The ideal listening room


When building a hi-fi or reference system, most times one give more emphasis on the equiment it self not having a lot a choices but to sacrifes sound's quality due to a poor listenig room with components trying to blend on a living room. But, what if you have the option to desing your own listenig room, how will it be? What materials, dimensions either corners or narrow end walls...
victorhsalcedo
There are several competing thoughts on room design. Where most people screw up is that they mix and match between them without understanding the big picture. Pick your design philosophy and stick to it religiously. My best suggestion is to get a book called the "Master Handbook of Acoustics" by F. Alton Everest. This is pretty much the Bible of acoustics.

As for me, I found that 14x19x10 (Louden's Ratio) was the most ideal. My walls are 10" thick styrofoam/concrete and my entire roof is a pseudo helmholtz resonator. Add in a few more room treatments to further tweak the room and it is about as close to perfect as I could ask. Personally haven't seen/heard any room that was better.

Julian
Victorhsalcedo, the ideal listening room would be similar to the golden ratio when building speakers. Think of the room as a huge speaker enclosure. A vaulted ceiling,IMO, is not a good idea unless the speaker placement are parallel with with the vault ceiling. Imagine putting a mirror on the ceiling and using a flashlight to aim the mirror. If you point it upwards to the mirror, you have the beam of light redirect to you at 90 degrees. If you know geometry, you know what I mean.
Definitely my ideal room would be shaped like a giant egg, which will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Seventh Veil speakers. Steve
Check with Rives Audio and visit the Acoustic Science Corp. website look for their Iso-Wall system,and Auralex.com has many ideas and consultants that will give good advice. Using all three sources (websites and materials mostly) I have built an excellent listing room. Let me know if you'd like to talk.
Thanks,
Steven
All the best rooms I've heard were all regular rooms and not some special shape. Instead, what they did is make sure the speakers are set-up correctly and then used some judicious room tuning with bass traps in the corners and absorbers on all the walls. If done right the fabric of the room treatments can kinda fade into the room decore. The best room is your own and it must be functional, comftorable and pleasing to the eye. Otherwise, why would you want to stay in such a room. Besides, if you do not know what your doing I'd recommend getting in touch with a professional or at least consult with one and do your homework.
Best of luck and you are pretty lucky to have a dedicated room in the first place.