Rhapsody.Audio Listening Rooms

Rhapsody.Audio- Listening Rooms (RLRs)

Rhapsody.Audio would like to announce that within the next 3-4 months there will be multiple new locations where several of the product lines that Rhapsody.Audio represents will be available to audition via Rhapsody.Audio Listening Rooms (RLRs).

Initially, the RLR’s will have the products available for demonstration mentioned below. Upon opening, the DFW RLR will have a very similar product offering as that available at Rhapsody.Audio in Manhattan.

Over time, all locations will be expanding their portfolio to a comparable scale as that of NYC/DFW.

The RLRs will be available to host auditions by appointment. All product ordering and delivery logistics will be processed and supported from the Rhapsody.Audio NYC location.

Product assistance and installation will be supported by Rhapsody.Audio NYC along with the RLRs depending on customer location.

The RLR locations are:


Portland - Rhapsody.Audio RLR

Products available to audition (coming soon)

-Pilium

-Alsyvox

-Diesis

-Bayz Audio

Dallas/Fort Worth Rhapsody.Audio DFW

Products available to audition:

-Alsyvox

-Diesis

-Bayz Audio

-Pilium

-VYGER

-Kondo

-Taiko Audio

-VYDA

West Palm Beach & Miami (2 Florida locations) Rhapsody.Audio WPB/Miami

West Palm Beach will open initially. Miami will follow when the RLR is ready to host customers.

Products available to audition (initially):

-Alsyvox

-Pilium

-Aurender

-TelluriumQ

Chicago, IL Rhapsody.Audio Chicago

Products available to audition (initially):

-Alsyvox

-Pilium

-Aurender

-TelluriumQ

Long Island, NY Rhapsody.Audio Long Island

-Kondo

-Alsyvox

 

Slowly settling in to our new location in Brooklyn. Still waiting on wall art, which has been delayed, but most of the NINE different listening set ups are coming into focus. We should be ready for visitors sometime in September. A peek/preview-

Really nice original rooms Bob love the stone and brick, wonderful!
Wish you the best of luck and fortune in this new store but I have to ask, where are the Daiza ? Sorry, couldn’t resist!
david

 

Really nice original rooms Bob love the stone and brick, wonderful!
Wish you the best of luck and fortune in this new store but I have to ask, where are the Daiza ?
david

Thx David!!! Appreciate it. Actually the D's are under several pieces of electronics. I'm still sorting electronics out. I went from one room to many rooms, so it's a challenge to get all the rooms outfitted appropriately with sources, pre/amps etc. I'm still a month away.

I actually have balanced cables from my main source set up, through a wall to an adjoining room and then another set of balanced ic's running from the main source set up, down to a room in the basement. I can stream using my main sources for streaming to three rooms. Saves from having three high $$$ streaming set ups.

For vinyl and tape I have to have different set up in different rooms. Right now I have vinyl in three rooms and R2R in two rooms. I have an Otari been set up with new heads and a king/cello tape pre for the main source set up. A few Teac's for the other rooms.

I have to say, I kept thinking about you and Peter when I started to set up my rooms. I was expecting to have to do all types of treatments to get good sound. Instead I found that with "the luck of the draw" I loved the way the rooms all sounded with pretty much nothing more than rugs, furniture etc. I have no current desire for treatments. I actually had some large panels that I used prior and I gave them away as I realized that I didn't need them. LESS IS MORE, right now for me. I feel lucky for that.

 

Bob, the great thing, imho, about your new setup is that visitors can get an idea of how something might sound in their own, non-dedicated spaces. Surely in NYC the number of folks with dedicated rooms is going to be limited, so folks visiting you can more likely envision and hear equipment “realistically”. Lets face it, there is a WAF many deal with, and having a bunch of wall tampons or psychedelic patterned diffusion elements hanging on the walls is a deal breaker in many circumstances. If someone hears great sound in a “normal” space that too says a lot for the components being evaluated.

Here in the left-coast RLR (Rhapsody.west) my room will be very different from any of yours. Mine is an acoustically remodeled room, maybe a wee-bit on the damped side, with one major reflective surface (the wall of windows behind the speakers.) Other walls are floor to ceiling custom BAD panels. But also reasonably large at roughly 30’ x 20’ x 9.5’, also with some nooks and crannies. The room is open to the house though there are acoustically treated curtains across the openings.

It will be great to compare and contrast your rooms to my own… and you’ll have the benefit of visiting all the RLR locations so you will end up with a huge base of reference of how each of Alsyvox, BAYZ, and Diesis sounds in differing spaces. I will post my own images as the new kit arrives, and look forward to a visit to 1 Portland Avenue, NYC.

 

A few points. In each of the new upstair rooms there is not one parallel continual solid wall surface. There are MANY nooks and crannies that act as natural diffusion. Between the rug absorption and the natural diffusion, and in each room there are several door openings to joining spaces. It simply works, again for me.

Although there are special diffusion panels that I will try in the upstairs rooms once they arrive. I like diffusion, not so much absorption unless it is required. Absorption is not required right now from what I am hearing.

In the basement/dungeon rooms it's more of the same. Not one parallel wall that is the same. Many openings, nooks and crannies, then with the full ceiling of heavy rafters, carpets, furniture it again, to me, it sounds amazing. Not just OK, it sounds REALLY good.

In one of the basement rooms where the Bayz Omni directional speakers are located, and which the Bayz are designed to work in very reflective rooms vs abortive rooms, there is just the right amount of natural diffusion that makes them sing quite nicely. I've heard the Bayz in five or six different rooms and I like them in the room that they are in now the best.

The Diesis open baffle horns, which are directional with the horns and the open baffle loves the reflections, also work very nicely. When doing serious demos there will only be one of the speakers set up in the room. The speakers not being used will be removed.

I would appreciate your opinion MUCH more if you had listened to the sound in these specific rooms, with these specific speakers vs. what your past experiences and acoustical expertise have been in other rooms with different speakers.

Let's just leave it that you know all about the sound in my rooms without hearing them. I have listened and experienced the sound in my rooms after working with them for 30 continuous days. It's just my opinion that they sound great. You have your opinion and I have mine. None of it is anything more than that. To each his own.

I get it. I haven’t heard any of your rooms. You have a point. But I have heard many similar rooms over 40+ years as an audiophile. It also sounds like you haven’t heard any of them properly treated. It is entirely possible that if I listened to the systems in those rooms I would like the sound of some of them. It does not follow however that these rooms wouldn’t sound better with acoustical treatment done well, or that I wouldn’t hear reflection related issues even though I liked the sound. I have never heard a well treated room that didn’t offer up more of the music-not less. Obviously if a room is over damped then it hasn’t been properly treated. This is not a huge deal. If I was looking to audition a component at one of your stores I would have to borrow and audition it in my own listening room to be sure I was listening to the component and not the room.

 

Bob, the great thing, imho, about your new setup is that visitors can get an idea of how something might sound in their own, non-dedicated spaces. Surely in NYC the number of folks with dedicated rooms is going to be limited, so folks visiting you can more likely envision and hear equipment “realistically”. Lets face it, there is a WAF many deal with, and having a bunch of wall tampons or psychedelic patterned diffusion elements hanging on the walls is a deal breaker in many circumstances. If someone hears great sound in a “normal” space that too says a lot for the components being evaluated.

Here in the left-coast RLR (Rhapsody.west) my room will be very different from any of yours. Mine is an acoustically remodeled room, maybe a wee-bit on the damped side, with one major reflective surface (the wall of windows behind the speakers.) Other walls are floor to ceiling custom BAD panels. But also reasonably large at roughly 30’ x 20’ x 9.5’, also with some nooks and crannies. The room is open to the house though there are acoustically treated curtains across the openings.

It will be great to compare and contrast your rooms to my own… and you’ll have the benefit of visiting all the RLR locations so you will end up with a huge base of reference of how each of Alsyvox, BAYZ, and Diesis sounds in differing spaces. I will post my own images as the new kit arrives, and look forward to a visit to 1 Portland Avenue, NYC.

Exactly Bob. I "cringed" (actually got use to cringing) with my old room. It was the cards that I was dealt with at the time and I did the best that I could although it definitely was a laboratory. I did have the Iliad Design Loft for 10 years where I took architects/designers/wives when it was necessary vs the "lab". It all was what it was. That chapter is over now.

I am SO grateful that it just worked out that the rooms sound great with basically nothing but normal furnishings. I actually have several boxes of "tweaks" that I always felt were necessary to the sound that I was making. I think they were necessary in my former heavily dampened room. It was overly dampened as it was originally built as a Home Theater dedicated room with 20 speakers in the SS system. Regardless, for the new place, all of the tweaks are staying in the boxes.

I would say that 75% of the people that I normally sell to just want systems that blend into their natural living environments. Especially in NYC, where space is always at a premium and family is usually a very important variable in the overall equation. I still need 10 pieces of wall art that are coming soon, for the upstairs rooms which will add to the aesthetics.

 

I get it. I haven’t heard any of your rooms. You have a point. But I have heard many similar rooms over 40+ years as an audiophile. It also sounds like you haven’t heard any of them properly treated. It is entirely possible that if I listened to the systems in those rooms I would like the sound of some of them. It does not follow however that these rooms wouldn’t sound better with acoustical treatment done well, or that I wouldn’t hear reflection related issues even though I liked the sound. I have never heard a well treated room that didn’t offer up more of the music-not less. Obviously if a room is over damped then it hasn’t been properly treated. This is not a huge deal. If I was looking to audition a component at one of your stores I would have to borrow and audition it in my own listening room to be sure I was listening to the component and not the room.

If ever in NYC come for a visit. Not to buy anything just for a visit.

As I just told BobVin, with most of my customers, where I sell full systems, room treatments are usually not in the cards. It's not going to happen. So to be able to show that sound is pretty good with no treatments is a BIG plus from a business perspective.

Sure the sound might be customized and improved to one's personal preference with adding appropriate treatments, but then I loose the naturalness of the living space, WHICH RIGHT NOW I LOVE. It's much more important in my situation to be able to show systems that sound VG without treatments. Something that I was not able to do for a very long time.

Again, do come for a visit if ever up this way.

 

Congratulations on your new environment Bob and good luck with the business (though I doubt that you will need it).

Although my room has significant home made acoustic treatment, I have heard some rooms sound great with only home furnishings.

I would agree that much of your wealthy clientele would expect, that when they pay for the best in audio equipment, they should not have to make their living room look like a studio.

Some of us nutters may feel that they are not getting the best out of their expensive gear, but that is their choice and we will truly never know without hearing it.

 

Congratulations on your new environment Bob and good luck with the business (though I doubt that you will need it).

Although my room has significant home made acoustic treatment, I have heard some rooms sound great with only home furnishings.

I would agree that much of your wealthy clientele would expect, that when they pay for the best in audio equipment, they should not have to make their living room look like a studio.

Some of us nutters may feel that they are not getting the best out of their expensive gear, but that is their choice and we will truly never know without hearing it.

Thank you. Always need "good luck".
Very well said. Actually most of the times, besides spouses, there are designers and even architects involved.

Have to make everyone happy or it doesn't work out. Although every customer is unique, some do like treatments, it all depends on the person and the situation.

 

While I don’t know, I suspect the majority of listeners (audiophiles) do not have perfect environments, and probably could care less. They just want to listen to a decent sounding stereo. For example, my stereo is in my living room, and I love it. It is especially good in the cooler months when I can close the windows and play it on the loud side.

A few years ago I was at Magico and listening to a comparison of the S5 and S7. While the S5 was playing I commented that it sounded just like mine. Of course, Magico’s S5 were in their custom designed, acoustically isolated, listening room, while mine are in my living room.

 

But I have heard many similar rooms over 40+ years as an audiophile. It also sounds like you haven’t heard any of them properly treated.

Oh please. Get over it. Fade to black.

 

Oh please. Get over it. Fade to black.

Get over what? My passion for excellence in audio? Not likely.

 

If ever in NYC come for a visit. Not to buy anything just for a visit.

As I just told BobVin, with most of my customers, where I sell full systems, room treatments are usually not in the cards. It's not going to happen. So to be able to show that sound is pretty good with no treatments is a BIG plus from a business perspective.

Sure the sound might be customized and improved to one's personal preference with adding appropriate treatments, but then I loose the naturalness of the living space, WHICH RIGHT NOW I LOVE. It's much more important in my situation to be able to show systems that sound VG without treatments. Something that I was not able to do for a very long time.

Again, do come for a visit if ever up this way.

I will stop buy. I am in NYC often. Note that the uncovered “Sample Rate” ZR Acoustics panels from DHDI, my test of which I reported on extensively at this forum, would likely appeal to some of your customers. They are thin, full range, and attractive enough to be wall art. In my listening room they provided a dramatic increase in clarity (by reducing reflections) without any of the deadening of the room that absorber panels create.

 

Get over what? My passion for excellence in audio? Not likely.

I'm also 40 years plus in this hobby and just as passionate about excellence (as are many on this forum) as you are. One thing (amongst many) I've learned is to not criticize other experienced audiophile's personal tastes and preferences. Your apparent attitude regarding "properly" treated rooms (whatever that means) is I'm right, you're wrong. There are no absolutes in audio. At the end of the day, It's all subjective.

 

I will stop buy. I am in NYC often. Note that the uncovered “Sample Rate” ZR Acoustics panels from DHDI, my test of which I reported on extensively at this forum, would likely appeal to some of your customers. They are thin, full range, and attractive enough to be wall art. In my listening room they provided a dramatic increase in clarity (by reducing reflections) without any of the deadening of the room that absorber panels create.

Thx. Rhapsody uses RD Acoustics primarily for room treatments. In the soon to be DFW Rhapsody Listening Room there are two each of these 400lb each diffusers (see pic) on the front and rear walls. GIK panels will be used on the side walls. This is necessary in this dedicated room as it is basically a 22' X 32' box. This room will be used for the incoming Magico M9s, along with other Rhapsody offerings.

We also use GIK, RPG and various other room treatments when we do custom installations or especially home theaters.

Rhapsody works with the Acoustic engineers that designed the "new"/updated Carnegie Hall as well as a few of the theaters at Lincoln Center, when we have specific design requirements requiring their services.

Rhapsody has installed several hundred systems throughout the US over the last 20 years. Approximately 25% of the rooms have used room treatments. 75% are systems that have been installed into natural living environments.

Regarding being an experienced audiophile, I had my first high end system (at the time) in 1965. I probably had 20 systems in 10 different homes prior to starting Rhapsody from the late 70's until 2000. Some of the rooms were dedicated/treated rooms, some systems were installed in our living/family rooms with very little treatment.

I feel very confident when I hear a system in a room whether I like it or not. In my new spaces I am very confident that sound is exactly the sound that I would like to present to future guests. All good here.

 

I have to say, I kept thinking about you and Peter when I started to set up my rooms. I was expecting to have to do all types of treatments to get good sound. Instead I found that with "the luck of the draw" I loved the way the rooms all sounded with pretty much nothing more than rugs, furniture etc. I have no current desire for treatments. I actually had some large panels that I used prior and I gave them away as I realized that I didn't need them. LESS IS MORE, right now for me. I feel lucky for that.

Congratulations Bob. I'm glad to see that things are coming together for you in Brooklyn. You write that you often struggled with good sound at the last location, but I remember visiting you there and was very impressed with what I heard. Of course my views may now be different as my tastes have evolved somewhat since visiting Utah.

These rooms look great. The natural home setting looks very welcoming and comfortable. You have quite a variety of gear. I suspect clients will feel there is never enough time to experience what you have created, so they will have to come back repeatedly, which is a great thing. I will certainly make an appointment if I come back down to NYC.

I wish you much success with your new Rhapsody Listen Room endeavor.

 

I think it will be very interesting, as the RLRs are finally acquiring their various kit, to see the variations of the different installs/setups. Your schedule is going to be pretty damn full Bob, traveling ‘round to assist with the RLRs (assuming the greek alphabet variants don’t put us into lockdown hell again.)

I don’t know why my mind goes where it goes sometimes, I keep thinking of college days… not just the delta or lambda variant, but the tri-delt variant, the i-felta-thigh variant, the i-tappa-keg variant. Sorry, I digress.

 

Congratulations Bob. I'm glad to see that things are coming together for you in Brooklyn. You write that you often struggled with good sound at the last location, but I remember visiting you there and was very impressed with what I heard. Of course my views may now be different as my tastes have evolved somewhat since visiting Utah.

These rooms look great. The natural home setting looks very welcoming and comfortable. You have quite a variety of gear. I suspect clients will feel there is never enough time to experience what you have created, so they will have to come back repeatedly, which is a great thing. I will certainly make an appointment if I come back down to NYC.

I wish you much success with your new Rhapsody Listen Room endeavor.

Thank you Peter!

Yes, I managed pretty good sound at the old place. It wasn't bad sound and worked for me for a long time. I was quite amazed when I plopped down the same gear in the new rooms and then all of a sudden felt that the prior location sound in comparison was maybe "bad sound".

Again, thx for the well wishes. I hope that all of the new RLR's are up and running soon now, that is my main priority for the rest of this year.

 

FYI: https://deltahdesign.com/zr_products/zr-quantex/

Trying the ZR Acoustics Panels

So clearly the ZR panels do something to improve the bass - what, beyond what the manufacturer says I don't know. And I don't think Hanson Hsu is going to reveal any more than he already has. He seems to be very smart about protecting his trade secrets. I'll just note that one can read...

www.whatsbestforum.com

It looks very interesting. You might want to start a thread on these products as well as room treatments in general. This thread is about the upcoming seven Rhapsody Audio Listening Rooms that will be opening in the near future.

 

. . .

You can also visit Cake Audio, who is an authorized Alsyvox dealer, in San Clemente CA, to hear the Botticelli X with Vitus. Ken did a great job at the show last weekend showing off the B X's with the very nice Vitus electronics.

Lot's of places to hear Alsyvox

Ken is terrific!

If anyone wants to visit Ken please let me know. We probably can arrange a joint trip.

(The only reason I have not visited Ken once again myself to hear the Alsyvox is because for the last year coming from Ventura, CA, occasioned such a long drive as to make necessary an overnight stay somewhere -- making the overall logistics kind of complicated.)

PS: I have never heard the Pilium. It might be the greatest amp ever. I am open-minded. But hearing even the great-sounding Vitus in Ken and Ozment's room at the Long Beach audio show made me wish for tubes on the Botticellis.

 

You can also visit Jerry at the Palm Desert, CA RLR, who has the Alsyvox Tintoretto X. Jerry also has the Diesis Roma on the way. Jerry has the Pilium Elektra DAC, Alexander pre and Achilles stereo amp to drive both the Alsyvox as well as the incoming Romas.