Several years ago, Belle and I downsized, selling our former home and moving into a smaller one. We had agreed to complete the unfinished basement (where my listening space goes), however, with construction costs inflated by the real estate craze, we suspected that our plans may be delayed for a long while.
Thankfully, we found out last weekend that lumber costs are coming back down and, following dinner with old friends, that Mike and June, who run a commercial flooring concern, can help us out with the flooring and connect us with reputable and reasonable contacts in construction after we formulate solid floor plans for accurate bidding.
“Don’t just hire one guy who says he does it all,” Mike says. “No one does; they just hire other guys who subcontract for them. You can be the general contractor and save money.” The catch is the time and effort involved in planning, collecting measurements, then reaching out to the various parties — the electrician, plumber, the guys who put up the studs and drywall, the heating and air specialist, painter and others, taking their bids, costing it out, then dealing with the actual construction process. This is going to take some doing.
In the meanwhile, before the basement project kicks into high gear and equipment needs to be covered and set aside, I have a little listening and review work to tend to, but the question remains, how is this even feasible in these challenging, unfinished conditions?
I recall the harsh reflections and horrible sound I’d experienced in the cavernous concrete-walled basement of our first home when I had a mobile DJ system and a spare stereo down there, hence I recognized early on that if I was going to derive any pleasure from listening in our current basement during the interim, I will have to take the room out of the equation as much as possible. To accomplish this, I settle upon a roughly 10’ by 12’ wide concrete nook lined with insulation beneath our sun room and do the following:
- I place my speakers roughly five and a half feet in front of the front wall and 25” from the sides, atop a thick shag carpet.
- The equipment sit atop a Simpli Home media stand little over a foot from the front wall.
- I place two tall bass traps in the corners of the nook.
- I line the front and side walls of that nook with acoustic absorption panels from our former home to tame potential harsh interactions with concreted and address first reflection points at the front and side walls.
- I placed a couch almost two feet back from the nook with the seating position at the center of the couch roughly seven feet from the tweeters.
- Tweeters at ear level and 5’ 3” apart, they are toed-in facing somewhere between shoulders and ears.
- An acoustic curtain hangs 30” behind the couch, with another smaller acoustic curtain hanging behind to the left, angled in, while a thick foam bed liner hangs to the right, angled in to minimize interactions with the greater portion of the basement space.
- I also note that mylar covered insulation lines the walls down to about two feet above the basement floor to the left and right, while the nook has it going all the way down to six inches above the floor
- The exposed rafters above help break up reflections from above.
Although there are some gaps between the hanging curtains behind the couch, they do a great deal to ameliorate interactions with the rest of the hard surfaces in our open basement space. In fact, listening from this nearfield position, Belle and I are stunned at the clarity and richness of the music tickling our ears. She’s remarked several times that she has never heard the system sound better! Sitting so close to the point position of an equilateral triangle formed between speakers and listener, that doesn’t completely surprise me, but it’s nevertheless gratifying.
Of course, following our basement remodel, we plan on relocating the media room along a longer finished wall with a large, mounted flat screen TV with a leather couch, loveseat, maybe my old Barcelona Chair and a pair of sliding barn doors at its entrance, closed off from a separate storage and workspace, and an open general usage room. We will likely paint the exposed ceiling — rafters, piping, wiring and all — charcoal grey, and treat the room with acoustic panels bass traps, and acoustic curtains for maximum auditory performance. Although our plans are not finalized, we are looking forward to completing them soon and building our basement with its own new media room. And, while we wait, we can still enjoy music and the occasional HD movie (with a smaller removable TV we sometimes use). In my book, that’s a win-win!
EDITOR’S NOTE: Several months later, we pulled the trigger, procured our subcontractors, and got ourselves a first-rate listening and A/V room. To find an article describing the process posted elsewhere, simply Google Juan C Ayllon A/V listening space. You can also view our current listening and A/V space by clicking on this website’s “About Us” tab.
That’s the Straightwire Crescendo 3 loudspeaker cable connected to the Usher Audio Mini Dancer speakers that I’ve since sold. The Crescendo 3s remained and are now plugged into my Usher Audio ML-802 loudspeakers!