Room Acoustics question:

For anyone with a fascination for numbers and curiosity about what George Cardas and others are promoting.

Read "The Golden Ratio, The story of PHI, the world's most astonishing number" by Mario Livio, Broadway Books, C 2002 (available in paperback).

This book covers the golden ratio from when it was defined by Euclid, through 2000 years of historical understanding. This ratio appears widely in nature and and has been reported used in architecture, painting, analyzing the stock market, and now the design of speaker cables and optimal listening rooms. Many examples and pictures of PHI in action.

1.61803... is a remarkable and mysterious number.

My math is weak.Is 1.61803 half of Pi?Your name Z also is mysterious.A coincidence?Destiny?Stay tuned Egyption lovers.....metaphysically speaking of course...Happy Halloween,Bob

If a room sucks you'll never get it right. Even with lots of room acoustic devices (bass traps, diffusors). If the room is quite good (proper acoustic characteristics), then you can optimize it further.
Caveat: room dimensions don't guarantee that you'll have good acoustics, even if you follow the golden ratio (whatsoever) rule.

Chris

With all due respects to Euclid et.al. the Golden Section goes back....Way Back. Many Egyptian monuments, including the near 5000yr old Great Pyramid use this ratio as a design element.

There IS a mathmatical relationship between phi and pi.
Phi is the only number that squared = itself +1. (2.618)
other relationships exist.

It goes back father than that. Nature has been using the "Golden Ratio" to design things pleasing to the eye, and to function their best for aeons. ie: As mentioned, the Nautilus shell, what we consider the most beautiful faces, the human hand's bone structure, your ear's cochlea, the DNA helix, flowers, etc.(http://cuip.uchicago.edu/~dlnarain/golden/activity7.htm)