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. Previous installments in this series on room treatment appeared in Issue 219 and Issue 218.
Setting Up an Empty Room
For those who are starting with an empty room, or having just completed construction on a new one, this section about room treatment is for you. There’s something uniquely exciting about standing in an empty space and imagining the possibilities it holds for musical reproduction. I remember the first time I walked into what would become PS Audio’s main listening room. Empty walls, bare floor, nothing but possibility. That blank canvas allowed us to create something special, but only because we took the time to understand what we were working with before we started adding equipment.
Unlike the previous sections where we worked to improve an existing setup, here we’re starting at the very beginning, before a single speaker or piece of equipment enters the room. This approach is actually my favorite because it gives us the greatest chance of success. Think of it like building a house – you wouldn’t start hanging pictures before understanding the foundation, and we won’t start adding acoustic treatments before understanding our room’s basic acoustic nature.
Over my fifty years in audio, I’ve helped create a number of listening rooms, and I’ve learned that the biggest mistakes often happen in the first few steps. People get excited (and who can blame them?) and rush to set up their systems without first understanding their room’s fundamental acoustic characteristics. It’s like trying to tune an instrument without first knowing if it’s even capable of holding that tune.
What we’re going to do is create an acoustic map of your empty room. This map will reveal the room’s natural behaviors – its resonances, its nulls, its sweet spots – before we add any variables like speakers or furniture. This baseline understanding is absolutely crucial. It will guide every decision you make, from where to place your speakers to where to sit, from what treatments might be needed to where they should go. I’ve seen rooms that looked perfect on paper turn out to have surprising challenges, and rooms that seemed problematic reveal themselves to be acoustic gems. You just never know until you measure. The beautiful thing about starting from scratch is that we can work with these characteristics rather than fight them.
Think of your empty room as an instrument waiting to be played. Just as every violin has its own unique voice, every room has its own acoustic signature. Some rooms naturally emphasize certain frequencies. Others create dead spots. Some have flutter echoes that can actually be useful when properly managed. Understanding these characteristics before you bring in your equipment is like knowing the personality of your instrument before you start to play it.
In my experience, this initial mapping process often reveals opportunities we might have missed if we’d rushed straight to setup. Maybe that troublesome corner that would typically need heavy bass trapping could become the perfect spot for your speakers. Perhaps that seemingly awkward room dimension might actually help break up standing waves. You won’t know these things unless you take the time to understand your room’s basic nature first.
What we’re about to do isn’t just about finding problems; it’s about discovering possibilities. This foundation of knowledge will inform every decision you make as you build your listening space. It’s like having a detailed map before starting a journey – you might still take some detours, but you’ll always know where you’re heading.
Orienting Your System
Before we take a single measurement or bring in any equipment, let’s start with the most fundamental decision of all – how to orient your system in the room. In PS Audio’s new listening room, we have a relatively simple rectangular space measuring 33 by 22 feet with 10-foot ceilings. With only one entrance to consider, we’re already ahead of the game, since we won’t want visitors walking into the back of the speakers.
This brings us to one of the most critical decisions in room setup: whether to fire the speakers down the long dimension of the room or across the shorter width. While both approaches can work, my experience strongly favors using the longer dimension. When we set up along the 22-foot wall and fire down the 33-foot length, we gain several significant advantages. First, we get more space for the sound to develop before it hits the back wall. Those lower frequencies, with wavelengths measuring many feet, benefit tremendously from this extra breathing room. Bass notes can fully form before their first reflection, leading to cleaner, more defined low-frequency response.
Firing down the long dimension.
Firing Down the Long Dimension
Additionally, firing down the long dimension gives us more flexibility with speaker placement. The wider 22-foot wall allows us to experiment with speaker spacing without being constrained by room boundaries. This extra width often helps achieve that elusive disappearing act where the speakers seem to vanish, replaced by a coherent soundstage.
Setting up across the shorter dimension, while possible, often creates more challenges than it solves. When speakers Fire across the 22-foot length, that first reflection from the back wall arrives too quickly, potentially muddying the sound. You might also find yourself more limited in terms of speaker placement options, especially if you’re working with larger speakers that need room to breathe. Think of it like taking a photograph. Would you rather shoot a landscape through a narrow window or have a wide-open vista? The longer room dimension gives your sound that wide-open space to develop naturally. It’s like giving your music a bigger canvas to paint on.
In our example room, the choice becomes even clearer when we consider the single entrance. By setting up along the 22-foot wall, we create a natural pathway into the room that doesn’t interfere with the listening experience. Visitors can enter and move to either side without disrupting the critical space between and behind the speakers.
This setup also typically allows for better seating arrangements. With 33 feet of depth, we have plenty of room to experiment with listening distance. The general rule of thumb suggesting speakers and listening position form an equilateral triangle becomes much easier to achieve without feeling cramped or compromised.
Listening Lab Layout
The Listening Lab layout.
Of course, every room has its own personality, and there might be specific circumstances where firing across the shorter dimension makes more sense. But in this case, with our rectangular 33-by-22-foot room, firing down the long dimension gives us the best foundation for creating an exceptional listening space. Once we’ve made this fundamental decision, we can move on to taking our baseline measurements with confidence that we’re building on solid ground.
Let me explain when you might choose the shorter wall, though it’s rarely the optimal choice. There are really only two compelling reasons to break from the long-wall approach. The first is simple physics – if your room’s narrow dimension is less than 14 feet, you might be forced to use the short wall simply because you need adequate width for proper speaker separation. Great stereo imaging requires speakers to be spaced apart properly, typically 6 to 8 feet minimum, with room to breathe on either side. When you’re dealing with a narrow room, setting up on the short wall might be your only option for achieving this spacing.
The second reason is purely aesthetic or practical. Perhaps your room serves multiple purposes and the long-wall setup would interfere with traffic patterns or furniture arrangements. Maybe your significant other has strong feelings about how the room should look, or there’s a beautiful picture window you don’t want to block. These real-world considerations sometimes trump acoustic ideals.
But unless you’re faced with one of these situations, the long-wall setup is almost always superior. Sound waves, especially bass frequencies, need space to develop properly. When you fire down the longer dimension, you’re giving those waves more room to form and dissipate naturally. Think about a bass note at 40 Hz – its wavelength is about 28 feet! By firing down the longer dimension, you’re allowing that wave to fully develop before it hits the back wall.
The long-wall approach typically provides better options for dealing with room modes and standing waves. You have more flexibility in positioning both speakers and listening seat to avoid problematic room nodes. It’s like having a larger canvas to work with – you can fine-tune positions more precisely when you have more space to play with. This setup also typically results in better soundstage development. The additional space behind the speakers allows for better depth perception, while the wider wall permits more optimal speaker separation. This combination often creates that magical disappearing act where the speakers seem to vanish, replaced by a three-dimensional soundstage.
Think of it like choosing where to sit in a concert hall. Would you rather be closer to the performers with ample space behind them for the sound to develop, or would you prefer to be far off to the side where the acoustic space is compressed? The long-wall setup gives you that ideal front-row-center perspective, with the sound developing naturally in the space before you. So while there can be legitimate reasons to choose the short wall, they’re exceptions rather than the rule. Unless space constraints or practical considerations force your hand, the long-wall setup provides the best foundation for creating an exceptional listening space. It’s one of those fundamental decisions that affects everything else in your room setup, so it’s worth getting right from the start.
Deciding Where to Place Everything
Now that we’ve chosen which wall our speakers will fire across, we’re faced with what might seem like an overwhelming challenge: where exactly should we place the speakers and listening chair in this empty canvas of a room? After half a century of setting up stereo systems, I can tell you that this decision will make or break your sound quality. But don’t worry; there’s a simple solution that’s served audiophiles well for decades.
Before we dive into the specifics, let me be clear: what we’re about to do is create a temporary layout, a starting point from which we’ll fine-tune based on measurements and listening tests. Think of it as sketching the rough outline before painting the masterpiece. I always keep a roll of blue painter’s tape in my setup toolkit for exactly this purpose. It’s gentle on floors, removes easily, and gives us clear visual markers to work with. Some folks prefer masking tape, which is fine too—just avoid anything that might damage your floors or leave residue.
Start by measuring your room’s dimensions and doing some quick math to find those third points [as we'll explain below]. Then, place small pieces of tape on the floor to mark where the center of each speaker will go, and another piece to indicate where your listening chair will sit. If you’re working with larger speakers, you might want to cut tape outlines that match your speaker footprints; this can be especially helpful when you start the fine-tuning process. Don’t forget to mark the center point between the speakers too; this will help ensure everything stays symmetrical.
Remember, we’re not moving any heavy equipment yet; we’re just creating a map on the floor. This preliminary step might seem overly cautious, but trust me, it’s much easier to adjust tape marks than to repeatedly move heavy speakers around your room. I can’t tell you how many times this simple technique has saved my time – and my back – over the years.
The Rule of Thirds
This elegant solution (for speaker placement) emerged in the 1960s when audio pioneers like Edgar Villchur of Acoustic Research and Roy Allison of Allison Acoustics were wrestling with the challenges of room acoustics. They discovered, through extensive measurements and listening tests, that certain speaker positions consistently produced better sound. The Rule of Thirds wasn’t just pulled out of thin air – it was born from careful observation of how sound waves behave in rectangular rooms.
The concept gained widespread recognition in the 1970s and ’80s through the writings of influential audio journalists. Harry Pearson, the legendary founder of The Absolute Sound magazine, became one of its strongest advocates, regularly referencing it in his famous equipment reviews and setup guides. Other notable champions included J. Gordon Holt of Stereophile, who wrote extensively about room acoustics and speaker placement, and Peter Aczel of The Audio Critic, who approached it from a more technical perspective. These writers didn’t just promote the Rule of Thirds; they helped demystify it for audiophiles worldwide, turning complex acoustic principles into practical advice that anyone could follow.
Julian Hirsch of Stereo Review, though often at odds with the subjective review camp, also acknowledged the importance of careful speaker placement, and frequently referenced the Rule of Thirds in his technical measurements and reviews. Even Bert Whyte, the pioneering audio journalist who wrote for Audio magazine and was known for his early advocacy of quadraphonic sound, recognized the fundamental importance of proper speaker placement in stereo reproduction, and often cited the Rule of Thirds as a reliable starting point. Their collective wisdom, backed by both laboratory measurements and countless hours of critical listening, helped establish the Rule of Thirds as a cornerstone principle of high-end audio setup. What had started as an engineering solution became a widely accepted standard through their educational efforts and real-world experience.
The classic Rule of Thirds.
The Classic Rule of Thirds
The concept is beautifully simple: divide your room into thirds in both length and width. Place your speakers about one-third of the room’s length from the front wall, and space them apart by about one-third of the room’s width. For example, in a room that’s 24 feet long and 15 feet wide, your speakers would sit about 8 feet from the front wall and be spaced about 5 feet in from each side wall. But why does this work so well? The answer lies in the physics of standing waves. When sound waves bounce between parallel surfaces, they create patterns of reinforcement and cancellation. These standing waves occur at predictable intervals based on the room’s dimensions. The one-third points turn out to be positions where these standing waves are at their most manageable; they’re not at the peaks or nulls where bass frequencies would be severely emphasized or canceled out.
Think of it like jumping rope. If you’re at the ends of the rope, the motion is minimal. If you’re in the middle, the motion is maximum. But at the one-third points, you find a more balanced position. Sound waves behave similarly in your room.
The same principle applies to your listening position. Place your chair about two-thirds of the way back from the front wall (or one-third from the back wall, if you prefer to think of it that way). This creates what we call a “golden triangle” between you and your speakers. In an ideal setup, the distance between the speakers should be roughly the same as the distance from each speaker to your ears, forming an equilateral triangle.
The historical significance of the Rule of Thirds goes beyond just speaker placement. It represents one of the first systematic attempts to understand and control room acoustics in home audio. Before this, speaker placement was largely guesswork. When the aforementioned Roy Allison published his groundbreaking research in the 1970s, it revolutionized how we think about speaker-room interactions. His work showed that room boundaries dramatically affect speaker performance, particularly in the bass region, and the Rule of Thirds emerged as a practical solution to these challenges.
Is this the absolute perfect position for every room? Of course not. Rooms come in different shapes and sizes, and they all have their own acoustic personalities. But the Rule of Thirds gives us an excellent starting point from which we can Fine-tune. Think of it as getting the big rocks in an aquarium in place first; we can adjust the pebbles later. In my experience, you’ll often find that the final optimal position isn’t far from these third points.
What makes the Rule of Thirds so valuable is its universal applicability. Whether you’re setting up a modest system in a small room or a state-of-the-art system in a dedicated listening space, these proportions provide a reliable foundation. They work because they’re based on fundamental acoustic principles that don’t change with room size or speaker quality. The beauty of starting with the Rule of Thirds is that it gives us a systematic approach to what could otherwise be an overwhelming task. Instead of randomly moving speakers around the room hoping to stumble upon good sound, we have a proven foundation to build upon. And believe me, after setting up thousands of systems over the years, having this starting point can save you hours of frustration.
In my early days at PS Audio, I used to spend countless hours trying to find the perfect speaker position by ear alone. When I finally learned about the Rule of Thirds, it was like someone had handed me a map after I’d been wandering in the dark. Now, whenever I’m setting up a new system, I always start with these proportions. They rarely let me down.
