System is being relegated to the basement, I'm looking for wisdom

We recently moved into a new home and my new listening area is going in the basement. The room is 26x23x8 with a support 1x1.5 ft support pole pretty much centered. I probably should be happy about this new room, but I'm so accustomed to smaller rooms, I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed.
This basement is fully finished with drywall and carpeting on the floor. There is also a 12x13x8 bedroom which could be used for the system, but I don't see the reason to go there.
The previous setup was in a 12x12x8 room in which I used the diagonal speaker configuration. Although volume was limited, the sound was awesome in that square room. This room had bass traps in every corner as well as a couple soffit traps. There were also a few absorption panels spread around. I'm not sure what type of treatment is required in a large room.
I don't intend to change any of the equipment right away, unless I find a pair of larger speakers I can't pass up. To save you the trouble of checking my profile, here's a list of my equipment:
Resolution Audio Opus 21 mainly used as dac.
Mac Mini with approximately 1,200 cds ripped to AIFF.
Musical Fidelity A3cr amp.
A pair of Hafler P230 amps modified for use as mono blocs.
Revel M22 monitors with a pair of Anthony Gallo MPS-150 sealed subs.

Like I say, I will be looking to upgrade to larger speakers with current candidates being:
Magnepan 1.7 or 1.7i
PSB Synchrony Ones
Revel Performa F32 or F106
Vandersteen 2ce or 3A signatures

I guess I'm looking for suggestions on treatment more than anything. All suggestions welcome.

 

I am currently in the process of moving my system to the basement. My basement is 17’ x 22’ x 8’. The basement is currently just bare concrete slab and extremely “lively”. I intend to install sound absorbing vinyl flooring, then following the following guidelines (The Importance of Room Acoustics ), determine how “lively” the room is after installing the vinyl flooring and perhaps add a large rug and / or wall tapestries where needed. This process worked well for me in my current music room.

If you can, try to audition the PSB Imagine T3 speakers. I auditioned several Revel speakers but I preferred the PSB Imagine T3 overall sound and with the extended low end did not need subs.

 

I'd love to hear the T3s, but they are not within my $2000 budget for the speakers. I owned the Synchrony Twos a while back and really liked their tone.

 

Your a lucky man, enjoy the open sound. Your system is plenty good for a bigger room.

 

First off, just give it a good listen with several sources you know real well, then go from there.

 

I’d probably at least consider the idea of replicating the arrangement from the 12 x 12 room in one quarter of the basement.

 

+1

 

Pics or a diagram would greatly help.
Don't be overwhelmed, bigger is always better as you have more options.
Ya got a nice room there.
Room dimensions that are non-divisional of each other are great!

Personally I'd go with Revel. See if there are any used Performa3s in your area.
People take care of them and you could maybe upgrade to the F206.

 

That's my intention. I even intend to replicate the diagonal setup. This negates the need for absorption as there are no standard first reflection points. I'll use bass traps in the corner behind the speakers, but after that, I'm stumped. Trial and error will be my method.

 

Thanks. I meant F206.

 

You could sit with your back to the corner, 180° from what I think you just described.

 

According to my room mode calculator the bedroom should be the better sounding room. But as always YMMV.

 

Trust me, you'll love them & they'll have no problem filling your space.
Enjoy the journey!

 

I prefer to call it the "Lower Level". Basements are for city folk. We are much more sophisticated here in the burbs. You should be happy to have a system on a slab of concrete where a turntable can truly sing.
Tim

 

Hadn't thought of that. Although in my previous small square room, that's exactly what I did.

 

I just returned a pair of Def Techs for Revel F36s today. Breaking them in as I type this. My room is 26' × 15.5 × 7.8 and opens to a hallway at the rear. These speakers output a lot of bass and seem much larger than they did in the showroom. I have no doubt they'd load your space with ease. For reference, the stand mounts near them are ~20"×10"×13"

 

Humidity is not your friend.

 

Lucky dog! I would love a basement system. The 206 should definitely do some damage have fun. Pics when ya can.

 

Relegated? By whom? Please don’t say the wife! So tired of the emasculation of our society!

 

A clean and dry finished basement may be "livable" for us, but to the equipment it may be too humidified. I suggest a dehumidifier, which can be turned off during listening. Congrats, and enjoy!

 

You lucky swine!

For reasons unknown, we don't have basements in Australia. I guess thats why we have such a strong 'Shed Culture' . That where my system is set up. But I've always loved the thought of a basement.

How exciting! You get to create a new room! Good luck with it all.

 

Basements have been known to cause headaches regarding bass peaks and nulls. Don't be surprised if you have to invest in some good treatments.

 

Basements generally have to do with the frost line in the ground. In places where it's cold enough in winter that the foundation footer has to be dug several feet below grade, it makes (economic) sense to pour a floor slab at that depth as well. You've already done the excavating.

Add to this the issue of water-supply pipes freezing in a crawl space and it's a slam dunk. When I build basements I give them ten-ft ceilings and lots of windows where possible, so you hardly know you're in a basement. I generally like old houses but basements are one place where new houses tend to be better.

 

The same -- it's really not a "large" room acoustically, it's not like Carnegie Hall or a cathedral. Bass waves are still bigger than the room's dimensions and will instantly pressurize the room and bounce back on themselves for cancellation and reinforcement. You'll have greater distances between speakers and listener and boundaries, which will move some of the problematic SBIR effects to even lower frequencies, which can be tougher to treat.

You may also have longer and more varied reverb times so you'll need to manage reverb times with absorptive stuff to get an even 2-5 ms T60 time across almost all of the audible range.

What you may be able to do in a room that big that you can't do in a small room is use diffusion. You pretty much need to be sitting 6 feet or more from diffusors to allow room for a diffusive sound field to develop or you'll hear weird comb filtering effects. But diffusion behind the listening position can be great to help the speakers disappear and diffusion is great for breaking up surfaces to combat flutter echo when you don't want more HF absorption.

The biggest problem it sounds like to me is going to be a boxed lally column in the center of the room and how you're going to do a set up around that.

You'll have choices though -- do you want speakers near walls behind them and you'll sit on one side of the column, or speakers more out in the room?

My suggestion is to set up the gear you have the way you think you want it and take some measurements with a $75 calibrated mic and some free real-time analysis software. Look at the frequency response, look at the energy time curve, look at the decay times. Move the speakers and listening position around and treat the room to get as even response in all those areas as possible. Better, and easier, than just guessing.

 

We moved recently and have a pair of Magnepan 1.7i. The new listening room is smaller and the system sounds noticeably better FWIW.