Acoustic treatment for a living room, high sloped ceiling-Acoustics Forum-Acoustic Fields Forum

Hello everybody,

Just want to say firstly thank you for the tips about acoustic management, it is really helpful! I hope I am writing this in the correct place, if not I will gladly amend or move the topic.

I would really like to get some opinions on my situation, I am having some issues with noise in my living room. First of all I am no expert in acoustics I am maybe a novice or less in the field, I know some general stuff but I am far from an expert of any kind, so this is why I would like to get some comments on my situation.

Also I would like to mention I am in Europe/N.America, actually Iceland so I am somewhere in the middle I guess, so I will be discussing all in the SI/metric system.

I have a living room where my TV is located, I will be upgrading to a larger TV set with a sound system (Samsung 5.1.4 Soundbar HW-K960). My question is, how can I reduce the “noise” that seems to be constantly in the living room, it tends to wear me and my wife out (doesn’t help that we have two kids, 5 and a 3yr old which span the entire high noise spectrum).
I cannot describe and I have not done any daily measurements what range of frequency we are working with, but I have contemplated of putting up maghony wood in the high area of the living room to diffuse the noise to some degree, also thought about putting up diffusers but not sure where to locate them. (Please see links below for room overview and dimensions).

DIY Diffuers: https://www.dropbox.com/s/05av…..e.png?dl=0
Floor plan: https://www.dropbox.com/s/sc9p…..1.pdf?dl=0
Screenshot 1: https://www.dropbox.com/s/sii9…..2.png?dl=0
Screenshot 2: https://www.dropbox.com/s/cend…..3.png?dl=0

I believe hardwood is not ideal as it doesn’t absorb as much energy as softer wood would probably do, but aesthetics come into play here also (*cough* wife).
The walls are plastered and the flooring is laminate hardwood flooring AC4, ceiling is wood panels with natural wood texture (not completely flat).

The wood planks that I might intend to put up on the walls should provide some diffusion I hope but I wonder if it is the right decision or if I should go another route with trying to reduce the overall “noise” in my room.

Also I would like to take some measurements in my living room over some period of time to get some frequency bands to work with, if anyone can suggest some good measuring equipment I could do some rough measurements.

Thanks for the forum and I look forward to the discussion that might come from this :)

Best regards, Larus.