How big should a great listening room be?

[MediumRare]

Thats one of the reason why concert halls are so big.

Sorry, I believe you fabricated that statement. Please school me if I err.

Here is some science on the topic. https://asa.scitation.org/doi/10.1121/1.4944787

 

[puppet]

I'd suggest that the size of the loudspeakers, their dispersion and the rooms comfortable sound pressure level should be factored in. No reason that a well matched room/system can't sound great regardless of physical room size.

 

[Marc v E]

The ancient Greek theatres used accoustics to their advantage. Basically everyone seated could easily understand what was being said on stage.
Funny and no coincidence imo that it resembles much of a recording room layout.
For anyone who has the space and isn't bothered by having no roof.

 

[bo_knows]

Hey Wes, if I recall correctly, a very important dimension is ceiling height. You want at least 10 feet and 12 is better. Specially for managing low frequency modes. I will try to find the reference documents and link them here.

This is a good read. Watch this video. https://audiophilereview.com/room-a...mensions-and-ratios-for-audiophile-listening/
Quote from this page:
“Good starting points we like to recommend when listening room dimensions can be chosen or adjusted are 17-foot width, 10-foot height and 23-foot length. Why did we pick those ratios? Because they minimize low-frequency pressure issues that need to be treated, and they also minimize reverberation time issues, which are reflection-based. Is this the correct room size for all situations? Absolutely not. It would not be a good home theater room, but it would be a good studio control room. What’s the difference between home theaters and studio control rooms? There’s more energy in home theater rooms, from more speakers, so the space requirements increase”

Hi AdamG247,

He probably recommends those dimensions so he can fit his room treatments. I bet after treating the side walls with his treatments, the studio control room will end up 15 feet wide. Same for the length and ceiling, which is fine. I have respect for Dennis and his knowledge, it appears that he takes his business very seriously. After watching some of his videos, I don't think he is a proponent of multiple subs solution..

 

[daftcombo]

8060b

Do you mean 7060B?

 

[Bob-23]

Let's say you want to reduce the amount of room treatments needed, and DSP "tuning" required as well.

You are building a new room onto your house, or you are going to buy a new house.

How big should the listening room be?

You may consider near-field-listening - and a small room may become great:

- for headphone lovers: near-field listening is most headphone-like - to be sure: in near-field room reflections are not reduced to zero, as in headphones, but play a very minor role.

- it's without the major downside of headphones listening - which is: getting the sound from the left/right channel only to the left/right ear, instead of getting it to both of your ears, as it is meant when it's been mixed on monitors.- Crossfeed tries to remedy that deficiency, but alas, can't perfectly recreate the intentioned (speaker) 'image'.

- for neighbors: volume can be relatively low as you're sitting very close to the speakers.

- and thus: amps' power requirements are relatively low.

(My speakers are 1,8 m apart.)

Near-Field Listening: Acquired Taste or Proper Paradigm?
https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/near-field-listening-acquired-taste-or-proper-paradigm.886/

 

[AdamG]

Hi AdamG247,

He probably recommends those dimensions so he can fit his room treatments. I bet after treating the side walls with his treatments, the studio control room will end up 15 feet wide. Same for the length and ceiling, which is fine. I have respect for Dennis and his knowledge, it appears that he takes his business very seriously. After watching some of his videos, I don't think he is a proponent of multiple subs solution..

Yeah there is no doubt he is selling his room treatment services. However he does know his stuff about room acoustics and has some of the most helpful videos that explain this complex stuff in an understandable way. Btw I did have a personal consultation with Dennis several years ago. His ideas helped me fix most on my major problems and I did them myself. His business model is more focused on professional level rooms and venues. When I was researching this stuff trying to get my mind around the complexities of acoustic room modes, I found his videos to be incredibly helpful and watching them is free.
One important aspect I discovered in my journey, is how good does the room need to be. How perfect? The answer depends on the individuals goal. Imho a 20% solution focused mostly on the lower end of the FR scale is about all a person really needs. Unless one is shooting for perfection, less can be more. He is a brilliant man and he charges accordingly. In the end his offered solutions were far far more than I could afford.

Sometimes we just have to learn to live with what we have and be happy. This is my story and I’m sticking to it!

 

[AdamG]

Thats one of the reason why concert halls are so big.

it's L shaped.

So as not to pollute Wes’s thread. Start your own thread and post a sketch of the room with dimensions. Include speaker(s) and Sub placement with dimensions to all walls. Also include the location of your MLP. Pictures will help.

 

[bo_knows]

Yeah there is no doubt he is selling his room treatment services. However he does know his stuff about room acoustics and has some of the most helpful videos that explain this complex stuff in an understandable way. Btw I did have a personal consultation with Dennis several years ago. His ideas helped me fix most on my major problems and I did them myself. His business model is more focused on professional level rooms and venues. When I was researching this stuff trying to get my mind around the complexities of acoustic room modes, I found his videos to be incredibly helpful and watching them is free.
One important aspect I discovered in my journey, is how good does the room need to be. How perfect? The answer depends on the individuals goal. Imho a 20% solution focused mostly on the lower end of the FR scale is about all a person really needs. Unless one is shooting for perfection, less can be more. He is a brilliant man and he charges accordingly. In the end his offered solutions were far far more than I could afford.

Sometimes we just have to learn to live with what we have and be happy. This is my story and I’m sticking to it!

Wow, I just realized, Dennis covered what I just typed before checking his latest stuff.

Anyway, to answer OP's question, the perfect room dimensions FOR ME would be 16WX21LX10H. These dimensions together with the room treatments would allow for a nice soundstage width and enough length space for use of floor-standing speakers.

 

[Chromatischism]

Devising "ideal" room dimensions from an acoustic perspective is difficult unless you include the locations of speakers and subs in the plan before it is built.

Source: Floyd Toole

If interested I will post a link later.

 

[GeorgeBynum]

The ancient Greek theatres used acoustics to their advantage. Basically everyone seated could easily understand what was being said on stage.

The Hollywood Bowl?

 

[Wes]

Devising "ideal" room dimensions from an acoustic perspective is difficult unless you include the locations of speakers and subs in the plan before it is built.

Source: Floyd Toole

If interested I will post a link later.

sure post it

 

[thewas]

The ancient Greek theatres used accoustics to their advantage. Basically everyone seated could easily understand what was being said on stage.

In the most famous one of Epidaurus you can still experience that today 2500 years after it was built, in the summer time also famous theatre pieces are performed there without any electric amplification, can only recommend it to anyone visiting Greece.

 

[mitchco]

Let's say you want to reduce the amount of room treatments needed, and DSP "tuning" required as well.

You are building a new room onto your house, or you are going to buy a new house.

How big should the listening room be?

Construct a room with decent room ratios is a great start. This is how most professional studio control rooms start, but go much farther with non-parallel walls, a room within a room construction, raised floor on isolation pucks, specially designed HVAC for low noise and vibration and on it goes... This is typically way beyond most home builder skills.

The link below has a number of references on calculating the appropriate room ratios. Check out the reference to a new method has been produced based on producing the flattest possible modal frequency response for the room to determine the best room size. This would be a great place to start.

http://hub.salford.ac.uk/sirc-acoustics/architecture-and-building-acoustics/room-sizing-for-studios/

While you can calculate and construct a room with the flattest possible modal response, there is no escape from room modes. Every "small acoustic room" I have measured over 35 years, even ones with the proper room ratios, still require some DSP for optimum results.

Good luck!

 

[AdamG]

Construct a room with decent room ratios is a great start. This is how most professional studio control rooms start, but go much farther with non-parallel walls, a room within a room construction, raised floor on isolation pucks, specially designed HVAC for low noise and vibration and on it goes... This is typically way beyond most home builder skills.

The link below has a number of references on calculating the appropriate room ratios. Check out the reference to a new method has been produced based on producing the flattest possible modal frequency response for the room to determine the best room size. This would be a great place to start.

http://hub.salford.ac.uk/sirc-acoustics/architecture-and-building-acoustics/room-sizing-for-studios/

While you can calculate and construct a room with the flattest possible modal response, there is no escape from room modes. Every "small acoustic room" I have measured over 35 years, even ones with the proper room ratios, still require some DSP for optimum results.

Good luck!

Exactly! All rooms are problems. Why they are called “Room Modes”. The only true solution is no room, no walls, no reflections. Today’s DSP and room correction software is pretty amazing and can manage to fix/minimize a great deal. Your link is very good read. There is no perfect room, only a less problematic room.

 

[Matias]

My experience researching recommended room ratios led me nowhere.
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/dedicated-listening-room-measures.22704/

So I will be building it with what is almost square (5.0 x 4.8 m) but tall ceiling (3.15 m).

 

[Helicopter]

Based on my experience of many different houses I reckon a room 30' by 20' by 10' (high) is pretty much perfect, Needs to be brick and concrete though, no bouncy wooden floors or reverberating walls.

Not easy to find rooms that size in this country though and a house with rooms that size would be very expensive unless it was in the ghetto, Like six figures expensive.

This is basically what I have. Except ceiling is vaulted 8 to 12 feet, with tongue and groove and walls are insulated 2×6 with MDF ship lap. Carpet, concrete slab, even (naturally occurring) sand under the slab. It is incredible, though I need a bit more absorption. I may do some bookcases, ridgid fiberglass, or a combination.

 

[AdamG]

My experience researching recommended room ratios led me nowhere.
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/dedicated-listening-room-measures.22704/

So I will be building it with what is almost square (5.0 x 4.8 m) but tall ceiling (3.15 m).

Just FYI but Square is possibly the worst case for creation of standing waves. You may want to read up on this. The height is great, but try to push the back wall out to create more of a rectangular room.

 

[Chromatischism]

From Loudspeakers and Rooms for Sound Reproduction—A Scientific Review

7.2.1 Room Modes, Room Dimensions, Ideal Rooms, and So On

All rooms exhibit resonant modes. Even nonrectangular rooms have modes, but they are difficult to predict. So most acousticians tend to prefer working with rectangular spaces. We can change the frequencies of modes by adjusting the room dimensions, and alter the frequency distribution of modes by adjusting the room proportions: length to width to height. A lot of effort was put into finding optimum dimensional ratios for reverberation chambers, where the sound power output of mechanical devices was measured and it was important to have a uniform distribution of the resonance frequencies.

These concepts migrated into the audio field, and certain room dimensional ratios have been promoted as having desirable characteristics for listening. In normal rooms the benefits apply only to low frequencies. Bolt, who is well known for his “blob”—a graphical outline identifying recommended room ratios—makes this clear in the accompanying, but rarely seen, “range of validity” graph. This shows that in an 85-m3 (3000-ft3 ) room the optimum ratios are effective from about 40 to 120 Hz [66]. This merges nicely with the common experience that above the low-bass region the regularity of standing-wave patterns is upset by furniture, openings, and protrusions in the wall surface so that predictions of standing-wave activity outside the bass region are unreliable. In fact, even within the low-bass region wall flexure can introduce phase shifts in reflected sound sufficient to make the “acoustic” dimension at a modal frequency substantially different from the physical dimension.

But there is a practical problem with the concept of “optimum” room dimensions. It is that, to experience the benefits, all of the modes must be excited simultaneously (sound source located at a three-boundary corner) and, of course, the listener must be able to hear all of the modes (head in an opposite three-boundary corner). This is simply ridiculous. Any departure from this loudspeaker location means that all of the modes are not equally energized, and any departure from this listening position means that all of the modes are not equally audible. The tidy predictions come to nothing. Multiple loudspeakers are a further unanticipated complication. So it is not that the idea of optimum room ratios is wrong, it is simply that, as originally conceived, it is irrelevant in our business of sound reproduction.

With modifications the idea can be made to work. However, to do so is not simple because it is necessary to take into account how many loudspeakers there are, where they are, how many listeners there are, and where they are seated.

 

[mitchco]

Here is some perspective on room ratios and room modes from someone who has practical experience measuring them for some 35 years.

Very poor room ratios like a square or a cube will typically yield 30 dB of peak to peak amplitude variation below the rooms transition or Schroeder frequency. These are the most difficult rooms that are almost incurable no matter how much room treatment and/or DRC/DSP is applied.

Typical listening room rations of varying degrees where ~60 to 80% will have 20 dB of peak to peak variation which DSP will do a great job of cleaning up the magnitude response to give typically a +- 5 dB variation below Schroeder.

Designed room ratios that have been calculated by a computer/software program like the link to the resources in post 54. These rooms typically have 10 dB of peak to peak variation below Schroeder and with DSP can smooth the response to +- 3 dB or better below Schroeder. These rooms are far and few between.

One of the best rooms I measured and worked in was an Chips Davis LEDE designed control room where we measured the response using a Crown TEF analyser was +- 3 dB below Schroeder with no eq. But this was a computer designed room with non parallel walls with a room within a room. The inner symmetrical shell becomes transparent to low frequencies and the out asymmetrical shell which is rigid mass design to absorb/reflect the longest wavelengths away from the inner sell to prevent standing waves. It is a deep topic well beyond a forum post, but you can find the papers describing the details if interested. A short summary is attached.

As @AdamG247 has already summarised, "There is no perfect room, only a less problematic room."