I think that would be a fantastic listening room... most hi-fi acoustic problems are down to 'small room' modal responses. High ceilings are good so use all the space you can. The only thing to bear in mind is that you'll need efficient speakers, high power amps or both as you won't get the 'room gain' effect from the near field reflections of the walls & ceiling.
Sport Court as Listening Room?
Probably a dumb question but who knows, maybe someone else has done this before...
My wife and I are currently shopping for a new home. Here in Minnesota one of the popular features in high end homes is to have a sport court inside. In the house we looked at yesterday this consisted of a room approximately 18 feet wide by 30 feet long and 18 foot ceiling. There is currently a basketball hoop hanging on one end but this room can be used for other sports activities, and these are especially popular with couples who have smaller kids as a means of burning energy on winter days.
Our kids are mostly grown up now so this space would not get the use it deserves, but the room size is good for setting up a listening room. The problem would be the ceiling height I imagine. It would not be hard to acoustically treat the walls and floor to prevent reflections, but would the ceiling height create an insurmountable problem to make this a viable option? I imagine so.
Anyway, we probably won't buy this house, but if we have this builder design us a house we could have the sport court included per spec, so that when we sell the house down the road it would have this attractive feature for the future owners. Or, we could convert the design to have these same footprint but with lower ceiling.
Just curious what you would do if you were in my shoes.
Thanks for any ideas you might share.
Peter
My wife and I are currently shopping for a new home. Here in Minnesota one of the popular features in high end homes is to have a sport court inside. In the house we looked at yesterday this consisted of a room approximately 18 feet wide by 30 feet long and 18 foot ceiling. There is currently a basketball hoop hanging on one end but this room can be used for other sports activities, and these are especially popular with couples who have smaller kids as a means of burning energy on winter days.
Our kids are mostly grown up now so this space would not get the use it deserves, but the room size is good for setting up a listening room. The problem would be the ceiling height I imagine. It would not be hard to acoustically treat the walls and floor to prevent reflections, but would the ceiling height create an insurmountable problem to make this a viable option? I imagine so.
Anyway, we probably won't buy this house, but if we have this builder design us a house we could have the sport court included per spec, so that when we sell the house down the road it would have this attractive feature for the future owners. Or, we could convert the design to have these same footprint but with lower ceiling.
Just curious what you would do if you were in my shoes.
Thanks for any ideas you might share.
Peter
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- 7 posts total
Tall ceilings are wonderful for listening IME. It’s not ideal to have the same dimension for height and width, but it’s probably manageable. Since sport courts usually are fully enclosed, the room may accentuate bass peaks and nodes, though the large size will help. My guess is, you will need extensive acoustic treatment to control reverb time and other consequences of echoes. It’s doable but will be an added expense. Unless you’re quite experienced with acoustic treatment, I’d suggest getting professional help in that. The biggest issue with that is finding qualified people in most places. You might even consider a consultation with Jim Smith, author of Get Better Sound. He sells nothing but his expertise. The project probably won’t be cheap, but it could be a lot of fun. |
Seems to me that space has great potential as a listening room. Higher sensitivity speakers are always a good thing. If you use line source speakers, ceiling interaction will be minimal. You could use an acoustic cloud if you have ceiling interaction issues which could be easily removed at a later date if you sell the house. |
- 7 posts total