the Listening Room


Many of you may know us, we design listening rooms. While we offer fixed prices for different levels of consultation, no two listening rooms are the same and some vary wildly. I am interested in hearing what you all want to get out of your listening room. I have my own biased opinion, that the listening room is often the most important component of any system (and unfortunately frequently ignored to a large degree). Let's suppose that you could get an acoustical engineering group like ours for free, but you still had all other constraints. You could a great deal on materials to impliment the design but you still had whatever other considerations you have in your life (I don't have space for a dedicated listening room, I can't have ugly acoustical treatement in the room, I can't move walls in my house). Try to be qualitative rather than quantitative. I'm not really that interested in hearing about the specifics of rooms--I'm more interested in hearing about end result goals, such as: I need sound isolation (I like to listen loudly at night and don't want to wake up my wife), or my room sounds dead--I feel like I have a head cold when I walk into it. The other aspect that would be very helpful, at the end of the post, please put a percentage of 2 channel vs HT or multi-channel you listen to. You may even be in the camp: "the room doesn't matter much, I like buying new pieces of equipment instead" That okay too--I'd like to hear from you as well. Some people may not understand the importance of room interaction on the sound, that's okay too--if you had free consultation what would you do or ask in order to get a better listening room.
rives
For me it comes down to a trade-off; while I CAN afford to live with any number of aesthetic deviations, it had better be for a dramatic improvement in sound. I have beautiful wood floors that I'd hate to cover up, but if necessary I would. I collect fine art, and giving up all this great but still limited wall space for sound absorption, diffusion or refraction devices kind of sucks. If they could be incorporated together al la a gallery, that would be a good trade-off.

Not having a perfect rectangle, with only two real corners in the room, both running along the same long wall, and a variable (vaulted 8-10") ceiling, I would look for a degree of options. Thanks for listening to your potential clients.
For me it would have to be sound isolation and control without making the room look like a recording studio.
Only time I can listen to music at the volume that I enjoy ( sort of loud ) is when the house is vacant.
This room is for listening to music only
I also agree with Mburns92, your advice is always helpful
and welcome.
Thanks, Rick.
Rives:
I am building a house and i purchased the house specifically because it had a gameroom upstaris taht could be truned into a dedicated room. Now for me dedicated might not be the same as the real audiphiles since i do want the room to be used for entretaining and I would like to make it into a comfortable room were you can listen to music, watch a movie OR talk with friends. The look of the room should be inviting and I would not like for it to look like a HI FI store. Having said that, I am very willing to put "nice looking" (whenever possible) room tratments to take the best of my equipment. So, in conclusion, looks do matter to me but the performance is ultimately the most important.
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Rives, if the consultation was free then I would ask how I could make my room acouticaly neutral, child,pet proof and easily maintained for as little money as possible. Cost, safety and inconvience would be concerns.