My wife and I found a beautiful piece of land that we will be building on soon. We are currently in the early stages of going through the plans for our house. I will have a dedicated listening room upstairs. The room will be a nice size with a vaulted ceiling. I am trying to gather as much good information pertaining specifically to “my” room for pre-construction. I’m not as worried about things that can be done after moving in, but the things that would be very difficult or impossible to do if I don’t think ahead. Any tips or links to websites that you could recommend would be appreciated. Also, if you have a book that you know would be good reading on the subject, please list it.
Consider where your system will be within the space. Consider running speaker cabling before drywall goes up. Ditto for dedicated circuit separate from the rest of the home. There are probably other considerations and I'm sure someone will chime in. Not necessarily recommending - just a suggestion: Book Review: Room Acoustics
I will definitely be running my speaker wire in wall on the first floor, but I am not as concerned about concealing my speaker cable (Audioquest Rocket 88) in my listening room. Obviously I don’t want it to look “sloppy”, but it isn’t that big of a deal. Especially with my monoblock amplifiers relatively close to the speakers.
Also, since you're in the design/planning phase if budget will allow, consider discussing your building project with an acoustic specialist: Paid Consulting Services - Room Design and DIY Acoustic Panel & Bass Trap
Buy a copy of Jim Smith's Get Better Sound. It's full of useful tips, concisely presented. Think about sound transfer. Will the room be next to a bedroom? Living room with TV? Nothing? There are several techniques for sound isolation, all of which require special materials and painstaking attention to detail in construction. So if the room is located far from other living areas, you won't need to do all that (unless noise transfer from outside is important). It seems to me that a nice-sized room above a garage could be a great situation. ... I got ideas and door seals from the Soundproofing Company. You can calculate room modes here. They are only approximations to what will develop in a real room with real furniture. Don't plan to sit facing west or south. It is unpleasant to have the sun in your eyes. Try for ceiling height of at least 9 ft if possible. If not, 8 ft is fine, and you can make 7 ft work (as I have), but it is far from ideal. As others have said, run a dedicated line. I ran two, one for lighting and one for audio. You can never have too many outlets. I recommend hospital-grade outlets as great quality and far less costly than "audiophile" ones. Run a couple of Ethernet lines, or more, with at least Category 6 cable. Even if you aren't using them now, you probably will later. I agree that a professional audio-room designer can be helpful, but they are hard to find and costly. So do plenty of research before hiring anyone. And finally -- this has nothing to do with audio -- if I were building a house, I'd use mineral wool insulation (Roxul) in interior walls around bedrooms and bathrooms and probably use QuietRock (or other sound-absorbing sheetrock) as well. No one wants to hear others using the bathroom.
I just ordered ordered Get Better Sound. I will run dedicated lines with quality outlets and Category 6 ethernet cable. I will also be using QuietRock.
Lucky guy, building a listening room from scratch. Make sure you have more power and outlets than you think you need.
Good advice. Speaking about doors: Is there any special type of door that would work well for sound? Mostly keeping the sound in the room.
You would most likely have to get one custom made if you are wanting the door to act as a sound barrier. Definitely looking at the thousands for such an option but once you get it done you don't have to worry about it. I would recommend posting a thread at either or both the AVSForum and Gearspace under the Studio Building section. There are a lot of Sound and Acoustic Engineers in those forums more than willing to provide you helpful information.
I’d start reading about golden room ratios, modes, nulls and SBIR. There are calculators and lots of other info here: Acoustics/Treatment Reference Guide - LOOK HERE! - Gearspace.com
If I was starting from scratch I’d design the room around the equipment I have or would want to have, make the room compliment or bring the best out of the speakers. Like good corners for k- horns, space to pull Maggie’s away from the wall and get a perfect triangle with the speakers and listening position. I would ideally design a room differently depending on the equipment. Likewise, think about the furniture you want to have in the room and how many people you would like to accommodate for listening. Also, I don’t what to have my back against a wall while listening, I’d design the room to be open behind the listening position. Do you want a bar, pool table or tv in the room? If you are building a clinical or exact listening laboratory probably not but these things can be in the room without interfering with listening if you design for it. in a perfect world I’d design my room so there isn’t any furniture or equipment between my speakers. I’d love to have all components, out of sight and isolated away from the the vibrations from the speakers. Like a rack on casters behind the wall the speakers are on and feed speaker wire through the wall.
Get the optional 1" hard foam insulation as the outer shell for the house. It will cut back on letting outside noise in (if that is an issue) and also save significant money on electricity/gas bills.
In addition to dedicated AC lines, consider how they are coming out of the breaker box. We are using a twin phase system, where the main 240v electrical drop is split in two to provide power for our 120v devices. Half of the breakers are on one phase, with half on the other. In my house, one side has everything that's electrically noisy: florescent lights, rheostats, computers, and major appliances. The other side has my stereo outlets, incandescent and LED lights, and general outlets. This keeps my audio electrical feed cleaner. I wrote about this in detail here. With your mono amps by the speakers, this allows a dedicated circuit for them to be on the same electrical phase as the circuit for the rest of your gear. In fact, if you amps are real electrically hungry boys, you may need two dedicated power amp circuits just for them. I've run into that problem at my house. I have one dedicated amp circuit. I have to be careful to stagger turning my mono amps on or I'll trip the breaker. I wish I had two power amp circuits just for them.
To get max effectiveness from it, it has to be installed with acoustic caulk at all joints, putty pads around electrical boxes, and as few penetrations as possible. For example, I'd recommend using floor lamps instead of ceiling cans.
Extension built 10 years ago that in main open plan living room for main hifi the room was proportioned using the 'Golden Ratio' plus ceiling open to the ridge. Also fill any dry voids, especially against plasterboard and any under floor voids with solid insulation. Where plasterboard or floor meets timber studs a thin rubber strip was applied. All contributed to minimal echo and structurally induced bass nodes.
The first priority should be size and proportions. Golden ratio (1:1.62) is probably okay, but I don’t think it’s the be all end all. In an ideal world you’d avoid parallel walls, floor and ceiling, having the room expanding toward the rear, and the rear wall on an angle. The one place you do not want the seating position is the midpoint between front and rear. There are methods for building the walls to absorb sound waves too- which involves more than drywall material. There is a lot of knowledge on the subject, so you’ll have to figure out how far down that rabbit hole to go, and how much you’re willing to spend. I’d opt for a big room with pool table and bar to go with my custom made cue. I might forgo indoor plumbing for that…
Provide at least double the number of outlets you believe you will need where you plan on placing your equipment. Install floor receptacles where your speakers will be place in case you ever run self powered speakers in the future that required power or you go with amplifiers that you want to place next to the speakers to shorten cable runs. Run your in wall wiring in conduit large enough to pull and replace or add wires in the future (Ethernet, speaker, interconnects, coaxial). Becareful of sharp bends or too many within the run that would kink the wire and/or make pulling new cables difficult. Veryify that all three room dimensions (length, width & height) work together for that "golden" ratio required for good sound. Be mindful of door and/window placements. Make sure they don't end up in early reflection points within the wall. Becareful in which way the speakers will fire in relationship to the pitched ceiling (cathedral or just sloped). Assuming your seating arrangement will be out in the room provide two floor receptacles for chargers assuming you will be using a tablet to control your streaming or other items requiring power. Depending on how much sound proofing you are planning double wall framing set on isolation pads maybe used. Glue and screw your wall panels (drywall or plywood). You might consider an absorption cloud built into the ceiling just in front of speaker location. Lastly becareful when designing the HVAC system so you don't transmit that noise into the room through the poor placement of the circuit within the power panel. Consider vibration and vent rush noises. Concerning the circuit layout make sure the dedicated lines feeding the room aren't going to be picking up electric generated hash from the HVAC system cycling or the refrigerator and other appliances that can cross contaminate the power circuits feeding the room. Locations of each circuit with the panel is critical to prevent dirty power from reaching the critical receptacles in that room.
These might help PSU, lol, in your neighborhood https://www.mne.psu.edu/lamancusa/me458/8_rooms.pdf The section on listening rooms, page 10 https://www.itu.int/dms_pubrec/itu-r/rec/bs/R-REC-BS.1116-1-199710-S!!PDF-E.pdf I echo others, consult with an expert, PSU may have someone willing to work with you. Soundproof and structurally reinforce the floor since you are not on grade. Room dimensions/proportions/materials are everything, if not right, everything else is a bandaid.
Let me clarify. In my case, the gasketed solid-core door came from a building supply house (via my GC). The add-on aluminum/rubber seals (sides) and drop seal (bottom) came from the Soundproofing Company.
