Systemic Development > Psycho-Acoustics

If you had to choose a bonus room

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Carlman:
What are some things you'd look for?
I'm looking for a new house and probably will for a while now.  It's the only way I see really upgrading my hifi. ;)

I've been in some houses with large room but they're square, or have a weird angle from the roofline... so the room looks like this:


There are tons of them... just do a search on 'bonus room' on Google and look at the images tab... they're all like that.  

What's the best way to deal with that?  Or should I just go all the way and build totally custom?  ;)

-C

WEEZ:
This is a GREAT topic....Carl, you are reading my mind!

Hopefully, Bryan (bpape) will jump in here.. :?:

My wife and I really like our house (one floor) but I want a dedicated sound room! (So does she, but for different reasons :shock: )

I'd like a room that has good ratios..but I really don't want a funky ceiling if I can help it; and to build everything on one floor gets expensive.

BRYAN!!!!!

bpape:
Rooms with funky surfaces like that can be a blessing and a curse.  They're very difficult to predict - not to mention ones like the pic above would tuck the speakers into a really tight place which is not good.

If it was me, I'd look for a large room square or not.  If you're serious about really good sound, you'll be building another set of walls inside for isolation anyway and you can change the dimensions at that point.

Room volume, room height, symmetry, ease of isolation, access to HVAC, ability to cover windows, etc.  Those are the things I'd look for.  I'll start with a 24x24x10 space any day and tweak it to what I want - like maybe a 10x19x23 room with a nice storage closet, a couple of nice deep bass absorbers, good spacing between inner and outer walls, etc.  Think about finally having a GOOD place to store all your boxes and crap - in that 3.5'x24' closet on one side of the room!

ALL rooms suffer from modal issues.   There are no perfect ratios - just those that try to spread them out instead of having them stack up on each other.  You'll still have to deal with them and the decay times, reflections, SBIR, etc.

You can also shorten the room a bit and then recess a couple of nice 2-3' deep, 2' wide, floor to ceiling bass absorbers.  Now that will reach down into the bottom end and not take up any of the visible part of the room.  The space between can again be a closet, equipment rack, bathroom, etc.

Oh, and don't forget a built in kegorator and tapper in the room.

Bryan

Double Ugly:

--- Quote from: "Carlman" ---What are some things you'd look for?
Or should I just go all the way and build totally custom?  ;)

--- End quote ---
Now that I've taken a job in this God-forsaken place, we're seriously considering adding onto our house, primarily for me and my system.  If that happens, it will be entirely custom.

Unless you're lucky enough to find a bonus room w/o screwed-up walls, and/or ceilings, and/or doors, and/or windows, etc., I don't think there's another way to do it right.  If you end up w/ a house w/ a bonus room like the one pictured, you'll spend about as much trying to tame the acoustics as you would building it yourself the right way the first time.

I may be a little off the mark or over the top, but I just don't like correcting what I perceive as someone else's mistakes.  I realize they aren't actually mistakes, but they may as well be when you consider my intended purpose for the room.

WEEZ:
Bryan, correct me if I'm wrong, but if a person is stuck with a square room, positioning the speakers in such a way that the listener is facing a corner works pretty well. (wish I knew how to post a drwg)

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