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Two channel and home theater room under construction

Some of you have followed my threads about getting a new room in which to listen. Well, it's underway. I've got to work with the parameters of the space -- 26 x 15 x 8 ft ceilings -- but I was able to accommodate some suggestions. Two photos at bottom of system page:https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/9064/edit

There will be 5 dedicated lines. Three at the end of the room where my audio gear will be, and two more at different locations in the room just in case the gear moves or other things need to be plugged in further away. There is one line along the sidewall in case I can get my gear away from my speaker's front wall. The lines are using 10 awg romex. Hard to fulfill some of the other electrical desiderata because we are not using a special electrician and it was just too hard to do too much. I did get a sheet of requirements to them (regarding breakers, silver paste, etc. Some was done.)

The drywall is all 5/8". The ceiling has insulation, a layer of drywall, an RC channel, and a second layer of drywall below it.

It looks like the room will have to also contain a TV and an AVR, but I'll mount the TV flush on the wall behind the speakers and have something to cover it with. The electronics for the TV will be on a separate line.

For the short run, because we have pets, we're going with LVF flooring and area rugs over concrete. The LVF will hopefully have something under it -- cork might be good. In the short run, some area rugs. In the longer run, a wall to wall carpet, not too thick.

It's very hard to think through other things until I can get set up and listen, but hopefully the fundamentals are being put in place. It's a room not dedicated to audio, but it will be friendlier than my current space with 6 foot ceilings.

128x128hilde45

Showing 6 responses by hilde45

hilde45's avatar
hilde45 OP
5,167 posts
 
Thanks all! Yes only doing resilient channels on the ceiling. I hadn’t really considered doing them elsewhere because the other walls are concrete, or at least two of them are. I realize that it’s best to have all the walls the same in terms of their resonances, but that is very hard to do when two walls are concrete, one is brick with drywall in front of it and one is just drywall. I am expecting that I will be doing some measurements and using some audio panels to deal with some of the asymmetries. Until I have a chance to listen and measure there’s only so much I want to do ahead of time. And, of course, we need to buy furniture flooring and other stuff.

 I would say this project is somewhere between me building a listening room for myself and the family getting a basement ready for multiple uses; so it’s hard to go OCD in an audio direction given those other parameters.

We are hoping to be done in two weeks, knock on wood! It will be tricky to try to integrate the audio visual and the two channel.
hilde45's avatar
hilde45 OP
5,167 posts
 
@tomic601 My current room has an RT60 which ranges from 440ms-225ms between 40 hz and 150 hz and then is more or less between 150 ms and 200 ms from 150-12k hz.

In this new room, I'm not sure what I'll get. I suppose the numbers don't mean that much to me because I don't fully understand how they correlate to what I hear. Typically, I look at the SPL graph and the impulse graph to gauge tonality and levels of reflection. RT60 has not yet played a big role in my measuring and I'm honestly not sure how to deploy that tool. Hints welcome.

What I can say is that my current setup seems very balanced in terms of tonality and is pretty spacious sounding in terms of sound stage. With a new ceiling that is about 1.5 feet higher, I'm hoping for a slightly larger and more open soundstage -- more room between instruments and a larger presentation, overall. The width and length of the new room are not that much greater, whatever that implies, sonically.
hilde45's avatar
hilde45 OP
5,167 posts
 
Erik -- there will be a subpanel and three of the dedicated lines are 6 feet from the panel. And you wouldn't believe how little it cost to add them. If I don't use them, I don't use them. But I'll never say, "I wish I had..."
hilde45's avatar
hilde45 OP
5,167 posts
 
Here's a brief recording of the room with nothing in it. Just old solid state gear but my current speakers in the mix: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Fmp8xHNgvdtHjBUy9
hilde45's avatar
hilde45 OP
5,167 posts
 
@soix Remember the scene in the 1981 movie Diva where the girl is rollerskating around the French guy's apartment, while he sits in the center of a largely empty room doing a puzzle and listening to music? That'd be the goal, here, if I wasn't a middle aged guy with a family in a basement.
hilde45's avatar
hilde45 OP
5,167 posts
 
Thanks for the reminder. I'll do another scan this weekend. Molding just went up yesterday. No floors yet, but they're coming. LVF with cork underneath. Then, some area rugs. The room will have to come together according to demands other than pure sound; once it's mainly together, I'll measure again and then start to see where to put the rig. Then more measuring and then perhaps adjustments, and then whatever panels I can get away with.
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