Listening Room

Almost any room will work. Some rooms work better without a lot of tuning, but anything can be fixed to sound better. There is no room that will sound ideal without any treatment.

What you need to do is find out what the problem areas are in your room and address those issues. A couple of resources you might consider are Robert Harley's book "A Complete Guide to High-end Audio." He deals with almost everything to do with this hobby. There is at least one chapter regarding the room. Another possibility is to check with Rives. They specialize in room alterations and construction. http://www.rivesaudio.com I have talked to them and found them to be helpful, although I know others haven't been as satisfied.

Realize going in to this that it will cost some money, but it costs less to fix a room than it does to buy better gear.

Angled side walls introduce complexity into calculating the acoustic characteristics of a room but there are plenty of folks who are strong advocates. What is the height of the ceiling? The 32 foot length is great since it can accommodate a 20 Hz wave (half wave, actually) fully.

Generally, the height, length and width should not be multiples of a common factor (e.g., 8x12x16 are all multiples of 4) since this reinforces some common frequencies and provides modal gaps in other frequencies. The worst room setup is a perfect cube from that perspective.

F Alton Everest has a relatively short book on acoustics titled "Sound Studio Construction on a Budget", 1997. In that book, he recommends three good room proportions that "have stood the test of time": 1.0x1.14x1.39, 1.0x1.28x1.54, or 1.0x1.60x2.33, where the first dimension is the shortest distance (typically height) in the room. For example, an 8x12x16 room would have a ratio of 1.0x1.5x2.0.

Another often cited reference ratio is the "golden ratio" of 1.0x1.618x2.618. This arises from generating a number sequence that is based on adding the previous two numbers together to get the next and so on, starting with 1 and 2. The sequence is 1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89 and so on. When you take the ratio of the current number to the prior number, it converges on 1.618 (e.g., 89 divided by 55 is 1.618). The thought here is that the natural sequence is an ideal acoustic environment -- e.g., a great room would be 8x13x21 or 13x21x34. Since whole numbers like this aren't always possible, the multiple of the ratio also gets you there (e.g., starting with a 9 foot ceiling height, the result would be 9x14.56x23.56).

In a larger volume, "Master Handbook of Acoustics, 4th Edition ", 2001, F Alton Everest suggests a broader set of ratios from various studies that are referenced. He also indicates which of these ratios fall within a broad band of ratios called Bolt's range. The first ratio mentioned above (1.0x1.14x1.39) falls outside this range. Other ratios that fall within it and conform to other studies include 1.0x1.4x1.9, 1.0x1.5x2.5 and 1.0x1.26x1.59 (this latter ratio being 1: cubed root of 2: cubed root of 4). The golden ratio also falls outside Bolt's range (but I've found that it yields pretty good first order modal distributions, so go figure).

I'd definately suggest reading up on things (including old threads here) before building anything since it is much easier to build it than to rebuild it. Hope that helps. If you would share the height of the room and the amount of splaying (e.g., what is the width at the front of the room compared to the back), I might be able to calculate a few things for you. Good luck.

Here is a picture of the room
http://iow.mlxchange.com/
Thanks

OOps
Here it is
C:\Documents and Settings\A. Bruce Crum\My Documents\My Pictures\1106oldbed
C:\Documents and Settings\A. Bruce Crum\My Documents\My Pictures\1106bed

Abruce, I'm sorry but I couldn't get to it either way. Is there a web site. The first web site requires a password. The second post references your own internal c drive, I believe.

I have a "coffered ceiling" listening room (wherein the walls are parallel for a certain height & then slope upwards to the ceiling. It's in my attic area hence the shape of the walls. While it might be more diff. to calc. room modes, I think that it helps, overall, in reducing the room modes as there is less parallel walls area. Thus, I also feel that coffered ceiling rooms can be more easily treated for resonances than regular rooms. I have to admit that I have not tried my present system in a regular (non coffered ceiling) room.
It is the not the 1st time that I have seen the 2 books suggested by Ozfly to be recommended. I have been recommended the same by a very reliable source. I have been very lazy & have not read them! However, I do believe that they will provide you w/ some really good info that you can execute on with regular/easily available material at a DIY store.
Thus, it is my personal opinion from personal experience that your room will be just fine for listening. FWIW. IMHO. YMMV.