2. misc-audio
  3. 160596-3674

Sport Court as Listening Room?

Probably a dumb question but who knows, maybe someone else has done this before...
My wife and I are currently shopping for a new home.  Here in Minnesota one of the popular features in high end homes is to have a sport court inside.  In the house we looked at yesterday this consisted of a room approximately 18 feet wide by 30 feet long and 18 foot ceiling.  There is currently a basketball hoop hanging on one end but this room can be used for other sports activities, and these are especially popular with couples who have smaller kids as a means of burning energy on winter days.  
Our kids are mostly grown up now so this space would not get the use it deserves, but the room size is good for setting up a listening room.  The problem would be the ceiling height I imagine.  It would not be hard to acoustically treat the walls and floor to prevent reflections, but would the ceiling height create an insurmountable problem to make this a viable option?  I imagine so.
Anyway, we probably won't buy this house, but if we have this builder design us a house we could have the sport court included per spec, so that when we sell the house down the road it would have this attractive feature for the future owners.  Or, we could convert the design to have these same footprint but with lower ceiling.
Just curious what you would do if you were in my shoes.
Thanks for any ideas you might share.
Peter

snackeyp
mike_in_nc
1,193 posts
 
Tall ceilings are wonderful for listening IME. It’s not ideal to have the same dimension for height and width, but it’s probably manageable.

Since sport courts usually are fully enclosed, the room may accentuate bass peaks and nodes, though the large size will help. My guess is, you will need extensive acoustic treatment to control reverb time and other consequences of echoes. It’s doable but will be an added expense. Unless you’re quite experienced with acoustic treatment, I’d suggest getting professional help in that. The biggest issue with that is finding qualified people in most places. You might even consider a consultation with Jim Smith, author of Get Better Sound. He sells nothing but his expertise.

The project probably won’t be cheap, but it could be a lot of fun.
arion's avatar
arion
167 posts
 
Seems to me that space has great potential as a listening room. Higher sensitivity speakers are always a good thing. If you use line source speakers, ceiling interaction will be minimal. You could use an acoustic cloud if you have ceiling interaction issues which could be easily removed at a later date if you sell the house.
mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,570 posts
 
It would make a great listening room. You would have to hang diffusers from the ceiling along with other treatment depending on the speakers you buy.
snackeyp's avatar
snackeyp OP
455 posts
 
You guys might be right.  Our current house has a living room ceiling that's tall (about 13 feet).  I've set my system up in this room before and loved the sound.  Always assumed I wasn't doing it right but figured that if it sounded good, why not?  
Thanks for the input.  Not sure it makes sense but fun to hypothesize.
Cheers
onhwy61's avatar
onhwy61
5,345 posts
 
It's big and it could work, but the dimensions are not ideal.  Take an RT60 decay measurement.
More to discover