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Building a listening room from scratch

Hello all,

I am renovating a 19th Century townhouse in a distressed post-industrial town on the Hudson River.

I will have the 20’ x 30’ attic dedicated to my home studio/office and audio listening area. The ceiling has a steep pitch from the 12’ high center towards the 20’ wide walls, which are 3’ high. To make the building perform to a high energy conservation standard, I have lined the walls with 5.5" of rock wool (which has excellent acoustic insulation characteristics), and the ceilings with 14.5" of rock wool. Except for the three windows situated in a gable and two dormers, and my book and record collections and the audio equipment itself, the floor is the only hard surface, of wide-plank wood. My architect says that I should not sheet rock the walls or ceiling, that I should simply cover them with fire-resistant burlap and I will have a semi-anechoic room, similar to recording studios.

What do you think of this idea?

Thank you all,

unreceivedogma
128x128unreceivedogma
unreceivedogma's avatar
unreceivedogma OP
981 posts
 
Dweller:

The floor is supported by 3” x 6” wood joists. The cavities between them are filled with rock wool, to provide a thermal barrier between the two zones.

I’ve never had good bass. I got a second hand 15” Velodyne. Haven’t tried it in my own system, it tested and performed well in the system of the person I bought it from.

G:

i have braces across the ridge ridge but I like the height. I’m gonna keep it. 
erik_squires
16,128 posts
 
Reach out to GIK Acoustics. :) 

Best,

E
sisyphus51's avatar
sisyphus51
121 posts
 
I like the feeling of space in my room too. :-)
sisyphus51's avatar
sisyphus51
121 posts
 
Ah! Cork panels might be a solution for my room. I'll have to look into that! Rick
whart's avatar
whart
3,047 posts
 
Some of the best sounding rooms I had were in old buildings that didn’t require a lot of treatment, e.g. a large room in an old brownstone in Brooklyn, with wide plank floors and heavy real plaster walls- behind which was lathe and horsehair.
What town are you in? We eventually moved up near Nyack to another old house but are now in Austin, TX (in an old house which is all shiplap planks though the music room has sheetrock- some of the main floor rooms are period recreated wall paper stretched over a muslin like cloth. I have a second system in one of these main floor rooms and it sounds great).
What are the inner wall surfaces (or is it the result of a gut that your architect says don’t sheet rock and simply leave the wall studs in place with the insulation you are describing?
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