building a good room in an apartment?

Hello all! My dad and I decided to build a listening room. i think the closest thing to what we would like to do would be a mastering room (may be used as one oneday too...) The only difference would be that we don't need that much isolation. I will use this thread for all the questins, pictures and other goodies. :lol: anyway... here we go... first question: how big does a room have to be? the ceiling is 3m high, but we could use different rooms for it. our first choice would be roughly 3,5m x 3,5m x 3m. that is almost a cube would this be a huge problem? thank you! (i will post a picture of the plans soon) Borut

i just thought of another question. what are my options to test the room? should i get a good measurnig mic? what then? how is it done? i hope you know what i mean... i'd like to see the frequency response of the room, so i'll know what to fix. Thx! ___________________________________ (edit) would a test CD and something to measure dB with be good enough? i could test all the frequencys (ok... not all..). and write down the results. i should get a curve of the responce, shouldn't I?

i know this is not the best place for listening room design. but it's the best place on the net about acoustics! i'd really love to make this room the best i can, and any help would be really appretiated! or at least tell me, what should i be looking at. Control room acoustics? Mastering room maybe (that's seems best to me)? or should a great listening room be something completely else? Thank you! Bourt Plešej

Here's a good place to start your reading :D http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/index.html Hope this gives you some ideas. Aloha 8)

thx for the reply kendale! i've read this several times. i know the basic theory what unit fixes what. but i don't know where to put them. should a good listening room be like a control room? or a mastering room? or something completely different? i know there are big differences betwen mastering and control rooms. my first priority would be, that it sounds great. i don't know if this means more dead, more live, as linear as possible... or something in betwen. are there any data, how long should the reverbarent time be and things like that? Thank you! Borut

Did a search on "mastering". Here's one of several results that might be helpful. http://johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic ... =mastering Perhaps you might PM some of these guys and see what they might have figured out? Aloha 8)

Hello, A listening/mastering/control room all have similar acoustics. Follow this link http://www.saecollege.de/reference_mate ... /Plans.htm and notice how all the control rooms are setup, basically 5 and 7 sided, no parallel walls, bass traps in corners, side resonators ect. You can pretty much take those designs and apply them in your room. Fill

The room i have is almost a cube. 3,33m x 3,41m with 3m ceiling. it's all paralell walls. i could brake them with some slot resonators, and bass traps in corners. what i'd like to know, is how do i calculate how much of what i need. how much slot resonators. what should be the thickness of the boards, how deep should they be, how much should the slots be... so how do i measure the characteristics of the room? is this room even big enough for something like that? i will post pictures (plans) soons. And thank you for your help so far! Borut

Borut, do you have any other rooms that are NOT so close to being a cube? Because there is no way you're going to get "mastering" quality acoustics in that room without moving some walls. Preferably a larger room if one is available; 3 meter ceilings are better than some lower ones, but you should have more difference between the height and each other dimension if possible. On the SAE site that was linked, there is a reverb calculator that might help you get closer to an answer - http://www.saecollege.de/reference_mate ... m#verbcalc Keep in mind that live/recording rooms and rooms for classical music need to be a bit more reverberant than control rooms, mastering/listening rooms - you should probably be looking at around .25-.35 seconds RT 60 in your case, longer than that if the room is quite a bit larger... Steve

Hello knightfly!! thx for the reply! another options is to change the living room. there is no way i could make it geometrically correct or anything like that. maybe just some basstraps and a couple of slot resonators... but nothing major. i could go with treating the room more, if the results would be obvious. i know it would be, if it is not the only possible option, much harder to make a good sounding room out of a living room, than from a geometrically correct room, where i would be able to calculate most obvious problems. how fat should i go in treating the living room, if i would not change it into a special room reserved for listening? i know this is a very hard and stupid question... what i'm trying to ask is, would throwin in some acoustic elements help, or will the difference be minimal? and again, thank you all for trying to help me! Borut