Great systems in butt-ugly rooms

Great topic. My wife and I are starting our major remodeling project. By the time we finished, my neighbors will not be able to recognize the old house (typical ranch style home here in the Silicon Valley). We will be adding a dedicated listening room as well, from the ground up. So the sky (and, of course, the wallet) is the limit. Both the architect and I came out of fairly progressive design schools, so the design of the house will be kind of out there, at least in comparison to the fairly conservative American standard.

I've started envisioning what the listening room might look like, and contemplated about enlisting Rives Audio to assist in the design. Afer looking at examples on their websites, I'm leaning towards figuring out the design myself while using Rives Audio to provide advice on acoustics. Not that there's anything wrong with their designs, but you could tell they were designed by engineers. I've started rading a few books on acoustics to learn the basics of acoustics so I have some concepts of what to avoid. I'm also doing some researches on designs of concert halls to get some design ideas as well. So, we'll see how this project turn out in late fall 2009.

FrankC

Kirkus,

Our remodel is going towards that direction with most of what we called a "public space", areas where the family hang out most of the time, i.e. kitchen, living room, and work area. However, the dedicated listening room will basically be a dark box, no windows, just an entrance into the room. We are taking out a major loan to do this, which pushes us further into debt. That means no retirement for me and my wife until we reach 85! But architecture is also a passion of mine. I went through six years of schooling (which I enjoyed thoroughly). So this is also a life-long dream for me.

But I think everyone's vision of what is aesthetically pleasing is different. And as you can see in this thread, aesthetics could also be low on many people's priorities as well. So, to each his own.

FrankC