My new room is 8 x 16 x 32, what to do?

you are lucky to have such a large room.

you may be able to avoid some of the effects of room boundaries by placing your speakers away from the rear and side walls.

for example, you could move the speakers, say, 10 feet from the rear and at least two feet from the side walls.

i assume you will place a hardwood floor over the concrete and maybe a carpet over that.

i suppose you will also select appropriate materials to place on the brick.

what about windows ? how many and where are they. glass is a reflective surface.

i have 6 windows in my listening room. it is a challenging to mitigate the effects of all that glass.

It is a basement so no hardwood floor. Only 2 small windows 2x3 feet at one end at the ceiling

I agree w/ 61: "BTW, great sounding rooms don't have to conform to golden ratios." You can certainly find hundreds of articles/advice on GS rooms and acoustics (type: "golden section" and acoustics into Google) but resonance and harmonic frequencies depend on multiples of a room's dimension(s) whatever they are. The whole "Cardas thing' just cracks me up! (BTW, I have a degree in architecture and acoustics, AND my last name is Golden, so I've certainly delved into the subject ;-)

I have two recommendations however:

1. I strongly urge you to set your speakers up on one of the long walls. At 16 feet, the room width is just a bit more than the minimum (15 feet) required to do this. And save that 32 foot length because with the L/R speakers far from their respective sidewalls, secondary reflections will arrive at the listening position too late to mess up the sound stage, so the usual sidewall absorbtive treatment will not be required. Large wool area rugs, without padding, are the best acoustically for the floor. Furniture can do the rest if it's upholtered with fabric, nice and plump, and enough of it ;-) A bookcase with a couple feet of walk space between it and the back of the listening sofa/chair will provide a perfect abffusor for the rear wall.

2. The other thing that could be a problem (or not at all) has to do with the low ceiling. Whether it's a problem requiring treatment, or not, depends on your loudspeakers. Line arrays (Pipedreams), d'Appolito arrays (Dunlavy, Dynaudio), ribbons (Dali), and panel dipoles (like Maggie, MartinLogan, SoundLabs, etc) tend to radiate mostly horizontally and very little vertically. So ceiling reflections (that bounce back down to the listening position) aren't significant. Otherwise, you need an absorbtive panel about 12 feet wide (L to R) and 6 feet across on the ceiling halfway between the speakers and listening position.

Just set up the speakers and listening position first as Onhwy61 says. Most speakers (not just dipoles) need to be at least 3 - 4 feet out from the wall behind them. That's pretty much it ;-) I sure wish my room was 15 feet wide so I could use the long wall - it makes acoustical life so much easier!
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The dimensions are definitely not good, there will be some serious room nodes, but the up side to this is the room is big enough to reduce at least one dimension to make a big difference. Your idea of reducing the overall length to 26' is a good one. The 6' space might make a very good equipment and/or music (LP, CD, etc.) storage area. With some homework you might also use the area as a giant bass trap. The best course of action would be some professional help, like Rives. This will be costly, but will be the best bang for the buck. Of course you can take the advice of the other folks above and just try it to see if you like it as is.

Here is an Excel sheet that is very helpful for calculating room nodes:

Excel Sheet on Ultimate AV

You can enter your seating positiong to find out whether you are sitting in a null or at a maximum. Also, you can enter your speaker position in place of the seating position to find out whether you are placing the speaker at a maximum or null. Just make sure you or your speaker are not sitting 4 feet or 8 feet from the walls otherwise you will have huge suckouts at 70 Hz. Note: If you place speakers on the long wall enter the 16 feet as length and 32 feet as width.

Good luck - it is not the best room but better than a 8 x 8 x 8 room ;) or most small rooms for that matter. Many of the above suggestions are good ones. To treat bass problems in this room you would need bass traps, big ones.

Good luck!

Rene