What would you do if this was your room?

[Haywood]

This is my living room. The brown boxes along the front wall are full height bookcases with glass doors. The brown boxes on the wall to the right of the sofa when facing the TV are 42" high bookcases with glass doors. The black cabinet directly in front of the couch is my gear cabinet and the 75" TV is hung directly above it. The large black box next to the couch is my subwoofer. The red boxes are all speakers. The ones behind the couch are sitting on the floor firing upward. The side surrounds are dipoles on stands. There is also a center channel on the gear cabinet under the TV. The large gray opening at the bottom is an open doorway. The others are windows. The room is 17.5' x 13.5'. The floor is hardwood. There is a throw rug between the sofa and the gear rock that spans the space between the front speakers.

Now for the $64 Million question: If this were YOUR room, what would you do differently?

 

[Flint]

1) take the glass doors off the bookcases to make them into diffusers
2) flip the room around so the bookcases are all behind the listener, move the side bookcase to the now empty spot between the other two
3) buy lots of acoustic absorbers for the wall behind the front speakers
4) place freestanding acoustic panels at the reflection points in the front side areas
5) paint the room Gray

 

[Zing]

^It's really hard to argue with any of this.

That said, alternative options would be:
a) True RTA the room as currently set up.
b) Rotate room setup 90 degrees to the left and run True RTA again.
c) compare and act accordingly.

Acoustic treatments are NOT a myth and worth every bit of effort and expense to incorporate them. I don't mean to imply they're expensive and difficult. They're not. But whatever cost there is and whatever work and effort is involved to get them in use, the gains are worth it and more. And don't overlook the ceiling.

 

[Botch]

I would move one of the longer "el Supra Lazy" sofa sections to the center sweet spot.

 

[Haywood]

It will be interesting to see what I can actually get away with trying.

I cannot rotate the room without blocking either the entryway or all of the windows. Given that it is a living room and not a dedicated space, that would just not work.

I might be able to move the bookcases from the front to the back. The challenge there is the width of the room. There is only 4.5 feet from the chaise portions of the movie lounger to the gear cabinet. If I move the book cases to the back, I would have to pull the couch forward about three feet, leaving a gap of less than two feet in front of the protruding sections of the sofa. That is the reason why I put the bookcases in the front. In Michigan, the room was deeper and I put them behind the couch. One possible work-around would be to reconfigure the couch to make it longer with a chaise on one end only. Moving the bookcases on the side of the room would make that work better and the couch would seat more people. On the other hand, my kids would hate not having a lounge on their side. This would also put the viewing position less than eight feet from the screen, although that is probably okay. The biggest problem is that I doubt I could get my wife to go for it, because it would make the room feel a lot smaller and more cluttered. If it was just me, I would probably do it.

 

[Haywood]

I moved some stuff around to see if rearranging the room was feasible. Unfortunately, it is not. The bookcases would completely block one of the windows and putting the short ones anywhere but in the middle would look weird. That wasn't the final nail though. The biggest problem is what happens to the room when you move the couch forward. The ONLY way it works is to take the chaise off the end near the door and use it to make the couch longer instead of deeper. That solves the problem of the one foot gap between the couch and the gear rack and the front speakers on the end of the room where it matters most. Unfortunately, moving the couch that far forward make the room feel very small and also renders it useless for anything but home theater (i.e. there is no way to bring in more seating for a gathering). It just isn't workable in a room that is also the main living room of a house.

The cool thing about this exercise is that I realized that I may not need as big a space as I thought to build a home theater once I finally do buy a house. If I can get by with a single row of seating, a room the size of the one I have would actually work. This is not something I really put much thought into before. I just sort of assumed I was going to need something at least 12 to 15 feet wide and 25-35 feet deep.

 

[Flint]

It is great to see you thinking openly about changes and future options.

Some simple guidelines:
- Symmetry is king: whatever is on the left should be mirrored on the right as best as possible
- Acoustics in the front prefer absorption
- Acoustics in the rear prefer diffusion
- All rooms benefit from first reflections being absorbed.