Need advice on what to do with this room
 

Hi everyone. I need advice on what to do with an existing media room.

I’ve been looking at houses down in Florida, and my dream of finding an affordable house with a 13x20 or greater, dedicated space (not a family room or great room) for my audio system appears to be something of a fool’s errand. However, I have found an absolutely wonderful house in a wonderful neighborhood that happens to have an existing 13x16 media room. It has separate dedicated lines for electrical and lighting, and has angled corners. Very nice. But it is a very “live” room. With the door closed I read on the order of 26 dBA ambient noise, but when I talk or clap my hands the reverberations are plain to hear.

What I don’t want to do is make the room any smaller. I was actually thinking of rebuilding the room, since I want to replace the 15A dedicated circuit with a 20A anyway. I figured I’d take the walls down, get the electrical work done, and then put new walls back up. The question is - is there a wall product I can use that won’t cut into the room space but give me better reverberation control than whatever is in there now? I know about the Wall Damp technique, but that (if I understand it correctly) would require a double layer of wall board with the damping material between them. I’d rather not do that if I had an option that could keep the interior space maximized. Thanks.

Welcome to the realization of how few of us there are outside the forums that have built homes with rooms that even approximate what the audiophile would want as a dedicated room. I have spent over two months looking at existing homes for sale in an area we are planning to move to and have come to the realization that I am just going to have to buy a lot and start from scratch which is going to be a real pain to do long distance. At least now I have a house plan but still looking for an acceptable lot and a dependable builder whose shoulder I don't have to look over everyday. A competent electrician should be able to change out the electrical circuit and you may be able to tame the room with treatments without ripping out the walls.

Thanks Jack. It’s been a very frustrating experience so far. As far as the area I’ve been looking in, there are very few homes to begin with that have anywhere near the size space I’ve been looking for, that aren’t common space rooms. I’m doing that now, running my system in my family room, and I vowed I vowed I would not do that again. Too many compromises.

No. The dual drywall and drywall isolation systems available don’t help with in-room reverberation. You will need to add absorption and diffusion in the room to get it sounding awesome.

If you are into DIY you can also use 1” roll fiberglass materials like duct liner and 1” batten boards applied to the existing drywall surface, all covered with acoustic fabrics from Guildford of Maine. I did this with my last dedicated theater to good effect.

You might send your room size and layout info to GIK Acoustics or another acoustics company and see what they recommend. If I were to do it again this is what I’d do because it is easier and you can add treatment incrementally. Getting the low frequency reverberation tamed is the most difficult part.

Good luck!

Tom

The Wall Damp system helps to tame low frequency reverberation in the room by turning the walls into membrane bass traps. It makes the wall about 1" thicker, not just because of the double layer of sheet rock with the damping material in between, but also because of the resilient channel used to decouple the sheet rock from the studs, allowing the sheet rock to flex. You get quite a bit of low frequency absorption for the cost of 2" off the width and depth of the room, and just 1" off the height of the room if you do the ceiling too.

What do you do about the outlets and wiring when you add 2"?

Box extenders.

Need advice on what to do with this room
 

To the OP: I am not sure why you need to take any walls down to replace the existing electrical. Instead of replacing anything, Why don't you just ADD an additional circuit? It will be cheaper to add a 20A circuit than convert an existing 15A to 20A.

No need to take anything down! An electrician can fish the wires in the existing walls. Plus two circuits are better than one!

Years ago, when I was looking for a house with a dedicated room for music/theater I ran into similar problems. Nothing suitable or available in the market.

Fortunately I found a house with an unfinished room above the garage. I was able to tailor that room for my music/HT needs. So consider looking for houses with unfinished rooms not just finished music rooms.

What can you tell us about the surfaces you have to deal with. Do you have a stone/tile floor? Lots of glass surface in the room?
Dedicated circuit is always a nice improvement. But the benefit is easily overpowered by bad acoustics in a room.
What are your plans when it comes to furniture, carpet, sofa, plants etc? Those items are usually good to have in a room to calm down the sound.

The choice for taking the walls down would be if there was a wall board replacement. Then I would do the electrical while the walls were down.

@bigblue, it’s a 13x15 space. Built as a dedicated media room. No windows. Each “corner” is angled so it is in effect an 8 sided room. The angled corners are about 30” wide. Eight foot ceiling, but it is coved (I think it’s called a tray ceiling - I think that’s probably a bad idea for audio). The entry door is solid wood with a gasket around the door jamb.

There’s currently a rug on the floor but the floor is a concrete slab. No plans so far, other than to figure out where the equipment would go.