Smallest room dimensions for good bass to 20hz

If you are going to the expense of building a dedicated room, why not get an acoustical consultant like Rives in to help you out?

Sarcher30,

Swampwalker offers some good advice. If you are going to the expense of building a dedicated room, get some professional advice. I've never used Rives, but I've checked out their website and their rates seem to be very reasonable. For possibly less than the price of a component upgrade you can get a customized room layout showing size, materials, etc. Heck, if you get it right the first time using professional advice, it could actually save you money in the long run as it might prevent unnecessary upgrades in an attempt to overcome bad room acoustics.

Just my $.02 worth......

Enjoy,

TIC

If room dimension had to equal wave length in order to reproduce a frequency of sound, what would one hear in a earphone or headphone?????????? nothing at all but very high frequencies?!!!!!

Kanuk, the space between the headphone driver and your eardrum is not the same as the space in a room between the speaker and your ear.

To vibrate your eardrum, the air in a whole room must already be vibrating at (whatever) frequency.

A headphone driver uses the air between itself and your eardrum as a 'fluid coupling', using it to 'grab' your eardrum and shake it back and forth at the same frequency.

Once again: "The longest room dimension has to equal HALF the wavelength of the frequency you want to produce in it. ;-)

This is only anecdotal;I'm not a physicist.

The lowest note a string bass plays is 41hz,which works out to about 29 feet,so the half wave would be about 15 feet.

With the exception of some organ pipes,most reproduction at 20 hz would be difference tones. (A tone at sixty generates a difference tone at thirty,and fifteen,and seven and a half,and so on. This is the ambiance you get in a concert hall,where the reverb is maybe a second. For more,see Carl Seashore's Psychology of Music.)

Keep in mind that the lower the pitch,the less directional it is. A 41hz tone,generating an half wave of fifteen feet,would bounce off a fourteen foot ceiling.

**So my point,and it is only anecdotal,is that deadening the room(including the ceiling) to absorb sound is probably more important than the size of the room.