Acoustical ceiling tile recommendations?

[Boomzilla]

Since my floor is wood over cement, with only a 8x10 foot throw rug, I've decided to use acoustical tiles on the ceiling. I want some light-weight ones that I can glue in place. I also want some that can be periodically vacuumed without damage to avoid dust retention. I'd prefer white or off-white ones.

I can Google as well as anyone else, so rather than a compendium of what's available, I'm more interested in what YOU'VE tried, personally, and how well you thought it worked.

Should I go with a geometric or repeating pattern for the ceiling tiles, I may put some on the walls too.

So far, I'm looking at these light grey ones with beveled edges:



These white ones:



These patterned ones:



These wavy ones:



These geometric ones:



Or maybe even these that are self-stick with no additional glue required:



And of course, at the low WAF end of the scale...

[klinemj]

To me, it depends largely on your decor and what you and the wife would like it to look like. I have tiles that look like your 3rd option in my theater. They are not special acoustic tiles - just dropped ceiling tiles, and I think they look nice and my room does measure pretty nice. And, there's no slap echo to speak of. I didn't plan it that way - just got lucky.

Mark

[Boomzilla]

I've had a subsequent recommendation from a local audio salon to skip any further room treatments & just equalize out the room peak. Their comment was that since I don't listen at high volumes, room treatment was the most expensive way to solve the (minor) room problem. They claimed that a full spectrum (20-20K) room measurement with white noise and REW software would provide the information to flatten with DSP. Although this wouldn't cure the slap echo, at the volumes I listen at, the acoustics guy said that it would minimize the affected frequencies sufficiently that I'd need no further room panels.

Now they also commented that if my room had bass problems (which it doesn't), that bass traps WOULD be needed. But since all four corners of my room are already vented to other areas, they said that the minor standing wave problems remaining could also be controlled with DSP.

So time to do some measurements, be creative with the DSP controls, and see if they're right.