Building a dedicated listening room

I accidentally bought a house with an outstanding audio room. My dealer says it is one of the best two he has ever heard. He has been in the high end business for over 20 years and installs many megabuck systems in custom rooms. It is about as irregular as possible. You can get some ideas from my photos.

Broadly it is a big Z with the audio located at the bottom of the Z. Broadly speaking the Z is about 45’ by 40’. There is a bar, hallway, and more than one nook in just the bottom leg of the Z. A bay window and fireplace offset to the left at the top of the Z. There is hardly a 6 foot wall segment uninterrupted anywhere other than behind the speakers. Even the ceiling is more than one level. The speaker wall and left and right sides are underground… completely dropping the noise floor to mid 20 db. Cement slab under carpeting.

There is no special wall material… or fancy / expensive audio construction. My audio treatments are heavy thickly woven wool wall hangings (oriental hand woven carpets) also, there are bookshelves and record racks I put up without thought to location only convenience.

It is also located downstairs and on the opposite side of the house from the major bedrooms. My partner is disabled and sleeps during the day. I can crank up the volume and she will never hear it.

All this serendipity, made for one in hundreds the perfect audio room..

So, I think if I had thought about building an audio room a couple decades ago, I would have researched the perfect three dimensions. I would not do that now. I would look at the whole house… the whole floor and think of a very irregular open area away from the rest of the house… below ground with halls and irregular walls everywhere to define an open audio area with lots of space and irregular short wall segments to deaden and prevent reinforcement.

@8th-note Your room sounds like a well-lived-in, well-loved audio space which is a big, non-quantifiable, aspect of its musicality. I like a room to look as if people live in it vs. a space that is antiseptically designed for one task that must be enjoyed in a certain aesthetic way.

My current room is the open-plan living room/kitchen area of our current home and it's not what anyone would consider audiophile-worthy. That's ok. Most of the time I'm playing music over the speakers as background music. There is furniture and all sorts of family stuff about. But it sounds better than my last space which was more isolated from the house. My wife likes listening to music as background music and can't wait for me to have my own space for my books and music. Primarily so she doesn't have to look at it. So I'll wire the house with wi-fi speakers for streaming background/wallpaper.  And my space will be where I'll spend some time on dialing things in but, like you, will take a laid-back approach to "treatment" because ultimately I want to spend my time listening and enjoying music vs. spending my gray years tinkering with the room. 

I’ve built multiple dedicated audio rooms in my latest custom houses. The best room was a room inside another room to get the ideal dimensions. The whole house had closed cell spray foam insulation (the attic in the south during the summers never got above 70 degrees), and the room within a room had acoustic insulation in its walls. Had 4-20 amp runs put in the room. The ceiling was 2” thick cedar tongue and groove. Door was behind the listening chair. Still incorporated audio panels and diffusers in the room from ATC and GIK. Speakers were 9’ out from the front wall and the listening chair was about 9’ from the wall behind it, and 9’ from the speakers to the chair. 

Once you figure out the room, learn REW.

OP,

In a similar situation as you are, building a dedicated listening room....unfortunately mine will be on a tight budget. Some suggestions, many of which you've already considered.

(1) Power is crucial, you are already know this.....I would recommend using high quality receptacles like Furutech GTX-D(G - Gold), Furutech DTX-D(R - Rhodium), or Oyaide R1.

(2) If you are going to stream, make sure you have a high quality ethernet or mesh system that you can connect a streamer into via an ethernet cable

(3) Reach out to GIK Acoustics (Mike Majors is a really helpful designer), their assistance and software has been really helpful. The one thing he highly recommended is to not overly deaden the room, it's hard to overcome this failing.

(4) I'm using hardwood floors with area rugs to "tune" the room, has been recommended to use thick tight weave wool rugs

(5) When placing receptacles, think about how your cables will lay in relation to signal cables, speaker cables, and power cords; so you can keep crossovers to a minimum.

Good luck on the build, sounds like you're starting from a great place!