The world of Home Audio is full of folk wisdom and myths.  My goal in this blog is to discuss those things which are true and demonstrable that will empower you to get as close to perfect performance in your listening room as possible.   

First though we need to have some physics on our side.

Truth #1:

Your listening room is the single largest contributor to the sound of your system.

The physical dimensions of your room establish the room modes or resonant frequencies that get excited in your listening room.  The obvious ones relate to room height, length and width.  In addition are the lengths completely around your room in all orientations which are called axial modes.

There are plenty of room mode calculators to be found with a Google or Yahoo search if you would like to know what your room modes are.  The rooms with the worst problems are rooms that have the same or nearly the same dimensions for more than one axis.  The worst rooms for acoustics are cubes.

When you get multiple room modes that have nearly the same resonant frequency it is almost impossible to get rid of those problem frequencies.

Hopefully you don't have a room like that.