Cathedral Ceilings, Part II

[Kevin P]

I posted a thread a couple months ago about the pros and cons of having a cathedral ceiling in the HT/family room. I have blueprints now and a better idea of how the room would be shaped if we go that route.

The room is going to be 22.5' long x 12.5' wide. The ceiling at the back wall (where the screen will go) will be 8' high, and slopes to a peak of 16.5 feet (approx) roughly 18 feet from the back wall (I think that's a 26.5 degree slope if I remember my trig correctly ). Since the room ends before the house/roof does, the front wall (back side of HT) will be higher, about 14 feet. I'll have to scan the blueprints and make a rough sketch since a picture is worth a thousand words when trying to describe the room.

Anywho, this translates to approximately 3,445 cubic feet. The room in its past life was the same size but with a 7' high flat ceiling, giving us rougly 1,969 cubic feet. So that's another 1476 cubic feet to fill with sound (almost doubling). I might need more subwoofage than I had before.

The other challenge will be acoustics and controlling echos, which are always more noticeable in a larger room.

I'll post more details with drawings later, but just wanted to hear any good or bad things about these room dimensions, and whether a single SVS 20-39CSi will be adequate anymore.

[Patt]

Hi Kevin,

Just visited the svs site and they have a 2039 pci or cs......what's csi? I'm using 2039 pc+ with the space around 1900 cu ft. I never asked for advise and now there is way more than enough sub. Those cylinders creat a huge amount of bass. Cranked up during movies the gain is never past 12:30 and it is plenty.

I've heard the guys at svs do not oversell and are very knowledgable about space versus power requirements. They were prompt with the few eMails we exchanged and are pretty down to earth with their simple but detailed answers. Bounce an eMail like this one off them and I bet you get a quick reply.

You really do get a lot of bang for your buck with those things.

[ekkoville]

Kevin, I agree about the challenge of filling a large space. My room is 17x21 with carpet and cathedral ceiling. We want to change to hardwood floors and that would be echo heaven I'm sure. What kinds of acoustic treatments have you looked at? Drapes carpet, and furniture work well, but the walls will tough.

Erik

[Kevin P]

20-39CSi or PCi refers to the improved driver introduced in the CS/PC series about 3 years back. It may be referred to with or without the "i".

In the original room I had a 20-39CS, later upgraded to a CSi with a driver upgrade. It never bottomed even with bass-fest movies, but then I had it in a corner and I EQed the heck out of some huge bumps with a BFD, so that sub was basically coasting. Since the new room will be better laid out for HT, hopefully I'll be able to place the sub(s) in a more optimal location.

The new room will be larger in volume due to the ceiling, plus it'll be laid out differently with the screen on the short wall instead of the long wall. The old room was relatively "dead" acoustically since it had a low ceiling with acoustic tile instead of the usual sheetrock. The floor was carpet on a concrete slab; this won't change.

As for acoustic treatments, of course there will be the usual drapes and carpet. Maybe I'll go with acoustic ceiling tile as well, if I can do it relatively inexpensively and have it look decent. Then maybe we'll do some sort of fabric wall hangings in strategic spots to kill sound reflections, as needed.