Weekly Q&A: Answers | Week of September 16, 2024

How to Start Improving My Room's Acoustics?

Question:

I want to improve the acoustics and setup of my room, but I’m not sure where to start. There is a lot of discussion of room ratios and acoustic treatment, but it is hard to put it all together…

Answer:

We will address this in a series because there are many steps to doing this well and each can be a bit complicated. We’ll assemble the final product into a complete document at the end. This won’t be the final word, but it will help, we hope.

Room Dimensions and Ratios

This is a common starting point, because some users will want to design a new room or modify an existing room.

It helps to start with the idea that your listening room has dimensions: length and width and height. To make this easy, we assume that the room is a rectangular box (if it isn’t, the math is much harder and you’ll have to or want to skip this and some other steps, or hire an expert).

The dimensions of a rectangular box room set the resonant points of the room. This is mainly an issue in the bass, below what…