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 Echo Busters |
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| ** Click here for our Room Package Specials ** |
| Here's what others have to say about Echo Busters products. . . |
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| Echo Busters is a New York based company located in Long Island that produces a range of sound absorbing products. They are primarily designed for home use. Their products are made using military spec, flame retardant ester foam, molded into egg-crate hill and dale convolutions, that trap lots of energy dissipating air. This material is then placed within wood frames of various sizes and covered with a grill cloth. The flat panel units are available in 4' x 18" and 5' x 23" heights, are 2.25 inches thick and come in your choice of widths. Custom sizes are also available. Fabric colors include white, quartz, light or dark gray and black or any color on special order.
The setback of the ester foam and its relief insures that lots of air remains between the panel and the wall. Any sound that makes it through the foam to a wall will reflect from the wall and will have to make it back through the foam. Not having the foam actually touch the wall means that no material is wasted trying to absorb energy at a point where the particle velocity is zero. Since even the largest of the standard panels weighs less than six pounds, they are very easy to mount with ordinary hardware included with the panels. A free-standing panel (with optional stands) can catch sound coming from all directions and can be twice as effective at many room locations. |
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They (The Echo Busters Absorption Panels) worked well, reducing glare and sibilance, cleaning treble to give greater definition and articulation, but also smoothing the midrange to give better depth and detail. The panels eliminated image confusion on complex musical passages, giving a cleaner and more controlled sound field. The sound stage opened out to give a wider, more open stage overall with better balance and less phasiness. The panels also helped clean up the midrange and treble splashiness which, combined with the better image focus, improved the immediacy of the stage and imbued it with an effortless sound quality. The Echo Busters outperformed all the other sound materials I had, however most of these are not as thick as the Echo Busters even though they cost more. A standard 4' by approximately 1 1/2' panel costs $627 for a package of four. Thus, experimenting with four or eight isn't so painful and even a little treatment is better than none. |
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The Sound Of Silence - Andrew Chasin Audiophilia On-line Magazine
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| Upon installing the Echo Busters, I immediately noticed
that the usually-live acoustic of my listening room was now much less so. The
"hand clap" test revealed much less echo and high-frequency ringing than it did
with both the untreated room and the room treated with 2" Sonex panels. In all
fairness, I didn't have as many Sonex panels at my disposal as I did Echo
Busters panels, so it wasn't strictly an apples-to-apples comparison. On the
other hand, I have previously used a full complement of RoomTune products,
including CornerTunes, TuneStrips, EchoTunes, and Deluxe RoomTunes, but I don't
recall experiencing quite the same level of acoustical control as I did with
the Echo Busters.
If I had to choose one word which best described the sound of the listening room when treated with Echo Busters, it would be silence. The treated room's ambient noise level seemed to be reduced significantly, and reproduced music appeared to emerge from an astonishingly black background. Silences between musical notes were more silent that I'd heard in my listening room before. Musical lines were more articulate as the decay of one note didn't interfere with the attack of the next to the same degree as in the untreated room. This high-level of articulation allowed complex musical passages to be unraveled by the ear/brain much more readily, resulting in far less listener fatigue during extended listening sessions. Removing the Echo Busters and listening to the same complex passages left me somewhat frustrated, as my ear/brain struggled to make sense of the music amidst a host of new reflections and reverberations. The control over the listening rooms acoustics offered by the Echo Busters, allowed me to direct more of my attention to what was happening in the music and less to filtering out the room's "noise" superimposed over it. As well as allowing complex musical passages to be more easily deciphered, the treated room more readily revealed the cues necessary to determine the size and shape of the recorded acoustic, such cues previously being masked by the untreated room's own sonic signature. In an untreated or poorly treated listening room, the sound one hears is the sum of the retrieved recorded acoustic and the room's own acoustic. The Echo Busters seemed to be able to remove the room's own acoustic from the equation better than the other room treatments I've used before Although I'm at a loss to provide a technical explanation for it, music played back in the treated room had subjectively more visceral impact than before the room was given the Echo Busters treatment. Percussion and guitar transients exploded into the listening room with more energy and impact than in the untreated room. I suppose it's possible that I was hearing a note's attack more completely, without the smearing or blurring associated with early reflections from the side and rear walls. Whatever the explanation, the effect was real and heightened the illusion of reality. Music played back in the treated room also took on a newfound ease and smoothness, giving me the freedom to lean more heavily on the volume control in an effort to recreate realistic sound levels. Music's lower octaves were served very well by the Bass Busters' absorption of low frequencies in the room's comers. The bottom end of the ProAc Studio 150s never sounded so deep and tight, the 150's two five inch bass drivers once again surprising me with their ability to plumb music's nether regions. The Bass Busters lived up to their name, ameliorating the slight tendency towards bass boominess, and its ill effects on the lower midrange, which characterized my untreated listening room. It is all too easy to abuse room treatment products and over-treat a listening room. Such over-treatment often results in a dull, lifeless listening environment not conducive to musical enjoyment. I was initially concerned that six absorptive panels and two bass absorbing resonators would result in over-treatment of my smallish 12' X l6' listening room, but my fears were unfounded. The full Echo Busters treatment did not overdamp the room, but instead left it with a very natural sounding acoustic. After hearing the major sonic improvements wrought by the Echo Busters, it was hard to go back to listening to music in the untreated room. Let's just say that the comparison sessions with the untreated room were short and not particularly sweet. Conclusions The complete treatment package consisting of four Echo Busters, two Double Busters and two Bass Busters, was very effective at eliminating the acoustical problems (slap echo, high-frequency ringing, smearing, and boomy bass) that I normally associate with my untreated room. Music played back in the treated room emerged from a silent background, and exhibited more detail, a better sense of the recorded acoustic, more dynamic impact, and tighter, deeper bass. In fact, the Echo Busters had more of a positive sonic impact on my system than some previous equipment upgrades. In my opinion, Echo Busters acoustical treatments more than lived up to their claim of being affordable, effective and decorative, and are a must-audition for anyone trying to get the most out of their audio system. |
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Treat Yourself |
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| To get the best sound from your system, you need the right acoustic treatment. But which kind should you use? We remodeled our NY listening room using different approaches to find out.
by Brent Butterworth, CFG Labs |
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For subscription information: 1(800)264-9872 |
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I've advised maybe 2,000 readers on what speakers to buy, but I can't remember a single reader asking me what kind of acoustic treatment they should use. That tells me that thousands of people are spending thousands of dollars on audio products, and getting, at best, mediocre sound. See, the acoustics of your room can affect the sound of your home theater almost as much as the quality of your speakers does --- and room acoustics have a far, far bigger effect on the sound than the quality of your electronics or cables. I guess a hunk of foam just isn't as exciting or sexy as a beautifully crafted cabinet full of drivers, chokes, and capacitors, or a black box with a couple dozen buttons on the front. But I hope that after reading this article, you'll be inspired to start treating your room right. We had the advantage of starting with a pretty good room in the first place --- our New York listening room, which measures 19 by 15 by 8.5 feet. These are good dimensions for a home theater room; the room resonances are well distributed, so there's little emphasis of any particular frequency band. However, this is a dedicated home theater room that has nothing in it but three chairs and some equipment racks, and a rather thin carpet, so it's much more acoustically "live" (or reflective) than a typical living room littered with bookshelves, velvet Elvis paintings, etc. Unless you have a dedicated listening room, you may find that you need less acoustic treatment than we did. That brings up an important point you should remember as you're reading this --- your results may vary. With the exception of speakers, most of the stuff we review will work the same for you as it does for us. But with acoustic treatment products, you get very different results, depending on the dimensions of your room, how much and what type of furniture you have, and what kind of speakers you have. For instance, we used direct-radiating speakers, because that's what most people have. But if you have bipolar speakers, you'll probably find that using much less acoustic treatment sounds better. |
Echo Busters
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Mostly, what your trying to do when you add acoustic treatment is absorb some of the sound, diffuse some of the sound, and soak up some of the bass energy. Echo Busters takes a very no-nonsense approach to these three goals with simple, affordable products designed for each purpose. The company's line includes four products, all of which are available in a variety of neutral colors. For an extra charge, they can be finished in any fabric you supply. The product that shares the company's name, Echo Buster, is a framed 18 - by 48 - by 2 1/4-inch foam panel covered with fabric. The company says they absorb frequencies above about 375 Hertz. Double Busters are the same size, but contain two partial cylinders made from 1/8-inch poplar in a wooden frame. The poplar semicylinders are framed in foam to minimize rattling and diffraction (spurious, uncontrolled reflection of sound). Double Busters are "abfusors" -- the foam absorbs, while the semicylinders diffuse sound in many directions. The Echo Busters we tried cost $165 each; the Double Busters, $180 each. Echo Busters are available in 4' x 18" or 5' x 23"; Double Busters are available in 4' x 12". Both can be hung directly on the wall using nails and small picture hangers. They can also be ordered with stands. Corner Busters are fabric-covered foam triangles, with a plastic diaphragm under the fabric. These mount in the upper corners of your room with small nails. All room resonances (or modes) terminate in the corners, so applying treatment in the corners can be an effective and visually unobtrusive technique. Corner Busters cost $145 for a pack of four. The Bass Buster is a medium-density fiberboard cabinet covered with fabric and partially packed with foam. The curved plywood front surface has 3/8-inch holes; it allows bass to pass through, and diffuses high frequencies. Bass Busters are designed to sit in the corners of your room, and to absorb frequencies between 55 and 220 Hz. The 4-foot-high Bass Busters we tried cost $498/pair. |
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The company specified 10 Echo Busters, four Double Busters, four Corner Busters, and four Bass Busters. The Corner Busters and Bass Busters went into the corners. Four Echo Busters went into each side wall, between our listening chairs and the front speakers. Two more went behind the front speakers. One double Buster went above the front speakers, near the ceiling; the others hung on the rear wall. This gave us the classic "live end/dead end" arrangement generally considered to be the best for home theater --- the sound from the front speakers is controlled and focused, while the sound from the surround speakers is diffused and spacious. This setup proved to be overkill for our room. The sound was too dead up front; there was too much absorption of high frequencies. Also, the bass sounded constricted and muffled. After some experimentation, we ended up removing two of the Echo Busters on the side walls, moving the front diffuser to the center of the wall, right behind the TV, and removing the two front Bass Busters. This greatly improved the imaging and soundstaging, and allowed more high-frequency energy to radiate around the room. It also gave the bass a looser, fuller sound we liked better. In a room with troublesome bass resonances, however, using four Bass Busters would be a good idea. Once we had Echo Busters products tweaked to our liking, we got very good sound from our room. Al characterized the sound as "clean and focused, allowing the speakers to image well", and my notes said the same thing. Joe felt that the bass and midrange were the best with the Echo Busters products. All three of us commented positively on the dynamics of the system -- the bass, in particular, really seemed to increase in impact. |
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After tweaking, we found this was the best
configuration of Echo Busters.
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We had some disagreement when it came to the treble, though. Al, who spent more time in the center seat than Joe and I did, found the sound too bright, with an emphasized treble. Joe and I, thought, found the sound a little dull, with a de-emphasized treble. From our listening chairs, we felt that the Echo Busters products gave us the least high-frequency detail of any we tried, and thus didn't sound as spacious as the others. The controlled, precise sound we achieved far outweighed the over-absorption in the treble, though. And with further experimentation, we might have achieved even better sound. I'd like to try replacing one Echo Buster on each side wall with a Double Buster, and placing a couple of the Echo Busters on stands. Echo Busters are an excellent value, especially if you buy them in one of the four packages the company offers. I'd recommend you start with two Bass Busters plus Echo Busters' Package B. Package B includes 4 18-inch Echo Busters, two Double Busters, and four Corner Busters. If you need more, add them two at a time. I guarantee that this package will give you a bigger improvement for your $1400-and-change than any upgrade in audio electronics. |
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ECHO BUSTERS | PO Box 721 | Wheatley Heights | NY | 11798
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