Ideal room dimensions?

S

Sendu

Audioholic Intern
If you're building your own dedicated home cinema room, is there a way to calculate it's ideal dimensions?

For example, a dealer of some speakers told me:
ideal room dimensions to avoid most resonant modes and bass issues in order of preference is:
5.2x7x3, 4.3x5.8x2.75, 3.6x4.6x2.4
(that's in meters, w x l x h)

My room can be a max of 5.6m width x 5.3m long. I'm currently planning on bringing the width down to 4.4m. I'm not sure how much height flexibility I have, but standard height in the UK is around 2.4m.

Given a fixed 5.3m length, how do you calculate ideal width (< 5.6) and height (> 2.2, < 2.6)?
 
ryanosaur

ryanosaur

Audioholic Overlord
Using the golden mean is best: ratio is something like .62:1:1.62... there are variations on this as well. Do a google search on acoustic s and room design.
 
AcuDefTechGuy

AcuDefTechGuy

Audioholic Jedi
Search for the "Audio Engineering Society" website. They list some room ratios for best room acoustics.

When I was building my house, I saw one formula that I liked:

1H: 1.57W: 1.87L

It seems to start with the HEIGHT of the ceiling.

I wanted a ceiling height of 14FT (since I thought it was a good number :D) ---- so my room room dimensions came out to be:

14'H x 22'W x 26'L.
 
S

snakeeyes

Audioholic Ninja
Search for the "Audio Engineering Society" website. They list some room ratios for best room acoustics.
When I was building my house, I saw one formula that I liked:
1H: 1.57W: 1.87L
It seems to start with the HEIGHT of the ceiling.
I wanted a ceiling height of 14FT (since I thought it was a good number :D) ---- so my room room dimensions came out to be:
14'H x 22'W x 26'L.
We can narrow it a bit further. I believe you want height a bit lower than 14ft for Atmos / DTSX speakers. Maybe height of 9ft is better? :)
 
ryanosaur

ryanosaur

Audioholic Overlord
https://www.acousticfields.com/ideal-room-size-ratios-apply-bonello-graph/

I had stumbled on this guy before... funny thing... when I started fantasizing about building my own scratch listening lab and theater, I came up with 17'w x 25'd x 11'H... using the golden ratio. Not too shabby for a guy that went to music school instead of architecture school. :p

I know for simplicity, Dolby Labs will stick with a common ceiling height to assist a majority of homeowners in deciding how to acheive thieir setups... but using the correct speakers for the space is most important. I think Shady pointed out the potential of using a more controlled-directivity speaker for Atmos support at non-standard measurements. So instead of wide dispersion, you narrow it down with a proper horn or waveguide, and you still accomplish the goal. Not dissimilar from what they do in large cinemas. ;)
 
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