# room set up / wide ? or deep?



## rselby (Feb 8, 2012)

I have bought a home that has a room that Im gonna use as my theater, its 24 x 18 x 9 to 10( roof ).... so which is it better to have use the 24' as the width or use the 18 ' as my width ?:help:


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## nova (Apr 30, 2006)

I'd set up on the 18' wall myself. A widely held belief is the the perfect acoustic room ratio is; width should be 1.6 times the height and the length should be 2.6 times the room height.


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## willis7469 (Jan 31, 2014)

+1. I've had set ups on long and short walls, and the short wall has always worked better. One advantage is by setting up on the short wall, you can take advantage of the room length to get the seating off the back wall. This also leaves room for better surround speaker placement. With seating on the back wall, the bass will be boomy, muddy, obnoxious, and hard to tame. Surround speakers will have to be on the rear plane(instead of slightly behind), and you'll never have room for rear surrounds if you choose to go 7.x. (Heights notwithstanding). I would use the 18' wall.


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## Tonto (Jun 30, 2007)

+2, put the screen on the 18 foot wall & move the rear seats off the back wall. If you can, build a false wall for the screen. That way you can better position the speakers behind it. Can you post a picture of the room?


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## rselby (Feb 8, 2012)

I will get some pics tonight , my seating is in the mid of room now but the pics will show ( gonna get some dark paint on the walls and roof 1st, its a lil crude now, thanks for all the input so far :bigsmile:


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## rselby (Feb 8, 2012)

Pix


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## Tonto (Jun 30, 2007)

Your pix's aren't showing. :dontknow:


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## brwsaw (Feb 19, 2014)

rselby said:


> I have bought a home that has a room that Im gonna use as my theater, its 24 x 18 x 9 to 10( roof ).... so which is it better to have use the 24' as the width or use the 18 ' as my width ?:help:



If you want 2 or more rows longer would be better.
The width is nice, it will allow you to place treatments without worrying about the loss of the floor space.
If I had the extra three feet (24 instead of 21) I'd frame up a projection room/partition to drop the noise floor even further.


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## rselby (Feb 8, 2012)

yeah pics didn't upload, will try to do it again


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## rselby (Feb 8, 2012)

Guess I will have to resize the pics , then upload them , anyway only need 1 row of seats ( maybe doing 2 love seats side by side ) just want the best performance , still gotta get room painted ( and celings painted too ) will make it so I can switch between the 2 types of set ups


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## Lumen (May 17, 2014)

rselby said:


> Guess I will have to resize the pics , then upload them , anyway only need 1 row of seats ( maybe doing 2 love seats side by side ) just want the best performance , still gotta get room painted ( and celings painted too ) will make it so I can switch between the 2 types of set ups


Moving listening positions changes the sound quality you worked so hard for. For the same EQ settings, the back seats will suffer the most. By shoving the once side-by-side sofa into the middle, one or two of the listening positions might actually stay the same. Many people don't care about the sound quality, so you may be able to get by with that. Keep the best seat for yourself :innocent:

OR... if your AVR can store different setups, you're good to go. Whatever you decide, keep the center channel high enough so that the back row has a direct line-of-sight. That will make sure they'll be able to at least hear the dialogue. Good luck!


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