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My sonic temple...new listening space under construction

tomlinmgt

tomlinmgt

Lunatic Member
**Jump to page 15 and scroll down to see finished space.

Bachelorhood allowed me to make what has almost certainly been the single most impactful decision I've made in the audio hobby since I jumped in...the commissioning of my garage (well, like 80% of it) for use as a dedicated listening space where I had virtually unlimited freedom to deal with room acoustics and speaker/listening spot location. No doubt about it, exploiting that "blank canvas" circumstance and educating myself on room acoustics and how to deal with them for 2-channel playback improved my hifi hobby experience profoundly. Hearing the improvements as I made incremental changes taught me just how critical it is to have generous latitude for adjusting speaker and listening spot location and optimizing room acoustics for music reproduction (which I achieved through the appropriate selection and placement of proper acoustic treatment devices) if you want to get the most performance out of your gear. All of those things truly are the gatekeepers for maximum fidelity.

However, all good things must come to an end and with a change in marital status (and living arrangement) approaching rapidly, the garage will need to be returned to full garage duty. But make no mistake, one of my criteria for marriage material was that she had to be as passionate about music as I am and support my musician lifestyle and audio hobby "tinkerings". Not only does she support both, but she encouraged me to build a "sonic temple" where I could fully enjoy and explore my musical passions. So when we decided to add another bedroom to my house, she was totally on board when I said I'd also like to build a room where I could conduct my hifi and percussive endeavors. What a lucky man I am.

I broke ground last month, and with framing now almost complete I have a skeleton that makes it possible to get an idea what the end product will look like.

Basic structural details are as follows...

- 19'x26' floor with vaulted ceiling 8' up to 14'
- walls of standard 2x4 construction with exterior layer of 7/16" OSB under 9/16" ply siding. Side walls get r13 with acoustically transparent fabric covering (10 oz. poly-cotton blend duck canvas). Ceiling and rear wall interior will be r19 insulation (paper face out) between rafters/studs, exposed but covered with poly-cotton blend duck, which makes each of those boundaries a giant mid bass trap.
- floor will be stained concrete with lots of rugs
- one door at rear of one sidewall and a double door on the rear wall which allows passage into the existing structure (24'x24' detached garage/shop)
- one window on side wall with door, and two windows on opposing side wall. Three windows on front wall.
-acoustic treatments have yet to be determined, but primary/early reflection locations will get broadband absorption. The front wall will get the Leanfuser stepped diffuser array that I used in my prior listening space and I have numerous other QRD diffusers that will be located accordingly after I've had a chance to measure the room's acoustic response. I already mentioned the ceiling and rear wall which will be totally absorptive from 125 Hz to approx 400 Hz except for strategically placed broadband absorption where it's needed. Bass trapping will be built after I've determined which bass frequencies are problematic.

- Michael

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Wow!

looks like the creation of a great dedicated listening space.

Here’s a suggestion from someone who is not an official authority on designing sound spaces (really needed to make that crystal clear especially on AK where there are a lot more smarter and knowledgeable people than me about this!)

Assuming that you still have not buttoned up the floors yet, I had a built a night club with a stage that was filled with sand below to reduce the unnatural effect that would occur on the lower frequencies. This was meant to reduce/eliminate any of the lower frequencies that might unbalance the overall sound.

As a bass player, it really made a difference to me in the sound quality.

Again, I am not a sound engineer (nor do I play one on TV;)) but, it did make a material difference in he overall sound quality especially on the lower frequencies.

Just say’n…
 
ibog1 said:
Try to have dedicated lines with some 20 amp circuits.
Click to expand...
The breaker panel in the existing detached garage structure will be the panel for the listening room. There's a 60a main breaker, three 30a breakers and about six or seven 20a breakers with only one 20a breaker in use for the detached garage. The panel piggybacks off the main panel at the house, though. So it doesn't have it's own pole.
 
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Great project!

Since you are in control of room dimensions, I would build out the side walls a touch (target ideal of 16') to provide a closer to Golden ratio or fibonnaci sequence of 1.62.

Lucky lad that I am, my current listening room (which is really a large bedroom) already has very good 26x15 (1.73) dimensions with minimal room modes resulting in very linear response in the Schroeder frequencies using bass traps. No EQ required. ;)
 
E-Stat said:
Great project!

Since you are in control of room dimensions, I would build out the side walls a touch (target ideal of 16') to provide a closer to Golden ratio or fibonnaci sequence of 1.62.

Lucky lad that I am, my current listening room (which is really a large bedroom) already has very good 26x15 (1.73) dimensions with minimal room modes resulting in very linear response in the Schroeder frequencies using bass traps. No EQ required. ;)
Click to expand...

From the get go, I started consulting with studio designers and acoustic engineers about optimum dimensions to minimize modal activity and they all say the vaulted ceiling makes it impossible to predict modal activity or achieve the proverbial "golden ratio". The vaulted ceiling was chosen because I couldn't build the room with the optimum ceiling height based on my floor dimensions (it would have needed to be around 16') and the vaulted ceiling was suggested as the next best thing. I wanted to build as much square footage as the location on the lot would allow since I'll be keeping a few of my drum sets in there and may even make the space available for recording to my friends who do that and need a large, acoustically optimized "live room". So I built as big a footprint as I could and I'll treat it appropriately with acoustic treatment devices after I figure out what issues the room has. The ceiling and back walls will be big bass traps, and there is no exterior wall that is masonry....so a good bit of first octave energy will pass right through the walls which means modal activity in that region and the spectral region the ceiling and rear wall bass traps operate within will be reduced.
 
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Very cool and interesting! Congrats on the opportunity to build your room from scratch...and good luck! Oh yeah, congrats too, on the understanding co-conspirator!:)
 
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