Room Acoustics

willemj, 

I appreciate the link you provided and will print it out tonight. Having been in the “trades” for 40+ yrs ; what I did read was of interest and should be to anyone that is building out a basement, attic or adding an addition with the purpose of a dedicated room.

 For the last year, my focus has been on treating my dedicated room and setup of speakers and then equipment outside of the room.

Two considerations that I found to be relevant and not considered by many.  Noise from outside and inside. And HVAC.

Living in Chicago is a noisy place. Even living a Special Landmark location. Daily noise is still there. On a quiet early Sunday morning; the extra quietness is noticeable.

As winter is coming and I can turn down the HVAC. My Pass amps run CL A and take out the little chill that can intrude.

Noise is insidious.

Best to All

Indeed. When we had our house designed we made sure to reduce background noise. It is in a quiet area, but the Netherlands are so populated that there is always some outside noise. The construction of the house is largely brick and concrete. We specified special sound damping double glazing and muffled ventilation openings (and none on the road side of the house). Heating is per hot water system (we do not need airconditioning) and mostly as floor heating. We also specified quiet water pipes. We went out of our way to find quiet kitchen machines, installed water pipe dampers and recently replaced most of the machines by even quieter ones from the latest generation of low energy consumption models. All this does make a difference. A somewhat noisy living room has perhaps 40 dBA background noise. The quietest you can get is about 30 dBA. That difference in potential dynamic range is almost the same as the difference between 16/44 and 24/96. More realistically, if your maximum spl is about 90 dB, it is the difference between 50 dBA dynamic range and 60 dBA. Since both are well below the dynamic range of a symphony orchestra, trying to get the noise down as much as possible trumps just about any upgrade.

Just curious if you designed the house to be up on isolators. If not I'll bet you're kicking yourself now, right? 

@willemj

Good point about dynamic range. For the same reason a speaker that plays cleanly at 120 dB has just given you 30dB dynamic range over most speakers!

There is not much you can do to get the ambient noise floor much below 40 dB but a speaker with high dynamic range is within reach. They are found as main monitors in studios all over the world.

Some thoughts on what I would try:

Check out ATS Acoustics web site for DIY products. This just as an alternative to GIK (not suggesting better than). 

Find yourself a pair of standmounts that roll-off below 50Hz.

Place speakers on short stands and angle upwards.

Place absorption panels behind speakers, at 1st reflection points on sidewalls, and behind listening position. Panels need not be larger than 2 x 4 feet.

Bass traps in corners. Start with front.

Use wall-to-wall carpet with pad.

Place equipment rack beside listening position, place nothing between speakers.