My new auditioning room

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Hello all,

I have moved from St. Louis and emerged in Buffalo with a new auditioning room. It's almost exactly 22 feet long and 11 feet wide, with a height of 6 feet and 7 inches. Metrically, that is roughly 154 meters by 12 meters, or imperially, one quarter of a furlong by 9/16ths of a furlong. Roughly.

Materially, it is a basement, meaning that three sides are concrete against the earth. The fourth wall is a lengthwise wall of drywall material. The ceiling is a typical office-type drop ceiling.

I have big plans for it, but I've never actually designed an auditioning room. One of the first thing I plan to do is treat the bass reflections, as they will probably be very great because of all the concrete. After that, I'm not sure how to proceed.

Another idea I have been developing for the room is to build a dipole sub, to maximize the length of the room while minimizing the reflections.

Oh, in addition, I plan to hang a screen in front of my desk for movie viewing. Has anyone tried any products by Lumenlab, this forum's sponsor?

Dave
 

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I'm in the midst of doing the exact same thing with my basement. That's how I'm proceeding:

Rip the walls open (down to 2x4s)
Use sound proofing insulation material (owen's corning or roxul) between your 2x4s
Then put a layer of sonopan (up here in canada we have some made by cascade, its 4'x8' sheets that are green and see to be made of condensed wool)
Then on top of that you want to put resilliency bars. These are aluminum spacers between you sonopan and your gypse, they avoir the gypse knocking on the sonopan if you didn't put enough screws in.
Next step is the gypse. You'll want to put 2 layers (if thats possible at your place). One horizontally, one vertically.

Then if your a whacko like me and want to integrate your front projector to your setup, you want to project DIRECTLY ON THE WALL. This will greatly help speaker placement (not having to deal with a projection screen). In doing so you'll want to paint that wall with sherman william's super flat white paint, but not the straight version. You'll wanna add aluminum dust to it to get a better reflection index.

Well, anyways, that's what I'm working on right now, and it should sound amazing in the end.

Hope it can help.
 
frugal-phile™
Joined 2001
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Buffalo... that's almost Canada!

kneadle said:
roughly 154 meters

154m?? That's a football field and a half (including endzones). I think something got lost in translation :)

Your biggest isse is the low ceiling... you are going to have a real problem in about 100 Hz or slightly above... and the length being 2x the width isn't going to be helpful, but at least that is easier to deal with (ie make the room shorter -- even if it is just loading both ends with record shelves (that would make it 20 ft).

Given it is a basement, raising the roof is probably not the easiest thing to do. (this week we raized the roof, and then raised it)

dave
 

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Re: Re: My new auditioning room

planet10 said:
Buffalo... that's almost Canada!


I actually have a job in St. Catharines. It's very beautiful here. Our homesickness has been eased by the wonderful region. Buffalo-Toronto-Rochester really is a nice place to live. I'm not sure about Hamilton, though.


154m?? That's a football field and a half (including endzones). I think something got lost in translation :)

I was just teasing....:D
Your biggest isse is the low ceiling... you are going to have a real problem in about 100 Hz or slightly above... and the length being 2x the width isn't going to be helpful, but at least that is easier to deal with (ie make the room shorter -- even if it is just loading both ends with record shelves (that would make it 20 ft).


dave

My last room was about 9 ft. By 6 ft, but it had 8 ft ceilings. I'll take the low basement ceiling for the 22 and 11 feet dimensions. Strangely enough, dave, I shortened the room up by a foot or so using...

...a shelf full of records. Not as many as you, of course, but they stopped making them at the height of my collecting them.

Dave
 
frugal-phile™
Joined 2001
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Re: Re: Re: My new auditioning room

kneadle said:
It's very beautiful here.

And that is the part of Canada that is most crowded...

...a shelf full of records. Not as many as you, of course, but they stopped making them at the height of my collecting them.

Thay are still making records -- matter of fact in England it is the only sector of the music sales market that is growing.

dave
 
Make that montreal and toronto instead of southern ontario and quebec. Its even more impressive... Montreal is host to 3.5 million people alone if I'm not mistaken (that's on an island that's about 40km long by 15km wide). Scary. Planet10, whereabout do you live in BC? I've seen your raising the roof pic, it seems pretty quiet :)
 
So anyway, dear neighbors and hosts, what about the Lumenlab thing? Any experience?

More importantly, any advice concerning room treatment that might be more timely and affordable for a poor, miserable adjunct professor? I will be building my own bass traps and sound diffusers. But what about a dipole sub?

I don't know if you noticed, but in the left-hand side of the first pic are two Cerwin Vega speakers of the Re 30 series.

Oh, excuse me, it's Cerwin-Vega! Forgot the exclamation point. At any rate, I figure to use the woofers for a dipole-style sub, if possible.

Dave
 
sberube said:
Make that montreal and toronto instead of southern ontario and quebec. Its even more impressive... Montreal is host to 3.5 million people alone if I'm not mistaken (that's on an island that's about 40km long by 15km wide). Scary. Planet10, whereabout do you live in BC? I've seen your raising the roof pic, it seems pretty quiet :)
Montreal isn't on an island, last I heard.
 
frugal-phile™
Joined 2001
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454Casull said:
Montreal isn't on an island, last I heard.

Yep -- in the middle of the St Lawrence...

An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.


map from Yahoo ... the above is the URL,, also attached below (tweaked to emphasize the terrain).

dave
 

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What speed limit? :D yeah its ridiculous. The only good thing in Quebec (might be like that in other provinces too) is that the police won't go after you if you drive too fast. So when I ride my bike at 200, I'm safer than when I ride at 140... :) I call that an incentive.

But they don't want policeman to endager more people by chasing you. Which makes sens.

Oh, and 454Casull, I haven't figured out in 25 years living in montreal how to get out the city without crossing a bridge :D
 
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