Do you prefer tidy room to messy one with better sound?

I personally could not stand a messy, cluttered listening environment-too distracting. My favourite rooms I see on this forum’s systems pages are the simple, well laid out minimalist (but veeery high quality) systems. My least favourite are the “gear temples” which I can only consider to be audio equipment collectors at best or hoarders at worst. Does anyone REALLY need 3 reel to reels and 4 turntables?

There are three reasons that I got tangled wires.

First, I had added four isolation transformers which made sound more refined and detailed.

Second, I had ended up three parallel lines of IC and Speaker cables which also improved SQ lot.

Third I ended up using Hugo Mscaler to Chord Dave Dac which also require double BNC digital cables.

Now overall system looks messy with tangled wires.

But if you close your eyes, it sound much more detailed , dynamic and refined than 18 months ago.

My room is only my audio room....Without money, and with only low cost homemade tweaks this room look messy...But even my wife that dont like this room said that the sound is incredible...I vouch that with big money my audio room will look gorgeous like on some virtual systems photos... But  the sound I get is absolutely not messy...And the price paid around 1000 dollars including all tweaks +audio system (excluding the trials and errors upgrade stuff and non essential materials) is so low that nobody here will trust his own ears listening to my system...


I discovered in my messy room that ALL audio system that are already relatively good are better, way better than we think; we underestimated what we have and spend money on new electronic components, instead of addressing, the vibrations-resonance controls, the acoustical treatment of the room, the electrical embedding of the system in the room and in the house, and others simple tweaks to decrease the noise floor...


My room is messy, the sound is not...

I think that we would all agree that no one appreciates a "messy" room, as messy implies untidy, dirty, and items oriented in a nonsensical manner. 

In a common living area, I appreciate a more minimalist approach and in some instance, style and decor trumps performance.  In my dedicated room, the equipment is well organized, room acoustic and tweaks are employed, multiple sources are utilized, and there is no doubt, this is an audio specific room for the sole purpose of music reproduction.  In this situation, performance trumps style and decor.  I guess it all comes down to one's priority.

Feng shui is for audiophiles, too. Old newspapers, magazines, books, all types of media, from CDs to LPs to DVDs and many other things like pictures of birds of prey or combat fighters, lions, tigers and bears - they all hurt the sound. Think of the brain 🧠 as a transceiver sensitive to many types of information. Yes, I know what you’re thinking, are you out of mind?

A messy room is the sign of an organized mind. - old wives tale

I'll never be fastidious when it comes to my man caves.  I have LPs scattered about, far from their appointed shelves.  I have a pile of stereo magazines within easy reach. Wires and cables festoon the floor.  There's the music stand with music on it.  My quote-unquote coffee table is an empty cardboard moving box that once housed some of my CDs.  Yeah, I'm a bad, bad boy...sorry, old man.

I need my room to be neat or I can't relax and enjoy the music.Well...If I turn the lights off and have a couple of drinks I can manage it:-)

There is one positive aspect to clutter in a listening room. It acts as diffusion and can actually make the room sound better. For non treated rooms of course.

It is going to be best to have a tidy room which sounds well.

But in reality, with so many tweaks. cables applied, it is not easy to organize it in tidy look.

That is so true!

I'm so non-neurotic about decor, despite the fact all my electronic components are modestly black, I bought a silver-cased Mytek BB simply because it was slightly cheaper.  I gotta say, too, that it actually livens up what is otherwise a glumly poker-faced equipment rack.

Overly sterile typically sounds that way
but my pet peeve is the forest of gear as trip hazards right in front of the turntable....

also, gear rack off to side is preferred.

OP what a lovely space you have up on the 3rd floor- how nice!!!!

@geoffkait  gosh now that you mention it my framed litho of an Eagle morphing into a F-22 hanging above the Revox B-77 must be causing that edge I hear now and then....

I put a Lockheed mug in the freezer and it went away.... something about twin paired photons...

I would rather have tidy and poorer sound . Mess makes me miserable. 

My brother stayed the night over the weekend, so I set up a tall queen size air mattress between the couch and floor standers. Next day before cleaning up, I was amazed at how much better the bass sounded. Immediately thinking “how can I get away with leaving the mattress where it is?”  Finally decided to put the bed up. Then the party was over. ☹️

Come on.  We all know a newly washed car goes faster, is quieter, gets at least 2 mpg better.  Make mine neat (tidy).  Even visual distractions well, distract from the acoustic.

I tried hanging a picture in my main view, lit room, compared to a blank space in semi-dark room.  To me, the latter sounds better.  Could be like the sight impaired have better audio sensitivity. 

Luckily I live in Alaska so theres lots of prime listening time. 

"Of all lies mysteries,  
 the greatest one I've seen,
 my short runs better, 
 when it's clean"
 ---Paul Williams
 
I agree that a cleaner room is preferable to a cluttered room, but sometimes you get both and the amazing thing is, it all sounds good.

@shkong78, as nice as your place looks and with that portion of your house dedicated to your system, I wouldn't worry.

All the best,
Nonoise

the OPs room doesnt actually look that messy . Just looks like a guy having fun being knees deep in his hobby . 

The only thing I see of real issue, is how tightly your cabling seems to be coming off the tube amp. Looks like it’s got significant tension there. Maybe you could tidy it up, but hey, if it sounds like you want it to, then awesome! And I agree, cool space for sure.

My first question is what happened to the Sceana line source towers that were paired with those subs?  

I used to love the Sceana’s and toyed with buying them.  

On the neat before photo you can see the listening room is not so much a room as is it is a listening loft.  Interesting arrangement in the sense that the completely open acoustic environment is almost  the whole house (or at least the great room).

@emailists

I bought used Scaena 3.2.

But it is a lot of work to re assemble the main tower.

Thus I had attached two 18 inch subwoofers to my Lansche 4.1 as a first step, with excellent result.

I may take turns at playing Lansche and Scaena speaker placing side by side.

Although it is an open space, it has lot of acoustic treatment which may not look neat on all sides.

@nonoise 

Thanks a lot for your kind word.

I will also try to make room tidy by removing some tweaks that I may not need.

I am lucky to use vaulted space as my listening room.

best

Thomas

I sit in the near field 6 - 8 feet from the speakers. So room condition doesn't matter!

roberjerman
I sit in the near field 6 - 8 feet from the speakers. So room condition doesn’t matter!

>>>>>I hereby declare that statement patently false. 🤗

Nearfield is more 3 feet....For me it is.... 8 feet is my regular location for listening and my room treatment is stupendous upgrade and mandatory, even in my near listening field, it is less impactful but transforming tough even there...

I live there i don't like a mess anywhere in my home.

your room needs to put you in your comfort zone so you can reach the ’zen’ music state where the music gets into you.

there are no rules beyond that.

i’m a neat nick personally, and need everything in it’s place. don't like stuff just lying around. so that’s how i roll. you can see my room pictures and know how i am. but i have seen cluttered listening spaces where i know that listener is also in his comfort zone.

know thyself.....and enjoy.

 Great words! I wish you the best wise mikelavigne… :)

Cluttered listening room cluttered mind.

minimalistic is the way to go. Neat organized and great sounding!

Quick interrupt! It’s also a question of entropy. The lower the entropy the better the sound. Entropy is inversely related to accumulated junk, especially media and the written word. It’s a mind-matter interaction thing. 

If space and matter suddenly disappeared there would be no time.

@robt22 the best sound quality I had at my previous house was when there were many moving boxes stacked behind my listening position.Small boxes and packing materials stuffed inside large boxes.They made excellent room treatments.

I must admit there is some truth in Geoffkait also..... :)

I must discover in my room now some balance between the end of time and the beginning of time...A big audiophile task indeed... :)

jtcf
@robt22 the best sound quality I had at my previous house was when there were many moving boxes stacked behind my listening position.Small boxes and packing materials stuffed inside large boxes.They made excellent room treatments.

>>>>Obviously that’s a case of low entropy compared to the case where boxes and packing materials are just strewn around, which would be a case of higher entropy. 

I remember an audio pal from the 70's with a poster on his wall stating..."BEWARE OF GOOD LOOKING STEREOS"...His room was a mess of course, with stacked up amplifiers, equalizers, various speaker systems of the day, etc.

We do the two extremes, for cable testing or testing gear, etc.

Taras, the other half of Teo Audio has the perfect room. All the tweaks and more done, everything to the 9's. If one even looks at a cable, it will sound different.

I do the messy version. Looks like a total mess with unused cables lying under the ones being used, you name it. Makes 'haphazard' look like a limp word and a inaccurate half measure. (I'm exaggerating, but..still..)

In between the two extremes, we get a grasp on how the cables, or gear... will be used in the real world.

Why would anyone wish to know what your cables sound like in a crappy sounding room? 

@ teo_audio

One of your IC cable is tangled as triple combination of IC (one more than Doug Shroder Double IC).

It does not look tidy, but it works.

We just put up for sale a 2m double GC Jr. We made it for a recent audio show, where it quietly, unrealized by most, stole the show. Cables should not be able to do that, but this is not wire, it is something else entirely.

Heck of a cable, to say the least. One of those ones where we are not sure we should even be selling it. It's too good.
 

Even if you do say so yourself. Cough, cough! 🤭

@mikelavigne

Thanks Mike for your advice.

I have limited space on third floor listening room thus it is too crowded with many equipments.

Lase year I had wondered between Pacific Dac and Chord Dave Dac.

With limited space, I had chosen smaller Dave.

Thomas

Spinaker01, I take exception to your remark using the H word. If you NEED to use the word NEED, you NEED not be on this forum! True, I don’t even NEED one turntable since there is streaming, yadayadayada... But I do NEED to challenge the ordinary and dubious sound that comes out of digital-only gear. Furthermore, I cannot fathom hearing either Fauré’s "Requiem" or the Beatles’ "Abbey Road" without the nostalgic and also intuitively rhythmic ensnaring of a 33 RPM, my favorite being RCA Victor’s HMV dog and horn spinning in an eternal embrace, a sight burned into my memory since childhood from my parents’ Sunday afternoon rituals (e.g. la Callas as Lucia di Lammermoor).
And for the, ahem, record: I have in mind to find an Art Deco chest of SIX drawers and devise a smooth, stable and level mechanism to encase not four but SIX turntables - with perhaps TWO MORE on top:
B&O 1000, B&O 4002, Miracord 50H, Denon DP52F, Garrard Zero 100 (seriously!), Empire 498, VPI HW19, and a still holy grail Thorens 124 which my SME Type III is aspiring to wed some day. Unless I trade the VPI for the other holy grail: a Garrard 301 the 124 will have to fight to keep its SME dulcinea then settle for an Ortofon arm! Lest I have to settle for my SL1200 MKii, yes a Technics but also a $15 Housing Works find!
Whaddya think, Spinaker01? Ah, and three suitable switch systems, one going to my Marantz 2270 (2-TT inputs, possibly the Zero and the Denon) which makes me think I should either find another 2-input receiver or amp (trade down my 2275 (1-TT input only)? Any idea out there?
While I’m having my steamy and unconscionable stream of consciousness on these netwaves (hey, it’s my first post after all these years!), how about a contest as to which cartridges (I probably have most, close to your suggestions) to match said turntables and arms?
Forgot, I also NEED to have my Nakamichi RX505 AND my Technics RS1506US, and, well I admit, some digital stuff since my VCR doesn’t really deserve being anywhere near my stereo equipment: should I mention at least one of: Philips region-freeDVD player, Sony Blueray HD, AND a... drumroll: Pioneer LaserDisc player.
Au théatre ce soir!
Professeur TourneTable

Do you prefer tidy room to messy one with better sound?

It reads like a false dichotomy -implying that a tidy room can't sound better than an untidy one. I prefer tidy and clean. At least after the experimenting is laid to rest. Endless chopping and changing leads to confusion.

The Final Frontier for audiophiles is learning how to control the local environment. And what affects the sound, you know, other than the components, speakers, room acoustics, house AC, house wiring, and all that rather mundane stuff. Of course the hardest part is convincing suspicious and clever audiophiles that this is even remotely a good idea. The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.

Well the best experiences i had audio wise were in rooms that were both tidy and sounded excellent. I felt completely at ease and could better focus on the music, instead of looking at the clutter. I strive for a tidy system myself but it's difficult with different  positions etc. Now that cable is too short/long. I always wonder how everybody hides there rca/xlr/power cables. I see great tidy systems and think some day....

I think it's a process, ask me again in 3  years. I saw yesterday my first system on a picture. It was pretty tidy (and pretty simple) lol

I'm thinking of letting my freak flag fly.  Should I assiduously vacuum my stereo room each dawn and then exclusively blast groove-damaged, warped, off-center Death Metal 45's?  Or should I pile my LPs and CDs in a treacherously slippery middle-of-the-room stack and listen only to Baroque harpsichord?