For those with a dedicated listening room, What is your home's Sq Ft?

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by wownflutter, Jul 17, 2017.

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  1. wownflutter

    wownflutter Nocturnal Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Indiana
    I'm currently looking at buying a house. I'm having a tough time finding the just the right size house that has a nice room for my system. There are only two of us so we don't want a big house. I have a nice sized room now, but we are looking to get something all on one level. Currently we have been looking in the neighborhood of 1800 Sq. Ft.
    How many square feet do you have? What obstacles did you have to overcome?
     
  2. rxonmymind

    rxonmymind Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sacramento
    Obstacles? None. I have an open floor plan that is 3000 sq ft with an open loft. I thought, man what would fit in that cavernous living room? Well it was one of those situations that "you know when you see it" type of things. I happen to be at an estate sale and bada boom. Klipsch Belle's.
    BIG FAT 15" woofers was just the ticket. Little did I know they are REALLY good at low listening too.

    Here is the pic from the loft. Everyone sitting around listening to music. Pretty cool.
    https://photos.app.goo.gl/PGHUP1lVSXYIDBlZ2

    A better look.
    https://photos.app.goo.gl/5356UFzcZen2BC452
    Truth be told now that I have the Pioneer HPM-100's they also do a fabulous job of filling the home with music.
     
    Last edited: Jul 17, 2017
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  3. action pact

    action pact Music Omnivore

    House: 2400sf
    Listening room: 8 x 12 :(
     
  4. wownflutter

    wownflutter Nocturnal Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Indiana
    Do you have your speakers on the 8 foot wall or 12?
     
  5. action pact

    action pact Music Omnivore

    On the 8' wall.

    One of my requirements for the next house will be a larger listening room. This one feels cramped at times, and the tubes make it stuffy in the summer.

    [​IMG]
     
  6. Jtycho

    Jtycho Forum Resident

    Location:
    PA
    My house is anout 3200 sq ft. Children have been the main obstacle! I initially had a spare bedroom. When our second son was on his way my wife gave me the boot so I renovated the attic. Now with my third son on the way I was booted again so I renovated the basement. I'm here for good, until my kids give me the boot so they can have a play room. :)
     
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  7. timind

    timind phorum rezident

    House is 2400 sq ft, listening room is perfect square 12x12, speakers set up in diagonal configuration. When we bought this home 10+ years ago, a dedicated room was a definite requirement for both me and my wife.

    We are thinking of downsizing, or at least moving in to a single story home, within a year. If we do, a dedicated room at least as large as I have now will be a requirement. As long as the room is dedicated, I won't complain about a square room as mine sounds better than any other room I've had.
     
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  8. Bob_in_OKC

    Bob_in_OKC Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dallas, Texas
    Our house is approximately 2,200 SF, 1-story. My listening room is 12 x 15, plus a 5 x 6 closet with built-in LP shelves. Any limitations are my own doing, since I designed the house. The original design for the house was around 1,800 SF, but we sort of just magnified it. All the rooms got bigger. The listening room grew from 11 x 13.

    We shopped for houses for a few years before giving in and building new. Anything with an enclosed room that big that wasn't the master bedroom was a much bigger house than we wanted.
     
    Last edited: Jul 17, 2017
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  9. DrZhivago

    DrZhivago Hedonist

    Location:
    Brisbane Australia
    My listening room is around 15 square meters, which I got relegated to after my first child was born.

    Regards
     
    Dan Steele likes this.
  10. nwdavis1

    nwdavis1 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Detroit
    Apartment: 1030sq ft
    My listening room is 11.5 x 14 ft
     
  11. chili555

    chili555 Forum Resident

    Home is 3200 sf, listening room is about 400 sf. Life is short and real estate in the woods is pretty cheap.
     
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  12. DLD

    DLD Senior Member

    Location:
    Dallas, Tx
    4,000sf, 13'x17'. Obstacles? Our plan had no real media room but, it had a 3 car garage. We made it a two and used the extra room allocated to the third car for a media room (plus moved the exterior wall another cupla feet into the backyard). Worked out great
     
    timind likes this.
  13. Ntotrar

    Ntotrar Forum Resident

    Location:
    Tri-Cities TN
    2000 SqFt. Room is 9x11 if I remember correctly.
     
  14. JMT

    JMT Senior Member

    Location:
    Grass Valley, CA
    House is about 1980 sq. ft., listening room is a converted bedroom and is 11' x 11'.
     
  15. advanced101

    advanced101 Forum Resident

    3000 sqft
    13x25'
     
  16. Apesbrain

    Apesbrain Forum Resident

    Location:
    East Coast, USA
    Condo is about 1600 sqft and listening room is 12' x 16' guest bedroom. Speakers are on long wall with sofabed opposite. Knowing that the speakers would need to be kept close to the back wall I went with an acoustic suspension design and it worked out well.
     
  17. dadbar

    dadbar Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portland OR
    We live in a 1700 sqft loft space which is somewhat oblong with 12 foot ceilings. Speakers are on the short wall. With one large room there really aren't any obstacles so to speak....except for a few poles in the living space.
     
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  18. Encore

    Encore Forum Resident

    I have the luxury of a 400 sqft dedicated listening room. However, it has turned out to be extremely difficult to get the bass to work in that room. It's worse in that respect than any other room I've experienced, and I think the culprit lies in the dimensions--it's almost precisely L=2xW=4xH. So if I were you, I would bring a laser measurer when you go shopping for houses. I would definitely trade my room for a smaller room if it had better dimensions. I have heard my speakers--my current AN E's--and previous speakers in other rooms where they play(ed) a lot better.
    BTW our total space in the apartment is 1780 sqft.
     
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  19. pdxway

    pdxway Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oregon, USA
    Curious, is it not enough bass, too much, muddy bass, or uneven bass?
     
  20. Encore

    Encore Forum Resident

    Very uneven and muddy bass. There is a suckout in the 45-70 Hz range down through the middle of the room. Playing down the length of the room gives a killer soundstage but the music sounds anemic, so I play along the width of the room now, which makes for a better compromise. The bass is still somewhat muddy and uneven, but at least it's not anemic. The suckout is still clearly audible--when I have people over for a listen, I always start by playing a 50 Hz sine wave and ask them to move their head between the listening position and the middle of the room (appr. 1 meter/3 feet), and they can hardly believe the difference.

    Maybe bass traps could ameliorate the problem, but I think I would have to spend a fortune to get an appreciable effect.
     
  21. Bill Hart

    Bill Hart Forum Resident

    Location:
    Austin
    We downsized from much larger houses in New York when we moved to Texas- our current house is around 2400 square feet, which is more than adequate. I will tell you that looking for a house you like that also has a room adequate for listening makes house shopping much more difficult. At first, we looked for smaller bungalows with decent sized out buildings, but there were issues with that as well- the outbuildings were not code compliant (some were built without any permits), or were going to require a full gut or tear down. I then switched to the concept of buying a house with enough property to build an outbuilding, and the house we bought has that- we had additional surveying and analysis done by an architect to get us within the zoning and historic restrictions (you can't really get an official "OK" until you submit and seek the necessary permits, something you can't do when you are a prospective buyer).
    Having said all of that, it turns out that the upper floor of this house is a large, modern loft space, about 30 some feet long with varying width from 11 to 14 feet. The ceilings upstairs are not as high as the main floor (only 8 feet 9 inches) compared to the 12 foot ceilings on the main floor. I hadn't intended to use this as a listening room, but set it up and it isn't bad-- the walls are made of shiplap (old wooden planks) so the acoustics are decent. The biggest issue for me using this room is the springy wooden floor, so I had to invest in one of those more elaborate isolation platforms for my turntable.
    I guess the punchline here, having just gone through this--- house shopping with a listening room in mind-- is to be prepared to build or add on if necessary; it gives you far more flexibility in terms of housing choices. (Austin is an "IT" city right now, so real estate is overpriced, new construction is pretty slipshod and you only get really big space if you live outside the city or spend large). And, my experience with real estate generally has been that large rooms are more common in large houses*-- one of our houses in New York had a living room over 40 feet long, but it was a very large old house.

    _______
    *Mid Century, early '60s style modern and even later "soft contemporary" homes often have a large central room as living space, but you often have to contend with adjacent semi-open floor plan kitchens, cathedral ceilings and glass. I suspect in Indiana, you probably have some of these.
     
    Last edited: Jul 17, 2017
  22. Mike-48

    Mike-48 A shadow of my former self

    Location:
    Portland, Oregon
    Our house is about 2800 sf (including basement), and the audio room is about 260 sf (in the basement). We were lucky to buy not long after the 2008 crash.

    The main difficulty was finding a house with a suitable space. Plenty of houses here have one big bedroom and two or three little ones, but I was hoping for larger room. We looked at 200 houses in our desired areas without finding one ready-made. So we bought this one, and I built in the basement. But I still haven't forgotten the house with a 28' x 18' x 8' room in the basement, on a hill, with a city-lights view (sadly, it was wrong for other reasons).

    As @Bill Hart pointed out, modern houses tend to be on the open plan, which makes sound containment (both ways) almost impossible.

    Converted garages can be excellent -- they tend to be large, with high ceilings.

    Good luck!
     
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  23. pdxway

    pdxway Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oregon, USA
    Interesting. It looks like even with bigger dedicated room, we still need to consider the proportion of the room. Your type of room will have strong room modes issue.

    Have you considered sealed the back ports of your speakers with foams to see if that helps with muddy bass?
     
  24. Mike-48

    Mike-48 A shadow of my former self

    Location:
    Portland, Oregon
    You were really smart to set it up on the diagonal! With a square room, that makes a tremendous difference. Less resonance and more random reflections, I suppose.

    That depends on your definition of "fortune." Consider the room to be your most important component. You might be pleased at the difference a few corner bass traps can make -- improvements in articulation and bass can be substantial. For example, something like this might help. The suckout is more difficult, because it's likely related to room dimensions. Vendors often will provide a treatment plan for any room for a small fee, which can be applied to purchases. (I linked to GIK because they have a European branch and are generally among the lower-cost suppliers, but other -- including Vicoustic -- also make fine products).

    HTH
     
    timind likes this.
  25. timztunz

    timztunz Audioista

    Location:
    Texas
    Reference system is in a 2,850 SF house, 18' x 24' listening room, 432 SF or just over 15% of the living space.
     
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