What are the best dimensions for a sound room?

Unless you live in a house from the 1600s (yes, those exist), old curch or a modern architecture house from hell, then you will always end up with right angles. They are simply more practical than spheres.

I did some digging, and one suggestion (and almost unobtanium) option is to do this “studio style”.
So outer walls that keep the building up, then have semi-permanent walls and a drop ceiling positioned to bounce sound towards the listener and into absorbers behind the listener.

A more feasable option seems to build a midfield setup with diffusors behind the listener and absorbers all arround and a cloud absorbers (or several) overhead.
Somewhat like this (not my image, added anotations):

I am not even sure about that anymore.
You can buy pre-eqiped (insulated, wired/conduits run, etc.) containers, sometimes even 2-part (so two container side by side forming one room). Internal conditions (according to German workplace regulations and manufacturer measurements) are the same as semi-permanent construction in an industrial/commercial space.

Also the fact people are making recording studios in containers now

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I want a listening room, not a production room. :stuck_out_tongue:

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While there is a difference between recording and listening, the difference appears to be mainly where you put absorbers and diffusors.

Good comments and of course people do many things and are happy afterwards. My thinking is as follows.

Containers: Negatives, standing waves and lack of mass in the walls, lack of mass effects the bass response. Think of all the remote recording trucks in use, it’s very expensive to do correctly and to me not worth the convenience of dropping it in your backyard. Does work? Sure but very difficult to get right.

Concerning room shape, most rooms are rectangle and acousticians generally try to add geometry to break up the standing waves. Most studio, although may they look square are actual 6 or 8 sided! I know we’re not talking directly about studios but these examples just show what the pros do (and even they get wrong).CleanShot 2020-06-18 at 00.21.00@2x|690x490 and more typical studio layouts


Now, I know its not possible to have angles like this in a home but you may be able to add random elements such as diffusers and other techniques to induce a similar effect. That said just throwing materials on the walls or ceiling will never fix your poor room geometry. All of the studios I am showing are housed in normal buildings and the outer shell is square and rectangle but within that, these typical shapes are created for a natural sound.

Concerning mass, its a tricky topic but if you have mass it is more likely possible to have tight and defined bass. In a container or a light structured room the walls become membranes that vibrate and it’s more difficult to get bass the way is should be. In those cases you really need power on the low end, lots of power.

Another issue is; the length of the room is effectively the lowest fundamental frequency the room can handle down low. For example if you want a room that can handle a 40hz wave your room needs to be 28ft long and so on, 20hz requires a 56 foot long room. So our room needs to handle the harmonics of fundamental freq and this is just the tip of quagmire of acoustics. If the room dimension is not synergistic with the low freq harmonics nothing can be done to clean up the bass.

Keeping it simple, if you use small loudspeakers in the near field then it’s going to be ok in most situations but the moment you want full range and power the difficulty rises dramatically.

Apologies for this raw explanation.

I watched this awhile back–can’t say much of it sunk it, but I thought it might be helpful to the conversation.

Personally, I think I’ll just stick to headphones–seems a lot simpler…

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just looking at those schematics cause immense pain. any way to change those yellow lines to black / blue…just something dark?

nope, but you get the idea.

nope, I can’t look at them. the yellow on white blows out my vision.