optimal room size and shape??

With all the testing that Audyssey has done, have they come up with an optimal room size for the best set up?  I know this is an often asked question, but I have never seen it in relevance to any of the audyssey products?

Things like distances from walls, speaker separation, height of room, etc. 

I have seen reference to the placement of speakers relevant to the main listening position, but nothing published on what room size is optimal.   I know this may be a little counter productive, as Audyssey corrects for most (dare I say all) room size/shapes but you must have found and optimal ratio to use?

Thanks

Brad Taylor -
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2 Comments

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    Audyssey Labs

    Hi Brad,

    The topic of optimal room dimensions has been addressed for decades in the published research literature.  It's not related at all to the Audyssey products, but purely on the dimensions of the room and the amount and placement of absorption and diffusion.  The optimal speaker placement is also a solved problem and now an international standard.  You can see it in the diagram here:

    http://www.audyssey.com/audio-technology/audyssey-dsx

    As for room dimensions, the ideal ratios are given by:

     1.1w / h ≤   l / h   ≤ 4.5w/ (h  – 4)

    l  < 3h

    w  < 3h

     where:

    l  = larger dimension of floor plan, irrespective of orientation;

    w  = shorter dimension of floor plan, irrespective of orientation;

    h  = height.

    You can read the entire white paper on this topic here:

    http://tech.ebu.ch/docs/techreview/trev_274-hoeg.pdf

  • 0
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    Brad Taylor

    Thanks for confirming my starting points.  I was able to do some critical listening today and found the 30* and 60* placement to be bang on (especially for stereo music).  The issues I did run into are speaker to screen distance and screen to listening position distance.  I am about 9' back from my screen and with the speakers at 30* and 60* there was too much "off screen" sound as they are placed about 2' to each side of the TV.  This placed the wides another 4' out.  Just too far for my size of TV (56").  So I ended up sacrificing the spacing and put the fronts up against the screen and the wides about 3' out from there.   It sounds AMAZING with the movies I watched and music is good.  My conclusions from the day are that I need a 120"+ screen with the fronts behind it with the wides out front... some day.

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