Natural Sound
- Thread starter PeterA
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20 years ago i paid about $170k for my whole 1800 sqft barn remodel, with about $65k of it for specialized dedicated room issues. the upstairs was just an unfinished hayloft, the downstairs had a 3/4 bathroom, other wise horse stalls. the structure was only 4 years old, but we had to add windows and replace garage doors with doors and walls.
since then invested another $15k in room mods plus added the Equi=tech panel.
today it might be $600k-$700k (maybe more) for the same thing.
my investment in the remodel likely added a lot to my property value, and if i ever sell my home it will end up being maybe my best hifi ROI ever. the only negative is a few years after my remodel the County discovered that the building had been improved, and my R.E. taxes jumped up.
The house we were buying was only a million. I couldn’t see investing another 40% of the home value for an audio room. At this price I was still purchasing the materials (specialized sheet rock, insulation, outlets, 10 gauge wiring, lighting, curtains, etc.). All the builder was doing was putting it together!
We‘re going to look back into turning our sizable back porch area into an Audio room in our current home. Because of the present state of the economy the building industry is beginning to slow down in FL so I may get someone to do it now - lots of difficulty before ….
People seem to want to discuss their custom rooms on my thread even though it is off topic. I don’t get it. Here is some information about my room:
My house was built in 1790. At some point the living room had a fire so the molding does not match the earlier less ornate molding in the rest of the house. There are three windows and the door plus the fireplace. You could call it a vintage room. The system is more or less vintage also with modern electronics. The speakers and cartridge are from 1960. The carpet is Persian. The furniture is old except for the contemporary leather sofa. The paintings are old. We stripped all of the lead paint from the woodwork and floor and exposed the original wide pine floorboards.
The acoustics are decent, though the ceiling is low and the room is fairly small. I’m happy to discuss rooms and how they function as listening rooms. A lot of it has to do with the choice of the system and the set up and how it interacts with the room.
I did not spend hundreds of thousands of dollars creating a dedicated audio room. With the exception of my American sound AS 2000 turntable, my system is actually fairly inexpensive compared to what people are discussing in this HIEND forum. The electric system for the room is completely new and very carefully designed for the audio system with the help of David Karmeli. Everything from the wire to the outlets to the grounding cable to the panel location is carefully considered.
The approach to natural sound is holistic.
My house was built in 1790. At some point the living room had a fire so the molding does not match the earlier less ornate molding in the rest of the house. There are three windows and the door plus the fireplace. You could call it a vintage room. The system is more or less vintage also with modern electronics. The speakers and cartridge are from 1960. The carpet is Persian. The furniture is old except for the contemporary leather sofa. The paintings are old. We stripped all of the lead paint from the woodwork and floor and exposed the original wide pine floorboards.
The acoustics are decent, though the ceiling is low and the room is fairly small. I’m happy to discuss rooms and how they function as listening rooms. A lot of it has to do with the choice of the system and the set up and how it interacts with the room.
I did not spend hundreds of thousands of dollars creating a dedicated audio room. With the exception of my American sound AS 2000 turntable, my system is actually fairly inexpensive compared to what people are discussing in this HIEND forum. The electric system for the room is completely new and very carefully designed for the audio system with the help of David Karmeli. Everything from the wire to the outlets to the grounding cable to the panel location is carefully considered.
The approach to natural sound is holistic.
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I also prefer the objective of using a functional living room as Peter has for listening… it’s very natural in that it is a familiar and coherent context to the rest of the home and fits naturally into the feeling of the personal and inviting… and talking about living the dream the ideal room could be a size that could even fit in a small jazz or classical group on occasions (sigh). So my ideal is a naturally well proportioned acoustic space with nice comforting textures with fairly natural/normal room functionality with music well integrated into the everyday routines of natural daily life… and even some otherwise normal music loving people in there at times. So otherwise normal people find themselves connecting with our weird sport. The dedicated listening retreat approach has great advantages in terms of control but some potential tendency to also (for good or for bad) create disconnects for me.
My choice would have been strongly influenced by the first half of my working life I worked in camera and direction in film and television studios with sound recording facilities so specially treated rooms with acoustic tiles and studio chairs always reminds me of work and production more than music… so maybe that’s also why I’ve always avoided the dedicated studio with single chair aesthetic.
Probably that context also then directs me across into a high efficiency high directivity speaker choice. I do think the strategy we choose be it separate dedicated or integrated fundamentally shapes the way our considerable listening time we spend then maps into the rest of our lives.
Dare I say it natural sounds in a fairly natural room? Maybe not… but maybe that instinct to integrate our music listening into normal life is reflective of the desire to fit our passions into an otherwise normal living routine and not something that keeps us separate.
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Well. I would want a big room, dedicated or living.
big horns need big rooms.
that said, for small rooms slightly powerful SETs with audionec are excellent, and despite being skeptical of a London audiophile setting up big Stenheim Ultime 2 with CH precision in a very small room, once I heard it I was totally amazed what it could do in such a small room. When Sujay was in London I took him there, he just referenced it on another thread.
Big horns need big rooms… great mantra… are we talking about the gear or about us now
Big horns need big rooms… great mantra… are we talking about the gear or about us now
i am a long horn. Learned about cattle in Texas
IMO referring to Bonnie when addressing your room is not kind to her work, since her project was completely shattered by reasons that she was not responsible for. Room design is an holistic activity.
All the professional acousticians I have met were used to design studio acoustics, that needs a more damped acoustic than hi-end consumer listening rooms.
Many solutions make sense. Used with proper knowledge most materials can lead to excellent rooms.
Do you have the support of any measurements in this statement or is it just a feeling?
BTW, what is vinyl sheeting?
I think that’s the word digital guys use on hearing pops and clicks in analog
Can you please discuss Ron‘s room in Ron‘s room thread. It has no relevance here. It is totally off-topic.
I’ll share this to perhaps get the thread back on topic. A good friend came over for a listen today. He was not aware that I had made some changes to the room acoustics. Within seconds of hearing the music he asked me if I changed anything. We listened to a string quartet, a piano and clarinet duet, a group of French male a cappella singers, and Black Sabbath. The effect of the recent changes is easily audible. Below is what he wrote me after he left:
Hi Peter,
Thanks for making time to have lunch and a listen.
The ‘ease’ of listening continues to improve, by which I mean music sounds So much more like itself that the pro-cess of taking in a ( re- corded ) performance simply requires less effort in listening.
The brain has less to fill in, which means —to me— that there is more room for involvement, both physical And emotional.
And what’s more musical than movement and feeling?
Thanks again.
Hope dinner is Great Fun. My Best to everybody
Hi Peter,
Thanks for making time to have lunch and a listen.
The ‘ease’ of listening continues to improve, by which I mean music sounds So much more like itself that the pro-cess of taking in a ( re- corded ) performance simply requires less effort in listening.
The brain has less to fill in, which means —to me— that there is more room for involvement, both physical And emotional.
And what’s more musical than movement and feeling?
Thanks again.
Hope dinner is Great Fun. My Best to everybody
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It varies with the time of day, and the amount of activity outside the house and inside the house. The listening room is not isolated in that sense. I measured it years ago with all my audio file acoustic treatments, but I can’t remember the result.
I recently articulated in a different thread what I am trying to achieve with my system. I am trying to re-create the experience of listening to live music in my listening room. The experience is holistic involving multiple senses. I want to include this description here in my system thread. Here is what I wrote:
For me, the sight of musicians in space is a part of the experience of listening to live music. We use our senses, not just our hearing. We see the musicians in the performance space in front of us. We feel the energy produced by the musicians with their instruments hitting us and filling the space. And we hear the sound those instruments make. Seeing, feeling, hearing -these are all part of the holistic experience of live music. My goal is to re-create that experience to as great an extent as possible in my listening room. As such, absent the visual (we see nothing), virtual imaging, the impression of something physical, with mass, in front of the listener with proper scale AND in the context of a space with all the ambient cues and boundaries, contributes to the impression that you are in the presence of musicians making music. This is all part of the live music experience and such impressions all contribute to making listening at home seem more believable, convincing, and enjoyable.
For me, the sight of musicians in space is a part of the experience of listening to live music. We use our senses, not just our hearing. We see the musicians in the performance space in front of us. We feel the energy produced by the musicians with their instruments hitting us and filling the space. And we hear the sound those instruments make. Seeing, feeling, hearing -these are all part of the holistic experience of live music. My goal is to re-create that experience to as great an extent as possible in my listening room. As such, absent the visual (we see nothing), virtual imaging, the impression of something physical, with mass, in front of the listener with proper scale AND in the context of a space with all the ambient cues and boundaries, contributes to the impression that you are in the presence of musicians making music. This is all part of the live music experience and such impressions all contribute to making listening at home seem more believable, convincing, and enjoyable.
sounds like it was a " natural " progression to discuss Mike's and Ron's room in your natural thread
In your experience, with your system or others that you have heard, do you find this aspect can be well conveyed through system videos?
Is this objective not pretty much universal amongst aspiring audiophiles ?
Would you describe members here as "aspiring audiophiles"?
Your post is difficult for me to answer. I rarely see people discussing their goals or being able to clearly articulate them. I did not have a clearly defined goal that I was able to articulate until about three years ago. That was one reason I floundered and did not make much progress.
In a lot of the discussions about new components or other changes, people rarely articulate why it is they want to make a change and what they hope to achieve by making the change. They rarely identify the problem issues. I see people posting about new components but they do not explain why they bought them, what they think is missing with the old stuff, and what they hope to gain with the new stuff.
I think having a goal and understanding how to achieve it is important in this hobby. It seems rather simple, but I actually think it can be a real challenge. You assume people have goals and that they are similar or the same as what I just described, but how do you really know? Can you point out some posts which support your claim? When I used to ask others why they were changing stuff, they usually just said they want "more" of something without explaining why.
The exception most convincing to me is the switch from vinyl to digital. Here they articulate very clearly. It is convenience, access to more music (with streaming), no more crackle/pop/noise. They do not tell me it is for an experience closer to what they have when listening to music in the concert hall. And few actually articulate what that experience is like for them.
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