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Beginner's DIY audio room

Spectrum77

Spectrum77

Super Member
Well blokes, this is the culmination of what I’ve learned from this site over the past twelve months. Here’s the beginning of the story:
http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=102842 I’ve already had megawatts of fun with this hobby and each new discovery amplifies the enjoyment.
The second storey room adjoins an old Japanese farmhouse, located in a small mountain rural village. Originally it was a granny flat; the last couple of years it has been used exclusively for rat dropping and dust storage. Major renovations were required.
The main goal was to create a comfortable space where I could get the most out of my gear while taking advantage of the surrounding views… and drinking beer. Secondary goals were to refine the floor and wall materials to improve sonic and aesthetical aspects and to create a convenient, integrated equipment storage/record cleaning space/ audio shrine.
For the room design, I capitalised on Billfort’s experiences (read: too lazy to study it myself) described in his ‘dedicated listening room’ thread http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=39695&highlight=dedicated+listening+room and learned about acoustical treatments on the Ethan Winer site: www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html and the Cardas audio site www.cardas.com. The Cardas site introduced me to the notion of the Golden cuboid. The theory sounded convincing enough to this novice, and I calculated a set of room ratios that could be fitted within the building’s existing size. The final plan for room dimensions were 6m (20’) X 3.8m (12.36’) X 2.3m (7.64’).

Below are some "before" photos of the room and the westward view.
 

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Configuring the planned dimensions and my goals to the building’s existing framework proved to be quite a challenge. Many drafts later, the final design required the removal of the entire westward wall and parallel interior wall, the construction of a drywall at the eastern of the room, a floating floor and the relocation of the access door. Many rural areas in Japan are not subject to building inspection regulations. In relation to time and money, I was thankful for that.
As the kitchen, bathroom and other places I rarely venture in the adjoining 100 year-old house still required much renovation I had a pretty tight budget. So, wherever possible, I used framing wood, plywood sheets and insulation gathered from skip (dumpster) diving. A couple of abandoned houses provided some windows, albeit after some restoration work. A couple of largish orders found me making good friends with a family running a local wood yard. Its handy being a foreigner here at times, after their curiosity was piqued they discounted materials, gave a lot of advice and delivered for free.
The job began by demolishing the westward wall and installing salvaged sliding glass doors in its place. Next I removed an interior load-bearing wall enclosing a toilet and cupboard. I salvaged a 3m long fallen cedar log to serve in place of the interior wall from the mountain behind my property then hoisted it up onto upright slabs bolted to studs. I must have been crazy to attempt to haul that log some 800m from a mountain valley up to the second floor by myself, but I discovered that although not too smart or strong, I’m bloody determined! Now I had my view. The sloping, bouncy floor that had plagued effective turntable set-up but loved by the kids as a jumping-castle was tackled next. I built a floating floor frame from 10cm X 2.5cm lumber (1” X 4”) and packed the spaces with fluffy insulation to aid in bass absorption and help keep the room warm. The framing brought the floor to ceiling height to the required 2.3m.
 

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I'm already finding this fascinating and look forward to progress reports. TO have the luxury of space for building in Japan, you obviously must be in the hinterlands.
 
In order to fit in component racks and a record cleaning area, I had to relocate the entrance door. Its new location was where I envisaged positioning mid/high absorption panels, so I made the whole door a sound panel. To obtain the room length of 6m, I constructed a drywall from particle board over 10cm X 2.5cm framing and packed it with insulation. This wall also creates a small room at the eastern end of the building that I intend to use as a bedroom for home stay purposes. The access door to this room has built-in mid/high absorption panels, too. 4.5cm X 4.5cm framing went directly over the remaining mud and bamboo walls to provide a space for insulation and the installation of cedar panelling. I wanted the Ethan Winer design bass traps and remaining mid/high absorbers to be as physically unobtrusive as possible, so I took a semi-educated guess as to where they should be, then positioned and mounted them within the framing. I re-routed light and power-point cables, including running a ground wire from the hi-fi power outlet to a copper stake outside. When installing insulation in the ceiling, I was shocked to see a few sections of cable that had been chewed to the wire by rats. Replaced those quick smart and wrote ‘Buy fire extinguisher’ at the top of my materials list.
Photos below show Jamie the T.A. and new access door and framing for built-in acoustic panels.
 

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Next was to build the gear section. Accessibility and ergonomics were the priorities here. I made sure there was space behind the components where I could quickly and easily jump in to swap leads around and generally mess about.
I liked the build simplicity and isolation characteristics of the flexy-rack www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/flexye.html, so went with this design. For the components I put together a four shelf double-flexy. Above these I built a frame from 10cm X 10cm (4” X 4”) lumber and suspended a “reverse-double-flexy” to aid in turntable vibration isolation. The flexy shelves were made from a local timber called kusu or Japanese cinnamon. It’s a hard, beautiful wood and pleasantly fragrant. I mounted the turntable platforms and pre-amp shelf quite high (I’m 6’ 2”) as my previous listening space had taught me that I wanted to view any turntable adjustments and do the pre-spin anti-static/dust-bust ceremony close to eye-level- definitely no bending. Having easy access to the volume control was also a requisite.
On the left is a record-cleaning/accessories and component storage cabinet. I used an unemployed Yamaha turntable and a wet-dry vacuum (lurking behind the cleaning cabinet) to hand-clean LPs.
Photos below show wood used, behind gear, gear racks, cleaning set up.
 

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I slapped on a coat of flat black paint to hide scars on the ceiling, open-weave cotton purchased from an Asian import shop was used for removable screens over the mid/high absorbers (doors have the patterned batik style material in the top section) and perfect condition sections of carpet retrieved during a skip dive finished the basic decoration. Scratched black NS-1000Ms really didn’t blend into the whole wood-look thing so I attacked them with an orbital sander and a couple of coats of teak coloured stain. Not perfect, but look better than before. Finally, I got a new Yaqin MS-12B tube pre-amp and Yaqin MC-100B tube amp combo and a set of Dynaco A25s to “… really tie the room together”, as The Dude would say.
Initially I set up the speakers in a near-field listening configuration suggested by Cardas. Imaging was fantastic, but there was something missing in the mids, so I moved the speakers and couch further apart to a previous configuration, played with fine positioning and “Viola!”- I was instantly convinced that the effort was worthwhile. Definitely a significant improvement over any room I’ve used before and I feel even more refinement is possible.
All of the interior wood is yet untreated. I’m uncertain whether to seal it and what would be the best product to use. Any ideas?
Any constructive criticism and/or advice would be much appreciated.

Photos below show each corner of the finished room, and with the curtains closed for when the listening gets... "serious".
 

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tentoze said:
Then I'm confused. There is a door behind the child, but I was talking about the extension on the right of him in the picture coming out from what appears to be the external wall at 90 degrees.
Click to expand...
Yes sir, that's the access door. I removed the existing bamboo and daub wall section and installed it there. The old Japanese-height door behind The Little Boss was never used. Previous to renovation access was gained through sliding doors (at 5' height- OUCH!)- the gear racks are now where the sliding doors were, hence the need for the new access door.
The room is in my weekender. It's in the bush about an hour's drive from where I live in the city of Fukuoka. Thanks for the interest.
 
It's a fine looking listening space, and I'm sure you will have many hours of enjoyment from it. Well done, sir!
 
Man, the only thing better than making something useful out of nothing or unused, is to make something very special out of nothing. Great job. I really like the cedar log. It seems to add a feeling of weight or premanance to the room.

Hope you enjoy that space for many years. I'm sure it will be well remembered by your T.A..
 
Fukuoka is a beautiful and historic city. Having this wonderful retreat in the country must be awesome.

Great work and thanks for sharing!
 
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