GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Audio Discussions
In the Thread: Romy The Cat's new Listening Room

Post Subject: DiffusersPosted by fulcrum on: 11/3/2010

Romy, first thanks for your help to fix the picture upload.I know the Whisperwave material quite well - it is an open cell melamine foam. It has very high absorption but is also expensive.I think you are trying to do two different things simultaneously - absorb & diffuse. For me absorption is pretty much driven by how porous the surface. If the sound enters tiny apertures on the surface it will bounce around internally until it is eventually converted to heat. Open cell foam does this, also fiberglass. Diffusion is more about the shape. As the sound hits a curved surface it bounces back in many different directions. With your fiberglass tubes you are doing some of both - is it better to have the two functions in one component (maybe not do either one perfectly) or to separate them so that each can be tuned better?I agree the half tubes in the first picture are all the same size - it is very easy to make them different sizes - maybe 3 or 5 different diameters.The point of the last two pictures was this - you are talking about randomizing sound but you (and everybody else) achieves this randomization by using quite precise geometrical shapes (cylinders, pyramids, triangles). Maybe more random shapes produce a better randomizing effect. I don't know what the right shape should be but was just showing these as examples of more organic/random shapes - for example the purple spiral shape in the second picture or the varying waves in the last picture. I don't know what the shape should be, I just have the feeling that the more organic it is, the better it will be at randomizing?

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