The ideal listening room

My listening room could never be a vault. I like my music. but I won't create a room where it becomes so important that I would be almost afraid of inviting 'the others' into it at the risk of seeming....wierd.

In an old TAS (I think) they gave dimensions of 10 x 16 x 26 as ideal dimensions and this seems to be supported (roughly) by various articles I have read since. I tend to lean toward Stehno's idea of sloping walls to eliminate any parallel surfaces myself. There was an article in Stereophile about a place that built a room around their stereo equipment and they did this as well.

if i was going to build the ideal listening room, I would go listen to the experts on how they design rooms or hire an expert to design the room for you. at he2003 this year in san francisco, they had a panel of speakers talking about designing and building audio and video rooms. very informative.

There are several competing thoughts on room design. Where most people screw up is that they mix and match between them without understanding the big picture. Pick your design philosophy and stick to it religiously. My best suggestion is to get a book called the "Master Handbook of Acoustics" by F. Alton Everest. This is pretty much the Bible of acoustics.

As for me, I found that 14x19x10 (Louden's Ratio) was the most ideal. My walls are 10" thick styrofoam/concrete and my entire roof is a pseudo helmholtz resonator. Add in a few more room treatments to further tweak the room and it is about as close to perfect as I could ask. Personally haven't seen/heard any room that was better.

Julian

Victorhsalcedo, the ideal listening room would be similar to the golden ratio when building speakers. Think of the room as a huge speaker enclosure. A vaulted ceiling,IMO, is not a good idea unless the speaker placement are parallel with with the vault ceiling. Imagine putting a mirror on the ceiling and using a flashlight to aim the mirror. If you point it upwards to the mirror, you have the beam of light redirect to you at 90 degrees. If you know geometry, you know what I mean.