Hi Folks:

I am in the design phase of building a house that will feature a dedicated room for audio. My plan is to build a comfortable listening space that I can enjoy that is separate from the main part of the house so that I can listen with friends, late at night, and set up a small two-channel audio business and consulting service. The space is a bonus room over the garage which measures 21 long by 15 wide. It will have a ceiling that peaks at 9 feet and slopes down to the long wall reaching 5 feet where it meets the vertical wall. There will be a large dormer on one of the long walls, roughly in the middle of the room and approximately 8 feet wide. The speakers will be on the short wall firing down the length of the room. The equipment will be between the speakers. I expect to be able to move the speakers well out into the space so the equipment minimally impacts the center image.

I would like the room to look and feel like it could be in anyone's house. To me it feels a little dishonest to invest tons of money in construction materials and room treatments and then have customers take products home to their untreated spaces only to discover that the sound isn't even close to what they heard in the "showroom". That said, this will mostly be a room for me to enjoy my system so I'm prepared to invest in some limited measures that will make the room acoustically sound or at least prevent significant problems. Since the room will be over the garage and away from the main living area, I am not concerned with preventing the sound from migrating from the listening space.

I'd like to hear from likeminded folks who took some basic, practical, budget-minded steps to improve the sonics of their dedicated rooms. Here are a few areas to consider that I have picked up here reading through various threads:

• Wall stud size and placement/arrangement;
• Insulation type and application;
• Sheetrock type and application;
• Minimizing initial wall and ceiling reflections without the use of expensive/ugly room treatments;
• Floor supports and floor coverings;