Building an audio room from scratch (designing a new home)

Firstly, apologies for the slow reply, I made the mistake of reading the follow-ups before I had time to respond, and assumed that the thread would continue to get bumped. Oops!

Understood.

Of course, acoustic decoupling (if you are not building a floating room) can become an issue (of course, a lot depends on how loud you like to listen). I wonder whether it would be possible to disguise a physical separation between your listening room and the rest of the house? Of course, there is still the risk of sound transmission through common walls, ducts, etc.

This is why you need the advice of a specialist to work with your architect to arrive at a solution that fits your requirements and budget.

(a) I didn't expect you to answer this question, I was just pointing out the need to have a budget in mind;
(b) I was considering the cost of the room, over and above what you would already have to pay to build and furnish the rest of the house. I might be inclined to go all-in on a dream kitchen, swanky bathroom, walk-in closet with room for hundreds of shoes and handbags. Then your room will seem like a drop in the bucket, and everyone is happy!

Decoupling the listening room (without floating) from a room above can be difficult. If this is going to be a guest bedroom or some other room that would not be in use during listening sessions then it may not matter.

With regard to ceiling height, higher is always better, but you are going to have to find the happy medium between listening room requirements and attractive home requirements. Again, an audio consultant should be able to help advise here, and work with your architect.

With regard to ceiling features, they can be hit or miss in my experience. I have done many, many audio demonstrations in hotel rooms, ballrooms, conference rooms, etc. Tray ceiling can be unpredictable when it comes to sound. They are especially tough to deal with when they have some giant chandelier hanging from them! Vaulted ceilings tend to be fine if they are high, but can become problematic as the ceiling height goes down (some times causing beaming of reflections to the listening position, which is on the center line). If the ceiling beams are going across the width of the room, I could imagine there being some help in breaking up specular reflections. However, if you do decide to engage an audio consultant, you should take his advice -- there may be ways to add some acoustic treatment to the ceiling that can be easily removed to restore the room to 'normal' after your time living in the house.

Regarding the room size, there are numerous listening room ratios which have been published which are meant to minimize room modes. These are some I collected years ago:

Assuming a 12" ceiling height:

1:1.14:1.39 - Width = 13' 8.16" - Length = 16' 8.16"
1:1.28:1.54 - Width = 15' 4.32" - Length = 18' 5.76"
1:1.6:2.33 - Width = 19' 2.40" - Length = 27' 11.5"
1:1.26:1.59 - Width = 15' 1.44' - Length = 19' 0.96"
1:1.59:2.52 - Width = 19' 0.96" - Length = 30' 2.88"
1:1.59:3.18 - Width = 19' 0.96 - Length = 38' 1.92"
1:2.52:3.18 - Width = 30' 2.88" - Length = 38' 1.92"

The dimensions in bold would seem to be in the ball-park!

The golden ratio has also proven itself to be popular for both room dimensions and speaker placement. For your situation we get:

12' x 19' 5" x 31' 5" (cuboid)
12' x 19' 5" [front wall] x 31' 5" [length] x 15' 3.2" x 24' 8.4" [rear wall] (trapagon)

The second example has non-parallel walls and a sloping ceiling, but you've already ruled that out!

Just to let you know, I have a wide window at one end of my listening room, and glass doors at the other (I had to take what I could get! ). I invested in heavy theater drape (colored velvet curtain, some kind of cotton backing, and a thick lining -- so three parts to each drape). It doesn't really do much for bass frequencies, but can help tame high frequency reflections. I had the drapes made in sections, so I have 8 pieces, four at each end which I can open/close/bunch to avoid deadening all the highs.

I wanted Pass Labs monoblocks for my system, as I had used them for work for several years, but we have no A/C at our home, and they idle at 700 W per chassis. Having had to do a show in Las Vegas in 100 degree heat and FIVE such amps. in a M-ch demo, I know how sour the air can quickly become. So, I had to settle for Classe monoblocks which seem to use some kind of plateau-biasing to keep the idle heat dissipation down.

While I think of it, be sure to consider how you will get your equipment into your room! Consider a wide corridor and large doors -- or consider installing doors to the outside in the listening room to ease access. While it may not be your job to move your Wilsons into the room, you don't want whoever is moving them to damage the speakers or your walls!

Definitely do NOT plan a spiral staircase as the only access!

I don't keep up on all the latest and greatest when it comes to video. I know that some people do use projectors for everyday use, but mostly (exclusively?) in darkened rooms. I know that the lamps have become more powerful, and they have black screens, etc. which can make daylight viewing possible, but it sounds like an OLED set would be your best bet. There are all kinds of ways to camouflage it when you want to do serious listening.

 

Just an FYI / brag... I was just able to upgrade my digital to a full dCS Vivaldi stack!

We are still working of the shape of the room (and the rest of the home)... I'll be back with details when we are closer to final.

 

Nice!

You can park it here while you busy yourself with the new house!

 

We are moving along with the planning... The room has been moved around a bit and there is some good news and some challenges... First a description of the shape of the current room: it is 20'x25' with 12 foot ceilings. It is hard to make the room longer, but I have some flexibility on the ceiling height and width. The speaker wall with be to the north -- an outside wall made of block). The wall to the west is solid (backs to an eat in kitchen area) and can be made of block. The door from the home will be near the south end of this wall. The east wall will be an outside wall -- there will be about 10 to 12 feet of block from the north corner. This will give me a great / quiet area surrounding the speakers.

Here is the challenge: This is a Florida home with a big pool / lanai area directly to the south of this room... no choice here --> there has to be a corner opening for outdoor entertaining. That means that 12' of the east wall will be glass that slides into a pocket to open and the same for the south wall. The glass will be hurricane glass, so it will be much heavier than regular, but I need a way to deaden the reflection!

My wife has asked if there is a material that might be usable on rollers (like movie screen) to drop from the ceiling... we could cover the rolls with a valence or box/tray ceiling. Any ideas on if there is this material?

Thanks again for everyone's help.

 

Your problem is that material (even thick theater drape) only works on higher frequencies, it does nothing for bass frequencies.

RPG used to make 8' acoustic panels (VariScreen) which you could put in front of the glass, but my guess is that your wife would flip at such a suggestion -- plus you would have to open up the panels when you wanted to open the glass doors. Here's an image from a show I helped to set up back in the SACD days (no idea why this image is on the website that is hosting it, we dealt with RPG directly):

 

I’d add whole house surge protection to the already great recommendations you’ve received.