[JLM]

Wifey and I are planning to build a new home in the next 2 years.  We're currently purchasing the lot.  We had a house plan in mind and picked out the lot in part to optimize the plan.  The plan includes a room in the basement for my office/listening room.  This room will include a desk, drafting table, and 2 drawer file cabinet as well as an office chair and listening loveseat.

Odd as it sounds the requirements for our septic tank/drain tank has affected the design of this room.  As the drain field must be elevated higher than planned/hoped for the house will also "sit up" higher than desired to avoid pumping sewage with it's potential problems of backups in the finished basement.  In order to minimize the amount of earth moving and to better fit the house onto the site we'll be designing the basement to provide only 8 foot high ceilings.

Using the "golden ratios" of room proportions the room would be 8'-0" high, 12'-9.5" wide, and 18'-7.5" long (1,905 cu. ft).  Due to a slight layout restraint and to utilize a design feature I've seen used to help break up front to back standing waves the back wall will not be "square" to the side walls.  (Side walls will be 17'-3" and 19'-7" long each.)  The room will have no windows and the only door will be solid core and located in one of the back corners.

Other design features of the room:
1. Dedicated electrical circuit for the audio equipment with heavy/quality parts.
2. Use of either radiant floor heat or forced air via fiberglass ducts.  (In Michigan you don't need to air condition a well insulated basement.)
3. Interior partitions to be constructed of 0.5" drywall on insulated 2x4 staggered studs on a 2x6 plates so that the studs for each side of the walls are not in contact with both sides.  (I've used this technique before to isolate sound to great advantage.)
4. Insulated 0.5" drywall ceiling (10" batts).
5. Exterior partitions to be precast concrete wall sections with 7.5" deep ribs at 24" on centers with 1" rigid insulation plus 5.5" batt insulation and 5/8" drywall.
6. Carpeted concrete slab floor.
7. Layout of furnishings will probably dictate sitting 10 - 11 feet from the front wall for serious listening.

Audio priorities:
1. Acoustical music at realistic spl's, mostly jazz and classical.
2. Tonality, detail, and imaging in that order.
3. Full frequency response.
4. Enjoyment of a wide variety of musical types and quality of recordings.  (I don't want a system that is so accurate that it renders most recordings unlistenable.)
5. Digital only (with a single machine, hopefully for all formats).
6. System budget, $5,000.00.
7. I don't sit with my head in a vice.  In fact, I'll be spending most of my time in the room at the desk/drafting table that will place me off-center and about 3/4's of the way back into the deepest corner.

I plan on purchasing an all new audio system when the time comes.  At this time I'm leaning towards 4" full range driver based speakers with a subwoofer driven via tube gear to achieve near 105 dB peaks and 25 to near 20,000 Hz response.

Questions (finally):
1. Should I build the optimal room first, then assemble the audio system?
2. Room design suggestions?
3. Room treatment suggestions?

thanks,

jeff

[WilliamL]

Hi JLM and gang....

We were closed for July 4th Holiday we have all been away from the internet.  So......

Give us a day or so to get back into the swing....A well thought out response to your post and the previous one is on its way.  

Hi JLM and gang....

We were closed for July 4th Holiday we have all been away from the internet.  So......

Give us a day or so to get back into the swing....A well thought out response to your post and the previous one is on its way.  

ADDENDUM:

OK. I am back online...

Yes, I would build the optimal room first and then assemble the audio system. You have a big advantage if you can take care of the room first.

As far as room design and treatment specs, its difficult for me personally to make serious and specific suggestions in this forum without more information such as a room diagram and conversing with you. Specific and detailed room analysis and suggestions is provided for all our clients, but is out of the scope of this forum for sundry reasons.  

Please feel free to call or email me. Look forward to serving you.

Thanks,
Bill Laurent
blaurent@eighthnerve.com


Thanks,
Bill Laurent

[JLM]

Thanks Bill, that's what I thought too (room first).

And I understand the need to deal with details outside this forum.

I'll let you know as I get closer to completion of the room.

jeff

[MaxCast]

You are a lucky man, Jeff.  I'm sure all of us wish we could build the best room for audio.  It looks like you have done a lot of research on this.  Not much to recommend from us "regular Joes."  Please keep this post active as you go through construction and treatments.  Maybe we could archive this somehow as there is a lot to learn.  I am interested to know where you found your research info and what Bill recommends.

One suggestion I will make.  It dosen't sound like you will have enough room, but try to get your drafting table behind your listening spot since you will be spending much time there.

For all, is there a simple drawing program that will let you use graph paper to do a room lay out?  something easy and cheap?

[JLM]

MaxCast:

Yes, the drafting table is pushed as far into the corner as possible.  I'd rather have a little more elbow room to allow speakers to "breathe" and not have to be quite so "nearfield".  

I've picked up on the stated design features here and there over the years.

As far as graph paper and drawing programs goes, I'm an old school kind of guy and prefer the graph paper with pencils.  CAD (computer aided drafting/design) programs come and go and if you don't use them enough they create more work than they avoid and like any program if it's garbage in, it'll be garbage out.  I find paper and pencil to have a therapeutic quality.  For this house I built a foam board model to demostrate the open ceiling/loft upstairs to wifey.  But after 30+ years at a drafting table I can "see" more on the drawings than in real life.  It takes her hours to layout part of the kitchen that I'd already done in 3 minutes and she's not sure how she arrived at the same answer, but I let her prove it to herself.  One suggestion for use with graph paper would be to pick up architectural templates that are at the same scale your using.  Just cutting out to-scale pictures of your furniture helps.

jeff

[MaxCast]

Hi Jeff,  I use graph paper to make "paper dolls" all the time for tooling layouts.  It is very helpful in pictchering what it will look like in the real world.  I was thinking more for email and posting on this site.  I guess I could fax my layout

[WilliamL]

JLM,

Thanks again for your understanding.

Reviewing rooms in depth and giving our advice and consultation time is something we do for all our current customers. However, our time is limited to address individual rooms in this forum.  More importantly,  its not fair to our paying customers (for instance--see Witch Doctor's post above this one) if we start publicly diagnosing everybody's room  in this forum.  

Pretty much everything else though is fair game for this forum and we are glad to help on and off line.

Cheers and thanks again,
Bill

[andyr]

Wifey and I are planning to build a new home in the next 2 years.  We're currently purchasing the lot.  We had a house plan in mind and picked out the lot in part to optimize the plan....

Using the "golden ratios" of room proportions the room would be 8'-0" high, 12'-9.5" wide, and 18'-7.5" long (1,905 cu. ft)....

Jeff,

The 'golden ratio' is only a precise method of calculating what could be called the optimum dimensions.  If these dimensions suit what U want to do with the rest of your house ... then that's fantastic (and you're lucky!!).

However, there is available on the Net an Excel spreadsheet (which I think has come out of THX), which enables you to plug in different values and see what happens in terms of standing waves.  I used this to design my next 'listening room' and I found that I could change the dimensions without making the room sound 'worse'.  IE. with some (not all!) other values, there were no more standing waves set up - just that they occurred at different frequencies - and neither were they greater in amplitude.

I could send U this spreadsheet if you would care to send me your email address.

Regards,

Andy

[JLM]

Andy:

Thanks for the heads up.

Yes, I have a big chunk of the basement to work with so I might as well stick to the ratios, even if furniture placement is somewhat problematic.  For $1,000+ I could also make the basement deeper, so the room could be bigger, and minimize furniture issues.  I've also experimented with non-symetrical speaker/listening positions that work very well.  The idea here is to keep speakers and listen away from walls while maximizing the number of reflections (5 or more) before they come back to the listener thereby delaying them long enough so that the ear does not confuse them with the orginal/direct sound to improve imaging.  The downside here is that you'll be locked into nearfield listening conditions for "normal" sized rooms.  Refer to the Decware site for more information.

Actually I've seen 3 sets of "golden ratios", but this (the one most often quoted) is the most practical in allowing proper placement of listener and speakers into the room with 8 foot high ceilings.  I realize too that a rectangle is one of the worse possible shapes for a sound room (only a cube, sphere, or other perfect polygon could be worse).  But through familarity we understand the rectangle.  Others could argue that different musical styles need their own sized/shaped room to provide proper delays, etc.  

That's where I get off the perfectionist train and realize that reproduction of music at home is only a facsimile of the real thing.  OTOH I agree with others who have gone to a live concert (classical, jazz, folk, rock, etc.) and come home to hear it "better".  But it's a little scary when the reproduction is more attractive than the real thing.  So me and my pocketbook are steering clear of that level of perfection.

jeff

[andyr]

Jeff,

You raised a few different issues, so I thought I would reply as follows:

1.  Non-symmetric room layout.  Yes, I have read a whitepaper on the Net which said this was a good thing.  Mind you, I think the guy was single (ie. WAF wasn't a problem!!).

Basically, put your speakers either side of one corner (at the long end) and see how this sounds.

2.  There cannot be "3 sets of golden ratios" .... there is only one golden ratio!  This is:
H x 'X' = W and
W x 'X' = L.

Where 'X' I think = 1.618 but I am afraid I don't have the figure to hand and I'm too lazy to go find it.  You can do this .

3.  As far as I know, this 'golden ratio' has nothing to do with "proper placement of listener and speakers into the room with 8 foot high ceilings".

All it does is calculate the ideal dimensions of a room when you specify one unalterable dimension - like ceiling height.

Placement of speakers and listening chair within the room are a different matter - go see the "rule of thirds" or "the rule of fifths" for this.  Cardas has a whitepaper on this.

And as I said, you can get room dimensions that are just as good as the 'golden ratio', sound-wise, if you play with the THX spreadsheet.

4.  Yes, do try to "maximize the number of reflections (5 or more) before they come back to the listener, thereby delaying them long enough so that the ear does not confuse them with the orginal/direct sound ... to improve imaging".

But, don't forget that with a flat ceiling you have only 1 reflection from speaker to ceiling to your ears!


Regards,

Andy

[JLM]

Hi Andy:

Yes, the "popular" golden ratio is something like 1.6 (the ancient Greeks actually used 1.625, i.e. 8 to 5) as the original golden ratio.  Any ratio that can produce 3 room dimensions that stay away from multiples is "golden".

Yes, the nonsymetrical layout is probably a bachelor only solution.  

You're right, the golden ratio has nothing to do with speaker/listener placement.

As the other two golden ratios are both smaller, they tend to produce smaller rooms.  The nonsymetrical layout takes up lots of space and therefore doesn't lend itself to these other ratios if you're limited to only 8 foot ceilings.

Good point regarding ceiling reflection.  Hardwood or concrete floors would give another.  OTOH ideal rooms are never too reflective or too dampened, so maybe some first reflections are actually desirable.  Wonder if the 8th Nerve folks would like to comment?

[WilliamL]

Good discussion for sure. I am going to defer to Nathan from Eighth Nerve to elaborate on this. Thanks for your patience, summer is almost over and we are ready to get back in the swing of things.

Cheers,
Bill

[JLM]

Another question regarding design of the ideal room:

In the process of designing my listening room I gained the opprotunity to provide a 2 foot cavity at the front of the room by pushing the whole room back 2 feet.  

I also have gained a 4 foot by 10 foot alcove along one of the sides of the room.  The other side is another 2 foot deep space.  All these spaces are in addition to the 8'-6" x 13'-7" x 21'-8" listening room (the back wall is on a 2 foot skew to help break up standing waves).

Any recommendations for these additional cavities/alcoves/spaces?  I've thought about huge built-in subs or diffusion panels or recessed/wall supported equipment rack or just storage for books, CD's, etc. (the room is also my office with the office furnishings in the back).

Thanks,

jeff