What is your listening room like?


My listening room is also my living room, but I am planning to expand my garage and turn it into my musical get away (listening while my wife is home is not always easy). The dimensions will be aprox. 15 X 20 X 10. I plan to install multiple dedicated lines and room treatment. I would love to hear what fellow Audiogoners listening rooms are like, and/or if you have suggestions for my new space.
cmo

Showing 2 responses by rives

A few things you should watch out for. First, your dimensions are multiples of each other in a very bad way. Your room modes are going to stack up on top of each other and give you very very boomy bass. You need to change a few of the dimensions to get proper mode spacing. There are a number of threads here on acoustical treatment, but in the end I think you will find one thing in common. The basics of acoustical treatment are quite simple--absorb the first points of reflection and get ample diffusion behind the listener. Beyond that it can get complex. Here's the delimna: many people see the complexities and decide not to wander into the jungle of acoustic treatment, instead they buy a power cable or something. Each room is different, each listener is different, and everyone of the designs we've ever done has been different. There are two routes with acoustical treatment and design, one is the DIY. In this case, start with Alton Everest's books (Master Handbook of Acoustics and Studio on a Budget), read before you build! Then start working with the basic acoustical treatments and build slowly--it can be a fun process. Like upgrading equipment you are upgrading a room (but be sure you built the fundamentals like mode spacing in right from the beginning). Like system synergy of various components, so works acoustical treatment--actually even more so. Everything acoustical in the room has to work together for optimum sound. The other resource is on our website http://www.rivesaudio.com, go to the listening room. It is a brief tutorial on some basic listening room issues, including room modes and how they interact with each other.

The other route is to simply hire a professional acoustical engineer. This will get you the results you want without the trial and error routine. When building a new listening room, this can be a very good idea because the acoustical treatment becomes part of the room and built into the room using in most cases standard (or close to standard) building materials. This can be a cost savings over many of the pre-packaged acoustical treatment products, but it does mean you have to invest in the design and the construction for such a project. The end result though is a perfectly fitted custom solution and takes the worry out of design issues.

Either way, I'm glad you are taking the room into serious consideration--so often it is neglected and in so many cases equipment upgrades are negated by dismal room conditions. In short--quite often the equipment far exceeds the potential performance of the room.
CMO, it was the 10, 15 and 20 that concerned me. 20 being 2x10, but also 15x2 and 10x3 are pretty low order multiples. The slope will help, but trimming the 20 feet down a bit to get better mode spacing would go even further. When you get the books, read the section on room modes, it will go into great detail (possibly more than you want) on modal distribution and the different philosophies on modal distribution (and the golden ratio/s--yes there is more than one forumla for the golden ratio). I haven't completely subscribed to any of the golden ratio's as of yet--but it is a good place to start.