I thought this up while reading the Audyssey thread that is heating up.

If our hearing has been honed over the ages due to self preservation and keen listening and threat positioning skills...

then why are we designing home theaters in rectangles.

Is it because movie theaters are in rectangles? Because sound technology was invented while we were living in rectangles?

We need to break out of this. I am building a man cave in a real cave.

Pity we came down from trees, not out from caves.

If I ever get to build a home theater room without restrictions; it won't be rectangular. It'll be more like the Axiom speaker enclosures. With the floor and ceiling sloping away from each other, along with the side walls. The front wall will be an arc.

No parallel surfaces.

Tell that to my mother.

the home theater in a tree idea has lots of merit. i think i might prefer that to a cave

First trees, then caves; but before both the ocean.

Gotta wonder if we really did live in caves all that much. Maybe just in France?

My tree was in a cave. I kept hitting my head. Stupid Pliocene period architects.

When we built our media room, we ended up having a broken ceiling and wall pattern such that we actually have a partly angled back wall and a similar wall section to the right hand side of the chairs in the upper ceiling corner.
The left side of the room was tempered with heavy curtains in front of the doors.
I've always thought the room had excellent sound, the best i've heard so far in comparison to others or other rooms in my present and past homes, but i have yet to setup and take measurements during a sweep. It might still be a bit bass heavy.

The room dimensions were originally put together with the Golden Ratio in mind.
http://www.cinemasource.com/articles/room_modes/modes.html

If the room's dimensions are of the golden ratio to each other, there will still be modes, but they won't be compounded. Non-parallel surfaces prevent modes all together.

I just got done framing my new HT... you're making me feel the need to tear it down and start over.

:P

Naw, Chris; for example, Dr. Toole, in Sound Reproduction at p. 203("Optimizing Room Shape and Dimensions")states: "A recurring fantasy about rooms is that if one avoids parallel surfaces, room modes cannot exist. Sadly, it is incorrect". In the following pages are computed pressure distributions in non-rectangular rooms, showing irregular patterns of high and low areas. He further comments(p.204)that "The real difference is that in rectangular rooms, the patterns can be predicted using simple calculations".

After I typed that, I started wondering what the pressure wave distribution would actually look like in a horn shaped room. It made my head spin a bit, and I did start to doubt that there'd be no ill effects at all.

So OK. Normal, boxy room with major dimensions that are not multiples of each other, and treat with bass traps. No more fantasies.