Ron's Speaker, Turntable, Power and Room Treatment Upgrades

[Hi-FiGuy]

This is so awesome! These are the pictures we have been waiting years for!
I am with Tinka on this one, one couch and the listening chair and do not block that view.
Looking forward to the final set up, its all "fun" from here.

Not that you need another opinion but I would get those traps and panels out of the room and set up the system and see what the room does on its own and bring back from there as needed, you might be surprised, trust your ears.
I will be interested to see Davids take on the room.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Ron, as we all know, the eye listens. What a magnificent view. I would be tempted to choose the listening position towards the window. Unfortunately, this has acoustic disadvantages (hard reflections and less bass because of the large window areas).

I wish you much joy in setting up your HiFi equipment.

That’s actually the low rent view looking over the pool. We cultivate and cut the trees so that on the lower level it looks like a jungle and we have a lot of privacy, and on the upper level we can enjoy the views out to the distance.

Early on I researched the possibility of removing those glass walls and extending the listening room onto the deck by about four feet and making that wall area opaque plain exterior wall. It was prohibitively expensive. And it would’ve kind of screwed up the already narrow walkway around the pool.

Thank you for your kind words!

 

[Ron Resnick]

This is so awesome! These are the pictures we have been waiting years for!
I am with Tinka on this one, one couch and the listening chair and do not block that view.
Looking forward to the final set up, its all fun from here.

Not that you need another opinion but I would get those traps and panels out of the room and set up the system and see what the room does on its own and bring back from there as needed, you might be surprised, trust your ears.
I will be interested to see Davids take on the room.

Thank you for your thoughts.

If I keep only one of the three couches I definitely would keep the couch on the left side wall in front of the kitchen. It is an interesting design, from de Sede of Switzerland, in which the seats can pivot forward into a chaise lounge. I have trouble bringing myself to sell that one.

Before the carpet went in the echo was so severe that even simple conversation in the room was not easy.

Once window treatment covers the three glass sections on the rear wall I might be able to remove the Tube Traps. The glass wall of the kitchen is more difficult to deal with, but there has to be absorption or diffusion over at least some of that glass wall.

I like the “stage” look of the speakers standing on the wood floor, and I like the ability to move around easily the components on the wood floor. Carpeting that front area would have been easier acoustically, however.

Right now the front third of the room, with the wood floor, is much livelier than the rear 2/3 of the room with carpet. The equipment on the wood floor might diffuse some of that reflection, or I might have to place pieces of carpet around the equipment. With the prior Martin-Logan/VTL system in this room I had strips of carpet in front and behind the speakers. That mitigated the excess liveliness of the wood floor section of the room. And I don’t want to get involved with installing diffusion waves or something like that on the ceiling.

Finally, my personal starting philosophy with dipole speakers, which I have used since 1988, and which I have set up in five very different rooms prior to this revised room, is to allow largely a clean, unadulterated reflection of the back wave off of the front wall. Many dipole users prefer to diffuse that back wave; many dipole users prefer to absorb that back wave.

The wood floor section is nine feet deep, so I have plenty of flexibility to set the time delay between the ears hearing the front wave, and the ears hearing the reflected back wave.

Since I don’t focus on classical music I am not good at hearing the ambient cues in a recording which form the acoustic soundstage in the listening room. I will defer to others to help me with speaker placement on that particular parameter.

I have a collection of giant precision “T” squares and very long metal rulers which can be placed on the floor and used to measure and equalize the distances between the front wall and the speakers and the distances between the side walls and the speakers relatively easily.

 

[rando]

Ron, impression gained from you relating showing up at a new speaker owner's home with a full complement of tools ready to perform a hours long internal surgical procedure has not faded. I maintain hopes little stands in your way during the coming days.

If I keep only one of the three couches I definitely would keep the couch on the left side wall in front of the kitchen. It is an interesting design, from de Sede of Switzerland, in which the seats can pivot forward into a chaise lounge. I have trouble bringing myself to sell that one.

Having previous experience in this room. Did you find preference towards smaller surface area or number of absorptive chairs?

It does seem transitional balance will have to be attained between your chosen solution and playing host to various sized crowds. From photos alone it appeared you had settled upon an easily pulled together 2-3-4 tier arrangement allowing seating for 10 or more. At least I thought this an attractive setting once the sunny view gave way to focus on the wood walled room itself. "It pays or it plays" might be your current outlook though.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Ron, impression gained from you relating showing up at a new speaker owner's home with a full complement of tools ready to perform a hours long internal surgical procedure has not faded. I maintain hopes little stands in your way during the coming days.



Having previous experience in this room. Did you find preference towards smaller surface area or number of absorptive chairs?

It does seem transitional balance will have to be attained between your chosen solution and playing host to various sized crowds. From photos alone it appeared you had settled upon an easily pulled together 2-3-4 tier arrangement allowing seating for 10 or more. At least I thought this an attractive setting once the sunny view gave way to focus on the wood walled room itself. "It pays or it plays" might be your current outlook though.

Thank you for your thoughts and your kind wishes!

In the prior incarnation of my system in the earlier version of this room I had one main listening chair and two smaller chairs on each side of the main listening chair. Other than speaker positioning and listening chair position versus the speakers I did not do any experimentation with different sizes or quantities of seating surfaces. I put that system in that room in what seems like a different audio world for me (circa 2008) as it was before I discovered WBF, and before I had a single audio friend within hundreds of miles.

Perhaps incorrectly but I am deducing from your last paragraph a question about tension between maximizing sound quality for a single primary listening chair, versus abundant seating locations? My primary goal is to maximize sound quality for a single listening position (mine), but I don’t necessarily think that couches in the room will undermine that, because furniture often has an acoustically beneficial diffusive effect.

 

[Kingrex]

This is the wall in the adjacent room which will have David’s racks and David’s turntable and the Io and the TL-7.5 Series III. The tape machine will go on the left.


View attachment 99956


There will be enough tubes in this system to entertain any pyromaniac. A nearby fire extinguisher is prudent.

Are the round cups escutcheon covers for low voltage cables. Do you have any pipe for routing low voltage in the wall.

 

[cjfrbw]

High, open ceiling looks like good potential for ambience mixing chamber. I might have chosen the long wall for speakers, but it looks cool the way it is.

 

[rando]

Thank you for your thoughts and your kind wishes!

In the prior incarnation of my system in the earlier version of this room I had one main listening chair and two smaller chairs on each side of the main listening chair. Other than speaker positioning and listening chair position versus the speakers I did not do any experimentation with different sizes or quantities of seating surfaces. I put that system in that room in what seems like a different audio world for me (circa 2008) as it was before I discovered WBF, and before I had a single audio friend within hundreds of miles.

The picture of an audiophile freshly returned home from a day's labors to recover in solitude.

You've rekindled a memory from 2008 of reading an audio magazine by moonlight somewhere there was good chance of not finding another human soul around for at least 100 miles.

Perhaps incorrectly but I am deducing from your last paragraph a question about tension between maximizing sound quality for a single primary listening chair, versus abundant seating locations? My primary goal is to maximize sound quality for a single listening position (mine), but I don’t necessarily think that couches in the room will undermine that, because furniture often has an acoustically beneficial diffusive effect.

Tension of a good easily welcoming quality possessed of full understanding primary purpose is (eventually) a single optimally placed chair yet to arrive.

Appears I've made a larger comment on where my own balance of pronounced aesthetics meeting high functionality lands. Casting the solitary vote for using full complement of leather seating. Expect to fill them nightly very soon and let it come about. I'm also considerably far from aghast at closing off the reflective pool view and possibly line of sight to the kitchen.

 

[Ron Resnick]

I'm also considerably far from aghast at closing off the . . . line of sight to the kitchen.

Unfortunately I did not think of it myself early on to wall off the kitchen. I wish we had walled off that opening to the kitchen, and reconfigured the kitchen as an open kitchen facing the dining room. I didn’t think of it, and then Peter suggested it, but by then it was far too late.

Tinka would’ve preferred that for the kitchen, and I would have preferred that for the listening room. (All else being equal, which in this case, it was not, as we both had our own reasons, in retrospect, for preferring the open kitchen layout, I like enclosed kitchens, because an enclosed kitchen with a swinging door reminds me of fancy apartments on Park Avenue in Manhattan.)

 

[Ron Resnick]

High, open ceiling looks like good potential for ambience mixing chamber. I might have chosen the long wall for speakers, but it looks cool the way it is.

Ideal room dimension calculators never seem to like tall ceilings, but I have never failed to like the sound afforded by tall ceilings in actual listening rooms.

The photos might be deceiving, because there really is no long wall option. The kitchen is on the left side wall, and the opening to the equipment room/home theater on the right side is about 6 feet wide.

 

[microstrip]

Ideal room dimension calculators never seem to like tall ceilings, but I have never failed to like the sound afforded by tall ceilings in actual listening rooms.

The photos might be deceiving, because there really is no long wall option. The kitchen is on the left side wall, and the opening to the equipment room/home theater on the right side is about 6 feet wide.

Ideal room calculators are isotropic and only consider the room modes associated to dimensions - you can use the calculated width as height and vice versa and they will be happy! The order length - width - height is arbitrary.

 

[gleeds]

View attachment 99952

The listening room has been painted, the carpet has been installed, and this morning I cleaned the wood floor loudspeaker/amplifier section in the front third of the room. I know this sounds absurd, but you can’t imagine how excited I was to be using a broom and a dust pan to clean the wood part of the listening room floor!

Just for fun I put in my inventory of ASC Tube Traps.

The photo of the front wall using some wide-angle lens function on the iPhone exaggerates grotesquely the actual size of the room. It’s about half the size of what it looks like in this photo.


View attachment 99951


I found some Mickey Mouse reverberation time app in the Apple iStore. With the rear wall of the listening room almost completely uncovered glass the current reverberation time according to this little app is .56 @ 500Hz and .63 @ 2,000Hz.

When those glass walls are covered with window treatment I think RT might fall into the target range.

Tinka does not like any of my legacy leather couches, so they have been banished from the living room and into the listening room. I want the listening room to be a fun place which can accommodate naturally a pretty large number of people. Still, I think I should probably keep only two out of the three couches.

I do not yet have a main listening chair here, but I picked one out a couple of years ago. Or I could place one of the couches in front of the other two couches, and use the forward couch as a main listening position. But then that would make this room look unmistakably like a furniture store!

Tinka thinks I should keep only one of the three couches, and keep the place uncluttered looking.


This is a photo from the center of the rear wall using the regular iPhone camera lens:


View attachment 99957

Ron, I find the lady of the house is usually right insofar as furnishings I love the way the walls turned out and don't imagine you are going to have too many acoustic issues as the Pendragon arrays will eliminate floor and ceiling issues. You have come a long way since I visited!

 

[Hi-FiGuy]

Thank you for your thoughts.

If I keep only one of the three couches I definitely would keep the couch on the left side wall in front of the kitchen. It is an interesting design, from de Sede of Switzerland, in which the seats can pivot forward into a chaise lounge. I have trouble bringing myself to sell that one.

Before the carpet went in the echo was so severe that even simple conversation in the room was not easy.

Once window treatment covers the three glass sections on the rear wall I might be able to remove the Tube Traps. The glass wall of the kitchen is more difficult to deal with, but there has to be absorption or diffusion over at least some of that glass wall.

I like the “stage” look of the speakers standing on the wood floor, and I like the ability to move around easily the components on the wood floor. Carpeting that front area would have been easier acoustically, however.

Right now the front third of the room, with the wood floor, is much livelier than the rear 2/3 of the room with carpet. The equipment on the wood floor might diffuse some of that reflection, or I might have to place pieces of carpet around the equipment. With the prior Martin-Logan/VTL system in this room I had strips of carpet in front and behind the speakers. That mitigated the excess liveliness of the wood floor section of the room. And I don’t want to get involved with installing diffusion waves or something like that on the ceiling.

Finally, my personal starting philosophy with dipole speakers, which I have used since 1988, and which I have set up in five very different rooms prior to this revised room, is to allow largely a clean, unadulterated reflection of the back wave off of the front wall. Many dipole users prefer to diffuse that back wave; many dipole users prefer to absorb that back wave.

The wood floor section is nine feet deep, so I have plenty of flexibility to set the time delay between the ears hearing the front wave, and the ears hearing the reflected back wave.

Since I don’t focus on classical music I am not good at hearing the ambient cues in a recording which form the acoustic soundstage in the listening room. I will defer to others to help me with speaker placement on that particular parameter.

I have a collection of giant precision “T” squares and very long metal rulers which can be placed on the floor and used to measure and equalize the distances between the front wall and the speakers and the distances between the side walls and the speakers relatively easily.

As a Maggie guy I follow similar procedures on speaker set up. More often than not I prefer nothing to slightly diffused on the front wall, never absorbed.

In our previous home our main conversating room was perfectly square and about a 20 foot tall flat ceiling. I had great visions for that room and we always wound up conversating at the island in the large kitchen. Visually it was a beautiful room that no two people could have a conversation in, let alone have the TV on at the same time.We just gave up on it, so I get your dilemma.

So excited to see your next steps.

 

[Ron Resnick]

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

I started this thread on June 18, 2015, over seven (7) years ago. This thread has been a chronology and a discussion about a future system which does not, even after more than seven years, exist today. The system which has been the subject of this thread has been the audiophile equivalent of “vaporware.”

If the current schedule holds, on Monday that is about to change. The Gryphon Pendragon loudspeakers will be delivered to my garage.

On Monday morning I will be driving to Torrance, California, to witness the Pendragons being unearthed from The Source AV, owned by the infinitely patient and gracious Jason Lord, by Jason’s colleagues, Wayne Strickland and William.

I will be starting a brand new thread to chronicle the “hatching” of the new system. Sometime over the weekend I probably will close this thread to new posts. I am intending to keep the new thread focused on the new system, as opposed to this thread which has been wide ranging and anything goes.

 

[morricab]

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

I started this thread on June 18, 2015, over seven (7) years ago. This thread has been a chronology and a discussion about a future system which does not, even after more than seven years, exist today. The system which has been the subject of this thread has been the audiophile equivalent of “vaporware.”

If the current schedule holds, on Monday that is about to change. The Gryphon Pendragon loudspeakers will be delivered to my garage.

On Monday morning I will be driving to Torrance, California, to witness the Pendragons being unearthed from The Source AV, owned by the infinitely patient and gracious Jason Lord, by Jason’s colleagues, Wayne Strickland and William.

I will be starting a brand new thread to chronicle the “hatching” of the new system. Sometime over the weekend I probably will close this thread to new posts.

In the words of Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley and plenty of others.... HALLELUJAH!!!

Sincere Congrats Ron, I hope it fully satisfies.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

 

[Ron Resnick]

Thank you, Brad! Thank you, Mike!

 

[HughP3]

Now this is exciting! I am certain all will be well. Look forward to your new thread.

 

[microstrip]

Great news! Have you already decided on what will be the first recording to be played in the new system?

 

[Hi-FiGuy]

Great news! Have you already decided on what will be the first recording to be played in the new system?

i am sure it will involve clowns!