The Worlds Best Listening Room?

Fellow WBF members, I found this video earlier today outlining the building and design of the Elbphilharmoni concert hall in Hamburg. I was blown away by the architecture, yet more importantly, the painstaking efforts to create the world's most awesome listening room.

We often debate on WBF what constitutes the most faithful reproduction of sound. Undoubtedly, the room is our most significant component. The Elphilharmoni is a space I hope to experience someday soon for the sheer joy of it but also to better inform my work in the field.

It's a YouTube, so please skip the commercial

 

That is a listening room at Shenzhen/ China.
Another superb one.
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this one looks a lot like member Mike L ‘s room.

 

That is Mike L's room. Nevertheless, it does, however, deserve acknowledgment because it is indeed a special room

 

I remember when they remodeled Carnegie Hall, folks universally felt the sound was abysmal.

The "original" main auditorium was organic. With the remodeled version, you could almost here people blink. And when audience members who had the score with them turned a page, it sounded like a tornado. "The Trumpet Shall Sound" from Handel's Messiah could blow out eardrums in the remodeled auditorium.

 

Regarding concert halls: I recently checked out pricing for some concerts at Walt Disney Hall in LA and the remodeled Geffen Hall in NY. The current fashion is for vineyard style halls with lots of seats behind and to the sides of the orchestra. However the prices in those (LA) seats are lower than traditional main floor (orchestra) seats and they are not selling as well. NY has some very odd pricing, for example Orchestra Left is much more expensive the Orchestra Right. Aisle seats have a large premium -- in one case $174 vs $80 for the adjacent third seat. Presumably the pricing reflects management's evaluation of desirability - visual and acoustic.

 

Another great listening room.

 

Another great listening room.
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what drivers in there?

 

 

So far, my room has been the best listening room.

 

what drivers in there?

The speakers are field coil Shindo Latour, means Altec.

 

Here is my favorite dedicated room, minus the one-chair option.

Eerily quiet and immersive space. Yes, the shades do go down. For those that are interested, those are darTZeel electronics pictured. To the best of my knowledge, they are the only silver anodized chassis in existence.

 

"In Living Stereo", NYC.

 

I met Frank Gehry shortly after the inauguration of the Walt Disney concert hall. I asked him how he designed the acoustics. He said he tried using software simulations, developed together with acousticians, but at the end, they needed to build scale models and do measurements. Even then, I did not find the acoustics of the hall particularly outstanding. The excellent acoustics of the famous halls such as the Grosser Salle of the Musikverein, the Boston symphony and the Concertgebouw probably all happened by accident. The architects most likely did pay attention to the shape and dimensions of the halls, but the building materials, the texture of the walls and ceiling, and even the seating also played an important and unpredictable role. The ornate carvings on the ceiling and the cornicing of the Musikverein is an integral part of its acoustical architecture.
The acoustics of Carnegie Hall deteriorated after renovation works carried out in 1986. People suspected concrete under the stage might have caused the problem, but this was not addressed until 1996 when the stage was dismantled and the concrete removed. Apparently, this restored the acoustics of the hall. This goes to show that even the experts are probably no better at predicting the outcome of constructing concert halls.

 

I hope the Orpheum in Vancouver BC sound good. I am watching Stewart Copland play there on Saturday.

 

Thanks for showing those examples of mislead "renovations" done on famous and spectacular sounding concert halls.
I'm not an expert on this subject, but some fine listening rooms I auditioned were extremely well damped to minimise the reverberation time.
This principle has been applied to the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie as well, but to me it seems not the best practice for concert halls.

All you will get is an orchestra, playing in a near dead sounding room and that has a great effect on the way music has to be played in this room.
One cannot any longer rely on a reverberant room with the acoustics of a wooden shoebox design. The new rooms do much less to participate in the acoustics, in opposite they try to hide and minimize their acoustic effects and emphasize on the orchestra to amplify every single note.

 

The sound in cathedrals is usually very good (very high ceilings and lots of diffusion). A beautiful Jazz recording that demonstrates this is Branford Marsalis' In My Solitude: Live at Grace Cathedral. Because there is only one instrument, the effect of the space is very evident.

 

I met Frank Gehry shortly after the inauguration of the Walt Disney concert hall. I asked him how he designed the acoustics. He said he tried using software simulations, developed together with acousticians, but at the end, they needed to build scale models and do measurements. Even then, I did not find the acoustics of the hall particularly outstanding. The excellent acoustics of the famous halls such as the Grosser Salle of the Musikverein, the Boston symphony and the Concertgebouw probably all happened by accident. The architects most likely did pay attention to the shape and dimensions of the halls, but the building materials, the texture of the walls and ceiling, and even the seating also played an important and unpredictable role. The ornate carvings on the ceiling and the cornicing of the Musikverein is an integral part of its acoustical architecture.
The acoustics of Carnegie Hall deteriorated after renovation works carried out in 1986. People suspected concrete under the stage might have caused the problem, but this was not addressed until 1996 when the stage was dismantled and the concrete removed. Apparently, this restored the acoustics of the hall. This goes to show that even the experts are probably no better at predicting the outcome of constructing concert halls.

I have performed and listened to Disney Hall as I am fortunate to live nearby since it opened. To some extent I agree, it isn't the finest listening hall I've encountered but it is very enjoyable nonetheless. I never feel overwhelmed by tuttis and like (not love) the tonality of instruments. The bloom just doesn't match my great recordings listened to at home. It is so superior to the neighboring Dorothy Chandler where I listen to opera. I would much rather hear the opera at Disney Hall all the time. The best music halls listed have many remarkable recordings done there so I can only assume that the halls are just as good live. Typically, the shoe-box design halls I have performed in and listened in have been my favorites in California.

 

Strange, the untreated room at the Pleasanton Library has a very large open coffer skylight (sound mixing chamber?) and it sounds great with small ensembles.

It's kind of funny that these large, expensive concert hall projects will be panned relentlessly by somebody as soon as they are out of the gate. I remember the Disney Hall in LA getting the same treatment as Elbphilharmonie when they had the first performances. Is that a symptom of too many egos and self styled experts and divas ruining the soup by insisting on throwing in their own spices?

WIth all the money and flash, I imagine the construction process is an enormous brawl, as is the subsequent 'revamping', not unlike the kinds of dogmatic conversations that can occur on boards like these. In Hollywood, script writers are usually credited according to the percent that their contribution actually makes it into the final script. Too many authors, you get a hodge podge. If you have one dictator, you get his taste to the exclusion of all others but perhaps with thematic integrity. Hollywood writers would lament that director's and producers wives and female relatives would often embellish their scripts disastrously, but money and daddy's precious would win.

Tempo has a certain amount to do with how a hall with sound because quicker tempo will create entirely different backbeats from slower tempos. Also, the reverb times that seem to please the most people are in the 1.6 to 2.0 second range of the more famous halls in Vienna and Amsterdam, which will necessarily dictate the limiting size of the halls. Large churches with 4.0 second reverbs can be great for slower chorales and organs, but not so hot for quicker tempo standard classical.

Elbphilharmonie had people who liked to be against the wall where the mix of reverbs and bass were warmer. I find in many audiophile rooms, that's where I like it, too, right at the wall juncture.

 

I met Frank Gehry shortly after the inauguration of the Walt Disney concert hall. I asked him how he designed the acoustics. He said he tried using software simulations, developed together with acousticians, but at the end, they needed to build scale models and do measurements. Even then, I did not find the acoustics of the hall particularly outstanding. The excellent acoustics of the famous halls such as the Grosser Salle of the Musikverein, the Boston symphony and the Concertgebouw probably all happened by accident. The architects most likely did pay attention to the shape and dimensions of the halls, but the building materials, the texture of the walls and ceiling, and even the seating also played an important and unpredictable role. The ornate carvings on the ceiling and the cornicing of the Musikverein is an integral part of its acoustical architecture.
The acoustics of Carnegie Hall deteriorated after renovation works carried out in 1986. People suspected concrete under the stage might have caused the problem, but this was not addressed until 1996 when the stage was dismantled and the concrete removed. Apparently, this restored the acoustics of the hall. This goes to show that even the experts are probably no better at predicting the outcome of constructing concert halls.

That would have bern an interesting conversation! I imagine it was a struggle between sculpture and acoustics .. I was
pleasantly surprised by the hall and thought the acoustic quite good the one time I attended.
The "draped " ceiling and upper walls make sense in terms of minimizing direct ceiling reflections and providing side wall reflections that are not shaded by the head beside you.
Most of the famous older shoebox halls have a flat floor which avoids "seat dip" .. the multiple reflections from risers cause cause a bass dip resulting in less warmth .. all the neoclassical ceiling coffers and pilasters on walls reduce side wall relections without messing with phase .. so they can work quite well
The vineyard halls seem to rely on being close to the stage for direct sound and less on reverb. ..which I like ... pick your poison !
I think size is the big issue .. 1000 or so seats is great but as you go up to 2000 or more it gets quite difficult to provide universal acoustic quality
Most fancy modern halls are designed by "starchitects" who probably have limited acoustic knowledge so it is always a battle of vision vs acoustics and how the team works together and even when it is excellent the results are hard to predict as components such as cladding may absorb more bass than the model suggests .. you can ( and should) build in adjustability to deal with this but the manual often gathers cobwebs
A bucket load has been recently spent on the Sydney opera house ( a design descendant of the berlin Philharmonic) to improve the crappy acoustic .. it was done by a German firm.. I am looking forward checking it out .
Using live acoustic music as your reference does depend quite a bit on the venue
Cheers

Phil

 

Using live acoustic music as your reference does depend quite a bit on the venue

also interesting to consider this when you think about how you might have been introduced to various instruments -- small un-amplified venue, small but amplified (by sound engineer), etc. Do non-musicians really know the timbre of instruments?

 

All I know is, that modern music, amplified by modern electronics, has to be avoided to attend.
The sound today is most often magnitudes more worse than the sound from a good reproduction at home.

Watching those kids setup and adjust their PA gear to amplify a complete combo, the result will be certainly "the louder, the better". No other focus has priority. They have no clue about music quality and do really think their iphone is the new gold standard in the audiophile world. It simply ruins ears what they do today, but most concert visitors seem not to be worried about that. And in the city, one new hearing aids acoustician store every thousand feet. No wonder why.

In the past, the sound was clearly better, who needs an acoustic room that sounds like the first generation of digital audio? And that's state of the modern art today?

Those designers are, imho, decades behind what good sound means today. They think to be very smart to simulate everything, but in fact know much lesser about acoustics than the previous generations. Whats that interesting to talk with such people? They have a big name, but don't know much about their profession.
The results of their work are often not stunning but the real opposite to it. I don't think without their computer aided programs they really know and understand what they are doing.

Modern PA gear is the same, compare one combo playing on old audio recordings (1960's to early seventies) and on newer, solid state stuff. Such a crappy sound, I can't believe they are able to sell their expensive tickets still to thousands of music lovers. Do they all have no taste in music reproduction? Becoming ecstatic about too loud crappy PA sounds, they still freak out just to see their idols.