Vaulted ceiling - room echo

[Lincolnshire Ian]

Hi Folks

Our build is progressing and it's nice to be thinking about room echo rather than whether our timber frame will fit on the foundations! 

We have a kitchen/diner which is roughly 5m x 8m and a 6m vaulted ceiling. We have tiled floors and a half-glazed gable end. The room is empty at the moment awaiting the kitchen install, but even so we anticipate a pretty monumental echo.

The room will have a dining room table, small settee and a few other bits of furniture. We have underfloor heating so are wary of putting down too many rugs etc. 

We have been looking at acoustic panelling, this could be an option. 

How have others "tamed" the echo in large rooms? 

Thanks 

[Russell griffiths]

Things to over think about on a Sunday. 

[Andeh]

As much soft stuff as you can... Rugs, large pictures, curtains, soft chairs, etc. 

 

We have similar, and it isn't so much the echo but the whole environment is "noisier" - can't think of a way to explain it , so two convos in the room are harder, kids are amplified etc.

 

It's obviously worth it for the impact of the room, and how special it is as a space... But everything in life has a drawback... 

 

 

[Lincolnshire Ian]

10 minutes ago, Russell griffiths said:

Things to over think about on a Sunday. 

Thanks Russell, that's super-helpful! 

[JohnMo]

We have a similar sized room. Soft things is key.

56 minutes ago, Lincolnshire Ian said:

acoustic panelling

We did look into that, but they took away from the clean lines, and doing the actual sizing I needed huge amounts of panels, and they wanted huge amounts of money.

 

If you are having curtains they will knock huge amount of echo off the room. Rugs (even thin ones) the same. Soft stuff is good, hard stuff not so good.

[saveasteading]

As @Andeh and @JohnMo.

The fundamentals are soft surfaces, clutter and especially avoiding large hard surfaces facing each other and parallel.

There are also distances between surfaces as related to the wave lengths of sounds but that is going too far!

After furnishing, do you have any such large bare surfaces?

I think you just have to see how it turns out, then maybe add hangings etc.

 

I was privileged to visit the acoustics dept at Delft Uni. They had an anechoic and echoic chamber.

The former had  no hard surfaces, being entirely lined with foam in egg box form. They fired a starting pistol and qe had no ear defenders,  and it was just a pop sound.

 

In the echoic they had deliberately hard and parallel surfaces. It was impossible to speak, even alone.

 

Another awful space is a round room such as an oast house roundel. It acts as a dish and your voice is bounced straight back.

These are the principles. If you are minimalist it is a challenge.

 

 

Edited yesterday at 09:01 by saveasteading

[Russell griffiths]

29 minutes ago, Lincolnshire Ian said:

Thanks Russell, that's super-helpful! 

glad i could help on this glorious spring day 🤣

you need to put more thought into will the vaulted ceiling be noisy when it rains. 
echo, nope that’s not happening. 
 

our room is a similar size. 
8.5 x6.5 the ceiling is 5.3 and slopes to 3.5. It’s like a squash court. 
no soft furnishings at all apart from two leather sofas, no curtains up yet and no rugs. 

[JohnMo]

Our house at one point, only had Rockwool Flexi in all the internal walls, and woodcrete external walls - deathly silent. Was a shock as the plasterboard went up, lots more noise etc.

Edited yesterday at 09:08 by JohnMo

[FarmerN]

We have similar room , it's fine for me but my wife complains all the time at noisy room, “ like an Italian Restaurant”

Floor tiles ceramic work tops etc. Wife put carpet off cut on top of all tall cupboards and wall units.

Curtains / Roman blinds help a bit in winter when closed, and large rug in seating area.

[Redbeard]

Do you like the Albert Hall? Small 'mushrooms'? More seriously I think previous posters are right that 'softening' is the most important bit.

[SteamyTea]

If you are going to have any pictures hanging on the walls, you can line the back of the them with carpet, quite effective.

Alternatively, you could experiment with a 'sonic crystal'. Lot of playing about to find the correct length, diameter, density and orientation, but can make for an interesting bit of art in the room.

Edited yesterday at 14:49 by SteamyTea

[Beau]

You are right to plan for problems. We have a similar room and I did not consider acoustics.

 

When I finally set up my prized hifi in there my better half said it was the closest she had have seen me to crying. It's better now with lots of furnishings and pictures up on the wall but the fancy hifi got sold as it was totally unsuited to such a bright sounding space. 

Edited yesterday at 15:15 by Beau

[DownSouth]

We gave up on acoustic panels because of the cost and found that lots of little things made it less echoey - like cork place mats or cork roll over the table, tablecloths with a heat mat under it, curtains, cushion pads made from acoustic foam (foam factory does made to measure), thin acoustic foam or felt behind large pictures, small rug as a wall hanging, plants, books on a shelf. It all adds up. 

[Tony L]

This is one of the concerns I have for the biggest room in my build (which is well over a year from completion), although I'm confident I'll be able to solve the problem with some cheap DIY acoustic tweaks (thin pads on the ceiling, soft coving, absorbent art work, etc).

 

I can't stand trying to hold a conversation in a room with loads of reverb, & if my hi-fi is not performing as it should I get quite annoyed.  A friend's new house suffered terribly from this reverb problem when she held her house warming party.  It was very difficult to decipher what was being said in her 70m2 or so room with vaulted ceiling & several different conversations going on at once.  By the time of the next party, there were two sofas & a big (4m wide) floor to ceiling book case full of books, & the problem was gone.

 

I briefly considered having a slightly sloping ceiling & non-parallel walls, for the benefit of my hi-fi, but I decided this would be impractical.