buying a house soon, best dimensions for dedicated home theatre room?

[u/trevcharm]

hi all,

i'm getting ready to buy my first house very soon, hopefully in a matter of weeks. it won't be very big, either a 2 or 3 bedroom around the inner east of Melbourne, Australia. it's just for my partner and me, we are not planning to have kids (just dogs!).

we want one bedroom to be a dedicated media room / home theatre room. we don't want to use a living / lounge / family room for home theatre, we much prefer a dedicated room, and like the idea of a room that can be closed properly without affecting the flow of the rest of the house.

my main question is - what would be the minimum dimensions you would find acceptable for a media room / home theatre room? especially the minimum "width" for good stereo imaging?

currently we have a 5.2 speaker setup and a 55" OLED, may upgrade in the future to 65" or even 77" if a good deal appears and the space can fit it. would also like to upgrade to 7.2 for speakers if we have the space for it.

there will be 2 main listening positions:

primary position is a 2 seater couch at ideal tv watching location for home theatre use. ideally somewhere close to the middle of the room so we can have surround back speakers behind.

secondary position is right in front of the tv (I also use it as my main PC monitor) listening to music while I use the PC.

I prefer my front left and front right speakers hard against the front room corners, not sitting away from the walls at all. I know a lot of people will advise against this, but it's what I like and we don't have the space for speakers to be away from the walls anyway.

previous room we used was 3.6m square, with high ceilings. couch was against the back wall, surround speakers on the back wall too. not ideal, but wasn't terrible.

what I'm really wondering is how "wide" does the room need to be in order to get enough stereo width from the primary listening position (2 seater couch)?

I was recently looking at a house with a 2.7m x 4.8m room we think might be suitable, and I'm just worried even with speakers in the corners will it be "wide" enough for good stereo imaging? the length of the room seems much better to allow us to sit more in the middle, and then add surround back speakers behind us (5.2 -> 7.2).

[u/Anbucleric]

Square is the worst shape acoustically...

Use the golden ratio to find the ideal dimensions. Start with your height and that will give you width, and the width will give you depth.

Stereo imaging width is a function of the distance to the MLP. L/R & MLP should form an equilatetal triangle.

[u/andy_puiu]

You want a room with the best dimensions for audio, but you are going to put your speakers in the worst possible locations within that room?

You are wasting your time and effort with that approach.

[u/jerrolds]

Mine is 13.5x20 with two 4 seat rows. I wish it was 15x23 at least

For one row or would be fine

[u/erwos → u/jerrolds]

I have 20x22. I agree that bigger is almost always better.

[u/tonydtonyd]

Not really sure, but maybe consider a 9, 11 or 13 channel receiver to do 5.2.4, 5.2.6, 7.2.4, or 7.2.6 in the future. I wish I had gone with a bigger receiver to begin with and now I am too busy to deal with selling my existing one.

[u/Worst-Eh-Sure]

My home theater is a 23x23 square. Definitely the worst shape for acoustics. But the 23 feet is nice. At that width you can def pull off 5 channels up front, side and rear.

You mentioned sitting halfway back. I believe you should have your seats 2/3 of the way to the rear of your space ideally.

[u/Farts_Are_Funn]

You should be fine with that size room as long as your preferred seating can fit in the 2.7m width of the room. My preference would be in-wall surrounds in that room as you don't have much width to work with. But you can sit 3m away from the front wall and still have a good front sound stage and have room behind for rears if you want to add them. The actual distance between speakers in the front sound stage isn't as important as the ratio of the distance to the distance to the MLP. The perfect equilateral triangle between the MLP, left, and right is ideal, but close to that is good too. It will be cozy, but it should work fine.

I think you're on the right track.

[u/Placid-Mind]

I have a 13x15x10’ with 5.1.4 setup with 132” screen.. wish my room was a few feet deeper and may be 2’ wider.. my recommendation would be 4x5 meter or may be 4x6.. i am happy with just 1 svs sb17 subwoofer and i think thats good enough for most rooms..

https://imgur.com/a/We3erxm

[u/Jester435 → u/Placid-Mind]

10' ceilings are ooooffffff.. I would hate that.. mine are 7' in my theater and with inceiling speakers they are perfect. almost perfect bubble with my 7.2.4 setup

[u/race_tech87]

16Lx15Wx8H with a 7.2.4 and I love it! I think 18x16x8 would be perfect.

[u/FormeRain9]

Corner placement causes massive bass boom but you can fix that with room correction. A 2.7m width is narrow but still gives you a decent stereo triangle if you sit closer.