The speakers and the listening sofa are not close to any wall and their exact placement is a result of several years of fine-tuning, inch by inch. The ceiling uses skylight to allow daylight into the room. The irregularity of the room (aside the ceiling and tilted walls) was not calculated to fight the room modes, rather to make a room for hidden damping materials so that they would not protrude into the room. Weighing the pros and cons resulted into a decision to built something like "a domestic control room" with precise acoustics and even reverberation to hear "the most from recordings and the least from the room". In the small room, the listener is usually quite close to the speakers which is another advantage for the most sound arrive direct, not reflected. So the really deep bass is heard several rooms further into the house and their inhabitants do not like it a bit. The small rooms have acoustic advantages - like easier reverb management - and disadvantages - like modal problems and non-existence of really deep bass. Still, according to all measures, it is a small room. The room is not big, the floor is less than 20m2, yet the floorplan makes it interesting as well as its volume of 63m3. The rest is the room and many tweaks that I employed along the journey. Today, I would estimate my system, that is the electronics and speakers, is responsible for ca 30-40% of the final sound. I think this is exactly what makes audio enthusiasts ticking: the journey, the possibility to explore, fail, learn, and improve. Not that it was the fastest route to the destination, but because the sound did not behave as theories and professionals foresaid.
Absolute sound reference recordings cd trial#
But mostly I took the trial and error approach.
I started studying available materials on acoustics, a lot of them. Yet, the budget constraints existed and I had to respect it. My spouse let me do what I wanted, there were enough other rooms left to her.
The opportunity arised and I could design and build my own listening room. However, I did not want to be cold in winter and sauning in summer, so I moved on. It was uncomfortable, but sound transparent. The walls were wooden boards, the ceiling was reed with no insulation between it and the roof tiles, the floor was made from wooden boards across wooden beams. Once I lived in a loft, and it was the best listening room that I had. I have built my room for my ears and my eyes, as they have built theirs. And maybe those 36 reviewers would not be interested in my room, so it is okay, I guess. I am not interested in the remaining 36 of them, not to ruin my high esteem about their owners that also happen to be audio equipment critiques. Today, after years, out of the 43 rooms in the picures I would be curious to audition maybe 7. The experience is non-transferrable and each room is unique, as is the listener. If I live in a similar prism, my logic told me, and I use the same system and the same panels on the walls, I will be happy.
Should you, the reader, are not worried by any of the aforementioned, I envy you.Īnother truth behind me collecting the pictures of listening rooms is that - many years ago - I wanted to be like them, like those that hear everything. Even if your spouse is a benevolent one, there is often the budget side of the problem that does not allow to imitate Skywalker Sound and Abbey Road at home. No matter that hi-fi is a manly hobby, home decor is a female hobby, and we have to make compromises. Unlike porfessional studios and control rooms the rooms of reviewers are living spaces, not working spaces. So why the supposedly ideal listening rooms of reviewers differ so much? Shouldn't they converge to a hypothetical ideal? The theories of room acoustics and listening spaces are widely available in paper format or on the interent, and they converge to similar solutions. Of course, unless you review for 6moons and your room is a chapel.
Yes, it is true, yet the rooms themselves are more or less typified, all are rectangular prisms with floors and ceilings, just sizes are different. Well, it is logical you may say, each room and each system is different. There is one remarkable aspect to the pictures - no two rooms are identical.
Absolute sound reference recordings cd archive#
I have been doing this for years, and there is 43 pictures in the archive to date illustrating the listening spaces of guys from Stereophile, The Absolute Sound, HiFi News, Positive Feedback, HighFidelity, and many other known and less known magazines, review sites, and high-end blogs. Everytime I come across a picture of the listening room that belongs to an audio reviewer, I save it into my archive.
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