Posted by Retsel (A) on October 23, 2012 at 13:54:14

In Reply to: RE: new build room posted by Ethan Winer on August 24, 2012 at 09:12:28

I have been interested in quite a while on how to configure a dedicated audio room which I will likely build next year.

I saw a post once from a guy who apparently designs sound rooms. I e-mailed him privately. He says that he will always try to design a room with nonparallel walls. He said that his ideal room was something similar to the bridge of the Enterprise with a front wall which is not as wide as the rear wall. Like you, he brought up the idea that a more radical angle near where the first reflections would bounce off the side walls and reflect to the listening position could be easily designed to avoid such reflections. He also said that the walls and floor and ceiling need not be splayed significantly to avoid flutter echo. I sketched up a room design based on this philosophy.

I have no experience designing such rooms though and I have only been gathering ideas. I also have no idea how much experience this person had which made the recommendations to me. Avoiding flutter echo does seem like a reasonable approach to take. I don't fully understand the downsides of nonparallel walls and floor and ceiling.