Steel Fist In Velvet Glove(A follow up visit)

View from the throne! Note the books shelves filled up to solidify the bass!

Referring to October's home visit post of the same tittle. Mr Wong, the home/system owner at that time felt it was not right to publish photos of his room, for the fear of people looking and perhaps, intending to follow his room treatment works. Reason being that at that point in time, he felt not totally satisfied with the room treatment results.

The first deflection point deflector/absorption panels

He has since made some pretty drastic changes and further refinement to the concept. And now that he's reasonably satisfied, 80% he says! He has allowed me to share with our readers, the pictures after much persuasion.

A more detailed look at the panels

The final results were all in the listening as they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating! The room treatment had allowed Wong to house the Wilsons in a smaller room than otherwise recommended. With it's big, bold gutsy, bad ass bass response, the Wilsons had been giving Wong a "hard" time(as commented by ML in his earlier visit). The room treatment had more or less taken care of the area. Wong wanted his bass solid, no overhang and most importantly, cleanly distinguishing the cello and contra bass play note for note.

Ceiling diffuser panels, note the varying height arrangement!

Room treatment is a funny thing, because if you take small baby steps approach like me, you can pretty much know what you're gonna get. But if you make major changes like Wong does, the results can be down right unpredictable. He started out room treatment to fix his "hard" bass issue, but once done he realised there's some over hang in the mids at certain frequencies.

The basic first reflection point absorption/deflector panels at both sides of the room helped somewhat but could not cure all. The ceiling was lowered twice, to satisfy Wong. First time, the ceiling was lowered by 24 inches, but this then caused some problems with the highs, which made high hats sound somewhat brittle, for the lack of a better word, and lack of air and decay. Then it was decided that the ceiling would instead be raised back upwards by 6 inches, then the results were pretty good(final results had ceiling lowered by 18 inches). Ceiling diffuser panels were then added to free up the highs. The high hat's attack, sustain and naturally extended decay were all there!

The throne, with rear wall "treatment"

With the completetion of the room treatment, I noticed the staging depth and layering improved too! I could place each instrument in an orchestra in their place. Solo piano works, a favourite of Wong's, I could easily perceived the whole grand piano sitting in mid hall of the recording. Stage width is as wide as the room. The overall sonic presentation is one of lushness, refinement, coherence and power on demand. Who says you can't have your cake and eat it too?

And finally, you can say he's a happy man on the throne!

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