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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
flex
292 posts
 
Rives,
I live in California. The preferred architectural style in this area is the open floor plan. It is quite difficult when house hunting to find suitable audio rooms with four closed walls, and you can't change the walls around without reducing the resale value. If you can work on ways to define and treat an 'audio area' without having to build a separate room (impossible anyway with small lots), you would provide real assistance.
Just a thought, needs ingenuity.
g_m_c
443 posts
 
I listen to music in a beautiful space, and my view is as important as my music. I sit in a glass and concrete study 3 floors up, in the trees, with a small grass court outside the space. I am looking at beautiful fall color right now, listening to Blood Sweat & Tears. Dispite the hard materials of the room, it is not too hot acoustically. The seasons and time of day affect what I listen to. It is nice to connect the music to nature.
macdonj's avatar
macdonj
118 posts
 
I also have physical constraints: moving walls is impractical (until my wife gets the second story she wants), no ugly treatments allowed, semi-open floor plan ("wall" behind the seat is open) and the room is normally high traffic.

I'm looking for a way to isolate the room so I can listen louder more often. Heavier doors? What can I rebuild the existing walls out of? Sliding panels or folding doors to temporarily close the open "wall"?
mburns92's avatar
mburns92
37 posts
 
I have a similar situation to Flex above, regarding the layout of my house (WA, not CA). Since I am at a point in my career where I move every few years, I can't afford to do anything to lower the resale potential of my house.

Therefor, I will tell you what I would like in the future, not my current listening space, which doesn't leave much flexibility.

I would look for a room design where I could listen to relatively loud music without sounding strained, and without interfering with my wife watching TV elsewhere in the house. Asthetics would be secondary, but I wouldn't want to feel like I was in a laboratory either. Additionally, I have no problem living with the same speakers for a long time, so I would not hesitate to have a room optimized for a particular pair of speakers.

My current listening is 100% 2-channel music, and if I could change my entire system today, it would still be optimized for 2-channel music, but I would add surround for watching movies.

BTW, thanks for all the excellent information that you provide in this forum.

Mike
goyescas's avatar
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goyescas
31 posts
 
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.
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