Listening room ceiling type?


I'm in the planning stages of my listening room in my basement. The dimensions will be approximately 13' x 19' with the ceiling measured 7'7" from concrete floor to the bottom of the joists above. The joists are 2x10 with a finished length of just less than 9". It is my intension to fill the space between joists with Roxul mineral wool bats. These bats have a 3" thickness.

Should I stick three of the bats between each joist to fill the space or say two bats with an air space between the floor above and the first bat and again an air space between the first bat and the second with no third bat at all. The joist run perpindicular to the direction the speakers will be pointing.

Also, I have had a suggestion to us burlap to cover the ceiling but thought this might be to absorbtive. I've been considering a drop ceiling of 2'x2' panels (1st choice) and a fixed drywall ceiling (2nd choice if not 3rd after burlap). Any advise from some of you folks in the know would be much appreciated. Thanks, Tom.
cosmic_void

Showing 1 response by jlambrick

My old listening room was in a condo and my primary concern was isolation so as not to bother the neighbors. Now that I'm trying to make an existing home theater room in our new house sound good, I realize how good my old room was. Here's what I did:

The listening room was in a concrete basement with about 7'6" from floor to ceiling. I ran felt strips across all of the floor joists and put R13 insulation between them. Then I used 5/8" MDF panels cut in 4' x 4' sections. In each of the panels, I drilled five 5/16" holes - one near each corner and one near the center. These holes were large enough that the mounting screw would not touch the MDF. Then for each hole, I used a self drilling screw, a large metal washer and two large rubber washers. The panels were put up so that the felt isolated it from the floor joists and the rubber washers isolated them from the mounting screws. After they were all up, I sealed the whole thing with silicon RTV. Then I ran furring strips and put up acoustic tiles. I used track lighting to avoid leakage from recessed lights.

Off the subject a little, the rest of the room was standard room within a room studs and sheetrock with staggered studs on the one set of support beams. In the upper corners where the walls were shared with adjacent condo units, I put in some rubberized sound deadening material that is normally used to sound insulate ducts in large buildings.

The room might be considered somewhat dead to many people but it stepped right out of the way of my system and I wish I could reproduce it's qualities in my new home.