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. Morbius

    Morbius Forum Resident

    Location:
    Brookline, MA
    Our third floor condo is 1366 SF and the listening room which would otherwise be the master bedroom is 149.5 SF. The room for the most part has good sonics though the wrong speaker can boom in there. I recently got some Rega speakers which allow for bass tuning options and that fixed the problem. What's nice is the building is of fairly recent concrete and steel construction and footfalls don't bother my turntable and the neighbors are less bothered by my music though I only play between the hrs of 9:00am and 3:00pm when they're at work.
     
  2. timind

    timind phorum rezident

    Got the idea reading threads here on how to work with not-so-ideal rooms. At the time I was using Thiel 1.6s which sounded great in the previous room. In the square room though, they sounded flat and lifeless. What an amazing difference the diagonal set up made.
     
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  3. Encore

    Encore Forum Resident

    The suckout is the biggest problem, but it's probably strongly related to the muddiness. Which is why I am a little reluctant to spend too much money on bass traps. But I do plan to contact GIK sometime in the not too distant future. That has been my plan all along but I first wanted to be certain about setup and listening position. In first instance to get some panels on the first reflection points, and then we'll see what they have to say about bass traps. But now I find that my finances are a bit stretched :laugh:, so it'll have to wait a little.
     
  4. Encore

    Encore Forum Resident

    Yes. And I have tried all variations on diagonal speaker setup as well.

    I should add that although the bass isn't well defined, it isn't boomy as such. The level is not excessive. It may have to do with the room having slanted walls (it's the top floor) with a lot of mineral wool behind thin plaster walls (are they called drywalls in the US?).
     
  5. Encore

    Encore Forum Resident

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  6. pdxway

    pdxway Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oregon, USA
    I am not sure GIK panels would help if suck out are around 50 Hz or so. If using the short wall has great soundstage but lake bass, then may be adding a pair of high quality sealed subs, placed optimumly, could help bring back the bass. Seeing that you are a two channels guy, that idea might not something you would consider.
     
  7. Encore

    Encore Forum Resident

    I have considered it but never mustered the courage to dive into such a project ...
     
  8. timind

    timind phorum rezident

    Looking at your room, I'd suggest researching some bass trapping. Worked wonders in my space.
     
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  9. pdxway

    pdxway Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oregon, USA
    Haha, my wife would rather let me use subs instead of adding thick room treatments.

    Have you checked out those free Excel worksheet that calculate the Speakers Boundary Interference Response (SBIR)? It might give you good tips in speakers placement and sitting position.
    Google: wall bounce calculator

    I use it to calculate my sitting distance and speakers positions from walls. Lots of combination to try. It works well, but not sure about how accurate it would be with back ported speakers.
     
    Last edited: Jul 17, 2017
  10. Encore

    Encore Forum Resident

    @timind
    I'm worrying that my room is so bad that a couple of bass traps won't make much of a difference, but we'll see when I speak to GIK eventually.

    @pdxway
    I have tried all sorts of different principles for speaker placement, but I'll try googling what you suggest. My current speakers are Audio Note E's, and they are designed for corner placement. Since only one of them is in a corner now, I'm also considering building Warren Jarrett-style corners from them with GIK panels.

    To the OP--I just realize that I sort of hijacked your thread. Apologies. If nothing else, I hope that you have become aware of the importance of room dimensions.
     
    Last edited: Jul 17, 2017
  11. TheIncredibleHoke

    TheIncredibleHoke Dachshund Dog Dad

    Location:
    Brooklyn, NY
    We are getting ready to move into a 591 sq ft 1BR apartment next month. That's 591 sq ft for the whole shebang - not the listening room. Will be interesting coming up with a good listening space. Currently we are in a brownstone where I have a 10' x 10' foot small office that works just fine.
     
  12. Bill Hart

    Bill Hart Forum Resident

    Location:
    Austin
    One of my best rooms was in a Brooklyn brownstone- old lathe/horsehair/real plaster, wide old plank wooden floors, very high ceilings. With appropriate rugs and furnishings, along with window coverings (i used stage blackout curtains b/c the room doubled for projection system), it sounded great.
     
  13. pdxway

    pdxway Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oregon, USA
    Yeah, I don't want to hijack either.
    : )
    OP, I have dedicated office/music rooms before and will say this: try your best not to get small square room. Very hard to get nice even bass, especially if you like it loud.
     
  14. Methodical

    Methodical Forum Resident

    Location:
    MD
    Basement is 26x20. I carved out a 12X20 area for my HT/2ch setup - speakers on long wall.
     
  15. JimSpark

    JimSpark I haven't got a title

    1800 sq. ft. home, 100 sq. ft. listening room. No real obstacles, house advertised as 4 bedrooms, we only needed 3, so the smallest bedroom became the listening room upon move-in time. I was lucky.
     
  16. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    My house is approximately 2,000 sq ft., maybe a little less, and I have a 24' (give or take, there's some irregularity in either end of the room) x 12.6' music room principally for listening but also for home demo recording. Issues? Besides convincing my wife that a dedicated space needed to be a home shopping priority were the usual things that require treatment -- flutter echo from the side walls, it's a narrow room that has long expanses of parallel sidewall surfaces; standing wave cancellation and reinforcement in the bass that needed treating; etc. But it is very quiet, as it's partially below grade and away at in the back of the house where a variety of backyards meet, except when the HVAC is on because there's a big air in-take in the room. It was, however, directly below my daughter's room, so that was also a problem before we were empty nesters.
     
  17. Mike-48

    Mike-48 A shadow of my former self

    Location:
    Portland, Oregon
    @Encore : Here is one more thing to look at. Your speakers' woofers are adjacent to four surfaces: front wall, side wall, floor, and ceiling. If you have not already tried this, move the speakers around to make those distances all considerably different from one another. There is a chance that will reduce (not eliminate) the suckouts.

    Bass traps should help with the muddiness by reducing reverberation time. That has been true in the rooms where I've used them. But if your room is 400 sq ft, you probably will need more than 2 traps eventually -- though even the first two should make an audible improvement. I suspect they also will improve bass evenness, but in my (amateur) measurements, such effects have been only a few dB at best.

    Based on my experience, subs are difficult to set up for best effect, and I definitely would NOT recommend them until you have improved the room acoustics. At that point, they might be able to fill that gap in the bass.

    Let's hope you have a windfall and funds are no longer tight, so you can do all of this!
     
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  18. Diskhound

    Diskhound Forum Resident

    Location:
    Canada
    We have about 2000 sq. ft. on two floors plus the basement for just two people. The key for me was a modern, dry, unfinished basement with a reasonably high ceiling. I wanted complete control over the space and this was the way to get it because the rest of the house was plenty large enough for everything else we wanted to do.

    The listening room represents about 50% of basement and measures roughly 13 by 30. The ceiling is roughly 8 ft. Issues? While we bought our house new, construction was already well underway. If I could do it all over I would still buy the same model house but I would have bought it pre-construction and paid a few thousand extra for full 9 ft. ceilings in the basement!
     
    Last edited: Jul 17, 2017
    timind likes this.
  19. Mike-48

    Mike-48 A shadow of my former self

    Location:
    Portland, Oregon
    Amen, brother! The toughest thing about getting good sound in a basement can be a low ceiling. (I know -- I have one.)
     
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  20. Diskhound

    Diskhound Forum Resident

    Location:
    Canada
    Yeah. Ceiling height can definitely be an issue. Learning from previous experience, I decided to leave the ceiling unfinished with all the joists exposed. I can't emphasize enough how much this improved the sound (dispersion and extra height). The bottom of the joists is about 7.5 ft from the floor but everything in between the joists is a full 8ft. Finishing the ceiling would have meant having a uniform ceiling of less than 7.5 ft, which turned out to be crappy in my previous house.
     
  21. wownflutter

    wownflutter Nocturnal Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Indiana
    Thanks for all the replies. Can't wait to read them later when I get time.
     
  22. timind

    timind phorum rezident

    @Encore, as sparsely as your room is furnished, room treatments and especially bass trapping look mandatory. With the recommendation for corner placement of your speakers though, I wouldn't have a clue what the optimal treatment would be.

    My understanding is, it's hard to have too much bass trapping, and you don't have any. Definitely contact GIK in Europe. After buying a couple GIK type tri-corner traps, the thought of building a couple doesn't look so daunting.
     
  23. wgb113

    wgb113 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chester County, PA
    House: 4,200 sqft
    Listening Room: 120 sqft

    No obstacles to overcome really. Ran a dedicated circuit before we finished the basement and installed acoustic treatments after moving in the media and gear.
     
  24. mcbrion

    mcbrion Forum Resident

    Location:
    Connecticut
    Listening room is 14' x 20', 9' ceilings. Dedicated room, with 6 dedicated outlets and a room treated with ASC's wall damp treatment on a resilient channel.

    By the way, I agree that tube traps are extremely helpful. I know there's a way to build them, but I got all mine back in 1988, when ASC was new to the audiophile market. I have 35, give or take one or two. They make a considerable difference in that room, which it took me years to master. (Don't let that scare ya: I'm just a perfectionist when it comes to audio equipment, electricity, room acoustics and vibration control). Tube traps are great, but you must be prepared to nudge them - after first placing them in the room - fractions of inches up and down the wall to remove a peak or smooth out a dip. And in smaller rooms, I'm sure they help even more. I think the family house is around 1800 square feet, typical ranch size for the 60s.
     
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  25. wownflutter

    wownflutter Nocturnal Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Indiana
    That's what I'm running in to
     
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