Optimum size for music room?

If you search the internet for "golden cuboid" you will find many discussions about the "perfect room". Note especially the Cardas site as well as many others. I have never had the opportunity to build a dedicated room so my equipment had to adjust to the room dimensions. In my mind the most important criteria would be non-parallel walls, enough distance from the front wall for your speakers to image well, acoustical treatment for reflections, dedicated power, and sound-proofing from extraneous noises. I hope you get to build it. Let us know how it works out. A real "man cave"??

There is a relationship called the Fibonacci Series. Cardas says it is to be found everywhere in nature including the nautilus (snail?) they use in their logo.
Essentially it provides the relationship between length, width and height which provides the least reverberation and cancellation.
I imagine there are other people on this forum who can explain it better than I can but I believe I calculated something like
22 x 13 x 8 once upon a time.
Draw a line about a foot long running from left to right. On the left end write "A" and on the right side write "C". Then you figure where to place "B" along the line by locating the point where BC is to AB as AB is to AC. In other words, find the location where the shorter segment is to the longer segment is the same as the longer segment is to the whole line.
As it was explained to me, this will be the ideal dimensional ratio to employ in designing your room.
However, I like the idea of non-parallel walls too, and I cannot imagine how that gels with what I just proffered.
Good luck. This doesn't seem like a good place to proceed by trial and error.

I am in the same situation as you as we have started looking into a major remodel for our house. Part of the remodel will be to build a dedicated listening room from scratch.

There are tons of information available online. I've done some research online and read "consulted" some books on acoustics, studio design, HT room design, etc.

There are many different theories. But most popular ones are:

Cardas Golden Mean - 0.618
so something like 21 ft x 13 ft x 8 ft

Louden Ratio
- 1.00 x 1.4 x 1.9
- 1.00 x 1.3 x 1.9
- 1.00 x 1.5 x 2.5

Sepmeyer Ratio
- 1.00 x 1.28 x 1.54
- 1.00 x 1.60 x 2.33

I ended up deciding to go with the last one, so the room will be 16 ft (W) x 23.3 ft (L) x 10 ft (H). I have also done some searches with materials and have everything pretty much covered. I would say if I were to construct the room with the information I have so far I would be 85% there.

I had originally talked to Rives, but didn't think that was the right approach for me. I've spoken to Alan Goodwin of Goodwin Audio in Massachussettes, and think that by using his service I would benefit more.

What I intend to do is to have Alan review/critique my design and provide me with additional information to refine the design and acoustics. I think I will come out with a room that is aesthetically pleasing and acoustically "correct".

Feel free to e-mail me and we can share some information.

FrankC

I did a room years ago, but it is long gone. However, one of the issues was always do you put your speakers, current or future on the long wall. Most put them on the short wall to give the room depth. I did a 23 foot wide, 30 feet deep arrangement and ceilings that started 9 feet at the speaker wall and 11 feet at the back wall. Yes I did all the calucations and why the actual room was not design perfect, it sounded perfect. Getting at least a 22 foot wide room is a must. It gives a wide stage and you can reinfoce that if you do a 'center fill'.

Hi Tiger,

Wow! Now that's a room! Unfortunately, I live in the Silicon Valley where an ounce of dirt costs more than an ounce of gold. I am just lucky that my house sits on a pretty good size lot (in Silicon Valley terms) that would allow me to build a dedicated room.

FrankC