New House: Audio room/Office

I was lucky (I think!) I designed my own home. When I built my home I set up a floor plan with a more traditional living room and family room well separated from each other. The thought was that it was a floor plan that would resell easily to anyone not looking for a great room/open home style. I made the family room large and family friendly and that is where we live. I made the living room dimensions audio friendly and that is where I have my music/audio room. It is off the hallway/entry and can be closed off by pocket doors. Not perfect, but it works well.

I think a 13x15 audio only room could work but you'd have to scale back expectations a little bit on big/loud music, and to optimize results you'd probably end up with a near(er) field listening setup so you would have to be very careful in selecting speakers and avoiding any with an uptilted mid-high FR or that is too 'fast'.

FWIW. Hope that helps a bit. BTW, my audio room is 13.5 x 19.5 x 9 and my setup sounds pretty good - 10'equilateral triangle with speakers 5.5ft from the back wall.

Thanks Newbee. If you could change anything in your room, what would it be?

I have a room dimension or build out issue which causes a suck out of 6db at 40/50 hz and a small rise at 80hz of about 3db. Otherwise my FR is fairly flat thru the mid-range. I should probably be happy.

This might be corrected if the room was a bit longer I think, maybe 1 1/2 feet or so, and/or I might remove an open archway behind the listener chair. But, I worry that a solid wall behind the listening chair, even 5 to 6 feet, would still facilitate the bouncing frequencies from the side walls and make the room a bit reverberant. As it is now I have 6x7' openings on a side wall and a back wall - it really has helped with getting a very clear sound, the only down side is that the otherwise fine sound stage is restricted to the front 1/3d of the room (wall to wall, floor to ceiling, and deep though). But I guess I could always add some rear channels to fill in the other 2/3ds of the room.

BTW, I've used and carefully set up panels and electrostats in this room and was never able to get close to what I know these speaker types can do in a large(r) room. Listening to dynamic speakers in a nearer field has been the most successful for me in this room.

Well your comments concern me already, as your room is larger than what I am looking at; I think I need to try and find a living room setup that would work well with my stereo in it and have the office room something separate.

I have a home office which I am in half the day for six months this mine is 10 x 12 there is nothing technical
about it but it sounds great
Amp Plinius SA102
Pre amp Plinius M-8
MSB Tech ilink (source)
MSB Tech Platinum DAC
Totem Forests
Analysis Plus Cables
I pieced it together over two years and it sounds awsome
A plinius 8200 would work fine also if you need to save some money
Good Luck

Brian, I was just looking at your system photos. Not too complex. In a new environment you might just try to position your components apart from your speakers (use longer cables) to reduce the dominant effect of speaker/components, and simply mark the floor where you finally position your speakers so you can move them back against the wall when not in use (or for very casual listening at low volume) and easily pull them out for more important listening. I did that before I got a 'dedicated' room and everybody was happy.

Setting up a listening/audio/office room in a new house is certainly a viable thing to do. I did just that when our current house was built (check out my system listing here on Agon).

My solution was for the office (12X12) to house the equipment and run in-wall wires from there to 4 other rooms of the house (including outdoor deck)during construction so I have 5 rooms to chose from total when I want to listen.

I also keep a complete second lesser but more WAF-oriented system in the main family room that can tickle my fancy as well (see photo of this in my system listing also).

I also had the office made more soundproof so as to be able to play louder there at night without disturbing anyone. To do this, the builder insulated the inside of the walls and ceiling during construction and I used a solid wood door rather than the typical grade hollow ones most builders use by default.

It has worked well. I have 5 rooms I can listen in as needed by simply putting in speakers to fit each room. There is always a place where I can go to listen regardless of what all the family might have going on in the house and it makes for a nice variety of listening environments to chose from in general as well.

If I did it again, I might go for a slightly larger office if possible, but I have a much larger room right outside the office I can mix in that helps compensate.

Robert, 10x12 is a common room size in plans. It is great you made it work. In thinking on this, in light of some of Newbee's comments, I beleive I need to make it so there is no wall behind me, simply open to the rest of the house.

Newbee, moving the speakers in and out isn't an option for me; I agree it would be nice to get the components from between the speakers, but it can be costly. Thanks

Think about building an acoustical isolated closet to put the equipment in, especially if a turntable is in the picture.

What a nice looking home. I really like that log cabin style. Good luck with the new place.

Thanks Don.