[Christof]

At last I have a loft! Once the demo work is done I'll be left with an open area approx. 90 ft deep x 21 ft wide x 14 ft tall.  Walls will be exposed brick, pine floors and semi exposed beam ceiling.  I've searched about the net for information regarding building large audio rooms but in this case I'm not able to really build anything, rather my entire (open) living area must become an audio room...is this a crap shoot?  Since I've nearly blown my budget just in the aquisition of this commercial property I need to make some budget mods.  Can anybody point me in the direction of few diy acoustic helpers for this big space? Im faced with hard walls, reflective floors and the exposed beams will be perpendicular to the orientation of the speakers which will (must) be placed all the way to one end of the loft.

thanks for any tips

[bpape]

Large spaces are somewhat the same and somewhat differently treated than small ones.  However, large spaces are also normally treated to deal with tons of people.

I think you're kind of on your own.

Start with the basics.  Determine a good seating location that is not in any strong room modes.  Determine proper speaker position for that seating position.  Add some broadband bass absorbtion and hit the reflection points.  Probably some diffusion would be great in a space that large on the front wall and on the rear wall.

From there, it's just a matter of knocking down the decay time to a reasonable level for that space.

[Red Dragon Audio]

Maybe post some pictures if you can to spur the thought process going...I can envision some ideas but seeing the room always seems to help...

besides I  want to see what sounds like a damn cool loft!  

[warnerwh]

I think I'd considering building a wall. That's a very large room and you'd need huge speakers and major power to fill that room properly.  Then I'd take it from there. Bass traps and first reflection points all should be treated. This can be done diy with rigid fiberglass panels and there's recipes here and other places. Do a google.

With brick walls and wood floors you're definitely going to be needing more treatment. Post some pics. Hopefully Ethan will chime in.

[lonewolfny42]

Pictures and an equipement list would help....sounds big.

[Gordy]

Maybe post some pictures if you can to spur the thought process going...I can envision some ideas but seeing the room always seems to help...

besides I  want to see what sounds like a damn cool loft!  

I'll second that emotion

[Ethan Winer]

Christof,

> approx. 90 ft deep x 21 ft wide x 14 ft tall <

I agree with Warner that you should consider building a wall. You can absolutely make a large space like that excellent for audio reproduction. The problem is you'll need to spend a fortune on acoustic treatment simply because there's so much reflecting surface. Without substantial bass trapping the room will be very boomy. And without substantial mid/high frequency absorption you'll have a huge problem with reverb and echoes.

--Ethan

[ctviggen]

90 feet deep?  That's massive.  (Using the "rule of thirds" -- you sit 1/3 of the way into the room and your speakers are 1/3 of the way into the room, you'd be 30 feet from your speakers!)

[markC]

Hope you've got some LARGE drivers and a LOT of power to drive them! I would think that you would also need a ton of treatment; otherwise it could sound like listening to a boom box in an airplane hanger. Tough project.

[Christof]

Boom box in airplane hanger, yikes, I hope to settle with a compromise between hanger and concert hall.  After the renovation is complete Bob at SP Technologies will be setting up my system which will consist of either his new version of the  Revelations or Continuum 2.5's, biamped with Nuforce 350 monos.  I think I gave the wrong impression of this space, there will be a few walls which chop the open space into thirds.  In the middle two thirds section there willbe a somewhat enclosed box in which I will have kitchen/bath/laundry but the walls & ceiling of this section will not connect to the ceiling, rather they will stop at 9' leaving 5' of open air space.  This project is very hard to describe w/o pics and w/o having already renovated the space, I'll post some pics along with more specific questions in the near future as I progress.

thx...christof

[warnerwh]

christof: It would be wise to include room treatment in your budget.  The house I'm living in now we just bought last year and one of the prerequisites before I signed my name anywhere had been a place for my listening.  I had to build a room in the basement. Long story short I had some experience with room treatment at my other house and found it helped significantly.  This last room I budgeted serious room treatment and bass traps.  Well worth every penny.  Also more bass traps will be added as I believe I will try ready built Realtraps as I'm sure they're better than what I'm using.  If you want the best sound you've ever heard then treat your room.  The cost to performance ratio is excellent.

Your project appears complex and expensive, at least to someone like me.  The fact you have such a large space is excellent and it looks like you have many more options than most of usually do. Best of luck to you.

[ctviggen]

When I bought my house, I really, really wanted to buy one with an unfinished basement so that I'd have complete control over building a home theater/mainly 2-channel room.  However, the houses that had unfinished basements tended to be newer and out of my price range. In the end, I think it's worked out better, as while the room I'm in is more challenging, I'm also learning more about how to treat the room I have.  Plus, should I ever purchase a house with an unfinished basement, I'll have most of the elements and knowledge for room treatment, though obviously I'll be lacking in knowledge of room construction.

[ScottMayo]

I think I gave the wrong impression of this space, there will be a few walls which chop the open space into thirds. In the middle two thirds section there willbe a somewhat enclosed box in which I will have kitchen/bath/laundry but the walls & ceiling of this section will not connect to the ceiling, rather they will stop at 9' leaving 5' of open air space. This project is very hard to describe w/o pics and w/o having already renovated the space, I'll post some pics along with more specific questions in the near future as I progress

You are describing a *very* complex acoustic project. The good news is that 90' of length is not going to give you conventional modes as most people think of them. It's going to give you outright echoes instead. If you like New Age music, or choral music in languages you don't understand, the results might be fascinating. If you like pop, rock or jazz, you'll be stark raving mad in days.

Seriously, you need help on this. I offer consulting in this area and I'm relatively cheap, and I'd be willing to give this a go. But you might want to go with a company that's had more experience with commercial theater acoustic design, because that's more or less what you're attempting. They charge at least double what I do, though.

One hint: you *cannot* allow an open 90' path between opposing walls, even if you have partial walls in place between, if you're going to put in enough sound pressure to fill, say, a 30' long room with listenable sound. You'll end up with echoes that are tenths of a second apart, destroying the ability to hear lyrics. And heaven help you if you ever manage to excite the "room mode" - the effect would be physically unpleasant. You are going to end up hanging sound absorbant sheets in mid-air (like they do in stadiums) to damp those echoes. At the very least.

My advice - get a subwoofer in there, and a cheap stereo that you can crank, and listen to what happens. You want to have some idea of what needs to be tamed before you commit major resources to taming it.