The Home Theater Calculator is one free online tool for finding the best layout in the space of a home theater or studio system.
The Home Theater Calculator offers an interactive layout design of audiovisual systems in a room, which you can use to calculate ideal distances for screen placement, speaker placement (2.0 or 5.0 channels) and sound reflections. The free program uses the official instructions of SMPTE and THX to help you find the best distances for sofa and equipment for your room.
The Home Theater Calculator uses a 3D design environment and gives you a virtual room. Unfortunately it uses dimensions in feet, but we imagine you can convert them to SI European meters system in US feet. Roughly 1 meter equals 3,3 feet.
You can set custom dimensions of your room in feet and then use the different positions of your machines and sofa and it will show you if these are optimal. After submitting them information for your room, simply use the sliders to create the perfect measurements.
The program is an open source tool and you can run it locally on your computer. Alternatively, you can use it from here.
Way of use:
The first thing you need to do is determine the dimensions of your room. Uses legs as unit, so specify the length and width.
Now you configure the speakers and monitor. Here you basically need to specify the screen diagonal, its aspect ratio and the speaker channels (2.0 or 5.0). As you specify these parameters, the devices in the device will be ready for customization.
You can either use the sliders to adjust the distance of the sofa from the TV or the speakers from the back wall. Alternatively, you can use drag-drop to move the speakers and sofa directly on the chart. Continue adjusting the distances until you receive the THX Recommended or the SMPTE Recommended in the "Field of View".
When you get it, it means you've calculated the perfect layout, and then you can note down the dimensions for the wall distance and television and properly set up the home cinema in your room.
On the main site, there are detailed video instructions and texts, from which you can read for advanced use.
