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Some of you may recall I asked for guidance on purchasing a place to live with a suitable listening room.Well, I found a place. Neighborhood is fantastic, condition is good, and I feel I could live there for 8+ years. There is a pair of broadcasting towers 4.5 miles away, is this an issue?
The master bedroom is 15' long by 10'10 wide, with a sloped ceiling that is 8' tall at the front and 10'4 at the back. Side walls are perfectly symmetrical. There is one large window in the middle of the front wall, which I could cover with mdf and absorption. The rear wall of the room is taken up with accordion style wooden closet doors and the doorway to the room in the back corner. So no bass trap in that corner. =(
No fancy outlets, no angled walls, and the width concerns me. But at least the side walls are symmetrical, there is only one window to control, the front two corners are intact for bass traps, and the sloping ceiling is a plus.
My inexperienced eye gives it a 6.5/10, and since all the other places I've looked at rate a 3/10 or lower, this seems like a step in the right direction.
How do you rate a room like this for listening? What concerns you about it? What attributes that is has do you find most significant, and what attributes that it is lacking do you find most significant?
Thanks!
On the other hand, you have five fingers.
Edits: 05/11/12Follow Ups:
Hi
Besides the sloped ceiling which is a huge concern (witness the poor sound in most of the Munich High-End Show sloped-ceiling rooms), you wrote:
"The rear wall of the room is taken up with accordion style wooden closet doors and the doorway to the room in the back corner "
The adjoining room should be added to the room dimensions from a bass modes POV.
I have attached a useful link to calculate room modes (sorry, no sloped ceiling function).
The same site includes an excellent room acoustic treatment calculator. After you buy the house, the Room Acostics link will be useful to fine-tune the room. Start with furniture, carpets, curtains, input those into the calculator, see how is the room response and RT-60, then and buy the audiophile stuff ONLY if your room has an RT-60 shorter than 0.5 seconds (diffusors) or longer than 1 second (absorbent panels).
Bass traps are not mandatory and should be evaluated on-site, preferably with a Real Time Analyser.
BTW the software's RT-60 and bass response calculations match pretty closely the RTA measurements in my room.
Have fun!
Thanks for the reply.
The doorway is closed with a door. It probably isn't a solid door, but it is a door. Do I still count what is behind it into the room volume?
Thanks for the calculators. It's a help. I'm especially interested in its estimation of how much treatment I'll need and where I need it.
I'm considering buying an analyzing microphone and some software, but I'll probably need an interface too then.
I can still back out from this purchase, and I do want a good room for the next decade. However, this was the best I could find in my price range, so I'm not sure what I could do differently.
On the other hand, you have five fingers.
Skye, you wrote folding door or words to that effect. A folding door MAY be transparent to bass frequencies. The adjoining room will act either as a bass trap or an extension of the room for bass modes, depending on door and wall thickness.Here is an inexpensive tip:
Phonic sells the affordable model PAA3 RTA. It measures 30 frequency bands, RT-60, absolute phase, also has memory and AVG functions, plus an USB interface to store the graphs in your computer. Street price is about U$ 350.
It comes with a test CD. Play the pink noise track in Repeat mode through your system and place the RTA where the listener's head would be, with the aid of a short camera tripod.
With an RTA, you will be able to position the speakers, your chair/couch and bass traps, looking for the most even bass response (30 to 300Hz). Small peaks and valleys are inevitable in any room, no matter how perfet its dimensions.
I like to use with curtains, carpets and acoustic panels to obtain a ~0.6 seconds RT-60 and a declining treble frequency response above 10 KHz, which is the correct response given the distance from speaker to listener and the average in-room high-frequency loss.
Do NOT try to obtain ruler-flat treble response, it will sound bright as hell.Another tip: while house-shopping, ask the realtor to leave you alone and walk around the room while talking to yourself. If your voice is deep, you will hear the bass modes resonating around your head as you walk. You may want to practice at home first :)
More details: search Wilson room/speaker setup method.
Have fun!
Edits: 05/17/12
Thanks for the helpful tips. I'll make sure to try them out!
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough about the wall behind the listener. Two thirds of the wall is taken up with the closet. It is not a walk-in closet, but the less-deep kind that has the accordion-style doors. The wall in the back of the closet is shared with the master bath.
The other third of the back wall is taken up by a normal, cheap, interior door leading to an overlook of the living room on the floor below.
I'm considering taking the closet doors off and filling the closet with absorption for deep bass, and then putting a large 1D diffuser covering as much of the back wall as I can. Of course, the treatment is still in the research phase. It's fun!
On the other hand, you have five fingers.
Skye, a few comments:
A partially open cavity filled with absortion material may be a bass trap....but you do not know if you need a horizontal (back wall) bass trap yet.
If you remove the closet doors and fill the space with absortion material, it is no longer a bass trap, it will be a highly damped wall...instead of trapping bass, it will kill mid/high frequencies.
In any room, there are vertical, transversal and longitudinal bass modes, not counting ten diagonal bass modes. Luckily they all add and subtract in a haphazard way, therefore most rooms have decent bass, if one chooses the speaker and listener locations wisely.
The bathroom may or not be part of the bass modes equation, depending on how thick are its wall and door. If it has a thin decorative wall and a thin door, the whole wall will act as a bass membrane and absorb some bass frequencies while blurring bass definition.
The same concept applies to the slanted ceiling: if it is solid, for example, made of a thick concrete slab, it will reinforce bass modes. If it is made of one thin gypsum layer, it will act as a large bass "drum", leak bass out and "return" some unwanted bass overhang.
The cheap interior door is a concern, because it may leak bass, therefore your room is no longer a simple space, it's two interconnected spaces with a lossy interface. I suggest that you replace the flimsy door with a solid wood door.
I suggest that you do the "voice" test as outlined in my other post. If the room gives you a headache, look elsewhere. If you hear no major bass boom or total null points, I suggest that after you move in, listen to the system, then proceed to treat the room based on actual listening experience.
Too much bass > bass traps
Too Much treble > absortion
Echoey sond > diffusors (never overdo diffusors).
In other words, do not spend $$$$ on acoustic materials before listening to the system in a fully furnished room. It is very rare that one needs to cover more than 30% of the wall/ceiling surfaces to obtain excellent results.
In the meantime, I recommend that you read Jim Smith's Better Sound (no affiliation)...and DO NOT read acoustic advice on Pro Sound forums.
Studio acoustics has a different set of goals as compared to listening room acoustics. Enjoy the music
I had to read this post a couple times to fiqure out the master bedroom is the room under consideration. Ummm, not to be ummm, difficult, but why would anyone put their hifi in the master bedroom. Are you sleeping in the livingroom? (sorry- I couldn't resist)
Haha, because the master bedroom is the best shaped! Priorities, of course! I'll be sleeping in the second bedroom, and I'll be renting out the third bedroom in the basement.
The living room, as with all the places I've seen in the past few months of looking, is highly irregular with missing boundaries as the room opens into other rooms, usually the dining room.
On the other hand, you have five fingers.
If it's practical to have some changes made to the living room to make it suitable for the music system, the home may be worth buying, otherwise cross it off your list and keep looking.
Brian Walsh
Do the houses in your part of the country typically have basements? If so, then perhaps you might consider building a listening room in the basement rather than converting an existing room. A dedicated room in a basement costs less than you might think. Asylum sponsor Rives Audio will design a room for a very reasonable price. I had them design a basement room for me in a previous home. Even with splurging on some construction features that were probably overkill (staggered studs, double layer sheetrock walls with Green Glue between the layers, five dedicated AC lines on a separate subpanel), the entire thing was less than $20K. It was by far the best sounding room I've ever had and one of the best I've ever heard.
It's much more important to consider factors like the quality of the school system and property taxes when buying a house. You can always treat an existing room or build one. Always always always ask yourself "how easy would it be to sell this house in the future?" Things change and you might not be in it for the 8 years you've planned. We recently sold our house and it took far longer than we expected because most buyers thought the street was too busy. It didn't bother us when we first saw the house, but that was a lesson for us. If the house has been on the market for an extended period, ask yourself why that is so. Even in a poor real estate market, good houses priced correctly still sell fairly quickly.
Rob, thanks for your detailed response.
Yes, basements are common in this part of the country, and I've been trying to find a home with an unfinished basement, especially one with a high ceiling, but I haven't been able to find anything in my price range.
As for your last paragraph, that is exactly why I chose this home. While I'm not concerned about schooling since I have no plans for children, it is a very desirable area in a safe and beautiful neighborhood that is only a brief drive from Minneapolis and St. Paul. Additionally, it is significantly closer to my work place than everything else I have found. And lastly, the homes in this area sell very quickly, virtually always in under thirty days.
I don't have a big budget, so generally when I look or houses that I could afford, they are built in the 50's in a bad neighborhood and need lots and lots of work. And, they invariably have big yards, which I'd rather not take care of or pay for in my mortgage and property taxes. =] All these houses have very small rooms that would be unsuitable for listening. If I search for newer homes, they are small townhouses built in the 90's or bigger ones built in the 70's or 80's.
The listening room I've described is in a townhouse, and my offer has been accepted (although I still have two weeks to change my mind without penalty), so no one else can steal this home away while I'm thinking about it. All other homes I've been able to find have wildly irregular rooms without symmetrical side walls, which I believe are very important for the imaging.
So you understand the predicament I'm in. I can't afford somewhere desirable and suitable for listening, it seems to be one or the other. This room is as close as I could get. Do you have any more specific advice now that you know more about my situation?
Thanks again!
On the other hand, you have five fingers.
Almost anything is better than six apposing walls, break it up as much as possible.
Hopeless for real Hi-Fi and of course hopeless for mch.
Too narrow, and the sloping ceiling means you cannot predict the bass response linearity, as it will change dramatically with every few inches you move.
Although it may be the best you've seen, I'd suggest setting your standards a bit higher.
What you want is still out there.
Best regards,
Jim Smith
Jim,
I appreciate your feedback. What attributes should I look for in a room, and perhaps more importantly, what type of home would feature a room like this?
On the other hand, you have five fingers.
At minimum, I'd want 12' of width, with up to 15 or 16 if possible.17 feet or more of depth, if possible. No equal dimensions (such as 16 x 16 x 9 - or worse, equally divisible - 16 x 16 x 8).
No sloping or cathedral ceilings.
Absolutely no non-parallel walls - a huge audiophile myth.
Quiet HVAC on a relatively quiet street.
If possible, the ability to pull a 20-amp dedicated circuit to my electronics.
Best regards,
Jim Smith
Edits: 05/13/12 05/13/12 05/13/12
Rooms are what they are. Regardless of dimensions, all rooms have four walls, a ceiling and a floor. Whatever room nodes we end up with is what we've got. Forget the number crunching and look into an Anti Node 8033 for your sub. Set that bad boy up and laugh at the audiophile number crunching obsession as it doesn't provide any solutions.
... If I was buying a home and one of the main criteria was a listening room, I can’t imagine buying a home with a listening room under 11 feet wide.
If this room is over twice as good as anything else you have looked at then maybe you are looking at the wrong type of houses.
Good luck and maybe don’t over-think it too much.
Smile
Sox
Unfortunately, the real estate websites don't let me sort results by the quality of a listening room.
I've looked at hundreds of houses online and visited close to twenty of what I hoped would be better, but nothing in my price range has a better room. All the old houses have rooms that are far too small, and all the new houses have wildly irregular shapes leading to a horrible imaging since they simply don't have sidewall symmetry. I think if a house was twice or three times what I can afford, then my chances of finding a symmetrical room that is big enough would be higher. Or, a high-ceiling unfinished basement. But I can't find either of those, unfortunately. And I can't afford to build new, unfortunately.
So you understand why I am considering this one.
Do you have any advice with a budget in mind?
On the other hand, you have five fingers.
If I calculate by using the ceiling's average height (110"), these are axial room modes I came up with:33.7, 52.2, 61.6, 75.3, 104.3, 123.3, 150.7, 208.6, 246.6, 301.3, 417.2, 493.1
The percentage difference of each room mode from its neighbor is:
38%, 18%, 22%, 38%, 18%, 22%, 38%, 18%, 22%, 38%, 18%, 22%
In my calculated ideal room, the percentage difference of each room mode from its neighbor is:
62%, 24%, 31%, 24%, 24%, 31%, 24%, 24%, 31%, 24%, 24%, 31%
I think the greatest separation overall is best to avoid uneven bass buildup at certain frequencies, but of course as the distance between some increases, the distance between others decreases. Overall, I think the room in the home I am considering is pretty well balanced. There aren't any under 5% difference from a nearby frequency, not even close.
Opinions?
Anyone know a way to calculate and appropriately weight tangential and oblique modes as well?
Does anyone know how to more accurately calculate room modes for slanted ceilings?
On the other hand, you have five fingers.
Edits: 05/11/12
Even if you could calculate the effects of the ceiling, calculated room modes aren't all that accurate, since construction materials have an effect on resonant frequencies.
I'd say the sloped ceiling is problematic, also the width of the room. But nothing's ideal.
You can't use the average height. Standing waves are a function of specific dimensions not average dimensions. You also have to consider the angle of the surfaces.
They are going to vary but you really have much less to worry about with non parallel surfaces. It's the other two parallel boundaries that are your source for potential serious standing wave problems.
How do you calculate with a slanted ceiling?
On the other hand, you have five fingers.
You don't!! :-)) All the calculators assume fixed dimensions.But if you want to PM me your email address, I can send you the THX Room Mode Calculator; your room length & width are fixed but if you feed 3 heights into the model (one end, the other end and in the middle), you can see what the results are ... and whether there's any radical difference.
Regards,Andy
Edits: 05/11/12
Address sent, thanks.
On the other hand, you have five fingers.
why not setup the system and go from there.....seems that you are overthinking this . Things might work out just fine with a few treatmenets here and there.
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