Is a 12' X 16' room big enough for stereo?


Dear fellow audiophiles:
I am in the process of building a house. Our builder went over the floor plans with us yestreday morning and there is an bonus room which I planned on making a dedicated sound room, I am strictly into 2-channel stereo, and my speakers aren't that big, the Thiels CS1.5 driven by Pass Aleph 5. This room measures 12'X 16'. Not sure about the height yet. Is it big enough? What is your opinion?

Thanks
Francis
yslee
I'm in an appartment 12 X 15 w/Thiel 2.3's and x-150 and x-2. Thiels are 36" from the rear wall and 24" from the side. I placed the thiels along the 12' wall. listing position 4 ft from the rear wall. slight tow-in. ppppppppeeerrrrrrffffffeeeeeeeecccccccttttttt!!!!!!!!!!
It's proabably built by now, but here goes: a minimum nine foot ceiling would be nice. Two more feet in width would allow more room between the speakers and, more importantly, between each speaker and the side wall. If you could go to twenty-five or twenty-six in length you would have room to grow and would allow for the deepest bass to be reproduced should you go for a subwoofer or a speaker sytem with really deep bass. As it is, the room is a good size. The trick now is to not fill it up with too much furniture and to fine tune the acoustics if you can. At the building stage a number of things, insofar as materials and construction techniques used should be looked at, since they can't be retrofitted very easily. The rest is fine tuning the acoustics with the usual approaches. The fact that you are looking at the interaction between speakers and room is a good idea, but you should, budget permitting, plan ahead for future upgrades of the speakers.
Lots of good advice here. You should have a great time experimenting and tuning. My room is only 14 x 16 and is a challenge with my big speakers. Argent room lenses were just too big for the livability factor (and too expensive--Yowee!!) but some Sonex at the first reflection points and on the back wall between the speakers helped hugely, as did a nice thick rug.