The cheapest "dedicated" rooms I can think of are
"headphones". Predictable results.
"headphones". Predictable results.
Building a dedicated room
We are beginning the early stages of looking at building a dedicated listening room above our garage for our 2 channel system. It looks as though we will be able to get about 500-600 SF. Those of you who have done it, or are in the profession, what initial guidelines or advise can you offer?
(other than the obvious planning for electrical) Garage is attached to a common wall and accessible through the kitchen, which will keep it nicely isolated from the rest of the house, Our HVAC system is only 5 years old and is a high efficiency unit, which will probably have the capacity to heat and cool the room. Electrical service is 200 amp and recently rewired with new breakers, panel, and trunk wire from street. It is located on the back wall of the garage so runs to the outlets can be kept short.
(other than the obvious planning for electrical) Garage is attached to a common wall and accessible through the kitchen, which will keep it nicely isolated from the rest of the house, Our HVAC system is only 5 years old and is a high efficiency unit, which will probably have the capacity to heat and cool the room. Electrical service is 200 amp and recently rewired with new breakers, panel, and trunk wire from street. It is located on the back wall of the garage so runs to the outlets can be kept short.
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I would have to concur with Nrchy. There may be lots of info on the net but, short of making acoustics a hobby and investing time & money learning & experimenting (which can be fascinating), you'd probably be better off (or cheaper off) investing in professionals such as Rives & co. Let them worry about the room! |
First thing is to get your dimensions right. Golden ratios are a good start (see Alton Everest's Master Handbook of Acoustics), but they don't really tell the whole story. There are often better ratios depending on the volume of the room. We look at each room using 3 different programs to examine mode spacing, total modes, axial mode build up, tangential mode coincidence, and bonello criteria. For most, using the ratio's is much simplier and can lead to reasonable results. But the dimensions are the most critical element for a couple of reasons: they can't easily be changed once the room is built, they control which bass frequencies are accentuated--and if the bass is wrong--just about everything sounds wrong. Second is to then determine the geometry. Angled walls are good for large spaces in a dedicated listening (2 channel) room. They allow you to have a live sound but get rid of slap echo. They do not change the modes significantly because the angles are relatively small compared to bass frequency wavelengths. Then it's time to work on speaker and listening position followed by acoustical treatment. This is the area that can really get quite complex and is very dependent on listener preferences. What volumes do you listen at, what type of music, what characteristics do you like (reverberant sound field vs direct sound only--most audiophiles lean slightly towards the reverberant field as it provides better spacial cues.) As to HVAC, Everest's book can help you there too. It's generally a good idea to have a plenum separating the duct work for a dedicated audio system and then use long linear ducts so the air flow velocity is slower and thus much quieter. Returns have similar issues. Lastly, you may want to take a look at our site for additional tips. In particular the listening room, which is a basic tutorial on room acoustics. |