Building a dedicated listening room

thanks @patrickdowns

when I read that now 19 year old article, I get very uncomfortable. building a room is a very exciting opportunity to do the one thing that very few get a chance to do. make the room right.

to begin with I was in lust with my room, but along the way I went through some ups and downs.

in 2004, after I built my perfect room, it only took me another 11 years to finally get it right to my ears. along the way my ego got dumped on regularly as I found I was not where I thought I was.....multiple times. yet it was a great labor of love and these past 8 years since 2015 I have not touched the room. so in the end it was wonderful.

so be humble and nimble and open minded that where you start might not be where you end up.

agree that the golden ratio is just numbers. predicting small room acoustics is not an exact science since there are just too many build variables to know. so be prepared to go through some tuning before you are home free. I was fortunate that my speaker type and overall musical compass did not change over those 18 years. my epiphany with music reproduction happened prior to my room project.

6-7 years into my new room I did reduce my built in bass trapping. later in 2015 I reduced it some more. my room designer told me he was over spec’ing the bass trapping as it is hard to add it later.

as far as fine tuning; here are links to what I did in 2015 to reach my room nirvana.

https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/almost-free-and-4-inches-the-final-1.17389/

https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/almost-free-and-4-inches-the-final-1.17389/page-3#post-314941

https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/suck-out-fixed-i-think.18116/

https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/suck-out-fixed-i-think.18116/page-2#post-329496

@randypeck

not everyone will put the time and effort into really going all the way in the room tuning department. but this whole process is like peeling an onion, and until you get to the point where you know where you are going, and you trust your ears, it’s hard to get that last few percentage points.

if you want to talk on the phone happy to hook up with you. or if you want to visit you would be most welcome.

congrats and good luck.

Thanks for not minding me tagging you, @mikelavigne ! I know your room has been an evolution. It would be great if a magazine updated a story on it, bringing it to the present...an article that chronicles the evolution. I was hoping you would do what you did, and chime in! You are a mensch. Cheers, Pat

The trend these days seems to be going wireless. My priority would be having electrical outlets close to the ceiling because wireless (surround) speakers still need A/C, and nothing worse than A/C wires running up the wall from low outlets.

Also, a lot of seating options need A/C and floor mounted outlets should be installed under or near seating area.

Good luck with your project!

The best room shapes for acoustics are irregular shapes ones. Symmetrical rooms with parallel walls are sub-optimal due to standing waves. So a box shape room can be problematic even though dimensions fit the classic golden ratio of 1 x 1.6 x 2.56 (height, width,, length). Room treatment can overcome some of these issues.

Concert halls and commercial theaters use the trapezoidal shapes. Houses with cathedral ceilings can be relatively "better" listening environment. However, cuboids are preferable because you can calculate the locations of nulls and peaks whereas with trapezoids those locations will be unknowns. Main objective of room shapes is to break the standing waves. As long as one can work this out, pretty much any room can be designed for a good listening space.

my room is an oval, no 90 degree corners. lots of built in diffusion. the ceiling is also irregular so standing waves don't get supported.

however; it is very important to have an absolutely symmetrical room, if you want your soundstage to approach perfection. otherwise it’s by degrees a mess.

even side to side allows for the musical parts to be complete and located properly with full frequency and the bass connection to the proper part, everything seamless side to side, up and down. it’s how stereo recordings are mastered to sound.

of course very fine sound can be found in rooms that are not symmetrical, but there will be a limit to how fine it can be. when you push it hard it will break down. there is a good reason concerts halls are symmetrical. they can scale without limits. so does my room.

this acoustical headroom I speak of at high SPL’s does require much fine tuning to achieve. it’s not any sort of plug and play kind of thing. took me many years.