Recommended reading for room setup, treatments, building?

[deepak]

I created a similar thread at Headfi a while ago and I'll paste the links I was offered over there. I'm now much more serious and once again interested in any good reading for room setup and treatments. I'm especially interested in room design and getting the most performance if one is able to start from complete scratch.

The links offered up for those interested:

Jon Risch's Web Site- Acoustic Treatments

Real Traps

Ethan's Magazine Articles

Auralex

Audioholics Tweaks

[Dusty Chalk]

There's a thread on audiogon, where a guy changed the guest quarters into a kick-ass audiophile building. He went all out, might give you some ideas. Pictures, too.

And yeah, good thing you already have the RealTraps/Ethan Winer's articles. I'd also recommend his forum for questions. Although he out-and-out admitted to me that he knows very little of soundproofing...it is to his credit that he was open and honest about it.

[mulveling]

I am no expert - but I've noticed that it works nicely whenever I've heard speakers placed with a large alcove or a sizable opening to another room behind them, rather than plopping them in right front of a flat wall. In general keep the speakers away from large flat surfaces as much as possible. Tall ceilings are great, of course. I do like to sit fairly close, say 8-9 feet from each speaker in a near equilateral arrangement, FWIW - which is less demanding on the amps and also allows more placement choices in a given room

Solid stuff (walls/floors/ceilings) is GOOD, you can damp down reflections with furnishings/treatments a lot easier than you can stop a flimsy wall from acting like a sound board.

I think a room with an aesthetically pleasing shape, layout, and furnishings (think "warm", avoid barren or minimalist) is going to stand a pretty damn good chance of sounding excellent on its own once a good position is found for the speakers. It will certainly be a much nicer looking room than the "shoebox chock full of treatments" alternative

I like my current living room a lot, and I've kept the treatments here pretty minimal (in fact at this point I'm not sure they have ANY discernable effect). The speakers have lots of free space in pretty much all directions, and I avoid things like sitting half-way along a dimension (bass nulls/peaks). I could probably tweak by taking measurements to check things out and find more optimal positioning, but hey I'm lazy! The ONE thing I'd like to change is to get a really nice, large rug with a thick pad to damp down the energy off the hardwood floors just a touch.

[luvdunhill]

don't underestimate first reflections that take place on the ceiling. I think there is a lot of advantage to treating this location... a close second would be the rear wall.

One book I would recommend that is somewhat tangential to this subject, but allows you to approach it in a more subjective manner is TESTING LOUDSPEAKERS by Joseph D'Appolito. Pretty much the de facto standard and depending on whether or not you plan on setting up a measurement jig to measure the various changes you make to the room, this can be a fantastic resource.

[deepak]

I am no expert - but I've noticed that it works nicely whenever I've heard speakers placed with a large alcove or a sizable opening to another room behind them, rather than plopping them in right front of a flat wall. In general keep the speakers away from large flat surfaces as much as possible. Tall ceilings are great, of course. I do like to sit fairly close, say 8-9 feet from each speaker in a near equilateral arrangement, FWIW - which is less demanding on the amps and also allows more placement choices in a given room

Solid stuff (walls/floors/ceilings) is GOOD, you can damp down reflections with furnishings/treatments a lot easier than you can stop a flimsy wall from acting like a sound board.

I think a room with an aesthetically pleasing shape, layout, and furnishings (think "warm", avoid barren or minimalist) is going to stand a pretty damn good chance of sounding excellent on its own once a good position is found for the speakers. It will certainly be a much nicer looking room than the "shoebox chock full of treatments" alternative

I like my current living room a lot, and I've kept the treatments here pretty minimal (in fact at this point I'm not sure they have ANY discernable effect). The speakers have lots of free space in pretty much all directions, and I avoid things like sitting half-way along a dimension (bass nulls/peaks). I could probably tweak by taking measurements to check things out and find more optimal positioning, but hey I'm lazy! The ONE thing I'd like to change is to get a really nice, large rug with a thick pad to damp down the energy off the hardwood floors just a touch.

I do want a fairly big room (something like 30 feet in length), so ceiling height is a big consideration right now. I'm also planning this to be just a dedicated two channel room so there really won't be anything else in it.

I'll definitely pick up the Testing Loudspeakers book, thanks for the tip!

[recstar24]

Robert Harley's book on audio basics is a pretty good read, or introduction for someone like me who is relatively new to speakers and acoustics. Very basic and elementary info that is probably below what you can get elsewhere, but it has provided me with a basic cursory understanding that will help me with further questions on my own, and given me a nice foundation to build upon.

All I can say is that there is no universal rule to speaker setup and positioning, other than the actual concept of where you place your speakers and how you position them is probably the #1 influence on the final output. My speakers are meant to be put smack dab in corners to linearize the response throughout and bring the low cutoff to a respectable point due to the rear horn loading, and to my ears they still image and soundstage like a muther though traditional theory says that method is completely wrong. Listen to a set of klipschorns in corners in a nice large room driven by a 2a3 and the enveloping sound can be pretty remarkable.

Old setup - really problematic after living with it. Lack of symetry between left right wall and left right speaker created all sorts of frequency imbalances, destroyed sense of imaging and soundstage air and ambiance. Notice the right speaker feeds into "nothing"

New setup - corner loading the way they were designed has restored the soundstage, actual imaging, my bass cutoff is a clean 50 hz at -3 db with the -10 db point around 40, and with the sub set at its lowest point to augment below 50 i am just really surprised at how cheap and easy this "tweak" of changing speaker positioning was (ignore the bookshelf on right, it appears to be in the way but the speaker actually has plenty of room to radiate outwards towards the listener)

[morphsci]

F. Alton Everest, Master Handbook of Acoustics

[Dusty Chalk]

...with the occasional Deus ex Machina.

[Dreadhead]

Lipinski Speakers has a recommended room that looks insanely sweet:

Lipinski Sound - surround sound philosophy

I really want to hear these speakers sometime. Some really respected people love them.

[deepak]

Yeah I understand trial and error, but if I'm having a house built, I'd rather have an excellent listening room planned out and built before hand. The speakers I want are big.

[faust3d]

Yeah I understand trial and error, but if I'm having a house built, I'd rather have an excellent listening room planned out and built before hand. The speakers I want are big.

This is my dream to build a custom room for my stereo shit God how I envy you.

[deepak]

This is my dream to build a custom room for my stereo shit God how I envy you.

But you live in NYC, envy right back at you

I'm going to be living in the burbs where ever I end up, so I can have some decent living space. But fun stuff to do <<< than NYC

[faust3d]

By the way, I have some somewhere on my home PC ebooks for room setup and stuff placement let me try find them.

[Dreadhead]

This is my dream to build a custom room for my stereo shit God how I envy you.

Me too but it's not going to happen here where I am either. My wife has offered that if we dig out the basement I can use it for that but I just don't see that happening because the cost would be nuts unless we rebuild the house too.

[deepak]

That Meridian remote is massive! I thought the G08's was big

[recstar24]

That Meridian remote is massive! I thought the G08's was big

Haha, it really is not as big as it looks in the picture, the scale is totally off on that pic for some reason. Though I can see that you would think that as it kind of looks as big as the moth:palm:

[jinp6301]

Its because the remote is on a cushion thats on the sofa, close to the camera.

[Dusty Chalk]

Actually, that's Private Perspective.