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Re: What would be the perfect size and shape of room for audio?

Posted by David Aiken (A) on February 22, 2007 at 22:18:12

In Reply to: What would be the perfect size and shape of room for audio? posted by fortysomething on February 22, 2007 at 21:06:12:

A round room would be awful. I have a recording made inside a large round, concrete, water cistern in Washington state. The place has a 43 second reverberation time which is caused by the stiffness of the walls and the fact that the space is round. You can also hear a strange, phasing effect panning around the room in the recording, part of the reverberation pattern. Round spaces have been used in the past for echo chambers.

I haven't seen anything on oval rooms but the curves in the walls are going to focus reflections, just as they do in a round room but without the common 'focal point' that reflections have in a round room.

A reasonably sized and dimensioned rectangular room is fine. Splaying the side walls out so they're not quite parrallel can help with some reverberation problems, as can a sloping ceiling. Regardless of shape, no room is going to present acoustic perfection and all will be assisted by acoustic room treatments. Standing waves can't be eliminated but they can be staggered so they don't compound on each other as they would in a cube, or in the horizontal plane in a round room.

There's no single, ideal set of proportions for a room but if you look in Everest's Master Handbook of Acoustics, you'll find a fair bit to help in choosing sizes for a room that will work well.

PS- once you move away from square/rectangular rooms and standard ceiling profiles, construction costs increase significantly. On the cost beneifit front, I think a rectangular room including good acoustic treatment would cost less to construct than a round or oval room without treatment. The rectangular room will sound better even without the treatment. You will also need a lot more acoustic treatment in the round or oval room because of their acoustic problems.

David Aiken

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