Most important fundamentals in your built/modded listening room?

Fantastic set of comments! I am copying these out into a list meant for a contractor. These ideas will be implemented. I hope there are more.

Some replies to you generous folks:

The room won’t have noise issues. Just master bedroom upstairs and my spouse is usually somewhere else in the house. No traffic to worry about.

Thus, regarding noise, my takeaway from the comments is that a modicum of noise reduction is in order, but no need to go crazy. I don’t think I need double walls, etc. Wall damp sounds great.

There are no moisture issues. Colorado is dry.

Electrical: dedicated lines for sure. Two should be enough, no? I have a fairly simple system but there’s a possibility of a home theater system down there, too. Perhaps put the stereo rig on one short wall and the home stereo on the other, with seating toward each in the center? So...three dedicated lines?

Regarding ceiling, this is a case where I might need to do something now and make a further decision later. Here’s why:

• The ceiling with drywall would be about 7’10" with the thicker sheetrock.
• The room is 27 feet long, but it could change when we continue a further basement and house renovation -- so, MC, for now, I suspect that leaving it at 9 feet with insulation and a fabric cover with sheetrock to be added later might make sense.
• Another person wrote to me that I might want to create a false wall at one end (shortening the length to about 25 feet) and have a place to put my electronics. That might help with the problem of "multiples" and also give a neatness to the space.
• I agree about not going crazy expensive.

@erik_squires
I agree about diffusion. I’ve now gone the over-damped route and am seeing how to make my space "alive" without brightness. So...

I have two of these: https://images.app.goo.gl/rkE6t1jUgAMBoHCm7

QUESTION: How would you lay the GROUNDWORK for diffusion?

@mesch

Thanks for your reply. Some questions below. I will design the space for audio, once the kids leave. I’d probably just have a different amp for video, as I don’t want to run tubes for video all the time. I already own a Denon AVR and klipsch speakers for A/V. Maybe I’d ditch the speakers or put them on surround duty.

Insulate between joists with two layers of 6" insulation covered by 5/8’ drywall.

QUESTION: What kind of insulation? R38?

The 17’ dimension can be played with by furring out the concrete walls as desired. Insulate between wall material and concrete. Use 5/8" drywall for wall. Consider this the width. Frame in a cross wall to the desired length.

Given you are running Mono amps and a pre with digital source I would route 3 dedicated lines to the room for equipment, one to amps, one to pre, and one for digital front end.

QUESTION: If I had a separate set of components for A/V would you do 4 dedicated lines? That seems like a lot.

I would consider placing a equipment rack for sources and pre at one side of listening chair. Mono amps on stands where best suits.
Have nothing between speakers.

QUESTION: Makes it hard to have a TV, but I suppose if there’s a "false wall" it could hide the TV. Sound ok?

Room ratio is a tough one. If one looks at various ratios, some say 1 H x 1.67 W x 2.7 L (P.S. Audio) and that works out, with an 8 foot ceiling to 21.6 x 13.3 x 8. That amounts to reducing width by almost 4 feet and the length by 6 feet. Not sure how that will work for various purposes. This is why I was thinking to keep the ceiling open (without drywall) and have it at 9 feet. That way I could have a ratio of 9 x 15 x 24 as a target and just need to pull off the walls by a couple feet. Still, I guess once you start building out from concrete (one exterior wall) you can probably bump out pretty easily, eh?

@mesch  Thanks so much. Let me be clearer about the space.

• The overall basement is 27.5 ft x 28 ft.
  • The room I'm thinking through is 27.5 ft. x 17 ft.
  • Let's call that Section A.
• The overall basement is cut in half by a long staircase, creating a second rectangle we might call Section B.
• Section B section is 27.5 ft. x 7.6 ft.
• It contains the staircase, a main electric panel, a sump pump, too.
• Section B has plumbing for a bathroom not in use, yet.
• There is no hot water heater or HVAC making noise, though. Very quiet.

One nice thing about the main panel being downstairs is that (a) it has open slots on it, (b) has capacity for dedicated lines, and (c) the dedicated lines won't have to go far to power the gear.

In a larger renovation, a couple years from now, we will move the staircase and get it out of that room entirely.

So, this post is about working through what to do to improve Section A. Yesterday, I spent many hours thinking about room dimensions. Alas, it is very hard to build the perfect sized room (Bolt-area-wise) within the room without messing up the re-sale potential of the home. I suspect that we will create a large media room that contains both listening and TV in it. That will be easy to sell.

So, I appreciate and can use your suggestions. Because it is not feasible to create a listening room within the larger room (as a set-off box in a box, so to speaker) there is greater need to get the ceiling height as high as possible to make the other dimensions easier to work with. That ceiling does have pipes running through it but I assume many of them can be raised up a bit to accommodate a slightly higher ceiling. (I suppose the rafters might have to poke through? Unsure.) Because if I did put double drywall or whatever under the current rafters, I wind up with a ceiling that is probably 7' 9" or so. And 8' 6" ceiling is way more forgiving.

Here's something close to the best I could hope for with 8'6" ceilings. https://amcoustics.com/tools/amroc?l=24&w=15&h=8.5&ft=true&re=OeNorm%208115-3%20musi...

That said, what I CAN do NOW is deal with the fundamental construction elements so as to tee up good sound later. Thanks for your help with that. 

Thanks -- a combination of boxing in some things within the ceiling and leaving other things exposed would be fine, especially if all is covered by a homogenous screen of some kind (fabric).

A redivision of the room is possible but depends on many other factors. We’ll see.

Your new room’s fundamentals look great.

I saw a house in my neighborhood with a gambrel roof (#8) and wondered, "Is that the perfect roof for audio?"

Great idea! Gotta figure out where that might be.