The ideal listening room

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.

Definitely my ideal room would be shaped like a giant egg, which will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Seventh Veil speakers. Steve

Check with Rives Audio and visit the Acoustic Science Corp. website look for their Iso-Wall system,and Auralex.com has many ideas and consultants that will give good advice. Using all three sources (websites and materials mostly) I have built an excellent listing room. Let me know if you'd like to talk.
Thanks,
Steven