room design help

Ethan's site, realtraps.com, is a great place to start reading. Also audiocircle.com has an acoustics circle. This is the most important part of your systems sound next to your speakers. Therefore it will have quite an effect.

You may even want to buy some panels from Ethan, his prices are very good btw. This way you can get some expert advice on your room.

One mistake you want to avoid is to build a room which the dimensions are multiples of one another. I noticed an above poster has a 20'x30' room with a 15' ceiling. This will amplify the peaks and dips in a room. It's pure physics. Being as you have the option on dimensions make sure you don't have the same or a multiple of a dimension, I said that twice on purpose as it's extremely important.

When it comes to the ideal amount of treatment that can be a grey area. In my room I went LEDE (live end dead end) with bass traps in each corner. This has worked out incredibly well. I've had a few speakers in this room besides my Vmps Rm 40's and they all sound better in here. Also it's quiet which helps. Many people think that LEDE is not the way to go and may over damp your room. If it hurt anything I don't know what it is as my dynamics are killer good, I mean the dynamics literally startle you. Imaging is so good I've had newbies ask a few times "where's the sound coming from?".

In the end getting what's considered good acoustics will help the sound of your system and allow it to perform as it should. Regarding room dimensions, did I say to make SURE you don't use the same dimension or a multiple of it?

Another thing I did in my basement room had been to isolate the sound substantially. The living room is directly above my listening room and I like to listen loudly at times. I put in a ceiling starting with soundboard(a layer of drywall I guess is as good), then resilient channel installed asymmetrically, then drywall and then acoustic tiles.

There is drywall that's far better than standard rock and is designed for sound isolation. I just read about it and don't know it's cost. If you're a carpenter then you may already be familiar with resilient channel. There are as good or better methods than what I used available. The result however works great. Only a bit of bass is heard in the living room directly above me.

Best wishes to you for your new room. I love having a dedicated listening room.

Warnerwh, you are right of course. 15ft was a typo. It's actually 12ft - the other dimensions are 33l and 21w to be exact!

What I wanted to say, and others have already done, is that there is a lot of good free help out there to assist in the constructions of a dedicated sound room. But had I to do it all over again, I would have allotted 10-15% of the total cost to a consultant (Rives as the example).

cjs

Chsmithmd: I'm glad to hear that your dimensions aren't the ones posted earlier. I had to tell this person how important dimensions are and an idea of dimension ratios but at the same time it appeared an insult to your room. It had left me feeling with somewhat mixed feelings.

If I had it to do over again I'd buy traps from Ethan and send him pics and call him to discuss it. I don't make that much money to afford a consultant to come out but having Rives help I'm sure is worth the investment.

Overall my acoustics are outstanding, at least I've not heard a better sounding system. I'd love to hear another system in a well done room, but done differently than my own. After doing this room and learning how much improvement can be made I'm sold. It's not like you have to "try" to hear the improvement.

In my other house I added a bit of treatment, that helped, so I added more and more. My living room looked horrible but had decent acoustics(I was single). When I fired up my same system in this room it took a while to sink in how incredible the sound was. For the money I consider room treatment a bargain.

Fortunately in my case I had to build a room in the basement of my new house but the dimensions worked out to 12'2"W x17'1"L x 7'2"H. These are decent dimensions. Good thing as I didn't have alot of latitude.

thanks for all the help, I was away for a few days , hence delay.I contacted Rives but their preprinted form is for someone that has a room and not for a new room, I filled it in as best i could but it looked ridiculous so I threw it in the bin. Maybe an email to Ethan is the best. Im stuck with about 300 sq ft max and a height of 8 ft or a little more, so what I want is a suggestion as to the best golden dimension and some ideas on what to build in to the construction. I read acoustic 101 , but there is a lot of really really detailed stuff, which is beyond my grasp. willie

In my experience, your room should be about 16' wide. Mine is appx. 14.5' and seems a little narrow. Double sheetrock and a weatherstripped solid wood door is invaluable. For the ceiling I would opt for the more expensive specialty drywall that is available. There is also a barrier that you can use between the layers of sheetrock that will increase the wall mass without the bulk but I forget what that product is. A nice troweled-on layer of silicone between the sheetrock layers should also help. A length of about 21' should suffice for most applications. If you build your bass traps into the corners from the start it will save you money on treatments. An effective way is to kind of round the room corners with sheetrock and if you can get insulation into that void space created helps tremendously. Just a few thoughts.