Wilson Audio WATCH Center Channel Series 1 - Manual (Page 34)

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R o o m S h a p e s
Standing waves are pressure waves propagated by the interaction of sound
and opposing parallel walls. This interaction creates patterns of low and high
acoustical pressure zones that accentuate and attenuate particular frequencies.
Those frequencies are dependent on room size and dimension.
There are three basic shapes for most rooms: square, rectangular, and L-
shaped (see Figure 5).
A perfectly square room is the most difficult room in which to set up speak-
ers. By virtue of its shape, a square room is the perfect medium for building and
sustaining standing waves. These rooms heavily influence the music played by
loudspeakers, greatly diminishing the listening experience.
Long, narrow, rectangular rooms also pose their own special acoustical prob-
lems for speaker setup. They have the ability to create several standing wave
nodes, which will have different standing wave frequency exaggerations depending
on where you are sitting. Additionally, these long rooms are often quite lean in the
bass near the center of the room. Rectangular rooms are still preferred to square
rooms because, by having two sets of dissimilar length walls, standing waves are
not as strongly reinforced and will dissipate more quickly than in a square room.
In these rooms, the preferred speaker position for spatial placement and midrange
resolution would be on the longer walls. Bass response would be reinforced by
speaker placement on the short walls.
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