March
2020

Acoustic mirrors

We all know how strategically placed wall mirrors can make a room feel bigger and better distribute available light. German company Arakas—their name is an anagram for Acoustic Room Sound System—now apply the same principle to sound. They offer various acoustic mirrors using an undisclosed surface material that's stretched under tension over round and square frames. Berlin colleague Ralph Werner reported on the unexpected results in his fairaudio review and none other than German speaker pope Joachim Gerhardt, formerly Audio Physic now Suesskind, already calls them the very best domestic room acoustic solution he's ever tried.

The drawing shows the recommended setup of circular deflectors above the speakers' tweeters, one or two stacked square mirrors on the wall between the speakers and one each square deflector angled diagonally in the room's rear corners to face the opposing speaker.

Well-engineered simple construction means that the tweeter mirrors can be fine-tuned to different angles and even lateral tilt to strategically shape a tweeter's off-axis response.

In Ralph's setup above, we see how even the sloping top of his Blumenhofer Acoustic horn tweeter posed no challenges. In the right shot, we see one square Arakas deflector atop a B.M.C. DAC to cross off the recommended middle position. If you don't do German, exploit Google Translator to get at all the juicy details of Ralph's findings. As we see, he already has on-wall acoustic treatments. Just so, for him the Arakas deflectors still did their own very specific job in a repeatable and demonstrable fashion. If you're a soundstage freak, this could be something to look into…