OPTIMUM HOME THEATER ROOM DIMENSIONS

Sound is the propagation of energy that occurs longitudinally among air molecules. When a
sound generator, for example, a speaker driver, pushes air molecules nearby, local molecules
push other molecules and the resultant wave of excitation travels throughout airspace. You are
probably familiar with sound waves being compared visually to ocean waves. This is done for
pedagogical purposes. The reason for this is that water waves are easy to visualize, and
represent a similar phenomena. It's just that water waves are lateral in nature and sound is air
molecules excited in longitudinal form. The both of them propagate with similar effects.

For the purposes of analysis, professional acousticians divide up the sonic behavior of listening
rooms into four characteristic intervals. Each interval is characterized by a frequency range of
sound. As it turns out, the physical dimensions of a listening room has the profoundest effect on
the behavior of the lowest frequency range, the one that bass notes (200 hz and lower) occupy.
The behavior of this interval, in acoustic terms, is dominated by "standing wave resonance
effects".

Standing waves are the phenomena that results when waves in an elastic medium, such as air,
travel back and forth within an enclosure. At certain critical frequencies, the waves traveling in
one direction combine with those bouncing back, with the result that some areas multiply in
strength and others actually cancel out. In our diagram, we show low frequency sound waves
being generated by a speaker bouncing back and forth in a tubular enclosure. As you can see,
the energy in the sound is actually a pressure wave and the combination of the waves traveling in
opposite directions yields high pressure zones and low pressure zones. If you were to step inside
this tube and walk to the areas of low pressure, you would actually hear the sound disappear. At
other points, the sound would sound twice as loud as normal!


A home theater room behaves much the same way as our "resonance tube" but with the added
complexity of more dimensions. Instead of just two surfaces, we have six (four walls, the floor and
the ceiling). Sound waves can, and will, bounce off not only just two surfaces (axial modes), but
four surfaces, (tangential modes) and even all six (oblique modes) at once. A complete analysis
of the sound field in a room must account for all these mode interactions to understand the
resultant pattern of high pressure and cancellations. Our diagram shows the simple combination
of sound energy of two axial modes into tangential mode form. As you can see, complex
disturbances in the room's sound field emerge. This is exactly what we want to avoid in a well
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designed home theater room.

As it turns out, if you design a listening room with exactly the right dimensions, you can spread
out the high and low pressure areas so that anoptimum sound field is obtained. Roy Allison,
founder of RA labs and Allison Acoustics, has written extensively on this, and in his paper "The
Loudspeaker/Room System" he examines some of the "golden room ratios" developed by
researchers L. Louden and L.W. Sepmeyer. These golden room ratios are the result of
calculating the modal distributions created by low frequency sound waves, and striving for the
most uniform distribution. L.W. Sepmeyer's ratios, in particular, have been highly utilized. Our
table illustrates the three famous Sepmeyer room ratios that have formed the basis for hundreds
of listening room designs over the last 30 years.

It should be noted that if you are starting from scratch in a home theater room project, it isn't
absolutely necessary to design your room around these golden ratios. Often these golden ratios
may not fit one's aesthetic needs or other constraints. Other options concern modifying the sonic
behavior of the room with acoustical treatments. This is especially true in existing rooms. The
general principle is to tame low frequency behavior by disturbing standing wave formation with
either physical obstructions (furniture, bookcases, etc) or via absorbing objects (furniture, tube
traps, etc). However, having a good understanding of the effect that room dimensions can have
on the distribution of resonance modes can provide you with a starting point if you are designing
from scratch.
Optimum Room Dimensions Calculator
Enter Room Height: Room Width Desired:
Sepmeyer Ratio 1 Sepmeyer Ratio 2 Sepmeyer Ratio 3
Room Length

Room Length Room Length
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