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Building a dedicated listening room

I asking for advice/help with building a dedicated listening room.  Please chime in if you have built such a room, have any experience listening to music in a dedicated room, or just your thoughts on the matter.  
 

My wife and I are just in the planning stages of our new home.  Our new home will have a dedicated listening room to accommodate my audio hobby. For me it is a dream come true and a chance to address maybe the most important component of my system…the room.  The dimension are based the Golden Ratio, 11’h x 17.5’w x 28’l.   I have spent many hours researching building methods and I have had the luxury of listening to music in a few dedicated rooms.  Some of these rooms cost well over 100 grand.  I am sorry to say they sounded dull and two of the owners agree.  Yes, these rooms were very quiet and the imaging was stable but the sound lacked rhythm and drive almost as if the music had been sucked out of the music.  I did read and watch the videos about Robert Harley’s experience building his room using the ASC ISO Wall method but I am not sure if this is the best method to achieving a good sounding room.  This is an important discussion because once the room is built and if I am disappointed with the sound it will be expensive to fix.

 

randypeck

Showing 1 response by pwerahera

pwerahera
107 posts
 

The best room shapes for acoustics are irregular shapes ones. Symmetrical rooms with parallel walls are sub-optimal due to standing waves. So a box shape room can be problematic even though dimensions fit the classic golden ratio of 1 x 1.6 x 2.56 (height, width,, length). Room treatment can overcome some of these issues.

Concert halls and commercial theaters use the trapezoidal shapes. Houses with cathedral ceilings can be relatively "better" listening environment. However, cuboids are preferable because you can calculate the locations of nulls and peaks whereas with trapezoids those locations will be unknowns. Main objective of room shapes is to break the standing waves. As long as one can work this out, pretty much any room can be designed for a good listening space.

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