Listening Room Remodel & A Little "Rage"

Thanks for the cool article about your new room. You must be excited to create your new space.<br />

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My wife and I will inspect our new condo this afternoon, and as soon as they fix whatever we find that needs fixin', we'll slowly begin moving in. In our case, we'll have a combo living/dining/listening room. This presents numerous aesthetic and acoustic challenges. In the last few weeks, I feel I’ve become an apprentice interior designer, but especially, a hifi audio salesman (to my wife) and acoustic engineer (to my room).<br />

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In the past, I’ve pretty much arranged my speakers solely based on convenience. Now, I’ve become fascinated with finding the ideal arrangement of furniture and audio. And based on what I’ve learned from my recent search for great sounding audio components, there’s no substitute for listening. So I’ve spent the last two or three weeks searching online for articles about audio equipment and its interaction with the listening room.<br />

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Whenever I write a contribution to the CA forum, I’m reminded of the words of my favorite teacher, Socrates: <br />

The only thing I know is that I know nothing.<br />

Yes, I feel this a lot around here, but realistically, I would be a truly boring member if I did not at least attempt to contribute some tidbits of information. So here are a few mental notes I made over while reading about room treatment. <br />

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Listen and Experiment<br />

No room is perfect, and even if it were, the ideal arrangement of items in the room conducive to great sound must be empirically tested. There are an infinite number of possibilities of arranging an empty room containing only one item. In the more realistic yet still minimal case of one room with one source component, an amplifier, two speakers, a chair, and one listener; the possibilities are vast. And I imagine different components react in quite different ways. One set of speakers from B&W might be happy as clams in spots A and B, but replace these with a set by Sonus Faber – or even another set from the same manufacturer – and they might lose their happiness to some degree.<br />

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Really – telling this to myself – just move things around and listen to the results. Better yet, my wife has good ears so I’ll probably enlist her as the evaluator and myself as the mover.<br />

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The Vocabulary of Acoustics<br />

Sound bounces. Often I’ve read in the forums and articles about the analogy with pool (or billiards or snooker, whatever you like to call it). Let me suggest it is also like handball. I like this analogy because handball takes place in a room, and just as the sound bounces from wall to wall in three dimensions, so does the ball. Acoustics then defines where the sounds goes, what happens to it when it meets other sounds, and how the room and its furniture affects this interplay of surface and sound in delivering the ideal flat frequency response to the listener. <br />

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I am still at the beginning of my education in acoustics, but my audio vocabulary has been expanded to include the absorption, diffusion, and reflection of sound. Covered surfaces tend to absorb sound, complex and irregular surfaces tend to diffuse sound, and flat bare surfaces tend to reflect sound. <br />

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Furniture First<br />

Cultivating the ideal environment for the propagation of dynamite music and marital bliss begins with the furniture. Choose your furniture with the heart of an interior designer, but arrange it in the room with the mind of an acoustical engineer.<br />

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Room treatment begins with some understanding of acoustics and how your decorating decisions affect the quality of sound arriving at your listening post. There are good commercial products available, and if you read through CA or Stereophile articles and forums, you can find these. But let me suggest – purely based on my “book knowledge,” not personal experience – that it is best to begin with the furniture.<br />

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In my case, I have learned that the direct reflection of sound from the wall behind the listening couch is not desirable. Previously, I had relished the thought of choosing some artwork – a portrait of my beloved Bach, perhaps? – to hang above our couch. No longer! So as an interior designer, I regrouped and from the aesthetic and acoustic perspective, considered the alternatives.<br />

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I love history, especially of the European Middle Ages, and the thought struck me that I could hang a tapestry. I wasn’t sure what my wife would think of that though. So, my online searching commenced, and I quickly found several sites with very fine wall tapestries. If it were up to me, I’d surely hang scenes from the Bayeux Tapestry ( 1066, Norman invasion of England), but I know my wife would not only disapprove of the content but might then set her mind against the whole idea of hanging a tapestry in place of a picture. So, looking at the other tapestries, I saw a category for flowers. Yeah, I was on the track to success with this. I found several that I loved and that she might. When I showed them to her, she not only approved of the scene, but liked it so much she now definitely wanted a tapestry, not a picture.<br />

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Yes, with the science of acoustics firmly mind, find the ideal arrangement of furniture. This is the appropriate starting point.<br />

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Room Treatment<br />

Having found that perfect arrangement of furniture and sound – again, this is a not to myself – then consider the possibility of room treatment with commercial products. My listening room is small, and from what I’ve read, bass management is crucial (Probably this is true in most or all rooms). I am fascinated by many things, and the bass-trap columns now fascinate me. Not that they are in any way beautiful, but as in the case of the tube amps, their beauty stems from their function.<br />

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After I began reading about room treatments and discovered my room was overwhelmingly imperfect, I felt depressed for a day or two. But the more I read and reflected, the more I realized, I would have great music in my room, it was just a question of discovering it. And I have been thinking about how in the world I would ever “sell” the idea of these huge tubes in our small room that filled with beautiful furniture. Well, I have been making sacrifices. I let her do anything with the bedroom she wanted. And she keeps telling me I can do what I want in the living room, but this doesn’t really mean I can add these bass trapping monstrosities.<br />

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I found an interesting product from RealTraps. It’s a bass trap disguised as a planter. You can put this in the corner, where the bass likes to hang out, and you can even place artificial flowers on top to make it look real. I don’t think it would provide enough bass trapping, but it’s a start, and better than nothing.<br />

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Advice<br />

I have no advice. I’m a complete beginner here. It might be helpful to anyone interested in upgrading their listening room to hear from our more seasoned colleagues.<br />

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Thank you<br />

Good for you Chris. I reckon having a nice environment is 3/4 of the psycho acoustic battle won.<br />

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Thanks Bachrocks - nice summation of what we all should think about. <br />

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Re: dcs - I have the privilege of regularly listening to a full dcs Elgar stack in a system very close to mine (Quads ESL + Valves). It is remarkable. I will be very interested to hear how the Weiss/Alpha Dac compare. The one thing about dcs - you need a very transparent system to hear what they can do. 9/10 times your gear runs out of puff before they do.<br />

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Happy renovating

Hi Chris,<br />

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I was wondering why you were "less" productive these days (btw, how much of your time are you spending on CA ? I'm much impressed (and grateful)).<br />

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Anyway, nice project of yours. I'm too moving and reworking all things. Unfortunately to a smaller place, with no dedicated room for the system. Having reworked the electrics entirely, I managed to create a dedicated shielded (to the earth) line. Not tested yet, but highly recommended <br />

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As soon as I can get my system back, I'll give your records list a try.<br />

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Good luck !<br />

Elp<br />

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Bachrochs : lol, I'm on my way with the tapestry...<br />

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ps : Can't wait to read from you about the dCS stuff. Previous versions were definitely topnotch. Go go go

So how's it going Chris - any closer to getting your redesigned listening room?<br />

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Eloise

Good luck with your remodeling project! You'll need to come up with a good plan specially if you have specific features to include to your listening room. You could check for <a rel="follow" href="http://www.rochesterremodeling.biz">Rochester remodeling</a> for an additional advise, they have excellent customer service. <br />

Furnishings must be in proportion to the space they occupy and to the needs and lifestyles of the residents. The design of such nonresidential spaces as offices, hospitals, stores, and schools places clear organization of functions ahead of purely aesthetic concerns.<br />

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