This article is part of a series of excerpts from The Audiophile's Guide, a 10-volume set that offers guidance and knowledge about all aspects of audio reproduction and system setup.
The journey to better sound takes two distinct paths, and in this installment covering listening rooms we’ll explore both. First, we’ll dive into optimizing your existing space – because let’s face it, most of us need to work with what we’ve got. Whether you’re wrestling with a living room that does double duty as your listening sanctuary, or you’ve claimed a spare bedroom as your audio haven, there’s always room for improvement.
We’ll focus on understanding and managing the acoustic challenges every room presents: standing waves that muddy your bass, early reflections that blur the soundstage, and parallel walls that create flutter echoes. We’ll identify these common problems and, more importantly, look at how to solve them through strategic acoustic treatments and room modifications that won’t turn your space into something that looks like a recording studio.
Your listening room is actually a key component in your audio system, one that can either enhance or degrade your sound quality more dramatically than any equipment upgrade.
While speaker placement and setup are crucial (topics we cover extensively in The Audiophile’s Guide: The Stereo), here we’ll focus on the room itself and how to make it work with your system rather than against it. We’ll explore practical solutions for dealing with room modes, managing reflections, and creating a space that lets your system perform at its best.
For those considering a dedicated listening room, we’ll also cover the principles of designing and building the ideal acoustic space. Even if you never build one, understanding these concepts will help you make better decisions in any room. The same acoustic principles that make a purpose-built listening room great can guide your choices in improving your current space. Whether you’re working with an existing room or planning your dream space, the key is understanding how rooms interact with sound and making informed choices that bring you closer to the music.
Start Fresh or Work With What You’ve Got?
Before diving into room treatments and acoustic solutions, we need to answer one crucial question: are you starting from scratch with an empty or new room, or are you working to improve an existing listening space where your system is already set up? This single question will determine your entire approach to room optimization. (These practical tips on room optimization will be the same if you build a room from scratch; so even if you’re skipping this section and heading straight for the “build your own room” part, you’ll want to come back here once you’re finished.)
If you’re working with an existing setup, you already have two fixed points that anchor your room’s acoustic landscape: your listening position and your speaker locations. These establish the primary sonic pathway in your room and define the critical refection points we’ll need to address. Your current setup might not be ideal – in fact, it probably isn’t – but it gives us a concrete starting point for identifying and treating acoustic problems.
However, if you’re starting with an empty room, we have two possible paths forward, each with its own advantages and challenges. The first approach is to treat the room’s acoustic issues before analyzing speaker and listening positions. This “room-first” method lets us address major acoustic problems – like problematic room modes, flutter echoes between parallel walls, and bass build-up in corners – before we commit to specific speaker and seating locations. The advantage here is that we can potentially neutralize the room’s worst acoustic behaviors before they interact with our system placement.
A dedicated listening room with acoustic sound diffusion panels installed. Courtesy of GIK Acoustics.
We at PS Audio actually implemented this approach recently as we built our company’s new Listening Lab. Starting with a rectangular room, 22 by 33 feet, we first needed to address some obvious acoustic challenges. The suspended acoustic tile ceiling that you see in most retail spaces, while practical for access to utilities, is actually problematic for sound. These lightweight tiles tend to resonate at certain frequencies and often create an uneven frequency response. We replace these with a solid surface that could be properly treated. Those long parallel walls are another immediate concern. At 33 feet, they’re perfect for creating flutter echoes –that rapid ping-pong effect you hear when you clap your hands in an empty room. We needed to break up those parallel reflections before even thinking about moving ahead with speaker placement. This involved a combination of diffusion and absorption panels, strategically placed along these surfaces.
Here’s something I’ve learned over the years: when taking over an existing space that’s already in use as a music room, it’s often best to strip everything out and start fresh. Previous treatments might have been addressing problems that won’t exist with your own setup; or worse, might interact poorly with your configuration. It’s like trying to paint a room without removing the old wallpaper – you’re better off starting with a clean slate. This lets us methodically address each acoustic issue we discover, rather than working around solutions to problems that may no longer exist.
The second approach is to rough in our listening position and speaker locations first, then treat the room based on these known points. This “setup-first” method can have the most impact on our actual listening experience. We can precisely target early reflection points, manage bass issues where they most affect our listening position, and optimize the space between us and our speakers. The potential drawback is that we might discover our chosen setup locations interact poorly with the room’s fundamental acoustic properties, requiring more extensive treatment to compensate.
In my experience, the setup-first approach usually makes more sense, even in an empty room. The relationship between our speakers, our ears, and the room’s surfaces is the foundation of our listening experience. By establishing this fundamental geometry first, we can more efficiently address the specific acoustic issues that will actually affect our listening experience. Think of it like tailoring a suit – you need to know where it needs to fit before you can make the right adjustments.
That said, there are some room issues so severe that they should be addressed regardless of where you end up placing your system. If your room is a perfect cube, for instance, or contains severely parallel walls that create strong flutter echoes, you’ll want to tackle these issues early on. The same goes for structural problems like a resonant floor or a ceiling that transmits excessive noise from above.
Before diving into specific treatment strategies, let’s understand some basic truths about rooms and sound that apply whether you’re starting fresh or improving an existing space. First, a reminder that every room, regardless of size or shape, has natural resonant frequencies called room modes. Think of them like the notes a wine glass makes when you run your finger around its rim (or blow across a bottle). These modes are determined by the room’s dimensions and occur most noticeably in the bass frequencies, or those below about 200 Hz. They create areas where certain bass notes will be either unnaturally loud or nearly absent, depending on where you sit.
Illustration of room modes between two hard walls showing areas of reinforcement and cancellation. Courtesy of Wikipedia/Christophe Dang Ngoc Chan (cdang).
Second, every boundary surface in your room – walls, f!oor, ceiling, even large pieces of furniture – affects the sound in two ways. They reflect higher frequencies like a mirror reflects light, and they can also trap or reinforce lower frequencies, especially in corners where surfaces meet. Picture throwing a tennis ball in a racquetball court versus a carpeted room full of furniture. The ball’s behavior in these different spaces is similar to how sound waves behave.
Third, the first reflections that reach your ears after the direct sound from your speakers are crucial to how you perceive music. These early reflections, arriving within about 20 milliseconds of the direct sound, can either enhance or destroy your stereo imaging and soundstage. It’s like trying to have a conversation in a tiled bathroom versus a living room – the quick reflections in the bathroom make it harder to understand speech, while the more controlled reflections in the living room feel natural.
A well-designed dedicated listening room. Courtesy of GIK Acoustics.
In PS Audio’s new Listening Lab, while we started with an empty rectangular room, the speaker positions were somewhat predetermined by the room’s entrance door at one end. This actually helped us plan our acoustic treatment strategy. Using the Rule of Thirds (placing speakers approximately one-third of the room’s length from the front wall and one-third of the width from the side walls, a starting point that often yields good bass response and minimizes problematic room modes), we were able to make an educated guess about where the speakers would end up.
Once we knew the likely speaker positions, identifying the points of first reflections on the side walls became simple geometry. These points – where sound from each speaker first bounces off the side walls before reaching your ears – are critical spots for acoustic treatment. Think of sound waves like a billiard ball bouncing off a pool table’s rail – if you know where the speakers are and where you’ll be sitting, you can predict exactly where these reflections will occur. That’s where our first set of diffusers went, helping to scatter these early reflections rather than letting them arrive at our ears as a distinct echo that muddies the soundstage.
Understanding these principles helps explain why certain acoustic problems are universal while others are specific to your particular setup. For instance, room modes exist whether your speakers are in place or not, but early reflection points depend entirely on your speaker and listening positions. This brings us to our treatment strategy. If you’re working with an existing setup, you would first measure or observe your room’s current acoustic behavior; identify problems that affect your specific listening position; then implement treatments that address these issues while working within your room’s constraints. If you’re instead starting from scratch, you would first evaluate the room’s basic acoustic properties; establish a preliminary setup plan as to where the speakers and listening position will likely be as a basic starting point; implement basic treatments for universal problems; then finally fine-tune the treatment once your system is in place.
Remember, the goal isn’t to eliminate the room’s influence entirely – that would sound unnatural and lifeless. Instead, you want to control the room’s effect on your music, preserving the positive aspects of room acoustics while minimizing the problems that interfere with accurate reproduction.
We’ll continue this discussion in a future installment.
