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HT room new construction - room treatments, etc

I am building out a basement AV room. I want to devote as much attention to the room as to the electronics, as I am CERTAIN that most untreated rooms completely mask and/or overcome the qualities of all this high end gear we spend so much time and money on. I know this simply from moving the same system into 3 or 4 apartments and/or houses over the years, and noticing the dramatic differences in performance based solely on what's going on in the room. I also know it from playing in a touring rock band for years -the room is far more important than, for example, this high quality amplifier versus that one.

ASC makes a wall isolation system (ISO-Wall) that de-couples the sheetrock from the framing. Benefits are said to include greater noise reduction in the room, as well as prevention of all that low frequency from getting out of the room. Before I invest $2,800.00 in additional building materials and add labor costs, somebody please tell me this stuff actually works as described.

Part II - tube traps and diffusors. Who can speak to the before and after of having employed these room treatments? Was it dramatic? And by dramatic, I mean more so than, say, changing out speaker cables and/or interconnects, because my ears are generally not golden enough to consider these differences "dramatic." (For those who care, the guts of the system will be Anthem AVM-20, Aragon 2007 200x7 amp, and Paradigm Reference matched set of speakers: Studio 100 mains, Studio CC center, Servo-15 sub, etc).

Thanks for the wisdom.

Jeff Warncke
jswarncke

Showing 3 responses by rives

rives
953 posts
 
First, we are an acoustical engineering company that specializes in small room acoustics. I would strongly recommend that you consider working with an acoustical engineering service for the design of your room. Every room is different, and one of your questions about should I use the following treatements is very dependent on the room and what you want to acheive out of the room. The room, when being designed from the ground up, should be comprised of certain acoustical attributes (flat frequency response, resonable reverberation times, etc), plus the tastes of the client (some want a brighter sounding or more reverberant sounding room), aesthetics of the room, and overall costs. It is very expensive to buy room treatment that does not work properly for you, and in general, a properly designed room will either need little treatement or have the treatment built into it, thus saving quite a bit of money (perhaps a greater savings than the cost of an acoustical engineering service). Please visit our website at www.rivesaudio.com, you will likely find some useful tools and tips, but I do encourage you to give us a call and discuss the project, even if you decide to take on design yourself.
rives
953 posts
 
I feel somewhat compelled to respond to Ksales. Unfortunately, what he says is likely true, and it really bothers me because this truly is the demise of acoustical engineering companies. What value are they bringing the customer, if only to charge more than what the customer could get otherwise? Our company does not sell or manufacture acoustical treatment products. We design the room--that's all. In doing this, it is our best interest to design the room with our clients best interest and budget in mind. Most of our acoustical treatment can be found at Home Depot. The raw materials for acoustical treatment are not expensive generally. The expense is in the labor and design of the products. We can provide the designs for what is needed for clients that either want to build themselves or have a contractor that will build to specifications. The acoustical products are still useful, in that frequently they provide an easy solution when a room already exists and the client does not want to build anything or have a contractor come in. In these cases, we still provide the designs, but have the client purchase the products directly from the manufacturer or local dealer. We do not take part in this transaction--thus there is no mark-up for the client.
I am glad Ksales brought this point up. I had suspected that this may have been a perception (and reality for some companies).
rives
953 posts
 
Room decouplers work very well. What you need to be careful of, is that low frequency travels through the studs of the walls. So it's not enough to just decouple the ceiling, because the bass will travel to the sidewall studs and up into the house. What you need is to just about build a romm within a room and decouple the inner room. We use Kinetics products for much of our isolation work. You can really get almost total isolation, but my guess is you don't need to take it to that extreme. This is one of the areas we regularly include in our plans (and evaluate the degree of isolation needed for a given environment)--in fact probably 75% of our clients have had us design isolation for their listening rooms. Another area to watch out for is HVAC duct systems. These can be very bad sources for sound leakage, and there are some good inexpensive tricks that can be used to just about eliminate the ducts as problems.
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