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

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David Aiken

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

Follow Ups:

"The place has a 43 second reverberation time" - Richard BassNut Greene 07:48:38 02/23/07 (2)
So if your wife starts bellowing "honey do" orders at you, then you still have 43 seconds to go to the bathroom and come back, without missing a word?
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Richard BassNut Greene
Subjective Audiophile 2007
- Re: "The place has a 43 second reverberation time" - David Aiken 12:49:00 02/23/07 (1)
  I think it would be easy to miss every word. I think the reverberation time would make speech unintelligible.
  The music on this disc is experimental/avant garde and the musicians basically treat the space and it's reverberation time as an instrument. It's hard to distinguish what is being played at a particular time and what is reverb. Due to microphone and musician placement, the reverberation at times is louder than the original sound. There's also a lot of phasing going on in what you hear.
  I've had the disc for years though it gets played rarely. I still have no real handle on what it sounds like. I often pull it out after making changes to the system, just to have another listen. It always seems different to me, and I also find it impossible to pin down what the differences are while it's usually possible to point to distinct differences with normal music. The difference is probably because there really is no easily recognisable characteristics of the sound on this disc, it's really a constantly changing coloured wash of noise in many ways and the constant change precludes building up a memory of it that you could use when trying to make comparisons. I tend to say that I really don't know what this disc sounds like, despite the fact that I've owned it for probably 10 years.
  If you want to check it out, just follow the link for details.
  David Aiken
  - "Deep Listening" (Open in New Window)
  - I thought you were exaggerating but that seems to be the most bizarre recording I've ever heard of ... - Richard BassNut Greene 13:20:45 02/23/07 (0)
    ... except for the recording of my Dad & Mom snoring that I made when I was a kid.
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    Richard BassNut Greene
    Subjective Audiophile 2007
Re: What would be the perfect size and shape of room for audio? - fortysomething 07:07:58 02/23/07 (0)
David, I guess I thought oval as I have been at concerts where the venue was oval. Though, come to think of it, the walls and ceiling seemed to be draped in some type of material.

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