Building New Home - Audio considerations

[80B]

Well, Boss-Girl and I decided it's time to downsize a bit, and build a new home in the process, so we'll be down in St. Augustine in a few weeks, living in a flat while the new digs get built.

We plan to keep our gear pretty much as we have it, but it will be a long 8 months or so with it in storage (luckily we have a storage unit that is nicely climate controlled for humidity as well as temperature).

Compared to our mid-80s-era suburban Atlanta home with a basement, the new home will be on a slab instead of a basement, and have more of an open floor plan, with the 24x17 family room open to the kitchen to the rear of the listening position, and the dining area open to the kitchen for something of an overall "L" shape. 10 foot ceilings.

We will have a recessed niche built into the long wall of the family room so that we can put our main stack of gear in that niche, and have the family room pull double-duty as our listening and TV room. The back of the niche will open into a closet so we'll have good access to the wiring. I'll probably put a tall Salamander rack in there, and consider a built-in rack later. We will put the Clearaudio TT on a rack in the family room, so that we can operate it, as well as have shelves for the vinyl. The TV, front three speakers and McInthosh C2301 monoblocks will be in the same configuration we have today, where the amps will be on a low rack between the L&R speakers.

The builder will provide conduits in the slab for the rear speaker wires to run from the audio niche out to the floor behind our listening position. I considered just going to stereo (90% of our listening and viewing), but will stick to 5.1, at least for the time being. We're wiring for rear ceiling speakers if we find having a second pair of floor standing speakers in the rear is ungainly in the room. We will have 20 amp outlets for the gear. The floor will be ceramic tile, and we will have area rugs. Several bookcases will probably be placed in the room.

Our future listening room won't have the peaked ceiling we benefit from today, nor the wall-to-wall carpet. I'd be curious as to people's experience with a setup in a room with these rough characteristics, especially with an open floor plan. It will be an interesting journey!

[nicoff]

Congratulations on the move! Sounds as if your music room dimension are set. But you will still have the opportunity to tweak the sound with positioning of furniture, etc. And don't forget that if you listen to digital you will always have the ability to use DSP to make adjustments for measured room response as well. Judicious use of DSP will bring you enormous benefits and will cost you a mere fraction of what you would pay on fancy cables or room treatments. Good luck with the move!

[80B]

Originally Posted by nicoff

Congratulations on the move! Sounds as if your music room dimension are set. But you will still have the opportunity to tweak the sound with positioning of furniture, etc. And don't forget that if you listen to digital you will always have the ability to use DSP to make adjustments for measured room response as well. Judicious use of DSP will bring you enormous benefits and will cost you a mere fraction of what you would pay on fancy cables or room treatments. Good luck with the move!

Thanks, yes the RoomPerfect on the MX151 will definitely be put to use!