How close to your speakers are you sitting Mike ?29' x 21' x 11' inside dimensions, an oval shape without 90 degree square corners. a room inside a room. cocooned inside 2 layers glued of 5/8" sheetrock. Quietrock 458 (now 510) covers the front third of the room walls. 100% of the inside walls and ceiling are 3/4" finish grade plywood, or hardwood diffusion built to spec, so no painted surfaces.
i had a horse barn with a potentially open space with a practical limit of 27' x 35' x 14'. i had a drive thru garage area included and needed to create an entry door, and then consider did i want hallways with only one listening room door? or did i want multiple doors from my listening room into the other barn spaces? there was a kitchenette bathroom area and a sawdust garage. this was a real barn with horses.
it was important to have a large enough room to not limit dynamics and allow for large speakers to breathe. my whole reason for selling one house and moving was to have a room without limits. yet too much space, unless you have otherworldly dipoles like the big Genesis, will then become a real issue to control. so i wanted the right size where real world speakers could command it. i needed to have it just right. another thing at that time was my infatuation with 5.1 SACD multi-channel, which required a wide room to get the 115 degree rear channel set-up.
so Chris Huston considered all these issues and suggested the 29' x 21' x 11'. it would not limit scale, but could still be pressurized reasonably. it would still do intimacy, but would not get over-driven. with the oval shape, ceiling design, and built-in bass trapping, there would be lots of flexibility in the future to adapt it to whatever speakers came along. that size gave me an entry hall and side hall which would further separate my listening room from other activity including the HVAC outside unit, and kitchenette/restroom. and all those things have turned out to be spot on.
at that time Chris asked me if i wanted him to design the room for my then current speakers, the Kharma Exquisite 1D's? i said no, i want it to handle large speakers with lots of capabilities. the speaker needed to live up to what the room could do, not the opposite.
well.....er......i had to grow up as a music listener and audiophile to find my way. initially i was smitten and all was perfect. but over time i confronted areas of imperfections, and had to work my way through them. which i did. about 10-11 years in i got my head around what i needed to do to finish the deal and then i did it. now 7 years later i'm still absolutely thrilled and satisfied. the room has delivered on it's initial promise. and my expectations now are sky high. way beyond my sonic universe vision 18 years ago.
me learn quicker.about the room? can't see how i could have anticipated the things i did. the changes i ended up paying for in the room, and the initial cost of the items i removed, maybe totally amounts to what i'm invested in one of my three turntables. after 18 years. hard to argue with proof of concept on how the initial plan worked out. the fundamental room design is wonderful.
an interesting sidebar is i started out listening in the far field. way beyond the equilateral point. as my room evolved i moved up more and more and now i'm in a medium near field sweet spot. had to tame the room bit by bit to allow for greater intimacy and immersion. would have been unthinkable to sit where i now sit at the beginning. it's still great sound in the far field, but the near field experience is revelatory. the lesson is to keep your mind open on your 'rules' and follow the musical truth. if it sounds better, it's better.
a dedicated purpose build room puts lots of demands on the listener to test limits if you want to progress.
as i sit here today; building this room was easily the best move and most cost effective decision in my 28 years in the hobby. it's the hardest thing and most significant thing. but a huge lifestyle commitment and not for everyone.
obviously i like your anticipated dimensions. they do not appear limiting to me.
good luck.
Custom dedicated audio room owners unite!
- Thread starter sbo6
- Start date
right now, the tweeters are 115" apart, and my ears are 98" from each tweeter. for a couple of years i did sit about 4" closer forward. about 3" closer to each tweeter.
the front baffle of each passive tower are 9 feet from the back wall in a 29' long room. so my listening position is almost exactly center of the room. maybe 5" behind it. the way my speaker designer put it, while i do sit in the near field, but with so much space behind my speakers with a wide and tall room, my speakers work as if they are farther back so my near field is not really so radical.
We currently sit close to the same distance from the tweeters/midrange, i have more distance to the back wall but my main towers are closer to the front wall (6 feet), i need that for the back wave to sound right from both omnis and electrostatic speakers. My room has the same width as yours (21,5 feet). Brick walls and only a couple of bass traps and heavy curtains. Subject to change !
dipole's and omni's have their own approach to speaker placement. not ever had either to work with.We currently sit close to the same distance from the tweeters/midrange, i have more distance to the back wall but my main towers are closer to the front wall (6 feet), i need that for the back wave to sound right from both omnis and electrostatic speakers. My room has the same width as yours (21,5 feet). Brick walls and only a couple of bass traps and heavy curtains. Subject to change !
room width is a real luxury to have. the music can breathe.
Elliot G.
Industry Expert
using two layers of sheetrock is excellent however they should ideally be different thickness like 5/8 and 3/4 and use a product like room damp between them gluing them together is not the right way. You can use damping sheets between instead of the room damp but I found my room quieter with the room damp, staggered studs and insulation. I am thinking of taking the wall to wall on croncrete and removing 1/3 of it so my speakers will sit on a flat and hard surface that allows the eEVPS and footers to work better and allow me to perfectly level my speakers.
I highly suggest you have the DIMS of your room run by someone like Norm Varney to help predict the outcome and who has built lots of rooms and is very experienced and helpful in making a good quiet room with no bad room nodes.
I highly suggest you have the DIMS of your room run by someone like Norm Varney to help predict the outcome and who has built lots of rooms and is very experienced and helpful in making a good quiet room with no bad room nodes.
Thanks Mike, much appreciated. WRT your near field listening, I completely agree. Even though my current room is only 19' deep I sit fairly nearfield which my ears and REW tell me is the best compromise in my limited space.29' x 21' x 11' inside dimensions, an oval shape without 90 degree square corners. a room inside a room. cocooned inside 2 layers glued of 5/8" sheetrock. Quietrock 458 (now 510) covers the front third of the room walls. 100% of the inside walls and ceiling are 3/4" finish grade plywood, or hardwood diffusion built to spec, so no painted surfaces.
i had a horse barn with a potentially open space with a practical limit of 26' x 35' x 14'. i had a drive thru garage area included and needed to create an entry door, and then consider did i want hallways with only one listening room door? or did i want multiple doors from my listening room into the other barn spaces? there was a kitchenette bathroom area and a sawdust garage. this was a real barn with horses.
it was important to have a large enough room to not limit dynamics and allow for large speakers to breathe. my whole reason for selling one house and moving was to have a room without limits. yet too much space, unless you have otherworldly dipoles like the big Genesis, will then become a real issue to control. so i wanted the right size where real world speakers could command it. i needed to have it just right. another thing at that time was my infatuation with 5.1 SACD multi-channel, which required a wide room to get the 115 degree rear channel set-up.
so Chris Huston considered all these issues and suggested the 29' x 21' x 11'. it would not limit scale, but could still be pressurized reasonably. it would still do intimacy, but would not get over-driven. with the oval shape, ceiling design, and built-in bass trapping, there would be lots of flexibility in the future to adapt it to whatever speakers came along. that size gave me an entry hall and side hall which would further separate my listening room from other activity including the HVAC outside unit, and kitchenette/restroom. and all those things have turned out to be spot on.
at that time Chris asked me if i wanted him to design the room for my then current speakers, the Kharma Exquisite 1D's? i said no, i want it to handle large speakers with lots of capabilities. the speaker needed to live up to what the room could do, not the opposite.
well.....er......i had to grow up as a music listener and audiophile to find my way. initially i was smitten and all was perfect. but over time i confronted areas of imperfections, and had to work my way through them. which i did. about 10-11 years in i got my head around what i needed to do to finish the deal and then i did it. now 7 years later i'm still absolutely thrilled and satisfied. the room has delivered on it's initial promise. and my expectations now are sky high. way beyond my sonic universe vision 18 years ago.
me learn quicker.
an interesting sidebar is i started out listening in the far field. way beyond the equilateral point. as my room evolved i moved up more and more and now i'm in a medium near field sweet spot. had to tame the room bit by bit to allow for greater intimacy and immersion. would have been unthinkable to sit where i now sit at the beginning. it's still great sound in the far field, but the near field experience is revelatory. the lesson is to keep your mind open on your 'rules' and follow the musical truth. if it sounds better, it's better.
a dedicated purpose build room puts lots of demands on the listener to test limits if you want to progress.
as i sit here today; building this room was easily the best move and most cost effective decision in my 28 years in the hobby. it's the hardest thing and most significant thing. but a huge lifestyle commitment and not for everyone.
obviously i like your anticipated dimensions. they do not appear limiting to me.
good luck.
Great advice, thanks Elliot. Quick Q: why 2 different thickness of sheet rock? Due to different resonances per thickness?
11m L x 7m W x 3m H
My prime number experiment LOL
Is there anything I would change? The room turned out to be really large and that meant going with speakers practically twice the size of what I originally had. The original speakers went to a room that was 50sqm and they surely sounded better at the new owner's house. My acoustician did his room for him too. So its kind of like a Fuji to Washington apple kind of thing LOL
I think that once one gets past 50 square the demands on speakers and associated electronics to deliver SPLs as effortlessly jumps drastically.
My prime number experiment LOL
Is there anything I would change? The room turned out to be really large and that meant going with speakers practically twice the size of what I originally had. The original speakers went to a room that was 50sqm and they surely sounded better at the new owner's house. My acoustician did his room for him too. So its kind of like a Fuji to Washington apple kind of thing LOL
I think that once one gets past 50 square the demands on speakers and associated electronics to deliver SPLs as effortlessly jumps drastically.
Elliot G.
Industry Expert
changing the thickness changes the resonances and the damping material gives a third different material that resonances have to travel through and get disappated within.
Elliot G.
Industry Expert
By the way I also prefer to listen closer than far away and of course that is where the best seating in my room is as well. I am about in a triangular type set up.
A fairly intriguing topic. It's shocking how many people make a designed room that then has issues. My friend Joe did a room in his concrete basement. He said he had to strip and redo it a few times. Bass issues. He has since passed so his wisdom went with him.
It makes me wonder how you enter this prospect and don't screw it up. There are a few pro floating around out there. But its always a question of did you get the right person.
I hope you do get to make your room and share the experience.
Rex
It makes me wonder how you enter this prospect and don't screw it up. There are a few pro floating around out there. But its always a question of did you get the right person.
I hope you do get to make your room and share the experience.
Rex
Elliot G.
Industry Expert
Well like anything else hiring someone that does not design home hifi listening rooms and has not done this many times would be a huge red flag. Recording studios, concert halls, corporate rooms, and home theaters are NOT the same thing!
I see this happening all the time.
Let me relay a story. when my youngest sons was born he had some health problems. They wanted to operate in the hospital that he was born in. I met with the surgeon and my first question was how many times have you done this proceedure? His answer was I have studied it in school but I
have never done it. I thanked him for his honestry and his time and left. My next calls were to find someone that has done this many many times.
The same should be true here.
I can suggest one person that I have worked with on 4 rooms and someone that has been doing this for as long as I know him.
That is Norm Varney. Hes a great guy, and he has lots of experience from his origins at M.I.T. with their 2C3D rooms.
I think a lot of people screw it up since they have no idea what they are trying to achieve. You have to find out what you don't know before you start.
Some things I think are really important
Room Size
Dimensions - there is math to be done to help with getting this done with fewer problems
Materials- building a quiet room not a dead space
What speakers you are thinking of using
Seating and seating position
Room treatments- sorry you need this to some degree
air conditioning - for noise abatement- i.e linnear difusers
electrical wiring
These all mater its not the audiophile one thing is what's important.
and finally a proper set up and tuning of the system with the room
Good luck
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My designer said she really doesn’t care for multiple layers of sheetrock. Instead there is a 3/16” layer of mass loaded vinyl between the sheetrock and studs, with 5/8” sheetrock. There is some technique to cutting the vinyl so it fully covers but doesn’t double up on a stud anywhere which would cause the sheetrock not to lay flat. But my room is not a room within a room. We were working with an existing space. And there are, essentially, custom BAD panels over the sheetrock, so sound hits bare walls in only a few places in my room.
The designer is listed in my signature, she has decades of experience and has done many audiophile rooms.
The designer is listed in my signature, she has decades of experience and has done many audiophile rooms.
Steve williams
Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
I’ve done my own dedicated room in my present house. Best advice is to use a reputable acoustician for every part of the design
@Bobvin do you think the MLV might be attached at the top, hanging freely *between* the studs? My understanding, is the MLV needs to be free-hanging, to the extent possible. Thank you for adding the MLV aspect. I have experimented with that concept with some corner "chunk" traps, faced with a hanging MLV sheet.
Once you move into using your perimeter wall as a membrane absorber with mlv sheets , various arrangements of sheetrock etc. you really need a good acoustic engineer as it is very difficult to predict what fr and amount of absorbtion is going to occur... even for experienced engineers.
Although all the acoustic principals are the same for any acoustic space a track record in this area is handy...
If you are going diy I would make walls as dense and rigid as possible and deal with bass absorbtion with traps
Although all the acoustic principals are the same for any acoustic space a track record in this area is handy...
If you are going diy I would make walls as dense and rigid as possible and deal with bass absorbtion with traps
Lots of great feedback, thank you all! more is better.
One thing from this thread and from the plethora of info I've read (and via many rooms' listening experiences) is - there is no consistency in the room builds and there is no way to compare different techniques for different sized rooms with different systems. One thing that is consistent that stands out as paramount is - room size matters, a lot. Below is a list of rooms from you all and others I know of (some verified excellent by me)
The length and width correlation is quite staggering IMO. Net - IME the best way to have a room within a room is to be distant from boundaries and that requires size (and yes, I know about the physical room within a room concept). It's physics; if you want to minimize standing waves and reduce deleterious effects from indirect and delayed sound, you need distance from boundaries.
IME for a no - holes barred reference listening experience a large, reasonably dimensioned room is ~40% of the puzzle. The right room acoustics (type, quantity and placement) along with speaker type, sweet spot placement and well - integrated subwoofers is ~50%, and the last 10% is probably the room materials. I'm omitting things like power, vibration management and other tweaks. This assumes you have reference gear with excellent system - speaker synergy to go along with all above. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!
One thing from this thread and from the plethora of info I've read (and via many rooms' listening experiences) is - there is no consistency in the room builds and there is no way to compare different techniques for different sized rooms with different systems. One thing that is consistent that stands out as paramount is - room size matters, a lot. Below is a list of rooms from you all and others I know of (some verified excellent by me)
| Room | L | W | H |
| Room A - verified | 33 | 20 | 12 |
| Room B | 29 | 21 | 11 |
| Room C | 31 | 18 | 10 |
| Room D | 28 | 20 | 9 |
| Room E | 24 | 20 | 14 |
| Room F - verified | 29 | 22 | 15 |
| room G - verified | 28.5 | 20 | 12 |
| room H | 28.2 | 18.4 | 10.5 |
| room I - verified | 30.6 | 19.3 | 8.5 |
| Average room dims | 29.0 | 19.9 | 11.3 |
The length and width correlation is quite staggering IMO. Net - IME the best way to have a room within a room is to be distant from boundaries and that requires size (and yes, I know about the physical room within a room concept). It's physics; if you want to minimize standing waves and reduce deleterious effects from indirect and delayed sound, you need distance from boundaries.
IME for a no - holes barred reference listening experience a large, reasonably dimensioned room is ~40% of the puzzle. The right room acoustics (type, quantity and placement) along with speaker type, sweet spot placement and well - integrated subwoofers is ~50%, and the last 10% is probably the room materials. I'm omitting things like power, vibration management and other tweaks. This assumes you have reference gear with excellent system - speaker synergy to go along with all above. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!
Wow.Lots of great feedback, thank you all! more is better.
One thing from this thread and from the plethora of info I've read (and via many rooms' listening experiences) is - there is no consistency in the room builds and there is no way to compare different techniques for different sized rooms with different systems. One thing that is consistent that stands out as paramount is - room size matters, a lot. Below is a list of rooms from you all and others I know of (some verified excellent by me)
Room L W H Room A - verified 33 20 12 Room B 29 21 11 Room C 31 18 10 Room D 28 20 9 Room E 24 20 14 Room F - verified 29 22 15 room G - verified 28.5 20 12 room H 28.2 18.4 10.5 room I - verified 30.6 19.3 8.5 Average room dims 29.0 19.9 11.3
The length and width correlation is quite staggering IMO. Net - IME the best way to have a room within a room is to be distant from boundaries and that requires size (and yes, I know about the physical room within a room concept). It's physics; if you want to minimize standing waves and reduce deleterious effects from indirect and delayed sound, you need distance from boundaries.
IME for a no - holes barred reference listening experience a large, reasonably dimensioned room is ~40% of the puzzle. The right room acoustics (type, quantity and placement) along with speaker type, sweet spot placement and well - integrated subwoofers is ~50%, and the last 10% is probably the room materials. I'm omitting things like power, vibration management and other tweaks. This assumes you have reference gear with excellent system - speaker synergy to go along with all above. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!
That is a pretty consistent size throughout .. is it the market speaking
.. it suggests a range that has a good ratio of cost to performance ... agree getting boundaries as far away from speakers as possible is the aim .. maybe at the expense of the perfect ratio ... and if you can get the short dimension long enough, locating speakers on long wall gives a great sounstage P
Elliot G.
Industry Expert
Mine is 1/1.6.2.33 or 10 foot ceilings 16 wide by 23.3 long FYI.Lots of great feedback, thank you all! more is better.
One thing from this thread and from the plethora of info I've read (and via many rooms' listening experiences) is - there is no consistency in the room builds and there is no way to compare different techniques for different sized rooms with different systems. One thing that is consistent that stands out as paramount is - room size matters, a lot. Below is a list of rooms from you all and others I know of (some verified excellent by me)
Room L W H Room A - verified 33 20 12 Room B 29 21 11 Room C 31 18 10 Room D 28 20 9 Room E 24 20 14 Room F - verified 29 22 15 room G - verified 28.5 20 12 room H 28.2 18.4 10.5 room I - verified 30.6 19.3 8.5 Average room dims 29.0 19.9 11.3
The length and width correlation is quite staggering IMO. Net - IME the best way to have a room within a room is to be distant from boundaries and that requires size (and yes, I know about the physical room within a room concept). It's physics; if you want to minimize standing waves and reduce deleterious effects from indirect and delayed sound, you need distance from boundaries.
IME for a no - holes barred reference listening experience a large, reasonably dimensioned room is ~40% of the puzzle. The right room acoustics (type, quantity and placement) along with speaker type, sweet spot placement and well - integrated subwoofers is ~50%, and the last 10% is probably the room materials. I'm omitting things like power, vibration management and other tweaks. This assumes you have reference gear with excellent system - speaker synergy to go along with all above. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!
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