I have really been wondering how much difference treating my room would make. I have very reflective paneling on all but the front walls. I have also been investigating room treatment on the web.

There are very costly products available that are ready to be hung, but I wanted to get an idea of the kind of improvement it would actually make in my room with my system. I started looking at the DIY room treatment recipes and could not find the fiberglass duct board many had talked about using.

Then, it dawned on me that this duct board is very similar to fiberglass ceiling tiles, an item I have many of as I ripped out a ceiling downstairs a couple years back and threw the tiles in the attic. I took the tile (fiberglass side facing out and thumbtacked them to the walls in the groves of the paneling so as not to ruin the walls yet.

I put tiles diagonally in all four corners and at the first and second order reflections from the front L/R speakers. I also placed a half tile 2' x 2' between the surround back channels. The cement floor is carpeted so I did nothing with the floor. I also turned the tiles in the ceiling over so the fiberglass side was facing down at the reflection points from the front speakers.

All this was just to get an idea of the difference treating the room would make. I was quite surprised. The front speakers were much clearer and imaging is incredible. I also noticed much more continuity when effects circulate all the way around the room. Bass also became much more defined.

Now, knowing I do want to treat the room, I thought "Hey, I'll take some peg board put the ceiling tile (fiberglass side facing out)on top of it, put a couple layers of polyester batting on top of that and stretch burlap across it all and staple it to the back. Well, it takes about 20 minutes to make one tile and I will spend about $90 to make 12 full size tiles.

I have made four of the tiles and will try to finsh up the rest over the holiday weekend and hang them all. I figure if it doesn't work out, I'm only out $100; belive me, this is cheap compared to some audio products I have bought and got minimal increases in performance out of them. They don't look as professional as the ones you can buy and I'm sure they don't provide as good of performance, but the result of even just the bare ceiling tiles was quite dramtic on my room.

Slap echo before setting the tiles in the room was very bad. The room was very reverberant. With the bare tiles the slap echo was not gone, but greatly reduced. I am hoping the polyester batting will further reduce or even eliminate it. If all fails I'm just out a few bucks and 8 or 10 hours. Hey, what else am I going to do this weekend? Yeah, I could get around to building a center channel speaker stand. Yeah, I could st up the SMS-1, but response is going to change greatly after treating it.

I'll report back once my project is complete. I welcome any suggestions or ideas.