Hi, we are new here. Our friend, Larry H., suggested that we present our questions here.
We are building our “dream home”, in which we wish to have a central room for chamber music and blue grass jamming sessions. How high should the ceiling be? What shape and material do you recommend for a private residential music room?
Thanks in advance.
Yoko & Richard
Replies
The height depends on the other dimensions. If you want to have a room specifically for music, talk to someone who does acoustical design. The attack of the notes from acoustic instruments is different from electric instruments or reproduced music. The wall and floor coverings have a tremendous impact on the way the sound is reflected, diffused and absorbed. If you want it to sound really good, the ratio of length:width:height will determine which frequencies will be stronger and weaker than others, too. If you can do it, eliminating parallel surfaces will make a big improvement in the sound.
Go to http://www.auralexelite.com to find a dealer for their acoustic treatments. They have brochures and a technical staff who can help with a design like this. Tell them what you want to do and they can help you.
Highfigh, thanks for you reply. We will visit http://www.auralexelite.com as you suggest.We are thinking of 24' x 15' central living room where we can have informal chamber music / blue-grass jamming session gatherings with arts and crafts corner and (at least four or five) comfortable seats for hours of reading. Nothing formal, but since we are designing and building this house from scratch, we thought we might incorporate as much expert suggestion as possible within our means.We are not professional musicians, but trumpet, french horn, violin, banjo, guitar & a keyboard (& choir voices) will be the main instruments to be practiced in this room. we like the practice sound and our house will be isolated enough not to bother neighbors with it, so there is no need to make a sound proof enclosed typical urban "practice room".Y & R
I didn't mean that you need to make the room soundproof but if you have certain frequencies that stand out because of the characteristics of the room, it's going to be really hard to listen to, never mind play in. The guitar will probably be the quietest instrument, unless it happens to be an inherently loud one, or a resonator style guitar, like a Dobro. If the room is too "live", any instrument with a small bell is going to sound very intense, percussive instruments will be prone to "flutter". You can hear flutter by going into a room and clapping your hands-it causes a repeated reflection. Certain notes from the piano and violin will be almost painful, literally. For playing music, you'll need to make the room somewhat "dead", acoustically, in order to keep the volume to an enjoyable level. Think of sound as billiard balls and the room as a 3D pool table. The louder the sound is, the longer it will bounce around the room, just like a cue ball will keep going around a pool table if you hit it harder. Each person will absorb a certain amount of sound, as will each square foot of drapes, carpet and other dampening material. Hard surfaces reflect very well. Hard objects with a lot of corners and surface changes will diffuse the sound. The trick is to have a balance of the absorbtion, reflection and diffusion. That balance, along with the dimentional ratios will give you a good sounding room. The different materials don't need to be permanent, either. You can make movable panels to get the sound you want. One side can be reflective, the other side, absorbing or diffusing. If you make a frame that stands upright, you can use tempered hardboard for the panel, with rigid fiberglass insulation glued to one side(thicker layers absorb more) and covered with a loosely woven material. With about six of these, you should be able to contain a lot of the reflections. Pretty cheap to make, too.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
Square, Plumb, and Level is bad.
SamT
I built a living room slash music room 19 by 30 with 9 ft flat ceiling. There is a small grand piano and a large upright piano in opposite corners at one end, with a stereo (for playing all those music minus one accompaniment CDs), and various saxophones, trombones, and other non-plugged-in instruments.
Three tips:
1. Large, heavy drapes work well for variable sound control.
2. A sound engineer told me once that it is best to have reflective and non-reflective surfaces opposite each other. Carpeted floor, plaster ceiling, drapes on east wall, plaster on west wall. I have noticed it is easier for me to hear the other musicians when in venues following this "rule".
3. Isolate the room from the rest of the house. I didn't do this, trying to keep an open plan. When little Johnny starts to practice the trumpet, everyone on the ground floor gets to hear every blast. It would really be nice to be able to close some french doors AND pull some heavy drapes.
Greg Graham, piano technician and not-ready-for-prime-time sax player.
For a room that is strictly a listening room, the wall directly behind the speakers should be dead for most speakers, the one behind the listening position should diffuse the sound. This is called "Live end, dead end". The ceiling should be semi(moderately) reflective/absorbant. If the speakers are planar(MagnaPlanar, Apogee Acoustics, etc), the back wall needs to be somewhat reflective since both surfaces produce sound. The side walls should be hard but not smooth and the areas where the sound could reflect directly off of the walls toward the listener should be made absorbtive so there won't be a problem with phase cancellations. Preferably, no parallel walls. This way, natural reverberation will happen without standing waves and if the room proportions are correct, all of the room modes will be close enough together to sound like the frequency response is smooth.The problem is, a dedicated listening room isn't the same as a performance room. However, some surfaces can be modified or moved in/out to accomodate either situation. Studios do this all the time in their recording rooms. The control room is their reference and doesn't change much. The room isolation gets tricky and can be expensive, depending on how well it needs to be isolated. The bass is the hardest to block. If you want to baffle the trumpet room, you can make a wooden stand with a sheet of masonite on it and glue rigid fiberglass insulation to it, then stand it in front of the door when he plays/practices. If you attach one layer directly on the masonite and another over that(or get 2" thick sheets) it'll be better for lower midrange notes. If you want to kill the upper mids, create a gap over the masonite and attach the rigid about 1"-2" away. This way, both sides will absorb the sound. Some musical instrument stores sell acoustic foam- as I mentioned earlier, Auralex is one of the companies that make this. Sonex is another. If he asks why you want to do this, you could tell him it's not that you don't want to hear him playing, you just don't want to hear him quite as easily. Blame it on the open floorplan.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
This is all very good advice. After playing in stage bands, jazz bands, Erie Thunder Birds for a short time( Drum & Bugle Corp.) on and on, We practiced everywhere. Which is why I was saying make the house a home, the way you want it, take information you get, use what you think you need, then adapt. Chances are, you'll be playing at other houses too, Check their sound (house sound) compared to yours.
B#
GB
I believe it was in Fine Homebuilding, in an article sometime in the past couple years, that a music room was done in a home. The article had photos, and a lot of text about the design and construction.
It showed a room for exactly the purpose you envision. Live music performances, not for "studio" music recording.
Maybe someone can help out here and point toward that article. All the acoustic design considerations were present in the design, necessary for a performance room.
You need to consider quite a few more things beside ceiling height.
The article you mentioned seems to cover just the kind of information I am looking for, but I can't find it in the back issue list of Fine Homebuilding magazine.I wonder which other magazines it can be from?In any case, thank you for the encouraging news.ytc
You might want to try Googling:
http://www.acoustics.org
Good luck,
-Jazzdogg-
Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right.
You might also want to browse the "Home theater builder" forum on AVSforum (http://www.avsforum.com). Lot of info on how to insulate sound and make a room sound better (for all price levels)
The best book on the topic is "master handbook of acoustic" by Alton Everest. Highly recommended
That handbook is definitely a good tool. I've had a copy since the late '70s and have used it a lot. I don't know how many revisions have been done since I bought mine, but it's got tons of info. The section on room "modes" is very important for rooms like this one.If anyone else is going to look for it, I think the author will be listed as F. Alton Everest. I haven't googled him, but a book store may want that. I'll add the catalog numbers later.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
One of the things I was taught in archy scholl a gazzillion years ago was that the golden cection was "sympathetic" to musical harmonies. That it was found in the cathedrals most touted for their natural acoustics.
Now, whether that means you use the short dimension or the long dimension to determine ceiling height, I couldn't tell you.
The shortest dimension can be the width if the space is large enough. In this case, floorspace is preferable to a tall ceiling. The two most common sets of ratios they taught us were [.6:1:1.6] and [.8:1:1.25] and these do result in generally good acoustics. Whatever the target for room size, it can be converted to volume and by finding the cube root, the ratios can be tested to see if they're workable.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
I agree with what others have said here.
From a musician's standpoint, you want the room "live" enough (a slight amount of natural reverberation) so that it sounds good to those playing, but not so "lively" that the reverberation lasts for several seconds because that will muddy the sound, particularly during fast technical passages of music ie. bluegrass banjo. One reason choral music sounds good in a cathedral is that composers and directors take advantage of the extremely long reverberation time. By the same token, most recording studios are very "dead" or "dry" acoustically so that the musician can be recorded without any coloration from the room. (That's one of the reasons musicians new to the recording studio have such a hard time, because they're not used to hearing the sound of their instrument completely "dry".) The "coloration" can then be added in the mix-down using equalization, or reverberation, or phase-shifting, or whatever the producer and engineer deem appropriate.
If it's practical and makes esthetic sense, no two opposing surfaces should be parallel to one another. That can't always be achieved easily but you can break up the bounce-back with panels, drapes, etc. and the nice thing is they don't have to be expensive or permanent. There's no limit to the technical detail that can be incorporated when designing for acoustical purposes, but for your use I don't think you have to go overboard. Even the acoustical gurus who design concert halls, tweak that design after the thing is built with a variety of panels and surface treatments.
One other suggestion is to leave a place for a baby grand piano. Sooner or later you'll want a piano, and if you've got the place to put it, it makes sense to take that into consideration now. We bought an older Baldwin for $1200.00 and it plays almost as well and stays intune better than a fellow musician friend's $23,000.00 Steinway. Good luck.
Wow, what a wealth of information in two short days!Thank you, all and each.We have started to browse through http://www.auralexelite.com and amazon.com is sending us a copy of "master handbook of acoustic" by F. Alton Everest. We'll visit "Home theater builder" forum on AVSforum (http://www.avsforum.com) as we come upon more concrete questions for designing the room.ytc
The cathedrals can sound the way they do because they're generally a very large space. That allows the room's "modes" to be evenly spaced. The natural decay rate of the sound is also very gradual. Choral music has almost no percussive sound, which minimizes slap and flutter. I wouldn't make the room too dead but you may want hardwood floors. If you do, rugs can be put down when you want to play. This will help a lot in taming the reflections. Think about using movable baffles, too. They're lightweight and can be stored somewhere else when they aren't needed.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
Could you type louder, I can hardly hear you........LOL.
Have you ever been in a situation where there are 5 people playing an instrument and everyone is at their maximum volume level ?? It doesn't matter what the room is acoustically, it will not be a good sound. I play a little myself, (even some Bluegrass) mostly classic rock stuff. The point is dynamics, make sure everyone knows this, we have to remind each other a lot, sometimes just a look or a...shhhh. If you are playing in a box or square room, there's not much you can do. BUT, if you have a cathedral type ceiling, play from the lowest point to the highest, get some folding room dividers to put on the other side. Some of the sound deadening foam is actually as flammable as a ping pong ball, watch what you buy. All the advice in this thread is very useful. I would say build your house the way you want it, the music will adapt to it, when people say it's so perfect for sound, you can say you planed it that way, and you might not have to spend a dime extra : ) Just remember, when you're playing in front of 2500 people, not to make the sound guy at the board mad cause you might not shine like you should. That's why he or she makes 4 or 5 times the money as any individual in the band, unless your headlining.
GB
The only reason everyone would need to play at a high volume with acoustic instruments is during a crescendo, and that doesn't usually last very long. For this short time, it's for musical effect and then it's either back to the rest of the tune or the next one. One of the main reasons for playing chamber music is for the intimacy. If each player knows the music and is actually listening to the group, the volume will take care of itself as long as someone takes a leading role. As long as the overall volume level isn't too high, it should sound OK if the room isn't too live. Better to be a bit on the absorbtive side in this case. If the room is very live, it will sound louder at lower volume because of the reverberation characteristics. There will be some hangover of sound that combines with the new notes and some will augment, some will cancel. As far as flammability, I think the specs are in the literature for the product and as long as Great White isn't there,...And when it comes to small groups playing, how many times has it semed that the sound guy had been exposed to high volume for waaaaaaay too long? Unless the group happens to know a really good one who hasn't completely abused his/her ears, something is gonna sound bad. Then, there are the people who don't understand what the sound guy actually wants and needs from them, which usually means that someone will be playing too loud. Between drummers who get carried away and guitar players who "just want to be heard", it's tough to get a good sound. I don't think that playing in front of 2500 people is a consideration here.
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
Red and Black velvet, Hexagon or dome shape!