Penultimate listening room?

[till]

This thread may belong in the loudspeaker forum, i´m not sure, so i post it here first.

OK. I made amplifiers now, a CDP, and are on building the loudspeakers, as you may know from other threads.

For all this there is a lot of information in this board and all over the internet. Not for the next step:

For some reasons i´m very sure the next way to go for making improvements is not into the details of amplifiers circuits or so (changing types of diodes, caps etc). I think the next step is a bigger and better listening room.


The room i use at the moment is about 5*6m with 2,5m high. It has a lot of hard surfaces, and i feel its a little bit small for the Altecs A7 clones.

I have spare room under the roof, estimated double volume of my current room.

Please post any comment and experience with your listening room(s), so i can try to understand which way to go to build the best listening room under my roof.

thanks, Till

[pinkmouse]

Easiest things to do;

If you have a hard floor surface, put a big rug on the floor half way between you and the speakers, this will attenuate direct reflections from the floor.

Buy loads of books and Vinyl LPs, (CDs don't work, the cases are too shiny ) and line the walls of your room with them on shelves. This will diffuse the lateral soundfield, and improve stereo imaging.

Hang a big wall rug behind your listening position, this prevents reflections from the rear.

Hope this helps

[jh6you]

Altec A7... Yeah, it is the speaker which has smashed my way to the crazy audio world. I remember the impact I have experienced through Altech A7 and a tube amp. That sound is still in my mind as a reference whenever I try modern amps and speakers.

I have seen a guy who really loves Altec A7 and keeps it in a rather small room. Of course his room walls are filled up with shelves where many vintage tube amps are sitting. The room floor is also covered by many different gears. Those seem to kill the reflecting sound waves. His room is a real penultimate listening room.

JH

[planet10]

Listening rooms... the final frontier.

I was fortunate enuff to get to design my own house, and when i did i just considered it one large listening room. The room rarely gets in the way of my hifi -- it makes a big difference.

All the rooms are accoustically connected, but walls break things up a bit. The space is just under 24'x36' (7.5m x 11m) with ceilings ranging from 3' to 17' (1 to 5.5m).

The last AES i was at i heard a paper by a fellow talking about rooms, and he said that you can achieve most of what you need in terms of room shape by just slanting the roof in two directions (ie a flat roof with diagonal corners representing the lowest & highest part of the ceiling).

BTW. I'm not sure why the use of Penultimate (means "next to last").

dave

[till]

thanks for all input.

planet10, i´m not sure i understand the information about you room exactly. Would be great if you are able to post a drawing and/or further explanation. I´m in the situation to design what to build in the roof of my existing house, but not to change the dimension it has now. I will make a drawing in the next days.

"penultimate" because nelson used it for zen v4, which i built. I realised after analizing situation next to build are speakers for zen, so i started some "penultimate" zen - speaker diskussion in are buiülding now. Now i can use my not ready yet speakers and feel i need a better room next. (i feel this at higher volume level when using the TL1601a in the 828. ) . nothing more than playing with the word. Also i hope i don´t need better speakers and room than this (not enough money....) for a long time, i hope they are not the last.

[RADIOLEE]

This topic is very timely for me as I will be constructing a room shortly that will hopefully be "sonically correct" (to coin a phrase).

My basic aim will be to have as few parallel surfaces as possible.

It will have a cathedral ceiling, thus eliminating the vertical.

I will be building large infinite baffle boxes, basically closets, in the front corners that will angle out at about twenty degrees. These will hold my Altec 604's.

The side walls will have built in shelving that tapers in toward the front of the room. This will eliminate parallel surfaces on the sides.

The rear wall will be something af a challenge. I am thinking of a floor standing cabinet with a slanted front and a bow window on top of that.

This should eliminate most parallel surfaces.

I have heard audio in such a room and the difference is amazing.

The room is definitely the most under addressed element in an audio system, in my opinion. This is probably due to a hesitancy to build slanting walls or cabinetry.

Lee

[Brett]

Part 1

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue3/maroom.htm

Part 2

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue3/maroom2.htm

[Sparhawk]

Hey, Jason, how about an acoustics forum? It's a wonderful topic, with many possible tweaks and suggestions...

I studied recording engineering before moving into my current computer-oriented career, and one of the most interesting topics was room acoustics. There are many techniques used in recording studio and control room design which are equally applicable to listening rooms. The design of an "ideal" listening room has always been in the back of my mind... I'll have to dig up some old references.

[till]

an acoustics forum would be fine, i´m very intersted. I hope we two are not the only ones in the board. Nelson, there is a little information about yours in the el pipe o article, could you give more descripion?

i need a scanner badly to be enabled to post my drawing...

Thank you Brett for the links, but i got the feeling this man has more money than me - i need a listening room not a palace. (but i would take the palace as well)

[Sandy H.]

There are at least three people here interested in listening room acoustics. I'm about 3 years away from a new construction home and need to start researching soon. I'm a slow learner. . . .

I'd be interested in an acoustics forum as well. It is extrememly important and in some people's cases, extremely overlooked.

S.