splayed walls?

1. what is the difference between "splayed walls" and a non-parallel room? 2. what is the prefered angle for splayed walls? 3. excellent point about a larger space between isolating walls being better than many small layers. what is the conventional wisdom about turning that theoritical 1 foot space into perhaps 3 or 4 feet that could be used as a closet or even bathroom? thanks, jono

Splayed walls CREATE a non-parallel room, although CR's would add the need for symmetry about a plane running vertically between exact center of the front speaker L/R pair and running through the center of the mix engineer's head; Degree of splay depends on the purpose of splaying; 6 degree splay will nearly always kill flutter, but will NOT create a RFZ for mixing - in a live room, using different angles for each wall (no square corners) kills flutter, prevents parallel returns to source from square corners, and thus allows you to choose wall treatments based more on reverb time balance than on reflection problems. For RFZ (Reflection Free Zone) in a stereo CR, you need to use geometry to figure the angles that will exclude early reflections from each speaker back to the mix position; this will change depending on the position of the desk, speakers, and ears; it's also necessary to figure this for an elevation view, so your front walls/ceiling combine to keep early reflections from the ceiling back to the mix position... Steve