Post by Steve Deckert on 12/11/21 at 02:12:34
The overwhelming plague of hi-end audio is the listening room. It's beyond an epedemic problem when you begin to really understand its effect on sound quality, imaging focus, and sound stage depth, width and height.
The number one reason rooms are an issue is because we want sound where we live... in our home... in our living room where we spend our time. Plus it's not like most of us have a house with extra rooms although some of us do and perhaps don't even realize it.
So really we need to understand that a more casual fun approach to listening in your living space is a valid way to enjoy high end audio and many of us do. At the same time a dedicated listening space with some attention to acoustics will change the focus of the stereo from a passive wall decoration that makes nice sound to a recreation of the even't complete with all the 3D positioning in space of the actual instruments... more like watching a movie with all the lights down.
As you can see these are two different experiences. If we spend too much on the hifi gear and exceed the potential of the rooms ability to accurately reproduce recordings it becomes like buying a sports car and driving it with four of those tiny temporary spare tires... but hey, the car looks good... just like the one with real wheels. You can assume that if the manufacture knew you were going to take the wheels off and install emergency spares, they would have probably sold you a different car.
If you are interested in a more serious room there may be hope for some of you. Here are two possibilities
I have made dedicated listening rooms out of un-used bedrooms in order to explore what is possible with both the gear and the music itself. There is no TV, no couch, just a chair and two speakers surrounded by 6 treated surfaces. These are fun rooms to create because they have only one purpose and become like escape pods. People don't realize that when walls are diffused they handle SPL better and make the walls sonically vanish so the room size becomes as large as the recording space was.
A completely valid approach if you have land, is to put up a free standing 10 x 17 wooden garage/shed like we did for this years DECFEST. Total cost was around 5 grand delivered. All that had to be done was install fiberglass insulation in the walls in strategic locations. The floor is hard, the ceiling is soft with a 16 foot bass trap down the center that naturally occurs when you insulate the peak.
To make it a room for hotter and colder climates install a mini-split and and foil backed foam board in the areas where you see no insulation.
Anyway, while it looks simple, it has the right dimensions and minimal but well executed treatment that you won't find in your house... like the absence of drywall, or plaster on the walls and ceiling. The simple construction and being a free standing structure the low bass energy moves through the walls and is not reflected back inside the room nearly as much as house. This means the building itself is a bass trap. The trapping in the ceiling was created to absorb mid-bass frequencies on up.
I really enjoy listening in this room compared to the bigger listening room in our shop. For one thing everything is at least 3dB louder which is like getting a second Zen Triode amplifier for free. The immediacy, slamb and overall frequency balance are very very good. This room is so pleasing to listen in that I could easily do all of my listening out there without secretly craving the fancy room in the shop.
Again, the free standing thing is deceptively simple and will take a lot more effort and money to re-create in your home.