Ceiling Height

Thanks a lot for the info, Nrchy. Actually, I received the Harley book for Christmas, but I haven't had the time to give it more than a cursory look. I'll dust it off tonight and read the chapter on room tuning. Thanks again!

Cosmic_void, my room is roughly 18' x 27' x 7.5' with a large bay area on one long wall side which makes the room shape slightly irregular. (The bay window area gives the maximum 18' width.)

Hooper there is a formula that Robert Harley uses in his book "The Complete Guide to Highend Audio" that allows you to calculate which frequencies will be problematic. The modes are plotted out on a sheet of paper. Each of the dimensions are plotted and where there is a collection of 'markings' there will be problem at that frequency. I'm trying to explain this as simply as possible but I'm afarid that without seeing it, it is too hard to understand.

The graph will tell you what types of tunes to use for each specific frequency that needs to be tamed. Rives and/or others can tell you where to put them in the room. Does this make any sense?

I really recommend buying Robert Harley's book. It is a good reference for a lot of things, including taming the room.

You didn't specify whether it was a finished basement. If your room dimensions are less than ideal for the ceiling height it was recently suggested to me that leaving the beams exposed, installing a good padded insulation, and covering the whole thing with fabric would effectively eliminate the ceiling as a reflective factor in the equation. Furthermore, if the room is small you may also want to consider running non-parallel. The one great thing you have going for you in most basements is the solid floor. I'll follow this thread as I'm dealing with the same situation in our renovation of our house. I'd like to create a dedicated listening room in the basement and my ceiling height is 7 feet also. Rives should be able to help.

Marco

The overall room ratio is the critical element and the problem with a low ceiling height is that it limits the number of practical room ratios. Low ceilings also create the possibility of greater frequency response irregularities due to reflection cancellation effects. These are not fatal problems, but they do require increased effort in speaker placement and/or corrective acoustic treatments.

Hooper,
Try checking out rives.com. They have plenty of info that will quickly help you up the learning curve on this topic.
Cheers, Spencer

Nrchy: The overall dimensions are approximately 25 x 20 x 7. With a little treatment (bass traps, Echo Buster panels, etc.), the room actually sounds pretty well balanced--there don't seem to be any glaringly obvious problems--but I'm not sure if the dimensions fit the "golden ratio," or whatever they call it.

Rushton, I'll be building a listening room some time in the next year or so and will be restricted to approximately the same ceiling height as you. What are your over all dimensions if you don't mind my asking?

Tom

Nrchy is exactly correct. The ceiling height in my new listening room is only 7.5 feet, but the room has turned out to be quite good overall.

It isn't so much an issue of ceiling height as it is room proportions. What is the width and depth of the room?