My new dedicated listening room - story with pics (BWW)

I think the phrase is 'Woof'

 

Impressive.

 

Well, next to double brick wall they weight next to nothing !

Our bigger concern was the extra 5cm of concrete we put on the existing floor.

The whole project was to be approved by the guy who designed the whole building.

 

Lovely job Elberoth...

That's the BBC nomeclature from the R&D papers they did on partitioning for studios (freely available from the beeb website). These days the wall build-ups mostly just labelled by target Rw - heaviest I've done is Rw72dB, 400mm thick but basically the same principle.

The mass loading is a very good point - Fermacell is around 20Kg/m2, so 5 layers is around 100Kg/m2, plus the studs, mineral wool and finishes; the equivalent masonry wall would be well over 300...

 

We managed to get plasterboard cinema walls up to about R'w 75dB (about 550mm thick). But that was really pushing the limits and trying to get any better performance is very, very hard (unless it's a dedicated test lab).

You'll still find thick masonry walls have the upper hand at the very low frequencies. It has a more "linear" performance whereas twin stud plasterboard walls sound insulation performance can drop off very sharply at very low-frequencies (depends on the air cavity size, damping and wall layer mass).

 

Congratulations, very good job... :beer:

 

This is heroic stuff! The room/speaker interface accounts for a very large percentage of the quality of what we hear. It's become clear in the last few years that we've been seriously misled (especially in the UK) by the 'source first' doctrine. Room acoustics and most importantly I think, the way that speakers interact with them, are probably the things we should consider first.

My approach to hifi now is:
1. firstly find the speakers that work best in your listening room
2. spend a lot of time to get them in exactly the best position
3. treat the room's identifiable acoustic problems with absorption/diffusion as necessary
4. then choose the amps that drive them most effectively
5. finally get the best front-end you can with the money left over.

I think this works with CD, vinyl is still a special case.

 

:respect: nice! gonna have to do something in my own room, tho' nowhere near that kind of engineering!

 

Very nice indeed ... not sure about the el cheapo ikea chair though, rather spoils the effect

 

Any serious audiophile should spend 30mins reading up on the term "comb filtering".

Just one of the room effects to consider.

 

Yeah, I do have neighbours. The one above me, in a penthause, is a law company that luckily do not work after 17.00. The one below me never complained, and I tend to listen quite loud till 1-2 o'clock in the night.

That foam/matt is about 1cm thick.

 

OMG!!!

I thought I spent a lot on audio stuff!

Nice one

 

I am sorry to say it and perhaps to cloud you "celebration" but a dedicated listening room is a large mistake....

Rgs,
Romy thr Cat
________
Ford essex v6 engine (uk)

 

Perhaps you could explain your thoughts a bit further Romy

 

Romy the Cat here... :yikes:

This is going to be interesting... :beer:

 

Yes, I predict a riot.

 

Romy has a web page - check it out
http://www.goodsoundclub.com/Tree.aspx

 

I like his Turntable, I'd love one of those Old Micro Seiki.

Seems very serious about his sound though

On a different note, I always read stuff like that and wonder if that's how I'd come across to a native if I tried to write in another language.

 

I vocally and persistently have been advocating this subjected for years. Probably I would need to compile it into an article in my Audio For Dummies? section and call it: ?Avoid the dedicated listening rooms?.

Let me to take a different approach this time and allow you guys to do your home works, thinking what kind argumentation and what kind motivations leaded me to disregard dedicated rooms as an audio expressive tool. The winner will get a prize?

Rgs, Romy the Cat
________
FULL MELT BUBBLE HASH

 

If you mean a room only for audio, I agree with you, I dont find it confortable, I like a nice environment to listen to music, where I can be with other people, or doing things, for instance surfing audio forums...

If you mean treated room, I disagree, particularly treated to minimize external interferences, for instance I treated the ceiling of my living room in Cascais, trying to minimize the very enoying sounds of high heels and chairs scratching the floor, while I was trying to listen to music...