Ron's Favorite Private Rooms + Systems of All Time

[MarkusBarkus]

...oh man, if I "had" to cut out that beautiful herringbone oak, I would carefully cut it out, add the stone (or whatever you are laying) and glue the cut-out herringbone on top of the new substrate. A good floor guy can do that. Minimally invasive surgery.

But whatever you do, cool set-up. Good luck with the floor.

 

[Kingrex]

...oh man, if I "had" to cut out that beautiful herringbone oak, I would carefully cut it out, add the stone (or whatever you are laying) and glue the cut-out herringbone on top of the new substrate. A good floor guy can do that. Minimally invasive surgery.

But whatever you do, cool set-up. Good luck with the floor.

I would rather not cut my floor. I would try 6 layers tar paper on the floor with 3 inch thick concrete or stone slab on top. Speaker on that. Or a steel plate like Peter uses.

I say tar paper as I was working on a remodel on a multiplex. The owner found that around 6 layers tar paper under a floor board almost totally shunted the sound of a steel ball being dropoed on the board between floors. Call it mass decoupling. Anything other than cutting.

 

[Lagonda]

...oh man, if I "had" to cut out that beautiful herringbone oak, I would carefully cut it out, add the stone (or whatever you are laying) and glue the cut-out herringbone on top of the new substrate. A good floor guy can do that. Minimally invasive surgery.

But whatever you do, cool set-up. Good luck with the floor.

I thought about that too, maybe that is the nicest way to do it, thank you !

 

[Lagonda]

I would rather not cut my floor. I would try 6 layers tar paper on the floor with 3 inch thick concrete or stone slab on top. Speaker on that. Or a steel plate like Peter uses.

I say tar paper as I was working on a remodel on a multiplex. The owner found that around 6 layers tar paper under a floor board almost totally shunted the sound of a steel ball being dropoed on the board between floors. Call it mass decoupling. Anything other than cutting.

I have a layer of felt under the big concrete tile now, vibrations are under control but it does not look great and i would not mind loosing that extra inch of hight.

 

[the sound of Tao]

I have written many times that if my primary musical genre interest were classical, or were classical plus jazz, I would have a horn loudspeaker system.

For sure… unless people are using a tick box pass/fail approach rather than a distinction grades only approach for experience based around the types of music we individually play in thinking how a system goes with various types of music.

It’d be easy to end up making a less optimal choice if you tried to make a system a jack of all trades when you don’t actually need to. Optimisation should always be taken in the context of the specific use.

I’d have thought your ribbon panels would be a great fit for your preferred listening and a change over to horns could be less compelling given your music playlist… it could very easily be a sideways or retrograde step.

 

[the sound of Tao]

You have a wonderful system, much like Grahams, if i ever get a additional horn system i will probably go PAP

I really love what I have especially for the room size I’m in… it’s ideal for me. If I went to a larger space I’d have to do a rethink. As good as OB horn bass is I’d possibly then I’d possibly want to further augment or extend with subs. Seems the good big systems in big rooms (also evident in Ron’s list) seem to make a very strong case for that.

 

[Macattack]

This thread needs beer. It flows more like a bar discussion where one guy makes a serious statement about fishing gear and it quickly evolves to a discussion on snowboards with a short diversion on whether you can feel the rush from Skiing videos. Geesh.

 

[AudioHR]

Big wilsons (before 2010) micro dynamics and dynamic range is ok , the important key to get good dynamics from cone (dynamic driver) speakers is not just going for higher efficiency, the room speaker interaction is very very important. You can increase dynamics if you find the perfect position in the room.
Larger rooms with wider rear wall can help but finally the most important key is the speaker placement.

lower efficiency cone speakers need proper low feedback high power amplifiers (very rare) and finding match amplifiers is not easy. The AC power quality is also very important for dynamics of high power amplifiers.

Huge impact of speaker placement on the sound is the big secret of high end audio.

It shouldn't be a secret but speaker placement is absolutely a key to getting the most out of your high end system! When I look at pictures of speaker placement on the internet I wonder if the news has got out.

 

[PeterA]

For me personally? As I have never in my entire life owned a loudspeaker that was not a planar dipole it should be obvious that this is not correct.

Manufacturers of dynamic driver loudspeakers and of horn loudspeakers have tried to make me offers they hoped I couldn't refuse. I still have only planar dipole loudspeakers.

Big room? Yes. I wish my home listening room were 5 feet wider and 10 feet longer (to get to 25 feet wide and 35 feet long).

I’m just going by your own list of favorites. Could you describe the sonic attributes that these seven systems and rooms have in common?

 

[AudioHR]

I would rather not cut my floor. I would try 6 layers tar paper on the floor with 3 inch thick concrete or stone slab on top. Speaker on that. Or a steel plate like Peter uses.

I say tar paper as I was working on a remodel on a multiplex. The owner found that around 6 layers tar paper under a floor board almost totally shunted the sound of a steel ball being dropoed on the board between floors. Call it mass decoupling. Anything other than cutting.

I wouldn't cut the floor either. I suspect the tar paper and slab would raise the height of the speaker and change the sound. So obviously it would be a try it and see what you think.

 

[Ron Resnick]

I’m just going by your own list of favorites. Could you describe the sonic attributes that these seven systems and rooms have in common?

These seven rooms + systems achieve for me, to a greater or a lesser extent, more convincing and believable sound (greater suspension disbelief) than the rooms + systems in the next tier down.

 

[PeterA]

These seven rooms + systems achieve for me, to a greater or a lesser extent, more convincing and believable sound (greater suspension disbelief) than the rooms + systems in the next tier down.

For your personal genre of preference, girl with guitar or vocal or whatever you call it, what are your five favorite rooms and systems?

Or put another way, with your favorite genre of music, which five system room combinations give you the most convincing and believable sound or greatest suspension of disbelief?

It just seems curious to me that you start a thread listing your favorite systems, but qualify it much later into the thread, that you do not own a similar system because of the type of music you like.

 

[tima]

These seven rooms + systems achieve for me, to a greater or a lesser extent, more convincing and believable sound (greater suspension disbelief) than the rooms + systems in the next tier down.

Are you saying your top systems sound more like live music than other systems?

 

[bonzo75]

I have written many times that if my primary musical genre interest were classical, or were classical plus jazz, I would have a horn loudspeaker system.

For my primary musical genre interest of vocals planar dipoles offer me a sonic presentation which is, for me, a critical "sonic cue" for believability.

I have still to hear a planar dipole in person or in video that sounds as good as horns, and I shared quite a few vocal videos from many horn systems In fact there is a thread on vocal videos.

I have still to hear a speaker do rock as well as horns. The closest non-horns that came to horns on rock were Henk's Grands

 

[JackD201]

Are any of these large rooms in this “Ron’s top-tier” list untreated, or do they all have some manner of audiophile acoustic treatments?

I ask because I don’t think of the rooms as being primary, or the gear itself, but how specific gear is set up in a specific room. The set up is as important as the gear and the room in my experience. The three are interdependent and only in combination can provide superior results.

A good set up guy or hobbyist with appropriate knowledge and experience can dramatically improve the sound of a given system in a particular room.

Hi Peter,

I agree with everything you've said. Except about the room as being primary. Well, it is. No room, no place to put a system in if we are going to be practical about it. So let's perhaps rephrase it in such a way that set up being as important as the gear chosen for the room we happen to have.

A good set up person can indeed improve the sound in any given room and personally that should be considered mandatory.

So why go through the process of designing and building a room specifically for music playback use? Let's go back to the good set up person now given a room with attributes that will make his job easier. Do you think that same set up person could bring out even more improvements to the overall playback quality? I would think so because quite a few room features can be impossible to overcome. There are factors such as severe L-R asymmetry, lack of isolation from external noise, actual internal noise from things like HVAC, noisy lighting dimmers and ballasts, the room's inherent propensity for broad spectrum energy build up.

It is case to case. Some may luck out and need little to no treatments using household decor wisely instead. It certainly wasn't my case where I got the basement in a home in a country with A LOT of rainfall. At the time we worked on the room the cost of treatments and HVAC modifications cost about 10,000 USD. What is a good cart and arm combo to somebody that already has a great cart and arm? Sort of a no brainer for me and somebody else building up from scratch. It just happened to be the hand dealt me. Please don't tell the wife I dealt it to myself though LOL

My take on this is that when somebody wants to take on the task of designing and building a space for critical listening, he must know and commit to the objective at hand. In other words no treated rooms are treated equally. A treated room is only a success if it aids in reaching the objective. If you are having a room done for you, it is imperative that the client and the consultant fully understand the same. So far we have been lucky, I do not want to jinx this.

In my room, I've had small, medium, large and gigantic cone speakers as well as horns. A good room by my definition is a room with the least possible handicaps. It is one least destructive. Some examples:

For those that like to boogie, a quiet room requires less power to reach a desired perceived loudness level. Less power, less heat, less heat less thermal driver distortion. For those that listen softly, the heat might not be the issue but the noise floor will definitely mess with micro dynamics, shading and ultimately sacrifice timbre. It is not a recipe I want if I just want to bathe myself in the purity and emotion of a Chopin Nocturne or want to go nuts playing Frampton live. This has nothing to do with the gear. The room simply allows one to deploy the greater extent of the system's performance envelope.

It is just about seeking "better" and by that I by no means mean better than others, just better for myself. I hope we can continue this conversation.

 

[Ron Resnick]

I ask because I don’t think of the rooms as being primary, or the gear itself, but how specific gear is set up in a specific room.

I do think of the room as primary. Alternatively, I think of the room and the components together as primary.

The set up is as important as the gear and the room in my experience.

I disagree. I think a competent and experienced dealer or hobbyist can get the loudspeakers positioned and the room set up to 80 or 85 or so percent. I think there is some sonic and believability magic in the final five or 10%, but I don't think it utterly transforms the experience as though the system were suddenly in a larger room or as though the components were suddenly significantly changed.

Stirling Trayle himself could set up small bookshelf speakers and a nice integrated amplifier in my listening room, and no matter what he does I'm not going to prefer it to my system set up by me to about 80 or 90%.

The three are interdependent

Yes, they are interdependent.

 

[PeterA]

I do think of the room as primary. Alternatively, I think of the room and the components together as primary.


I disagree. I think a competent and experienced dealer or hobbyist can get the loudspeakers positioned and the room set up to 80 or 85 or so percent. I think there is some sonic and believability magic in the final five or 10%, but I don't think it utterly transforms the experience as though the system were suddenly in a larger room or as though the components were suddenly significantly changed.

Stirling Trayle himself could set up small bookshelf speakers and a nice integrated amplifier in my listening room, and no matter what he does I'm not going to prefer it to my system set up by me to about 80 or 90%.


Yes, they are interdependent.

You must mean15 to 20%, not 5-10%. 80 to 85% proper speaker set up by a competent hobbyist or dealer leaves a lot on the table.

I’m not saying, set up as primary, I’m saying it is as important as the chosen and the quality of the room, more or less in general terms. Every case will be slightly different and they’re not all 33.33%

I just take issue with prioritizing the room and the gear and not even mentioning the set up in your opening post. That’s all. in other words, I disagree with your omission of the importance of set up.

To reach the very tippy top as Mike Lavigne would say, you need all three, and in my opinion, more more or less in equal measure. And even then you are not going to get consensus of opinion.

I understand that what these seven rooms have in common is large size or volume. I don’t know about audio file acoustic treatment. What sonic attributes do the seven systems share to reach your top list?

 

[sbnx]

I do think of the room as primary. Alternatively, I think of the room and the components together as primary.


I disagree. I think a competent and experienced dealer or hobbyist can get the loudspeakers positioned and the room set up to 80 or 85 or so percent. I think there is some sonic and believability magic in the final five or 10%, but I don't think it utterly transforms the experience as though the system were suddenly in a larger room or as though the components were suddenly significantly changed.

Stirling Trayle himself could set up small bookshelf speakers and a nice integrated amplifier in my listening room, and no matter what he does I'm not going to prefer it to my system set up by me to about 80 or 90%.


Yes, they are interdependent.

I guess it depends on how you define compentent. Setup is everything. Comparing a large panel system setup to 80% and a fully optimized setup of a bookshelf speaker is really not a comparison. The comparison is the same system setup to 80% and fully optimized. The difference is profound. Here is an example.

I heard a Wilson XVX system about a year ago in a large dedicated room. (35' long by 25' wide with a 12 or 13' ceiling. He had the big Boulder amp, preamp, transparent Opus cables etc. The speakers were setup by a dealer. The sound was "meh" at best.

This past weekend at CAF I visited a friend who has a pair of XVX in a room that is maybe 25' long and 20' wide with a tall ceiling. He used Audio Research amps, preamp and Esoteric CD stack. Transparent Opus cables. This system was fully optimized and setup by Stirling. This was a WOW system. Very compelling to listen to. Dynamics and drive! Clarity and transparency were very, very, very good.

If I showed pictures and a list of gear of these two systems to most people I think most would say that the system with the Boulder amp would be the system with more grip and drive but not even close. I think they would say the Boulder system would be quieter, with more nuance. Again, not even close. They would say the acoustically treated bigger room would sound bigger and more spacious. Again, not even close. I wish I could snap my fingers and transport you back and forth to listen to these two systems. I think it would change your assessment of the importance of setup. I also think it would also change your overly optimistic assessment that people and dealers are getting 80% of the available performance.

 

[bonzo75]

Stirling Trayle himself could set up small bookshelf speakers and a nice integrated amplifier in my listening room, and no matter what he does I'm not going to prefer it to my system set up by me to about 80 or 90%.

Well I didn’t like his set up CH Rockport Lyra, did like his set up CH Stenheim Alumine 2 but not as much as a good efficient high sensitive system shock sound great in untreated rooms

 

[sbnx]

Well I didn’t like his set up CH Rockport Lyra, did like his set up CH Stenheim Alumine 2 but not as much as a good efficient high sensitive system shock sound great in untreated rooms

I assume the Rockport/CH was at Munich. If so, then that is not too surprising as the walls are pretty transparent. It is hard to get good bass at those shows.