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Basement Suggestions

Posted by eric.lemberg@gmail.com (A) on January 19, 2013 at 12:28:21

Hi,

Let me start by saying thank you for this forum! It is a great resource for someone to learn and better understand room acoustics.

I recently bought a house with my wife and she was kind enough to give me a wonderful finished room in the basement for my 2 channel stereo rig. Unfortunately this room comes with some inherent problems. The most obvious is ceiling height and an HVAC duct that runs almost dead center down the length of the room.

My Ceilings are 7.10ft high beyond the duct. Standing directly under the HVAC duct the height is 7.1ft and the duct itself has a width 3.7ft. I rather tear apart the ceiling, and don't have the resources to re-route duct work if that was even possible. After reading through the forum I am concerned I will not be able to recreate an expansive soundstage with an open sound. I am also concerned about imaging as well. I thought possibly of suspending 2 inch by 48 inch sound treatments conjoined together an attempt to almost level the celling between the speakers and listening chair? Additionally I thought of wrapping the entire HVAC run in a thick fabric?

Also there is an odd corner because of an electrical closet that I am concerned about. I’m not sure how to treat that area. Will this affect bass response and should I bass trap that corner as well? Additionally there is an open entry in the rear of the room, is this cause for concern, it opens up another 6ft down a hallway so maybe sound is arriving at a different time on one side? I have more than a few sound treatments framed around Owen corning and wrapped in burlap that I used for the front wall, ceiling and first reflection points in my last house. (WOW it sounded good there). I also have (4) 4x48 bass traps for the corners hoping to improve bass response in the room.
Keep in mind that I haven’t hung or placed any bass traps since I intend to repaint the entire room before making anything permanent. So when I listened to the room untreated, and compared it to my previous smaller bass reinforced room there was a stark difference to say the least. I'd truly appreciate your thoughts especially in regards to the HVAC duct running down the center of the room. I have attached a sketch of my room dimensions to further elaborate.

Thanks,
Eric

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