What's the size of your listening room and/or ht?


Hello!

Just curious to see how big a room (music and/or ht) some of your systems occupy. Mine is 15x20 ft used for both music and movies. Please feel free to mention if you feel this is the right amount of space or if you could use more. If you could use a bigger listening room what would you like to have (try to be realistic)? I for one could use more space...for bigger speakers of course:-) Feel free to describe anything else about your listening room that makes it so special!
brandon007
Brandon007:

My audio system (which is a small/medium sized solid-state system (I hear that tubes do sound better and more natural than solid-state does, but they're too much of a headache to maintain and upkeep, whereas with solid-state, all you have to do is plug it in, set it up correctly, hit a button or two, and you're off and listening)) is located in my living room, and the size of my living room is 14"(H) x 12"(W) x 16"(D). It is not to me, an ideal situation as far as a listening room is concerned. But for right now, it works, as I make as best of the situation as I can. But I can promise you, the first house that I move into, I am going to take the audio system into full account before I go to settlement and close on my first house, and I am going to furnish my listening/living room around my audio system instead of the other way around. An upgrade of the room and the acoustics that come with it (or that I make it into) will then permit me to potentially upgrade the speaker system (either getting a small speaker system like my KEF Reference 102s, but with more refinement, or getting a stand-mounted floor standing system with low stands) and the amplification as well (and I will be looking at either Bryston, or moving a little bit up the ladder, Krell or Levinson gear) while keeping my front-end sources intact (I am going to have some very good sources which I am getting right now, and once those are completed, I don't plan on making any more audio purchases no time soon afterwards).

My home theater system is located in my bedroom, and that measures 14"(H) x 12"(W) x 12"(D), and to this day, I am still trying to figure out how am I going to fit a six piece speaker package (for me, that is going to be four satelites, a center channel, and a subwoofer) into the same room that also houses my bed, a TV (which weighs 100 pounds all by itself) and stand (which has to hold the TV, a DVD Player, a VCR, and an A/V Receiver as well), armore (for clothing, not audio/video equipment), a nightstand, and a side bench. Maybe when I finally get my house, I may have a dedicated room to put my home theater in then, and that alone will give me a whole lot more room to work with. And as icing on the cake, I am single. So, I won't have a wife to protest and bicker with (MAN!!!!!! AM I A LUCKY DEVIL OR WHAT?!?!?!?!?). I do have a girlfriend, but she doesn't live with me. So she won't as have much of a say as to how I will set up my house when the time comes for me to get one. So in either since, I won't have any WAF (or in my case.... GAF) issues to wrestle with and worry about.

But like I said, at the moment, I do the best I can with what I can afford. Real Estate isn't cheap to begin with. And as I live in Washington, D. C., I live in a tight housing market right now, which means that housing is at a premium. But hey, whose complaining. At least, I do have a place to live, right???

--Charles--
Right now my gear is squozed into a 14x14 room with 7' ceilings, but this is temporary as we've just moved in. The house is ~150 years old and obviously wasn't designed with audio or theatre in mind! I'm building an addition, but the biggest I could realistically fit in the budget is 15x20 inside dimensions with a 8' 8" ceiling height. (I live in the middle of nowhere, too, where the real estate prices are reasonable - how do you guys manage this in SF and DC???)

The dedicated room won instant WAF as the addition basically is my room downstairs and a new kitchen upstairs :)

The last house (back in the SF area) had "more" space. It was 16x23, but it was shared space with the living room.
In answer to Blw:

I live in SF, but have a great wife that "lets" me have the biggest room in the house for my hobby. She even had to move her office into the dining room when our child got old enough to need his own room.

Also, if I had your room I would definitely "change" the dimensions. Whatever frequency that has a 7' wave is reinforced 3X. Line the walls with bookcases to reduce the problem.
Good luck with your next room.

Richard
I am moving into a new home with dimensions of 32x19'8"x12'1". Not yet set up so I can't comment on the sound. I know I'll need some room treatments but a lot of the specs seem like they should work nicely. My old listening room was about 27x17x9 and sounded quite good - the measurements only showed a couple of minor peaks and I really enjoyed it. Room dimensions are only one piece of the picture. Surface treatments are critical and affect the overall depth and soundstage. Lots of opinions here -- from real hard/solid surfaces to more forgiving surfaces. The key is consistency in design and approach -- there's more than one way to skin a cat.

I mentioned in a recent thread that one of my favorite listening experiences was in an average room of about 13x11x8. The equipment was great and there was lots of cushy furniture and heavy curtains in the room which helped.

Generally good things are: Fewer windows, more carpets or rugs, plush furniture, heavy drapes, lots of uneven surfaces like bookcases and dimensions which are not direct multiples of one another (e.g., 10x12x14 -- multiples of 2, or 9x12x15 -- multiples of 3). Good luck. Take a look at Sound Sturdio Construction on a Budget by F. Alton Everest for background (simple stuff, no differential equations per Rives' much more scientific approach). P.S. Good luck Rives -- let us know how it turned out.
Ozfly--thanks. I really can't wait to post what we are doing. We are working in some really intersting areas--trying to reduce the square footage (although still realistically large), fit into the house appropriately (geometry wise that is), and make it sonically fantastic all at the same time. These are real world goals. It will be at least a month now before the modelling is complete--it is taking much longer than originally anticipated due to other customer commitments (they come first). Once the room is in it will be tunable to a large degree and it will be very interesting to see how close our models and the actual acoustic measurements are. There are many psycho acoustic responses we have modelled into this room, which is rarely done. As you can probably tell--I'm very excited about this project; we are covering some fairly new ground on a few areas. It will be over a year before it is complete, but I intend on detailing it appropriately on our website--so stay tuned.