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Let's build a room. How big? What dimensions?


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2 minutes ago, awayward said:

Or PS Audio’s recent music room build

Too small, and there really is nothing revolutionary in any of their ideas. They're all pretty generic long-held audiophile ideas in fact. Pretty sure a boringly built room made twice the size or more without any attention to audio concerns will still sound better.

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Previous similar post discussions mentioned that about at least 7 x 5m and 3m ceiling would be good based on the larger likely speakers that may come your way such as a large WMTMW cone box speaker, large horn speaker or 2m tall by 600-900mm wide panel ESL or ribbon speaker plonked into a wide listen triangle of say 3-4m between speakers and 3-4m from listening chair. 

 

This would give enough distance to the side and rear walls and behind the listening chair. Personally I’d be aiming for greater distance to side walls so about 6-7m wide and 9m+ deep just for the stereo setup alone, not considering the HT system on the other end, perhaps rotating lounge suite in the middle.

 

Also consider noise attenuation to neighbours and internal house occupants so thick or double glaze windows, seals to doors and windows, solid core doors etc.

Edited by Al.M
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14 minutes ago, Steam said:

Yes I noticed that as well.  Presumably acoustic treatments that look like couches.

I have always had couches either side of the listening chair, it just seemed logical, no evidence that the sound is better though.

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29 minutes ago, awayward said:

I have always had couches either side of the listening chair, it just seemed logical, no evidence that the sound is better though.

No evidence it's not better, either :)

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22 hours ago, pine weasel said:

I've had my system in rooms of varying sizes, and each time , as the room got bigger, I preferred the sound.

 

My current listing room is about 9m*7m, with a flat 3.7 m ceiling, but behind the sofa I do my listening from, there's an archway opening into a 6*7m room.

 

The downside of this is that when I listen to music/systems in smaller or normal size rooms, I always seem aware of the "room", and keep thinking to myself, I wonder what this would sound like in a bigger room.

 

I don't use any room treatments , but there's plenty of furnishings, rugs, record shelving, etc, and when the guys from Kyron Audio did some measurements, they were pretty happy with the room

 

Cheers

 

some photos of the layout

 

IMG_9605.jpg.76308a5a0b9dacd0e2bc1244292030a5.jpg

IMG_9740.jpg.19aba082185792a70679de146cced7fb.jpg

Your room is magnificent. As are your speakers.

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On 02/01/2021 at 4:08 PM, Ittaku said:

If you have reams of land to spare in an upcoming building development, how big would you make it? I'm thinking something oblong approximately 8.5 metres long, but there's no reason I couldn't go bigger. I'm planning on making the system suitable to fill a massive space too, rather than a room to suit a particular system. How big is big enough? How big is too big? Is it really just the bigger the better? I've seen recommendations in many places but just like acoustics of a studio, theatre, arena, chapel etc. it's part science and part art. Thoughts?

Interesting timing for me this post. I have been pondering a similar problem.

 

My listening/living room will also be an open plan dining and off to one side, open plan kitchen. The dimensions of the room are 9m x 4m, with the kitchen around 3m x 3m to one side and approximately in the centre. The roof slopes long ways at a 15° mono pitch with the apex above the hi-fi.

 

I am in construction, and have on large commercial projects (school hall with a similar shaped roof to my own, and basically a large oblong) seen (and heard) the benefits of acoustic plasterboard used in the raking ceiling. This made talking and holding events/assemblies in there so much less fatiguing and more enjoyable. The walls were pretty much smooth, lots of glass, polished floor (used for indoor sports too) and the room roughly (40m x 20m) still sounded great. I obviously hadn't set my system up in there and listened to it, not sure the head would have extended that courtesy.. but nevertheless it seemed that the acoustic ceiling made a huge difference. Interestingly, pretty much every time I go to a pub/restaurant etc I judge the room acoustics through the prism of that one project!

 

So I have been thinking an acoustic ceiling in the form of something like this https://www.gyprock.com.au/plasterboard-perforated

 

Also, I am considering an angular wall, either at one end or both, or some sort of fabric covered geometric blocky type wall with nifty led lighting.

 

I might need to have a chat with an acoustic designer.
 

Edited by Crabsticks
Missed the hyperlink!
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You might want to listen to the Jim Smith Podcasts about when he built a listening room. From memory he made the walls with two layers of plasterboard thinking that would enhance the sound but actually resulting in an acoustically dead room.

 

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-through-the-through-the-sound-barrier-podcast/id736205165

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The linkwitz lab site has a great discussion of room effects on acoustics

 

https://www.linkwitzlab.com/rooms.htm

 

The most important points I get out of all of that are that dipoles are less affected by the room than monopoles (well yeah we knew that), but most of all - no amount of modelling and planning around a presumed optimal size and construction is going to guarantee performance. The real world is much crueller than that. I still suspect that the overall volume of the room will be the ultimate determinant and positioning of equipment and sound treatment more important than fancy wall construction or dimension ratios. Sure, some ratios are to be avoided (like a sphere or perfect cube) but most any oblong dimensions will probably be fine in a massive room.

Edited by Ittaku
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My current room is 4.1 x 8.5 m with a clerestory ceiling.  It sounds pretty good.  The 4 m wide is good but I think ideally 5m wide would be a great minimal width - allows the speakers plenty of room from the side wall yet still be well separated from each other.  If the cash to go bigger is available then great. 
 

also this:

Golden trapagon

 

 

 

 

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1 minute ago, Steam said:

My current room is 4.1 x 8.5 m with a clerestory ceiling.  It sounds pretty good.  The 4 m wide is good but I think ideally 5m wide would be a great minimal width - allows the speakers plenty of room from the side wall yet still be well separated from each other.  If the cash to go bigger is available then great. 
 

also this:

Golden trapagon

Yeah many many sites refer to this golden ratio. The previous article I referenced said it's basically meaningless unless you have completely inelastic 100% reflective wall construction, so say if your room was dug underground and had concrete walls.

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2 minutes ago, Ittaku said:

Yeah many many sites refer to this golden ratio. The previous article I referenced said it's basically meaningless unless you have completely inelastic 100% reflective wall construction, so say if your room was dug underground and had concrete walls.

My house is rammed earth so effectively concrete walls.  Still sounds and actually measures ok.  
 

but yes whatever you build with will have an effect.  I still think the basic ratios are useful if your design is completely flexible.  A cube would be a disaster whatever it’s made of.

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1 minute ago, Steam said:

My house is rammed earth so effectively concrete walls.  Still sounds and actually measures ok.  
 

but yes whatever you build with will have an effect.  I still think the basic ratios are useful if your design is completely flexible.  A cube would be a disaster whatever it’s made of.

Agreed. About the only thing worse would be a sphere.

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Interesting thread here guys.

I'm just about to undertake a build myself in the back half (and a bit) of our garage. located away from the house at the back of our block. We recently moved to a more rural backdrop. Given my work (tradesperson) I cannot use the whole garage for the music room and frankly, if I were able, I'd probably be best to start from scratch.

So, measurements I have at my disposal are (after allowing for framework & 13mm plasterboard); 4.8m wide, 5.7m long and a ceiling raking upwards, 2.85m (front wall) to 3.05m (back wall).

I know the length isn't ideal but you gotta work with what you've got... 

 

Edited by Be Quiet...Listen
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My favourite room that I have "designed" is 7.9m wide x 11.2m long.  I allowed a minimum 2.5m (preferably) 3m behind the speakers' front baffles to allow the speakers to "breathe" and develop the soundstage, and for access to connectors and the rear of the quipment.  I propose a slightly convex wall behind the listening position.  Ceiling is at least 3m high behind the speakers, rising to at least 4m at the listening position.

 

No parallel walls - even a slight change in angle is better.  I think that David Wilson of Wilson Audio had his room at home with something like a 2 inch difference from parallel.

 

If you have large speakers you have plenty of room.  If smaller speakers, you can always move your listening position closer, and then use the rest of the room for other purposes.

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22 hours ago, Be Quiet...Listen said:

Interesting thread here guys.

I'm just about to undertake a build myself in the back half (and a bit) of our garage. located away from the house at the back of our block. We recently moved to a more rural backdrop. Given my work (tradesperson) I cannot use the whole garage for the music room and frankly, if I were able, I'd probably be best to start from scratch.

So, measurements I have at my disposal are (after allowing for framework & 13mm plasterboard); 4.8m wide, 5.7m long and a ceiling raking upwards, 2.85m (front wall) to 3.05m (back wall).

I know the length isn't ideal but you gotta work with what you've got... 

 

 

Scratch that...

 

Size has been revised as of today. 5.7 x 8.2 x 2.8m. Things are looking a little better!

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It would be worthwhile to consider the Bonello criterion for the distribution of room modes as well:

 

Quote

For optimum room dimensions the following conditions should be met:
1) The curve D = F(f) should increase monotonically. Each one-third octave should have more modes than the preceding one (or, at least, an equal number if D=1).
2) There should be no double modes. Or, at most, double modes will be tolerated only in one-third-octave
bands with densities equal to or greater than 5.

 

Bonello defines the distribution curve as:

Quote

the number of eigen-tones falling within each one-third octave between 10 Hz and 200 Hz is calculated; this number gives the modal density function per one-third octave, D = F(f).

 

Room mode calculators can produce the necessary information when given the room dimensions. Amroc will show the Bonello curve directly.

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Guest Peter the Greek

I forgot to say - angling walls is generally a bad idea in my opinion. All it does is change the angle of incidence, and its going to do SFA for bass.

 

You're better off keeping parallel walls and controlling what you want done with reflections (absorb, diffuse, both, or nothing).

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Everyone has suggested something of value.  It's a case of collating what suits the sound and look you want. 

 

I don't think the perfect room exists.  The most important thing is get the room sound you want and can live with.  Better to have a room a little too big than a little too small.  I think minimum size is 8m x 5m. 

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I think how a room sounds to the people on the inside and to the people on the outside are two very different problems. Trying to optimise for both will result in severe compromises on both fronts.

 

From the music listener’s perspective, only two things matter when building a room IMHO – room modes and bass energy. If I had the luxury of designing and building dedicated listening room I’d take care not have any undue bunching of room modes, and that the walls are as lossy as possible to bass. That’s the best way of staving off hard to manage bass (the primary and most difficult to treat issue with listening rooms).

 

Large rooms are also a good antidote to excess bass energy, but larger distances make it harder to adequately project higher frequencies, too. I suppose (never tried) that a relatively near or mid field setup in a very large room would be just about ideal.

 

Things like reverberation, deadness or liveliness can always be treated later by modifying surfaces (diffusion, absorption).

 

Then there is room EQ... Being at the tail end of another bout of room EQ experiments myself, I’m just about to give up on the idea. I can choose and implement almost any house curve I want, I just can’t make it sound alive and engaging. Right now, I’m back to listening without EQ. I think I’d rather live with the odd boomy room mode than with a collapsed sound stage and sterile sound (for lack of better words).

 

As for the people outside the listening room, f*ck’em! :D

 

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1 hour ago, Be Quiet...Listen said:

Whats the general consensus on wall & ceiling construction?

 

I keep reading double layered plasterboard but also read that this can very realistically deaden your room...

 

And insulation? one layer? As much as you can physically stuff inside the frameworks allowable space?

Typically, in construction, you would use double plasterboard layers in situations where you are trying to prevent the spread of fire, or to stop sounds transferring from one space to another.

 

I don't see how good room acoustics and those ideas are connected.

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