Perfectly-Shaped Listening Room Design Uses 2 Speakers To Accurately Reproduce Immersive Audio 360-Degrees Around Listener

Prior high-performance two-loudspeaker listening rooms have not fully integrated three essential components: the speakers, the listener, and the physical room shape. As a result, only a small portion of speaker output is heard in pristine quality.

Sound from speakers splits into DIRECT (“L” and “R” in Fig. 2) and INDIRECT components. Both begin acoustically pure, but become corrupted before reaching the listener due to design flaws in conventional rooms.

For reference, DIRECT sound travels in a straight line to the listener’s ears but becomes distorted by crosstalk (where sound from the left speaker reaches the right ear and vice versa) (“CL” and “CR” in Fig. 2) and off-timed reflections (cross directional lines in Fig. 1).

Fig. 1

INDIRECT sound—constituting the vast majority of speaker output—also contains valuable acoustic information, but is typically scattered uncontrolled around the room. INDIRECT sound becomes lost or damaged by off-timed sound fragments, frequency distortions, and interactions with room surfaces (collectively called Speaker-Room Interaction), leading to a degraded audio experience for the listener.

This 360-degree listening room design automatically solves and corrects these sound reproduction problems by synergistically integrating all three essential components – listener, speakers, and the physical shape of the room – into one acoustically optimized system. It delivers massive amounts of INDIRECT sound – acoustically pure from the speakers to the listener – significantly improving sound quality, spatial realism, and immersion.

Fig. 2

Eliminating Crosstalk and Speaker-Room Interaction

A. The design starts with the classic audiophile setup: two speakers and a single listener arranged in an isosceles triangle (Fig. 2). and symmetrically precision integrates it within the LEFT and RIGHT approximate elliptical-shaped listening room walls (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3

B. INDIRECT sound from the LEFT speaker is guided along the approximate elliptical LEFT wall, which reflects it in a controlled, time-aligned manner directly to the listener’s LEFT side (Figs. 3 and 4). This process maintains the acoustic purity of the sound.

Note the acoustical physics of the LEFT wall utilizes only the LEFT half of the approximate elliptical shape (Fig. 4).

C. The same reflection process is mirrored on the right side. Both sides then work in tandem, delivering synchronized and acoustically-pure INDIRECT sound in real time to the listener from both speakers (Figs. 3 and 4).

D. This INDIRECT sound merges with the smaller amount of DIRECT sound that reaches the listener (“L” and “R” in Fig. 2), resulting in a unified sound field of exceptional clarity and realism.

 Fig. 4

The key to this system is the approximate double-ellipse shape of the left and right walls which integrates seamlessly with the speaker-listener triangle. Together they provide powerful quanties of acoustically pure sound that:

1. Neutralizes crosstalk (“CL” and “CR” in Fig. 2) by overwhelming this small overlap of sound with a large quantity of now acoustically pure sound (Fig. 4).

2. Eliminates speaker-room interaction, cancelling and correcting the sound that would otherwise become inextricably lost, damaged and corrupted.

3. Makes speakers and walls acoustically “invisible”—the listener no longer perceives sound as originating from these sources.

4. Minimizes external noise and speaker spillover, enhancing focus for the listener and reducing disturbance for others nearby.

5. Works at scalable sizes with different sound reflective materials (Fig. 3)

6. Creates distraction-free and more focused listening, reduces outside-of-listening-room noises and blocks familiar room sights, helping the listener become immersed, much like in a darkened theater.

Fig. 5

7.    Provides universal compatibility with virtually all past, current, and future immersive stereophonic sound, including spatial music, video game, movie, and “surround sound” content, formats, and sources, with no upgrades, changes, or special electronics needed. Being electronically passive, acoustically active, and latency-free, it acoustically captures and hyper-controls sound only after it leaves the speakers, making it compatible even with future electronics and past legacy content reproduced with out-of-date electronics.

8. Generates a 360-degree hemispherical sound field accurately around the listener, where the listener can now clearly hear and point to each individual sound positioned around them in its exact 360-degree location—including overhead and moving sounds—as placed in the original content by the sound engineer (Figs. 6 and 7).

Fig. 6

Compare the sound positioning results of the below two listening rooms (Fig. 7) to a real sound field with individual sounds heard in their actual live locations (Fig.6 above).

Fig. 7

Summary and Evaluation

When comparing the acoustic results of this precision optimized 360-degree listening room (Figs. 4 and 6) to conventional designs (Fig. 6), the differences are striking. In contrast, the experience it delivers to the listener closely resembles real-life.

For over 100 years, this integrated system with its unexpected benefits have been essentially non-obvious to the stereophonic sound reproduction industry since the industry’s inception.    As a patented system, it should now be carefully evaluated and considered by the industry as an industry standard and the possible successful completion of stereophonic sound reproduction.