knew of Room Tunes and JustaRacks, but only the recent discovery of Tuneland brought me these other concepts like Sound Shutters and floor standing devices. Give the man some time, and he will probably invent a way to make our ears tuneable! He is the

So, I will continue to sort out what to do with my room, concerning number of chairs, their placement and the speaker locations and then get down to the nitty gritty of consulting Mr. Green on what genuine MGD stuff I can afford.

Hi Robert

I look forward to the development of your system as time goes on. I'm wondering if I should change the title of this thread to "The Robert Harrison System" or should we start a new one. Over the next while things will get exciting as we take your setup on a journey that will change everything for you.

A tunable system is a completely different dimension than any other stereo or A/V setup. The opportunity to hear "real space, real size, and harmonic balancing" is a trip all on its own. My goal of course is to make you the master of your own system through teaching you how to use the tools of the tune. You then will become the teacher to us and others as you find tricks of the tune that are unique to your environment and circumstances. Tuning is the art of listening from the naturalistic view of the hobby. As you have read we get down to the signal itself and follow it through the entire audio pathway from the fuse box to the ear. Each stop along the way is made as tunable as it can be or as far as the listener wants to take it. When enough of a tunable tools are in play the system then becomes an extension of the listener them self, and the freedom to move around and through the music's recording is made possible. In your case we're talking about music and sound tracks which is very cool!

personal thoughts

For me the thrill is always listening first and then watching how the "tunees" start to group together as generational clicks of sorts. The techno-zone is the latest era of "TuneLand" that will in time have it's on identity in the tune. Maybe we will even have our own staff of tunees that will moderate the original TuneLand and the techno-zone as one. TuneLand is fairly new, only starting in 2004 however the tune itself goes back to the 80,s when I would be doing performances at night with the Atlanta symphony among other tours traveling through then coming back to my store and sitting around the systems listening to our latest fav music. Tuning for me has always been a 24/7 service as listening around the world knows no time and is not on a schedule. This chapter of us being on line has been wonderful and as I'm learning more about the internet itself can see how the tuning family can reach into the knowledge of the past and keep growing into the future.

handkerchief please, Michael wipes the tears of joy from his eyes

OK, now I'm ready to do some listening!

Hey, Mr. Green,

You seem to be as excited as I am about my upcoming tuning adventure!

I suppose you should just go ahead and change the title of this thread and post it
in the section where you deem it best.

I swapped out the Marantz AV600 for the Parasound last night, after first opening her up and cracking as many screws as I could get to. If you recall, there is a circuit board on top of another one, so I didn't want to try to remove it. As I said, that sort of thing makes me nervous and I am more than likely to mess something up. I was lucky I didn't accidentally cut any wires when I removed the tie wraps!

I see what you mean about "strain reliefs" on power cords. The plastic one on the unit slid right out of the chassis after removing the cover (which I have decided to leave off, by the way) and came off easily enough. I must say, though, it appeared to have caused more strain than it relieved. The cord was definitely crimped and bowed at that point. I didn't see any bare wire showing through, at least.

More later. I'm at work now for another exciting 10 and 3/4 hour shift. In between starting movies I'll tell how I made my usual errors when I hooked it up...nothing serious, just dumb stuff that I do all the time.

Okay.

Speaking of making mistakes, I believe my wording in my last post may lead a reader to believe that I took out the Marantz pre-pro and inserted the Parasound. It is, in fact, just the opposite, just so we're all on the same page. (And if we are all on the same page, I hope it's a bloody great big page, so we can all fit on it, made of sturdy paper, nyuk, nyuk, nyuk!)

I'm starting to feel really at home here, so my goofy sense of humor will show through occasionally.

Anyway, as I was going to be moving things around, I took the opportunity to switch the Panasonic Blu-ray/DVD/CD player to the shelf directly above the pre-pro, as this is what I had on the daigram I sent to Mr. Green. This is something I had intended to do, but, of course, when I did so, I found I had to change the brand of interconnect (due to lengths needed) that was hooked up to the Panasonic and switch it over to the bulky old JVC S-VHS deck which I now placed on the left side of the entertainment center. That sort of put a slight damper on my wanting to do a direct comparison of the Marantz to the Parasound. I even left the output configuration the same, with the straight, full frequency range signal going to the Depth subwoofer (using its internal crossover) and then to the Outlaw amps. (I will switch to using the Marantz's crossover at a later date; for now the subwoofer switch on the back panel is set to NONE.)

So, the first booboo I made was accidentally moving the shelf I was attempting to place the S-VHS deck onto. This caused the front half of that shelf to slide off the front pair of metal pegs it was resting on and plop down onto one of the Outlaw amps. DAMMIT! It's a good thing I haven't taken the top covers off those amps yet, or surely some circuitry would have been damaged.

Then came the usual moving around and reconnecting of audio and video cables. When all was completed, I turned everything on and thankfully, it all worked. So, now it was time to do some comparitive listening.

The Marantz uses a display which lists the output level in dBs, so I had to recall which levels I used previously. I, of course, got it wrong. I set the volume to -20dB and put on the "Pure Moods" New Age compilation that has been one of my more recent reference discs. The sound quality was thin (as in not much bass) and a tad loud.

Then (I thought) I recalled that my old CD playing reference level was actually -30dB. But, I was wrong again. Finally, I recalled that was the settting for some discs by one of my favorite artists, Mars Lasar, as his recordings are usually louder than most other CDs. So, I reset the volume again to -27dB.

Well, it still sounded thin and there was something strange about the relative center of the sound stage. BLINK went that lightbulb over my head that made me realize that I hadn't reset the SUBWOOFER OUT setting on the rear panel, so I was actually hearing everything below 80hz rolled off. I turned the unit off (as I did remember that you have to do this or the resetting of those rear switches won't register with the unit), reset the SUBWOOFER OUT to NONE and tried again.

I got to the fourth track on the CD and heard a sound effect which had previously gone from left to right now going the opposite direction. Okay, Bob, which damn set of cables did you muck up this time? The answer was the output from the pre-pro; the left and right were reversed.

After all of that, I wasn't sure if the Marantz was making much of a difference (I know, I know, give it some settling time), although I was enjoying the music. So, before calling it a night, I put on the XLO CD again. On the track with the man walking around a recording studio, I heard some little things that caught my ear. I couldn't make them out, but they hadn't been apparent with the Parasound.

I must say, that is one thing I am really looking forward to when I get my speakers and such from Mr. Green, is being able to tune in those little "what was that?" sonic cues once and for all. The aforementioned Mars Lasar has a lot of voices and sound effects in his recordings, as does the short-lived 80's group This Mortal Coil, not to mention Pink Floyd. I just chalked it up to a lot of those things being purposely ambient, but I'm not so sure. We shall see this summer.

Uh-oh. Time to make the donuts..er, get some movies ready to roll. More later on this same channel. Stay tuned.

Hi Robert,

Yes, when you begin to tune, you have to get comfortable with moving things around, and, depending on how far you want to go, taking things apart. When I first started auditioning the small inexpensive dvd players, I had to learn to take them completely out of their cases, and put them back together so I could return them if I didn't like how they sounded. So if I screwed up the removal, or couldn't put them back together so they worked, I'd be out the $40 or so I paid for the player.... I did screw up a few times, but I was able to figure out what I did wrong and get the thing working so I could return it. You learn to get comfortable, and to track what you do to remove something in case you want to reassemble it .

Welcome to the world of tuning.

Hi Robert

If I can echo Drewster, comfort is a big key to tuning. One of the reasons I can feel the way something is going to tune is because I have done so much of it. When I hear something head in a certain direction I'm able to steer it the way I want based on the memory card in my tuning brain kicking in automatically. It's kinda like learning how to drive your system. You know the road to take after a while without thinking about it. At first it might feel like a guessing game but in time your system and ears will talk to you.

I like the sense of humor that people bring to the zone. It's what makes us into a family of listeners instead of just a bunch of techies.

Drewster,

Thanks for the welcome. Let's hope nobody from Best Buy (or Wal-Mart or wherever you get your stuff) was reading that last post and knows who you are!

I did used to open up video projectors to adjust the greyscale controls and electronic and mechanical focus adjustments on the three tubes, as well as spend MANY hours adjusting convergence with all those little potentiometers (if that's what you call them). Of course, I didn't remove any circuit boards.

Mr. Green,

You had mentioned placing shims under my sliding doors. I put one metal pipe clamp each under the 2 middle doors (the one furthest back is already locked in place and the one closest to room center I use for entering and exiting). Then, I used the adjusters at the top of each door to drop them down to where they were touching the clamps and wouldn't readily move.

I noticed a new pressure on my ears coming from the left side of the room whilst listening last night. The tracks on the "Pure Moods" CD exhibited center images coming more towards me instead hovering near the front wall. Sometimes I almost felt I could reach out and touch them. Sounds coming from the sides almost seemed to be beaming toward me, or perhaps it was only me sensing more "fill" between the center and the extreme sides. Bass became more solid, as well, though the top end seemed to come down a notch. Not sure if that was bad or just more balanced.

Thanks for you wisdom and advice. I would have never thought of trying to tune those doors. The simple things almost always elude me.

Hello techno-zone

Be sure to join us as we start Robert's thread in "home audio systems".

https://tuneland.forumotion.com/home-audio-systems-f3/robert-harrison-s-tunable-system-t48.htm#475

Hey, Mr. Green,

Getting back to the drop ceiling thing, do you think maybe some strategically placed Space Cones on the slats that hold up the tiles would be beneficial? I've been monkeying around putting wooden clothespins on some areas where the slats criss-cross, and I get the impression that the ceiling is now pushing more pressure down at me. I can't say if this a good thing yet, but I usually need to hear a negative to recognize a positive.

I haven't heard it in many years, but once I had a particular subwoofer which excited the resonances of those slats. The sub was in the middle of a wall instead of near a corner. At any rate, I was just wondering if you considered the use of Space Cones or some other product in an isntance where one such as myself can't or won't change out the acoustical tiles for some of the things you mentioned earlier in this thread.

Drop ceilings have a lot to offer because of their construction and frame. What they don't do well is their material. Their supports and grids are actually pretty cool. Space cones will work great on the frames but would cost a fortune. I do have a audiophile cheapskate tweak for you though.

Go to THD (the home depot) or Lowes and pick up a roll of builders paper. Take out a few tiles and wrap them in the paper as tight as you can get it. Now put the tiles back into the ceiling. Shock! Things will clean up dramatically, with more impact if the paper is really tight. If you have a couple of spare tiles to play with cut the paper to size, use 3m spray glue and glue the sheet on. This would be the best for sound. See where the sides of the tiles touch the side of the frames? cover them with the paper (or aluminum foil) not letting the tile fiber touch the frame any where. And this will clean up things a bunch too.