New Music Room - Help Required

Fuck! If only I’d thought about that before buying the house!

Just looking at the Russ Andrew’s stuff - is it all bollocks or is there any truth in ANY of it? I’m thinking wiring and plug sockets here.

No! Out of that rabbit hole quick!

Do everything you can to properly soundproof the build.
Stu has the right idea. Seal all air gaps with good mastic, use very dense insulation, try to isolate the internal walls from the external walls.
Think about the room heating; what to use, and how. All these things need to be sorted during the refurb.
All the acoustic room tuning can come later, but if you don’t soundproof and seal the room as much as possible, you will regret it.
You can build all sorts of room traps and acoustic panels later.

That was the answer I was hoping for. Are there better sockets to buy (B&Q, etc) other than just standard ones or do they all just supply electrickery?

That’s exactly what I’m trying to do. I have a friend who is project managing the whole thing for me; he usually works on commercial buildings and knows about such things and will make sure the correct insulation / sound proofing is used.

As for number of sockets, what do I do here? Just go for as many as possible in almost the right places?

I used non switched MK sockets, but you can get them silver plated if you want!
I would have a separate box, just for the music room, and I wired all my sockets, individually, to their own breakers, because I could, and it doesn’t cost that much more.
I actually have two sources of power in the room; one just for the hifi, and another one for lights, and anything non hifi.

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If you’ve got a mains supply with DC and/or noise on it and you also have susceptible kit then filtering can be a solution (talk to Sodders). In extremis a mains regenerator gives you a totally independent suppy albeit without the ‘stiffness’ of a substation. Beyond that there are no measurable benefits. As always with foo though there can be benefits in your head.

VB

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Just looked at the price of those. Some are the cost of doing the whole fit-out!! Think I may be keeping my fingers crossed that there are no issues.

The switched MK ones are under £20 for 5 on Screwfix. Use ones like that, and just have a dedicated ring or spur for them. Use plenty, it’s cheap if you do it all at once.

Save the money for the horns.

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Certainly a dedicated mains feed for the HiFi is worth doing and won’t cost much. Also a good ADDITIONAL earth sunk into the ground is worth doing. I added a thick yellow/green earth cable and ran it through the floor to my cellar below into a 1m long copper rod. The cellar is designed as a storm cellar as we are less than 100m from the sea. The ground is always damp.

I did all the work myself and then got a qualified sparks to check it over. I followed all the proper codes and regs and the sparks asked me if I wanted a job - true story :joy::joy::joy:

It made a worthwhile reduction in noise to the HiFi.

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Thanks - I’ll look into the earth grounding. As far as anything else goes, I can just about wire a plug, but the rest of it is way beyond my non-existent skill set

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Yup, they can be.

I bought one of these

except the batteries were shot in mine so it cost about half this much. I set to with a soldering iron, a handful of extra MOSFETs, a few feet of welding cable, an extra fan, a 150A forklift fuse, a couple of quick-release battery clip sets and a pair of these https://advancedbatterysupplies.co.uk/product/pair-of-numax-cxv31mf-deep-cycle-batteries/.

By the end of the day I had a system that would deliver 240V stabilised pure-sine (less than 1% THD, so a very much nicer waveform than comes from SSE) at, say, a few hundred VA for half a day. I didn’t use low noise fans so if I was powering hi-fi then I’d have to locate it outside the listening room. As it is I only use it for low-noise or voltage-stabilised measurements in the workshop where the acoustic noise doesn’t matter much.

VB

Thanks - though please see previous post re numpty skills :wink:

Typical starter for 10 list of questions I ask clients when requested to design such a thing:

How far away are the nearest neighbours?
How loud do you like to listen to music?
What is the current wall construction?
What is the wall height?
What are you thinking of insulating the walls with?
What is the current roof construction?
What is the height at apex?
What is the floor construction?
What do you plan to do with the floor, if anything?
What are you thinking of insulating the ceiling with?
Double apex and window behind you, do you want to listen in parallel with or at right angles to the 2 roof apexes?
Its a bit square in plan, are you happy to loose a bit a space to make it non-square?

At a guess the garage currently has brick walls as the finish, and you are thinking of plasterboard lining. If so, if you plan it correctly, the new wall linings can be good for all three key aspects: thermal, sound reduction, and internal room acoustics

best of luck, it should be fun

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You probably already know, but the 20’ x 21’ is less than optimal, since the acoustic reinforcement and cancellation for (particularly) the bass frequencies are very similar in both planes. SJS’ suggestion of losing some space could be built in cupboards along a wall?

The double apex ceiling is a big plus in breaking up the regularity of dimensions. I’d be looking at adding non parallel rockwool sheets up there, if possible. Heat and acoustics.

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I’ve got one of those APC UPS units. It’s a larger model than that, but they work extremely well. When fully charged, I could unplug it and it would run the system all day using the battery power only.

I don’t know what the supply is going to be like here as far as DC/noise etc is concerned, so I may, or may not end up using it.

I have put 8 double sockets at the end of the room that the stereo will sit. Wired direct to the consumer unit (which is fed directly from the meter and exclusive to the one in the main house) I have a separate lighting circuit and another separate circuit for heaters and dehumidifiers.

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or record shelves / CD storage can be used very effectively to hide a bass trap behind

this room is bigger than yours, but should provide some ideas:

image

image

the voids which Rives Audio have created in the corners act as bass traps and are lined on all faces with Rockwool, but it shouldnt completely fill the voids

the record and CD storage helps to create non-parallel plan view to help avoid standing waves and flutter echoes

the curved wall is a broadband tuned bass trap

for the side wall reflection points and the wall behind the listener I quite like diffusers rather than absorbers, something like these work well:

or if you need some absorption behind the listener, then the BAD arc offers a mix of absorption and diffraction

best of luck

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My dream project!

When it comes to sound degradation I have always been steered by acousticians to try and introduce an isolated ‘box-in-box’ construction, admittedly this has been on commercial studios/recording spaces for schools etc., but you could apply the same principles to some extent.

Building a raised ‘floating’ timber floor, isolated by acoustic pads from the structure below has thermal and acoustic benefits (fill between the joists with rock wool but leave an air gap above the existing floor). Then introduce studded walls sat op top of the floor, with acoustic pads between any fixings and the external wall. Minimise any fixings with the external walls.

Think about secondary glazing to windows, cheap (ish) solution to thermal and acoustic improvements. Or you could have hinged perforated plywood shutter doors flush with the inside wall face that could be closed for listening sessions/batcave requirements. Assuming you will line the roof with insulated boards, again, try to provide an air gap of a decent distance behind, maybe line them through with the inside edge of the rafters for a clean finish.

One nice box in box.

Consider using perforated plasterboard/timber lining boards, which have rock wool fixed to the rear face, this will address acoustics potentially without having to add panels afterwards (and look bloody gorgeous, have a look at auditorium spaces like Birmingham Conservatoire)

Be generous on the gaps/void behind your wall lining, try to have 100mm airspace, then dense rockwool before the internal board.

If it were me, like @sjs states, it would be beneficial for the room not to be square. To achieve this, and make a nice feature of it, you could build all your equipment/storage into a deep wall on one side (adjacent to your neighbour, for added acoustic benefit).
Irregular shape rooms/avoiding perpendicular faces seems to be common practice.

On a lot of projects I have included hanging acoustic rafts to ceiling spaces, you have a great opportunity to do this between the rafters, varying heights/forms etc. The commercial products are effectively wrapped dense rock wool, you could DIY some quite cheaply. Having suspended ply boards on wires with rock wool fixed to the back face would also do the trick.

The electrics will mean penetrating through the inner ‘box’. Mastic seals etc obviously critical. If you want to be anal about it do an air test when the space is complete.

If it were me (being a bit OCD), I would want to consider the positioning of all your stuff, design the room down the where furniture is going to go, to avoid trailing wires etc. You could use floor boxes/flush mounted steel power outlets, as you have quite a big space and may want electric outlets inboard of the space. All can be distributed neatly in the floor/wall void. If you want to keep things flexible, so you can change room layout in future, just provide a grid of outlets at regular centres.

I might be teaching you to suck eggs, so sorry if that is the case. If you fancy having a go at designing the space in 3D, SketchUp is a free program, and easy to use.

One last thing, and then i’ll pipe down. My choice would be for quite a cheap/industrial approach. Use OSB board or birch plywood to face all the floors/walls/ceiling and build the fixed storage, have all the services exposed inside in galvanised trunking, with galvanised outlets. Obviously has acoustic benefits over a plastered finish, but also cost and time. Cork is great too, for flooring and wall treatment.

Pinterest is a worm hole for this sort of stuff, useful to get inspired. Just look at plywood interiors, you’ll see lots of pitched roof examples (admittedly lots in Scandinavia with saunas).

Oh, and ask @edd9000 to build some custom big ass speakers in matching plywood oiled cabinets too.

There you go, that’s my dream. one day.

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Looks great, but, if only there was a way of storing all those CDs on, say, a hard disc or something :thinking:

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