Best lighting for an audio room

One candle is plenty..No more..Darker the better!

My system sounds best in natural light on a bright sunny day.

I guess your'e probably right about the dimmer switches. Aside from that, I like either dim wall lighting or dim lamp lighting. Sometimes I like the feeling I get from lighting the torchieres I have behind each speaker. It is a soft up-lighting. I have been to listening rooms in homes and high end stores that have overhead track lighting, or other types of ceiling lights, and I find it glaring and really unpleasant.

Here is what I do,

Get a string of christmas lights, all white, and the smallest you can find. Place them around the rear permineter of your rack. Tape them down. If they are too bright, wrap some brown duck tape around each light to cast a low level dim light. Trust me...it looks great. Indirect lighting that adds a nice warm glow from the rear...and does not effect tv viewing if you have a screen on the wall.

" If they are too bright, wrap some brown duck tape around each light to cast a low level dim light. Trust me."

After following that advice , I would invest heavily in smoke detectors... trust me!

Ya listen with the lights off, right? I do.

When I redid my living room into a dedicated listening room (see some of my threads on just this topic) I finally went off for a track lighting rig. 50w baby spots that are directional. Naturally on a track, each one is moveable too. Washing the walls with light seems the neatest trick. Scallops of light along the perimeter of the room adds to the amount of light in the room or can change the temperature and mood of the lighting itself. The mistake I made was choosing the color. It’s not a bad one but in the end could have been better chosen if I had gone with black instead of white. My traditional roots and conservative nature preempted me making that move. Thankfully, the hardware is antique bronze with translucent antique white bells/globes. There are eight lamps for the track. I use six. The track follows the perimeter of the room standing off the walls by 18 inches it’s a very nice effect at any lighting level and the levels can be adjusted almost infinitely..

I use a Lutron remote control dimmer.

If the gear is all truly balanced throughout, the dimmer has no effect, as mine is all SE, there is a minimal amount of noticeable noise at no volume when the lights are at less than full on. When off, it’s dead quiet. So I prefer at any length to run in the dark so to speak, for at that time the dimmer is of no real consequence.

I chose too, standard powered lighting, not low voltage. My understanding of that choice was made in one of those threads of mine I pointed too above as a better choice. The bulbs though ain’t cheap at $8 a pop… hopefully none will. After about a year they’re still all good.

I’ll be covering the ceiling with some quite dark acoustic wall paper later on. Which should help the audio and make the lighting become more a visual statement. The whole affair to this point with the electrician installation ran me a bit under $1600.

My main regret is not getting the curtains covering the fixed on wall 116” in. screen motorized. That was another almost $2K. For $2K, I’ll do it myself.

Tubes! Lots of orange glowing tubes...

Entrope beat me to it, I also recommend tubes!

I have over 40 tubes in my system and my big power tubes glow nice and bright in the dark.

It's pretty well known that audiophiles like to sit in the dark so we can watch our equipment glow.

Tube equipment vendors get to save money and have audio sex appeal by not enclosing their devices tubes in a box so you get to see those pretty tubes as well as listen to them!

And of course, our systems sound so good that we NEVER fall asleep while listening in the dark, right?

Also, the EM fields associated with light could be interacting with our electronics, so best to listen at night or to pull the shades during the day!

SAme true of gamma rays and neutrinos from outer space, but unfortunately we cannot see those and neutrinos penetrate most everything anywhoo.

When I was a kid, I built a Radio Shack "Color Organ" kit, remember those? You connected to the b speaker terminals of you amp and it produced a flickering light show choreographed by the audio signal. No joke!

Just enough for you to get around without knocking anything over!

Try the newest LED (No, not the rope stuff).

It's now operational on a dimmer switch. Can provide both task and ambiant lighting. I own a design firm and we have begun employing LED in an important way.

Wonderful effect when set behind one's equipment stacks.

Expensive but it will last and last.

Two words...........lava lamp!

Thanx, Russ

Christmas lights do not put out enough heat to warrant a smoke alarm.