Starting from Studs - What Would You Do???

[Moon Man]

Hi,

I am new to the audiophile game, but I have a basement to finish. It has two rooms that I am thinking about doing a quality setup in. There are other rooms as well, but they are less important for now.

The theater: 30x16x8.5

The guestroom/office/listening room: 16x14x8.5

My background is basically in home theater, I have a set of mid range polks in 5.1 along with a top of the line Denon AVR and an OPPO player for tunes. I have made the mistake of hitting up some local stereo shops, and I know what I am missing.

I will be finishing my basement in the next 6-12 months and I am starting to plan. My budget for audio gear will be around 5k, I might be able to go 10k, but my wife says she has to have a Range Rover before i spend that much, and the math just doesn't add up there

I have some questions:

1. Do I even bother trying to do a 2ch mixed with a home theater setup in my budget? I don't mind going used but it seems to me that if I spend 2k on speaks for the front, the surrounds might cost another 2k to match. Should I just move my polks to the theater and go for a nice listening room in the 16x14 space?

2. Do I need to run dedicated electric to these spaces? When we built I put in a 200amp service and it's about half used so far (house is 2700sqft up, maybe 1600sqft down).

3. What else should I consider structure wise? I am planning on insulating all walls and ceilings in the basement for soundproofing. Should I be using special materials on the ceiling or anything to setup the room for sound? Should I try to stud in some acoustic dampers or do wallhangings?

4. I assume carpet is best for sound? I was thinking of making the smaller room cork with a rug.

5. What kind of speaker cable should i put in the ceiling that wont break the bank?

6. For sound, is there any advantage to using a projector screen (the studs were arranged so i could do a motor down screen).

What else should I think about before beginning construction?

If you had a budget of about 5k, what direction would you go?

I have never tried tubes, and I want to, but my budget might be too small. Also, should I hire an audio engineer to look at my space before i begin?

Any and all opinions welcome, I only get one shot at this.

 

[RevMen]

2. Do I need to run dedicated electric to these spaces? When we built I put in a 200amp service and it's about half used so far (house is 2700sqft up, maybe 1600sqft down).

I can't imagine you would need anything like 100 amps for any kind of home theater that would fit in those spaces. Then again, I don't know that much about home theater equipment, so I can't really say for certain. It just seems really unlikely.

People who do basement recording studios will often do dedicated electrical for grounding/noise reasons. If you're going to plug everything into the same outlet (or on the same side of the wall), this isn't a concern.

3. What else should I consider structure wise? I am planning on insulating all walls and ceilings in the basement for soundproofing. Should I be using special materials on the ceiling or anything to setup the room for sound? Should I try to stud in some acoustic dampers or do wallhangings?

Just "insulating" may not be enough to get you there, depending on where you're trying to get. I can give you a lot of help on this topic, but I need more information.

What spaces are you worried about sound getting to (what are the receiver rooms)?

What kinds of walls or floor/ceiling assemblies are between your source rooms (home theater, listening room) and your receiver rooms?

4. I assume carpet is best for sound? I was thinking of making the smaller room cork with a rug.

Not necessarily. It's nice and absorptive, but its absorption spectrum isn't ideal. If you have full control over your wall and ceiling surfaces you might want to use some kind of hard flooring and "tune" it with area rugs. You can run some RT calculations for your room and experiment with different surfaces to see where a carpeted floor gets you vs hard floor with rugs.

5. What kind of speaker cable should i put in the ceiling that wont break the bank?

You can get a lot of different opinions on this, all well-supported. Me, I don't know.

6. For sound, is there any advantage to using a projector screen (the studs were arranged so i could do a motor down screen).

If you mean is it advantageous to be able to roll a screen up for audiophile time, then the answer is probably yes. It depends on the layout of your room, ultimately, but acoustical treatment on the walls behind your speakers is a very common step.

What else should I think about before beginning construction?

Are your studs in place already? If not, and if you're really serious about this, you should think about doing non-parallel walls.

Also, should I hire an audio engineer to look at my space before i begin?

"Audio engineer" is kind of an ambiguous term. Whose help you want depends on what you want help with.

If you want help with acoustics, you'll want an acoustical engineer (like me). Acoustics will include room shape and surfacing (room acoustics), and sound isolation (partition design and floor/ceiling design). Acoustical engineers usually work with architects and developers on large projects but many of us like to do small scale work on the side. If this is what you're interested in, I might know someone in your area if you want someone local.

If you want help with choosing, setting up, and tuning equipment, and also with some room acoustics, then you'll be looking for an A/V expert/engineer. I would guess your local stereo shop has a name or two or even has someone in-house.

"Audio engineer" usually refers to someone who operates audio equipment professionally, like live mixing, studio recording, soundtrack design, mastering... that sort of thing.

 

[shelly_d]

From a very practical point of view:

Putting more of the budget into the structure then the equipment makes the most sense. Its very easy to change out the equipment a few years down the road when the budget permits it, its very expensive to change the rooms. So place your emphasis on the rooms.

I would go with high R value insulation in the outside walls for heat and energy considerations. Interior walls and ceiling I would look to sound insulate. I'm not sure what that would look like so you would have to do your own research on that - sorry.

For interior design, I favor carpeting with thick foam padding for living in. It is also pretty good for sound deadening. That is my personal preferance since I grew up with it. Since one of these is a home theater, drapes on the windows to darken the room and add sound deadening makes sense.

For speaker wires, I defer to the advice of Rod Elliot of ESP found here:

http://sound.westhost.com/cables-p2.htm#spkr-leads

and here:

http://sound.westhost.com/impedanc.htm

His point is (I think) that for long runs with difficult to drive speakers (widely fluctuating impedance) speaker wire can make a difference. With that in mind however, the questions become:

1. Are these long runs?
2. Will the wiring be behind the wall?
3. Is roll off of the high end important for your longest runs? I.e. if the rear channel is the longest runs, is the roll off there important or is there little content in that speaker in that frequency range to begin with?
​

If you find that you will be putting speaker wiring behind the walls and it will exceed a wiring length of say 15 to 25 feet, and the roll of highs for that position is important, then the wire you use becomes important, mostly because you may, in the future find you want speakers that have widely varying impedance. Lets face it, you won't want to break the walls to run new wire.

What you would need for that situation is something with reduced inductance. Rod discusses a 3 wire solution with the wire braided together. That gives you one wire for one of the terminals and 2 for the other. It actually seems to me that a better solution is a 4 strand braid. I learned how to do that on the internet for a braided bread I make. No more difficult then 3 and you get the even resistance from the same length and size wires on both terminals. Also possible (and for this I reach back to the late 1950's when I was a kid) a "lanyard" stitch that resulted in a diamond or spiral lanyard. This site describes the steps involved.

http://www.ehow.com/how_6932107_make-diamond-lanyard.html

Any of these techniques that move the conductors in and out and back and forth are effective at reducing the overall inductance of the wire. That is your goal here. For safety reasons the wire must be rated as safe for use in a wall. For budget reasons, you do not want any of the special speaker wire. IT will break your budget and you will not hear enough of a difference to justify it.

Just my take on your project. Good luck with it and enjoy.

Shelly_D

 

[olson_jr]

Starting from Studs...keep us posted on your progress.

Looks like a fun project.

 

[Coytee]

Fun project. Mine is in limbo.

Some of the things I did... I ran four dedicated 20 amp circuits to my electronics closet. I also actively biamp and might at sometime, want a stereo amp (or mono tube amp) AT the speaker on the other side of the room.

I continued these four 20 amp circuits so that each circuit gave me several outlets in the closet (mixed with switched and unswitched outlets) AND I continued each circuit to each front speaker location (3 of the 4 circuits) so that I also had switched and unswitched power at each speaker location. The 4th circuit was dedicated to the closet.

Now, when I walk in the room, I have another panel of switches that will controll all switched outlets. I can walk in room, hit 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 switches and turn everything on or off. I will have requisite parts pluged into "live" outlets instead of switched (like a DVR)

I ran speaker wires from the closet to each speaker location so I can biamp from the closet. I ran XLR wires from the closet to each speaker location so I can put a balanced amp at the speaker. I also ran RCA wires from closet to speaker location so I can run an unbalanced amp at each speaker location. I also ran a couple Cat 6.

I installed enough of each so that I can biamp each location from the closet or, I can biamp each location from each location locally.

Oh, and I ran another run of similar wires so I could run as many as two subs from the front (via XLR, RCA or speaker wires)

Overkill...but once drywall is up I don't want to have my options limited. I might even go back and add conduit to each location in addition to all the wires "just in case"

Who, me retentive?

 

[luddite]

Maybe save yourself some cash by not doing a separate small listening room.
The larger room, if built as a combined video/listening room will get better acoustics and you can put all your eggs in one basket. The smaller room could serve as your equipment storage/workshop/office (guests can sleep on air mattresses in the living room, so they don't get too comfortable... we had one settle into our spare room for 6 months a couple of years back, and most come for a day and spend a week... the air mattresses in the living room are great, they are gone the next day) and you could prewire the heck out of both to run anything from either room at any time. I'd put resilient channels on the insulated ceiling joists before drywalling, and build out the screen end of the room to build in speakers and screen into a flush finished end wall. We don't know what those glass sliders are facing, but if is your neighbours out there, then you might spend extra on double tracking both sliders with an inner pair of sliders for sound proofing and a set of blackout blinds on both. You can't tell about the acoustics of the room until you've got carpet down and furniture in place. Walls can always be dampened later with fabric if they are too lively.

 

[noise gate]

Is 5K enough? Fore some people that will barely cover the cost of speaker cables.

For a guy like me 5K is more than what I have into my listening space gear. My gear, my chair, my space. Most of that gear is used,becasue I ENJOY scrounging for deals almost as much as listening to music. But, that space is just about music, and just for me. It's about 11' wide, 7.5' high and 14-16 feet long. There's a separate tv/ theatre place in my basement.

It all depends on what you want..

In this world like the world of Hot Rods, and many other things the question isn't where do I start, it's when do I stop?

Good luck to you.

 

[Moon Man]

Thanks for all the GREAT replies. Some good food for thought. I will post a short response for now (stuck at work).

I will post some detailed responses later, but I think I am going to try and combine the 2ch and home theater into one.

I like the idea of non parallel walls but the walls in the diagram above are all load bearing. I would have to add to them and decrease the size of the room. One thing I am thinking of trying is to run flexible PVC through the joists so I can easily change speaker cable in the future, I also like the idea of braiding 4 wires together for each speaker for BI amping etc.

I know that 5k is low for audio gear. However you have to realize what I have now are some Polk Monitor 70's (with center and surrounds) and a crappy sub with an AVR. Anything is going to be a step up.

I also like the idea of switching some of the outlets on a dedicated run.

I know this might be a bit crazy, but I always wanted to try K-horns. And I have the room for them now. Any opinions on that? Maybe with a little Jolida tube amp and a nice CD Player and Digital DAC? The do a Surround system with paradigm or wharfdale for 5ch?

And don't worry about house guests, I have 3 kids from 2-7. Any house guests are almost always helping with the kids.

 

[whoaru99]

If I were starting from stud, one of the first things I'd consider is sizing the room dimensions to try to avoid as many acoustic issues as possible right out of the box - golden ratio (?) or something like that. Cardas has some interesting material on his website. Dunno the validity but looks/sounds interesting, particularly the Golden Trapagon room setup.

http://www.cardas.com/pdf/roomsetup.pdf

 

[Coytee]

I know this might be a bit crazy, but I always wanted to try K-horns. And I have the room for them now. Any opinions on that? Maybe with a little Jolida tube amp and a nice CD Player and Digital DAC? The do a Surround system with paradigm or wharfdale for 5ch?

There are some that might say doing the Khorns would be fantastic. I don't know how they'd blend in with the other brands for HT.

If it were me, (and this is exactly what I've done) I'd look out for some Khorns & maybe some LaScalas.

In the back of my room, I have a closet which is the stairwell coming down. I've taken this closet and framed some openings so I can scoot my two LaScalas inside and get them out of the room.

Makes the wife smile.

The speaker now has a tile floor under it. This is an old picture.

 

[VolvoHeretic]

I don't know much, but I would insulate each and every wall in the basement with R11 fiction fit fiberglass batt insulation for cheap sound control. Also in the floor joists. I would also just run 12ga Romex house wire to outlet boxes in the wall runs and convert to braided wire outside of the walls for the short runs to the speakers. Good luck.

 

[luddite]

Moon,

If you reduce the footprint of that future vanity, you could do this...