Proposed room design, comments appreciated

[damonrpayne]

OK, here is my proposed room design. I'd really appreciate any comments from anyone. Everything should be to exact scale.

[DrWho]

at a first glance, i might suggest moving your side heresies back a little to be at least straight to the side of the front row of seats...having any amount of surround material coming from in front of you tends to sound unnatural.

also, what is that short wall thing that the subs are mounted in front of? if it's a full height wall and all that, then you might want to consider moving your subs around, but that'll be a subjective decision you gotta make once things are dialed in. i was thinking that with the dimensions and layout of your room that you'd get a really nice flat response putting one sub at about the mid point between each khorn and the center channel up against the wall. heck, maybe even put them directly in front of each khorn (or on top of them)

you may also want to consider building a similar short wall thing on the other side to maintain the symmetry in the room. If you do this, then perhaps you can even mount your heresies on the edge of the short walls instead of the main wall. This would get rid of an early reflection point that could possibly prove to be an issue.

and lastly, make sure you do some toe-in of those rear surrounds to make sure that your coverage pattern is covering more of the seats and less of the rest of the room. no need to throw sound in places nobody is going to be listening

Ok, one more idea...i might even consider moving your rack a little further south (perhaps behind a short wall) where it wouldn't be sitting in an early reflection point. im not sure how big your rack is or how the remote situation is, but it's just an idea. yet at the same time, it might be a cool trick to keep any surround material from being heard in front of the second row (cuz it'd just bounce forward and wouldn't be able to reach the back).

anyways, that's all the things of things to think about that i could come up with. no matter how you do it though, im sure that's gonna be one kick butt system.

[prodj101]

I'd rather have the subs on the front wall with the mains. This is reccomended by most other set up guides to avoid cancelation and to create a more seamless low end with the mains.

[dougdrake]

Nice layout and room. If at all possible, I would put the rack in the rear of the room. Personally, I find the lights on the equipment distracting in a dedicated HT environment. Also, not sure at what point you are going to cross those subs, but be careful about localized bass coming from them, which may sound out of place off to the left side versus the front of the room.

Nice to have a room to play with!

[artto]

Not bad. There are 50 modes below 150Hz with an average spacing of 1.8Hz. Primary axial modes occur at 28, 31, & 71Hz. Note the close spacing of the first two primary modes. This could cause some potential problems with the subwoofers as these frequencies will be substantially reinforced in some areas which will cause cancellations occurring in other areas. Id suggest experimenting with the sub placement. I also agree with the above comments that having the subs so far away from the primary frontal speakers may cause some discontinuity of the sound. You might even consider different, non symmetrical locations for each of the subs to reduce the effect of their interaction with the above mentioned room modes.

I too do not like seeing all the flashing lights and equipment in view as I consider it a distraction. And wont that projector in the middle of the seating area create a lot of noise? Consider putting it behind the back wall somehow. I dont know how open your equipment racks are, but you really should have a minimum of at least four feet from the edge of the Klipschorn until there is any obstruction. There can be exceptions, such as I sometimes have 2 or 3 of my bass guitars on each side wall 2-3 feet from the Khorns. But these are somewhat thin narrow objects. A 3 or 4 high solid walled cabinet shouldnt be there.

Im not sure you need to curve that front row. And its behind the axis of the Klipschorns. I used to listen to mine like that for years until I got a dedicated room with reasonably proper acoustics. Then I realized how much of the detail and sense of space I was missing. If the Klipsch sound bright and/or harsh when sitting in the axis, if its not the recordings fault, its certainly the room acoustics fault. Consider moving the seating area forward.

As mentioned in previous posts above, I too am not sure why you have that wing wall on the left side. Get rid of it if you can.

And I also agree to possibly pull the side Heresys back a bit.

Just for reference, my room has 63 modes below 150Hz with an average mode spacing of 1.4Hz although its probably somewhat better than this because of the offset in the rear wall as well as the some other features of the room boundaries. The system essentially measures flat to 16Hz without subs (who says Khorns can't produce LOW bass?). (the attached graphics HF response roll-off is primarily due to the pickup microphone). You can see some comb filter effect in the middle and higher frequencies. This is an anomaly of the test conditions whereby I ran all three speakers at the same time with the same mono signal. I have to re-run the tests individually on each speaker.

[j-malotky]

Damon

Bet you can't wait to get this new house done.

I too think your sides are a bit to forward. Probably where you have your SVS's in your pic, would be perfect. I like the idea of toeing your rears too. Maybe have your builder, build in a shelf to put them on so you can play with toeing easily.

In your room size, Im not sure what you will gain having your subs where you put them. With the SVS, and your room size, I would think the rear corners would be my first choise. What I would do, is run 1 1/2" PVC conduit to a box in each rear corner, so you can easily pull two runs of 12 GA wire to each corner. This way you can play with putting one or both subs in each of your rear corners once you move in.

With Khorns, and running large, your subs are rarely used, as you have experianced in my house. Mostly for sound effects with extreme bass, like explosions etc, so I would not be so worried about having the source so far from the mains, as it would be a problem with say the THX Ultra 2 setup where the mains do not make much bass. Having them in the rear corners would really max the bass output of the subs.

I think the SVS on the front wall will be too tall for your screen, I would not tuck them in your Khorns bass bin area either.

If you went with the new klipsch Ultra 2 subs, two of those under your screen on each side of your center would be killer. You may want to consider running conduit to some spots on your front as well, just in case.

In my next house, way off in the future BTW!!! I am going to do 10' ceilings in my room and put an opening a few feet deep, under my screen, covered by my curtains, to put in front fireing subs and center speaker bass bin like we saw in the theater in Indy.

Looks like a fun project. Remember that Artto is comming to my place in Aug, hope you can make it too.

JM

[artto]

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On 7/21/2004 10:49:38 AM j-malotky wrote:

What I would do, is run 1 1/2" PVC conduit to a box in each rear corner, so you can easily pull two runs of 12 GA wire to each corner.

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I would use metal conduit. For what its worth, it will provide additional shielding from RFI & EMI even though it probably won't need it. Conduit is cheap so it shouldn't be a major cost consideration.

BTW John, any idea yet on your road trip to my place? See you the 7th

[damonrpayne]

Hi all, thanks for the comments. I did realize that my side surrounds were too far forward and moved them back to just barely behind the primary seating position. The reason I put the rack there is that in the current house there is a natural alclove in the basement so the rack would be tucked back into the wall a bit. If I wanted I could move it to the other side and build it all the way into the wall like John did. The reason I put the seating farthur back is to sit back from the screen a bit, I will have to do some experimentation as far as distances from screen.

I will re-do the diagram tonight.

John we close on the land end of August so its still going to be a while! We're still working on the home, we keep running into support beam/pole issues in the basement of every model we pick, HOPEFULLY our current choice is the final one.

[j-malotky]

Damon

I thought your rack looked a bit shallow, using an alcove space makes sence.

As for the beams, I worked with my builder to put in bigger iron beam, and floor joists, the I-beam looking ones, to eliminate polls in my room. I think it only added $800 to the cost. Talk to your builders about eliminating all beams and HVAC pipes from your room. They should be albe to work that into the up front costs pretty easily.

The 7th is a go too. Will email you all in the comming weeks.

JM