It is like tuning a guitar to a major chord, the side walls become the strings and the end walls are the bridge and tailpiece. The sound confronts the entire surface of the end walls at the same time, rather than progressively as with height and width. They deliver pure left channel to your left ear, and pure right channel to your right ear. The progression of size at the ends of the room is a area relationship. When you wear headphones, the loss-of-stereo-separation effect described above completely disappears, and you get full stereo separation across the entire audio spectrum, because the headphones totally isolate the ears from each other. 1.272 is the square root of 1.618 or Golden Ratio. The ratio of front height or width, to rear height or width, is 1.272 to 1. When trying to recreate a musical experience, one of the many criteria that people will quantify subjectively is stage. In the example above, the ceiling height would be 12.72 feet. The cross-section area at the rear of the room is 1.618 times the cross-section of the front. The relationship between the height and the width of the room, at any point, is Golden Ratio. This decay is exponential, or higher, at all frequencies. I just don't see a person finding much directional information at 100hz in music for example unless you mix it way off to the side. Directionality is poor with low bass so why bother with stereo. The “sound” of this room is a decaying hologram of the original, not a slap. You can localize above 70hz depending, but stereo separation I doubt it matters much until up in the midbass area or more. The trick to a Golden Trapagon shaped room is it eliminates the problem of parallel walls and the slap and sharp nodes associated with them. Ideally, the rear portion of this room would vent into an attic space filled with fiberglass insulation.

You will be able to hear a center focused voice clarify when the sweet spot is hit.įor example, if the wall behind the speakers is 10 feet x 16 feet, the room would then be 26 feet long and the wall behind the listener would be 13 feet x 21 feet. Box speakers generally require a bit more toe-in than planear speakers. This can be done by ear and usually a 1/4 to 1/2 inch tweak will do. Once the speakers are set as close to perfect as possible, you must angle them slightly toward the listening position. The importance of symmetrical speaker placement in a small room cannot be over emphasized. It does not refer to the room in any way.

The near field listening position is determined by the “center to center” distance of the speakers and the distance to the listener’s head. It is frequently used in the recording studio to position the microphones and the voice in the mix. Near field listening gives the perfect stereo field. In the near field position the speakers and the listener’s head are the points of an equilateral triangle. Final focusing can be done from the near field position (Diagram B)

Placing speakers in this manner will set all the nodes in Golden progression. The Near Field Listening Position and final focus For those who must know more…

What is stereo separation