What the planner calculates
- Floor area and room volume — useful for judging whether a room is small, medium or large for tower speakers. We classify rooms under 150 sq ft as small, 150–300 sq ft as medium and above 300 sq ft as large.
- A starting listening position — if you don’t enter one, we use the popular “38% rule” of thumb, placing the seat about 38% of the room length from the back wall. It is a starting point, not a law.
- Speaker spacing and wall distances — aiming for an equilateral triangle between the two speakers and your seat, while leaving space to the side walls.
Why room size isn’t everything
Two rooms with the same floor area can sound completely different. Hard floors and bare walls reflect sound; sofas, rugs, curtains and bookshelves absorb and scatter it. Room proportions create resonances (“room modes”) that boost or cancel certain bass notes at certain seats. That’s why every suggestion here should be fine-tuned by listening — moving speakers a few inches at a time — or with a measurement microphone.