so what's the deal with diffusers? i mean they are thousands of dollars for
just a small fraction of that worth of material and assembly and they are
usually not specifically engineered for where they are installed. i am told
there's some high-math involved and someone like me shouldn't try to make
them; but hey every single electronic device in my home required advanced
engineering to develop but they are still affordable because the original
formula is just repeated. i mean i cant make a cd player either, but i can
get one for cheap.
-gp

Buy a copy of The Master Handbook of Acoustics by F. Alton Everest. It
has the calculations and plans for building several types of diffusors.
It's not as easy as you might think, but it's certainly not impossible
if you're handy with power tools. But it can be a very time consuming
project so I would guess that's a large part of the expense with
commercially marketed diffusors. It just depends on how large you need
it to be and what sort of diffusion pattern you want. If anyone in the
San Francisco area is looking for a deal on some gently used RPG's I
might be able to point you in the right direction...

greggery peccary .@. wrote:
so what's the deal with diffusers? i mean they are thousands of dollars for
just a small fraction of that worth of material and assembly and they are
usually not specifically engineered for where they are installed. i am told
there's some high-math involved and someone like me shouldn't try to make
them; but hey every single electronic device in my home required advanced
engineering to develop but they are still affordable because the original
formula is just repeated. i mean i cant make a cd player either, but i can
get one for cheap.

So install bookcases, or something else irregularly shaped. Rococo plaster
work will also produce some nice diffusion.

Commercial diffusers are more effective than typical irregular shapes, so
you need less actual area. But they really aren't all that expensive
when compared with what goes into them. There's no reason you can't make
your own but after the first couple days of gluing you'll wonder why you
decided to.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

greggery peccary .@. wrote:
so what's the deal with diffusers? i mean they are thousands of dollars for
just a small fraction of that worth of material and assembly and they are
usually not specifically engineered for where they are installed. i am told
there's some high-math involved and someone like me shouldn't try to make
them; but hey every single electronic device in my home required advanced
engineering to develop but they are still affordable because the original
formula is just repeated. i mean i cant make a cd player either, but i can
get one for cheap.

Oh, the math isn't really that bad. The phD's have already figured out
the hairy math and you just have to plug in your numbers. However, it's
more labor intensive to build them than you may think. For them to live
up to the calculations, they need to be built fairly carefully, and it's
a lot of busy work. However, there are other things you can do to
provide a generally diffuse environment, even if the results aren't
quite as predictable or uniform as the "real deal." You could optionally
get some molded diffusors like the RPG skylines for less than the pretty
wooden ones.

As for the CD player analogy, when you can build one-size-fits-all
diffusors in China with automation, ship them for cheap, and sell them
by the millions, the prices are likely to come down...

--
Jay Frigoletto
Mastersuite
www.promastering.com