Optimal listening room size..............

[C.A.P]

I am in constant battle with this, and like many I would like a larger room.I know many here also would like a larger room. Some have built dedicated rooms out of spare spaces, Basements, dens family rooms. We try and treat them with strategically placed panels or diffusers. Certain ML speakers will fit certain rooms better. Smaller speakers will work better in smaller rooms. However; I think a larger room will always prevail if done right. In my years with Audio and several different Planer-Ribbon ESL type speakers, The room has been the most defeating area of my trials and tribulations. I truly think most of us are really missing the potential of what our systems can really do in a real dedicated room. I think I'm getting about 75% of whats really capable from my system. You can only treat a room so much before the laws of physics prevails. What do you all think !

1.Whats the size of your current room, and are you happy with it?
2.What speaker do you have?
3.What would you do to better the room you have ?
4. What do you think is the optimal size room for your system?
5. Whats your dream room?

 

[amey01]

Yes, I too would like a much much better room!

1: Current size is 5.2 x 7.6 metres (with a small alcove behind speakers 33cm deep, as seen in system photo). System placed on long wall.
2: Vista
3: Seal off openings to other rooms. Sound proof to enable any time listening. More treatments. Dedicated A/C and remove from main house A/C. Move system to short wall.
4: 6 metres by about 10? Speakers on short wall.
5: Something designed with the help of an acoustic engineer! I am heading the way of my old room with large, high ceilings, approx 6 metres by about 10 metres or so. Definitely soundproofed for any time listening! Silent A/C. Dedicated power, where do I stop?!

 

[amey01]

......and your answers to the questions?

 

[C.A.P]

Yes , sorry for not posting that info, (It was late ).

1. 15 x 23 feet with a bar in the rear of the room and a big Stone fireplace in the front of the room. There is a small alcove behind me where the bar and the stairway are.Its what I have to work with now. (look at my system pics)
2.CLS1a
3.I'm working on treatments now. Although the bar has, and will be a part of the room, it is a bit of a sonic nuisance! Price you pay for a good drink !
4.I think the CLS are capable of HUGE sound stage. Having heard the CLX I think the CLS with twin subs in a large room I would be a damn good competitor.
5. I think a 22x30 room with the speakers on the smaller wall about 6 to 7 feet out and separated by about 8 to 9 feet with the front wall treated with diffusers and absorbers in a centered stage mix. The subs would be of Infinite baffle design with twin manifolds.The rear would be treated with diffusers as well. Side wall reflections would be addressed also. The list goes on and on and on..........

 

[Bernard]

Interesting questions. I just moved from a house into an apartment, and surprisingly, into a much larger space. My old room was 16'x12'x8', whereas the new one is 20'x14'x10.5'. My SL3's used to dominate the room; they are now lost in the room. I have been here a week and have not had time to play with the system. One big challenge is that the front wall is all glass. So, room treatments are on the agenda.

 

[FISH_MAN]

this is what I think

my system is in a 13'x21'x8' room. much wider would be better but I think what a lot of people overlook is the ceiling should be high, the higher the better without going higher than the width of your room even though martin logan as well as others say that you can put your speakers up to 2' of the side walls.I think the bass really suffers from this.longer sound ways need space to devolop. the speed of sound is about 1100 fps so a 60hz sound wave is 18.3 feet long! when you place your speaker whithin this space to a wall what happens? well the results are less than desireable.I have had my logans in a larger room and believe me they really open up.do keep in mind the room modes and use a room mode calculater when constructing a new room a couple of feet one way or the other make a big difference. stay away from widths and lengths that are divisible by each other.this is not to say that there are not great systems in small areas but I prefer the open sound of a lage room. I like the thunder of a bass drum and the way a female singers voice plays upon the reflective surfaces of a big room. music and sound replication is about moving air it only makes sense that the more you have the better.larger rooms are harder to treat and cost more to do so but the options are greater do to space constraints but when done correctlly the results can be stunning.

 

[nsgarch]

optimal (minimum?) room size

If we're talking dipoles (and I assume we are) the minimum size would (first of all) be one which allows placement of the speakers along the longer wall. Why? Because first (sidewall) reflections become a non-issue and soundstage can (potentially) be really spectacular. The short dimension of such a room would have to allow for

• getting the speakers into the room a minimum of 5ft
• having your listening position minimum 8 ft from the speakers (otherwise you're listening nearfield!)
• and having at least 2 ft to the wall behind your head to avoid the bass hump created there (and no, abfussors won't fix that problem when you're that close ;-)

So pretty much the minimum room size would be 15 feet by 23 feet. The 23 feet BTW allows enough time difference between the direct arrival sound and first reflection (if any) to avoid your brain combining the two (instead of recognizing the second one as a reflection) which is what screws up the stereo image. Of course bigger would be better -- I think something like 18 - 20 by 27 - 35 would be ideal and allow using even very large speakers.

I didn't say anything about ceiling heaght because with Logans and other line array designs, it really doesn't matter -- as long as there's a little breathing room above the speakers.

 

[David Matz]

If we're talking dipoles (and I assume we are) the minimum size would (first of all) be one which allows placement of the speakers along the longer wall. Why? Because first (sidewall) reflections become a non-issue and soundstage can (potentially) be really spectacular. The short dimension of such a room would have to allow for

• getting the speakers into the room a minimum of 5ft
• having your listening position minimum 8 ft from the speakers (otherwise you're listening nearfield!)
• and having at least 2 ft to the wall behind your head to avoid the bass hump created there (and no, abfussors won't fix that problem when you're that close ;-)

So pretty much the minimum room size would be 15 feet by 23 feet. The 23 feet BTW allows enough time difference between the direct arrival sound and first reflection (if any) to avoid your brain combining the two (instead of recognizing the second one as a reflection) which is what screws up the stereo image. Of course bigger would be better -- I think something like 18 - 20 by 27 - 35 would be ideal and allow using even very large speakers.

I didn't say anything about ceiling heaght because with Logans and other line array designs, it really doesn't matter -- as long as there's a little breathing room above the speakers.

Neil,

Interesting points. Wouldn't you stop feeling the bass if your room is too large? I am very tempted to take my system outside for this experiment, while the weather is still nice.

Also, what are the sonic differences between, say, the 17 x 26 room vs an 11 x 13 room, which you would call near-field?

Thanks

 

[tsmooth]

I have also wondered if anybody has taken the Martin Logan's outside to eliminate room interactions? Any comments?

 

[tonepub]

My current room is 16 ft deep by 24 wide. I'm very happy with it and have had it measured a couple of times now. Both guys found about a 2db bump at 40hz that I've been able to dial out between my speakers and the Descent, so, yes, I'm very happy. The room has a fair amount of GIK stuff (8 foot tri traps in the corners, and their 242 panels on the walls and hanging from the ceiling to correct for the peak, with a little bit of Sonex classic here and there. I think it's finally reached a point where things sound right but are not over damped.

I had Summits until just recently, am using Spires right now until the CLX's get here. Both the Summits, Spires and Vantages I used to have all sound very good about 8 1/2 feet apart and about four feet from the back wall. Having speakers on the long wall, leaves both speakers about 7 feet from the side walls, which makes for a huge stereo image.

I'm really at the point where I'm not going to do any more to the room. The walls are screwed drywall with R-32 inside and my floor is a 12" concrete slab, which really helps. No complaints finally.

Not sure if the CLX's will work in here, but pretty sure they will. Otherwise, I wouldn't mind having Dave Wilson's room which is 30x40. However, the bigger the room, the more power you need to get the oomph, so I think I'm in a pretty optimal size right now.

Only thing that would make this the dream room would be to eliminate my couch and put a pair of Barcelona chairs in their place, or perhaps a pair of Eames Chairs. Other than that, put a fork in me, I'm done!

Wait, maybe one more Finite Rack would be nice.....

 

[FISH_MAN]

I didn't say anything about ceiling heaght because with Logans and other line array designs, it really doesn't matter -- as long as there's a little breathing room above the speakers.[/QUOTE]

you are so wrong about this. the sound waves reflect of objects in the room and to the ceilings and back again. also line arrays are not perfecly directional
especially when there is a sub present. I belice C.A.P uses a very large sub correct?

 

[User211]

Not sure if the CLX's will work in here, but pretty sure they will. Otherwise, I wouldn't mind having Dave Wilson's room which is 30x40. However, the bigger the room, the more power you need to get the oomph, so I think I'm in a pretty optimal size right now.

Fingers definately crossed for you here, Jeff. They definately work in the much larger room I recently heard them in... with just 160 Watts of Jadis power.

My Ascent/Descent moved out of a 13 by 29 ft room (lounge) on my old house, to a 16 by 12 ft room here - a dedicated room with solid floor. They sound much better here, with less space - a point also remarked on by a friend of mine. I put it down to having plasterboard walls rather the solid ones... I am convinced there is a lot less reflection off them than solid brick ones.

 

[JonFo]

Chris, for me, I designed a room that is 26’L x 15’W x 10’H as being ideal dimensions for my Monolith based ML set.

While it definitely measured well, it, like many small rooms, still had plenty of mid-bass and low-frequency room modes. Never mind that the high-energy of mid and high-frequencies our large M’s put out would ring in the untreated room.

Even with initial RPG based room treatments, it still was less than ideal. Then in January of 2008, I added the 25 realTraps to the setup, then this summer, I added a dozen more third-party and DIY traps and treatments, which really took care of much of the mid-bass and low frequency modes.

But the icing on the cake was the Audyssey Pro room correction layered on top of all that. It was almost as magical as that initial round with the RealTraps, but with seamless time cohesion.

So even with ideal dimensions, one still needs to do a lot more before one can expect a great result.

I understand not everyone will go down this path, as most environments are mixed-use. But for those looking at dedicated A/V rooms, there is big lesson here.

 

[ScottGardner]

Here are a couple of charts from The Master Handbook Of Acoustics:

 

[C.A.P]

Very nice graph to work off. I have been playing with some corner traps and WOW . The bass is a tad less in impact but its much more precise in pleasing. The detail and placement is now truer . It actually tames a tad of the brightness too.