I'm modifying a basement room into a listening room. By american standards, this is a small room (20x11x7 ft). Since there is a staircase on the back corner of the room, I'm thinking of shortening it to approximately 17x11 give or take a foot. To avoid blocking the entrance into another room, I believe my best bet is to slope part of the back wall so I may just as well have a 3 sided back wall which could work.
The walls are knotty pine over sheet rock about 1.25 inches thick and I'll not take this apart even though I dislike knotty pine, this paneling is not cheap (5/8 inch thick tongue and groove panels). The ceiling is 12x12 tile and the insulation of the ceiling is Roxul. I'm adding a floating floor to replace the carpeting.
The thing that caught my eye was that behind the back wall, there is a crawl space (10x24x3 feet) that opens into an adjoining room of the basement. Could I use this space as some kind of bass trap if I put a grille on the lower back wall??? It seems to me this is similar to aperiodic chambers/transmission lines...
Can I use that space to my advantage and how would you do this? I almost forgot, the 3 sided back wall may be built with sheet rock, I have enough pine there thank you
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The walls are knotty pine over sheet rock about 1.25 inches thick and I'll not take this apart even though I dislike knotty pine, this paneling is not cheap (5/8 inch thick tongue and groove panels). The ceiling is 12x12 tile and the insulation of the ceiling is Roxul. I'm adding a floating floor to replace the carpeting.
The thing that caught my eye was that behind the back wall, there is a crawl space (10x24x3 feet) that opens into an adjoining room of the basement. Could I use this space as some kind of bass trap if I put a grille on the lower back wall??? It seems to me this is similar to aperiodic chambers/transmission lines...
Can I use that space to my advantage and how would you do this? I almost forgot, the 3 sided back wall may be built with sheet rock, I have enough pine there thank you
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I wish I could come up with a sketch lol. I have no idea on how to do that.
Basically a rectangular shape about 30x24 where the crawl space is 10x24 in one end of the basement. The listening room takes up one side at 20x11 and the other room is for furnace/laundry. The crawl space communicates with both rooms.
I was wondering if I should do my room calculations including this craw space or excluding it. The thing is that when you look at transmission lines and aperiodic chambers, you can tune a speaker to extend the bass so I was wondering if this applies to listening rooms also.
I know this may sound confusing but it seems to me that I can use that available volume to my advantage in the lower frequencies. It would sure beat having to install these horrific tubular bass traps in a listening room. If there is a path for longer waves to travel, it seems logical to me to use what I have at hand.
Basically a rectangular shape about 30x24 where the crawl space is 10x24 in one end of the basement. The listening room takes up one side at 20x11 and the other room is for furnace/laundry. The crawl space communicates with both rooms.
I was wondering if I should do my room calculations including this craw space or excluding it. The thing is that when you look at transmission lines and aperiodic chambers, you can tune a speaker to extend the bass so I was wondering if this applies to listening rooms also.
I know this may sound confusing but it seems to me that I can use that available volume to my advantage in the lower frequencies. It would sure beat having to install these horrific tubular bass traps in a listening room. If there is a path for longer waves to travel, it seems logical to me to use what I have at hand.
Building their own speakers, some people use a chamber behind the speaker wall as a vent for the woofer, instead of using a sealed speaker box, or a bass reflex speaker box design with a tuned port to the front. This gets you into measuring your speaker construction with microphones and instruments to tune what you've got correctly to get proper response. Very DIY, but tedious to my opinion. Read some of the threads in multi-element speaker forum about this issue. Search for the term "infinite baffle". I've got a 15'x35'x12' listening-living-dining room with the SP2 speakers high up on the narrow end (and the steinway on the floor between them), I am very pleased with the result. I took the speakers outside last night for 1812 overture, the bass went away some. So your room is important. Famous old concert halls like Vienna (Wein) tend to be the shape of my living-dining room, but scaled up 5 or 10 times. Your room seems to be the right shape, but a little short in height and length. It's what you can afford- I was lucky to find this house in a neighborhood going industrial, so I didn't have to pay much. The factory doesn't complain when I play too loud at 3 AM either, as long as I don't complain about their ******* beeping vehicle backup alarms.
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Your listening room in Montreal would be part of homes starting at 1 million bucks. So this is out of my range lol. We do not have access to american sized rooms in Canada unless we drop big bucks because they have to be heated and air conditionned which becomes very costly. The taxes here are very high also, over 10K a year for such a home.
I used to have a 12x12 room so this for me is quite an upgrade that I can have fun with.
From what I've read up on acoustics, experts do not all agree with opposite views being frequent. Small rooms are said to be dead and/or bright, go figure what that means. They both may mean the same thing using contradictory terms.
My gut feeling tells me the added volume of the crawl space can filter the low frequencies with little impact on the highs, just like a cabinet sees the whole volume of a cabinet at lower frequencies but a smaller area for the highs as in aperiodic/transmission lines.
I used to have a 12x12 room so this for me is quite an upgrade that I can have fun with.
From what I've read up on acoustics, experts do not all agree with opposite views being frequent. Small rooms are said to be dead and/or bright, go figure what that means. They both may mean the same thing using contradictory terms.
My gut feeling tells me the added volume of the crawl space can filter the low frequencies with little impact on the highs, just like a cabinet sees the whole volume of a cabinet at lower frequencies but a smaller area for the highs as in aperiodic/transmission lines.
environment
Heating and air are a real challenge on my income. I don't A/C this space, only the bedroom. I fan cold air from the bedroom into this space to dehumidify the piano. I've abandoned forced air heating that costs about $250 a month for 54 deg F, for an unvented (protected) gas heater in this main room. Cut the heating bill down to $120 and I am now enjoying 64 deg in the winter. I paid less than a years salary for this place, I am extremely lucky considering my music hobby. Search "infinite baffle" for tips on using the dead space behind the speaker wall for improving the bass response of your diy speaker. There's a guy in italy that has spectral analysis soltware for windows free, if you run windows. Look on the software thread. (I don't run windows- I'm out in the cold).
Heating and air are a real challenge on my income. I don't A/C this space, only the bedroom. I fan cold air from the bedroom into this space to dehumidify the piano. I've abandoned forced air heating that costs about $250 a month for 54 deg F, for an unvented (protected) gas heater in this main room. Cut the heating bill down to $120 and I am now enjoying 64 deg in the winter. I paid less than a years salary for this place, I am extremely lucky considering my music hobby. Search "infinite baffle" for tips on using the dead space behind the speaker wall for improving the bass response of your diy speaker. There's a guy in italy that has spectral analysis soltware for windows free, if you run windows. Look on the software thread. (I don't run windows- I'm out in the cold).
If it isn't too damp you could hang surplus heavy cloth in there. A cupboard full of heavy coats (wool is best) is very good bass trap if the door is open....
Or, you could glue thick felt, (or some other material like it such as several layers of worn out wool blankets) to MDF boards and hang them in there.
The main thing is to make sure that LF wave doesn't come back out, right?
And make sure moths, mold and mice can't get in
'listening room'
Our new house which we designed together has the lounge built to Gilbert Arthur Briggs' (Wharfedale Loudspeakers founder) 'Golden Ratio'
This uses the ceiling height as the basis for the two other dimensions of the room.
Unless someone else has the ratios to hand, I'll pick up the book from our new house tomorrow (we're still trying to complete the project, from day to day,with insufficient funds and let you have them.
Lots of soft furnishings with thick curtains and an unrestricted 'audio view' of the loudspeakers is a good idea.
Failing all that, a good pair of headphones (Sennheisser HD 414's) are a good substitute.
Best of luck (and best regards)
Jim.
Our new house which we designed together has the lounge built to Gilbert Arthur Briggs' (Wharfedale Loudspeakers founder) 'Golden Ratio'
This uses the ceiling height as the basis for the two other dimensions of the room.
Unless someone else has the ratios to hand, I'll pick up the book from our new house tomorrow (we're still trying to complete the project, from day to day,with insufficient funds and let you have them.
Lots of soft furnishings with thick curtains and an unrestricted 'audio view' of the loudspeakers is a good idea.
Failing all that, a good pair of headphones (Sennheisser HD 414's) are a good substitute.
Best of luck (and best regards)
Jim.
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