Room setup is as easy as A,B,C.

The most common mistake faced by people attempting to use acoustical room treatment products, like Echo Busters, is in the placing of the panels to maximize their effectiveness. Included with Echo Busters products is a brief manual which provides some general suggestions on placement. However, experimentation with placement is likely to be required to get the panels positioned just right in your listening room. Fortunately, the portability of these lightweight panels is where the Echo Busters panel makes experimenting a simple procedure.

You can fax us or mail us, a sketch of your listening room with its current furnishings and we will recommend the best placement of Echo Busters Products

Echo Busters
PO Box 721
Wheatley Heights, NY 11798
Tel: (631) 253-0001
Toll Free (888) ECHO-BUST
Fax: (631) 253-0002

Here is a basic room:

A: Echo Busters B: Corner Busters C: Double Busters D: Bass Busters

Most rooms are rectangular and the best of these, acoustically, have lengths that are approximately one and a half (1.5) times the width. In other words; a 10' wide room should be roughly 15' long, a 14' wide room would be 21' in length and so on. This has to do with frequency interaction within the room boundaries and these "golden ratio" rooms have the least interactive frequencies. But any size room can be made to sound better by using Echo Busters decorative acoustical treatments.

The ideal placement of Echo Busters (A) absorption panels which yield the best results, almost always includes treating the walls behind the speakers, and the side walls in front of the speakers. This helps to solidify the center imaging and to capture the first reflections. The Echo Busters work by converting sound energy that strikes the panel into mechanical energy and then dissipating it as heat. The end result is a cleaner, less confused audio experience. See the areas marked "A" in the above diagram.

The Corner Busters (B) are placed in the ceiling corners. This eliminates the "megaphone" effect corners are infamous for. Corners are also known for having ALL frequencies eventually find their way there. By neatly capping this corner juncture with a Corner Buster, you'll create a surface that absorbs almost all the frequencies that hit upon it and prevent them from being ricocheted back into the room, amplified like a megaphone. The center of the Corner Buster has a reflective section which allows the higher frequencies to retain their sparkle while effectively eliminating mid-range echoes. Even the lower frequency bass notes are somewhat tamed due to the air space that's created behind the Corner Buster acting as an efficient bass trap. See the areas marked "B" in the above diagram. For more bass control, see Bass Busters.

Double Busters (C) work best on side walls from the middle of the room back, as well as on the rear wall behind your listening position. Many people like to use them behind the speakers as well to create a livelier presentation of the music. Experimentation in your own system will ultimately tell what works best for you.

Based on a poly-cylindrical diffusion/absorption design, Double Busters provide excellent dispersion on both the vertical and horizontal plane depending on the way they're mounted on the wall. When the sound waves strike the curved surfaces of the Double Buster panel, thousands of reflections surround you with sound and create the illusion that the back and side walls virtually disappear.

Though less absorbent over the entire frequency spectrum than Echo Busters, Double Busters actually work better at lower frequencies because of their construction. The two curved surfaces act as diaphragms when lower frequencies activate them and transform the sound vibrations into heat which is dissipated into the surrounding foam. See panels marked "C" in the above diagram.

Bass Busters (D) have many positions where they work best. Based on the Helmholz resonator principle, Bass Busters are designed to absorb sound in the critical 60 Hz. to 225 Hz. frequency range. The Helmholtz resonator can be understood best by the example of blowing across the mouth of a bottle. The low frequency tone that you hear is the bottle's resonant frequency. When bass-heavy music is played, the Bass Busters' resonant frequency is excited and they resonate, or vibrate, sympathetically and wick off some of this bass energy from the room. This allows kick drums to sound tighter and pedal organs to sound deeper and more well-defined. See the areas marked "D" in the diagram above.

Figure 1.

Two Echo Busters panels were hung on the wall behind the loudspeakers and two were placed on the sidewalls at the point of the first reflection. The Double Busters were placed in front of the two sliding glass doors directly behind the listening seat. This placement diffused early rear wall reflection that may have adversely affective imaging and soundstaging. Each of the two Bass Busters were placed in a corner behind the loudspeakers.

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 then I'd heard in my listening room before.