@mesch Thanks so much. Let me be clearer about the space.
- The overall basement is 27.5 ft x 28 ft.
- The room I'm thinking through is 27.5 ft. x 17 ft.
- Let's call that Section A.
- The overall basement is cut in half by a long staircase, creating a second rectangle we might call Section B.
- Section B section is 27.5 ft. x 7.6 ft.
- It contains the staircase, a main electric panel, a sump pump, too.
- Section B has plumbing for a bathroom not in use, yet.
- There is no hot water heater or HVAC making noise, though. Very quiet.
One nice thing about the main panel being downstairs is that (a) it has open slots on it, (b) has capacity for dedicated lines, and (c) the dedicated lines won't have to go far to power the gear.
In a larger renovation, a couple years from now, we will move the staircase and get it out of that room entirely.
So, this post is about working through what to do to improve Section A. Yesterday, I spent many hours thinking about room dimensions. Alas, it is very hard to build the perfect sized room (Bolt-area-wise) within the room without messing up the re-sale potential of the home. I suspect that we will create a large media room that contains both listening and TV in it. That will be easy to sell.
So, I appreciate and can use your suggestions. Because it is not feasible to create a listening room within the larger room (as a set-off box in a box, so to speaker) there is greater need to get the ceiling height as high as possible to make the other dimensions easier to work with. That ceiling does have pipes running through it but I assume many of them can be raised up a bit to accommodate a slightly higher ceiling. (I suppose the rafters might have to poke through? Unsure.) Because if I did put double drywall or whatever under the current rafters, I wind up with a ceiling that is probably 7' 9" or so. And 8' 6" ceiling is way more forgiving.
Here's something close to the best I could hope for with 8'6" ceilings.
https://amcoustics.com/tools/amroc?l=24&w=15&h=8.5&ft=true&re=OeNorm%208115-3%20musi...That said, what I CAN do NOW is deal with the fundamental construction elements so as to tee up good sound later. Thanks for your help with that.