Originally Posted by NutFlush
azazel,

first of all: I envy you for being able to turn such a big room into a HT! It surely is a lot of work (I know from own experience with my HT).

If I understood you correctly you are still in the process of remodeling the barn. Use this advantage well and consider reshaping the walls and ceiling!

Why that? Well, if your walls are parallel then sound gets reflected back and forth with standing waves building up (can be a BIG problem). You might want to google "standing waves" in connection with sub woofer placement and you'll find tons of information if necessary.

Next thing to consider is that if possible you may want to "tilt" all walls inwards, meaning the room gets wider behind you than in front of you with the walls being vertical. Also you might want to lower the ceiling in front of you and raise it behind you.

Of course you don't actually have to move the walls. You could put additional bricks etc. at the inside of the room. It would stay rectangular at the outside but be cone shaped inside.

Another important thing to consider are the room modes = length of the 3 main dimension (length, width, height). Again google "room modes" or "standing waves" and you will see that certain ratios of the 3 length values are really bad. My HT for example is as long as it is wide, which gives you standing bass waves of a certain frequency (depending of the exact measurements). It took me a lot of effort to eliminate that (placement of sub, building and placement of bass trap, using an equalizer to filter out a tight frequency band).

I wish you good luck with your project. Please upload a few pictures as I am sure there are more folks than just me interested.

Thomas

Hi Thanks for your thoughts. Do you think that the soft walls and ceiling that I am building will still have standing wave reflecting back and forth? I thought that the studds and ceiling joists with the rockwool between them would make a good non reflective and refractive room. I will have carpet on the floors and refractors on the walls to scatter sound. One end of the barn (the screen and main speaker end) may be curved with really thick rockwool walls covered in fabric.

Its looking like I will have a 568 and four 557 amps. One each for frontleft, right and center, and one for rear left and right. Does anyone bother with side left and rights?

BTW, Im looking for a nautilus htm1, the three way center speaker B&W used to make.

B&W N802, Nhtm1 2xM.805, 2xM.htm, 2xASW4000, Meridian 568, 502, 504, 508, 5x557, VDH Revolution & D102mk3 XLR cables.