Beautiful listening rooms

I have no idea what is going on here but I love it

 

So many of the listening rooms have just one chair. I find that kind of depressing.

 

Well, it is hard to take critical listening notes when doing vertical pressing shootouts with a friend trying to engage you in conversation about the music. Even worse, a significant other resting their head on your shoulder and throwing off the stereo field, thereby causing you to have to restart your Aja promo cut since you may have missed some spatial cues on the guitar solo.

 

We have a pretty decent listening system upstairs for company and family to enjoy. Then I have my room downstairs. It's basically a den, but outfitted for audio (room treatments, one seat, minibar, etc...). Upstairs, we have fun. Downstairs, I appreciate music to a greater degree. Keep in mind, many of the homes the featured rooms here would be in would (most likely) have a LOT more space than what is dedicated to one stereo system. If you don't have the space? One seat seems selfish. A communal space would take priority in that scenario. For those of us who have enough space for both (and my house is not large), why not?

 

"Does it have to be that loud?"
Enough said...

 

I felt like I accidentally gone to the wrong sort of web page! Never heard a room described that way before.

 

You get the feeling that each night, ever so slowly, they are inching toward you and before you know it you've been assimilated.
" Resistance is futile. "

 

I listen solo. I deploy a comfy "camp" chair or two when I rarely entertain. The real shame in quite a few of these rooms are the high-back chairs like the one in the photo above. Great for dozing off I guess.

 

Some of them don't even seem to have a listening seat. What are you supposed to do, stand at attention?

 

Haha, that too.
It just doesn't seem like a place I'd want to go sit and relax and listen to music in.

 

Not quite as glamorous as the rest but it was a fun room to enjoy music.
One of my systems from the mid 90's.

 

Same room but with the front end equipment out of view, at the side.
Check out the home made sub, LOL.

 

Aren't these the bongs?

 

You can either have rooms like this or you can have sex. You can't have both.

 

PRECISELY!

 

If the room is setup for active listening, there's an ideal spot to sit. 99% of the active listening done with my two systems is with me alone listening, though the seating in both rooms can accommodate more. Bless you if you have family members and friends who enjoy active listening as much as yourself.

 

if you get a couch, at least you have a shot

 

not many people are interested in sitting down and listening to music in 2015. Sad. Anyone that comes into my home and asks about the stereo gear...and asks to hear it... does so standing up and/or walking around the room. My wife will join me for a few songs here and there, but that's the extent of social listening.

This is one reason I have a decent stereo in every room!

 

These spaces are like walking into a pair of headphones. Completely immersive and solitary by design. There is a fork in the road for most people, do you bring yourself into the world of the music or do you bring the music into your world? I think a couch is a reasonable compromise to have both.

 

Action act,

For a second, I thought I was looking at a picture of a friend's room. His room has the same side wall reflectors and the same kind of ceiling. The front of his room has a very large convex wood reflector, and the four corners have bass traps that are well hidden by being built into the walls. The room was designed by Rives. He does almost all of his listening solo, but, he does have three chairs in the room. Realistically, in a room that size, there is only one sweet spot.

The only time I heard a home setup that had an area wide enough to deliver decent imaging to more than one listener, the dedicated room was quite large--I am guessing something like 28' by 50'. When he had guests listening, he had three tiny stools, with one in front and the two to the side set in back of the one in front so that the listeners are bunched up in a small area; that is how he got three people to hear decent sound at one time. The other occasions where I heard decent off-axis sound involved MUCH larger spaces and pretty exotic setups (three Wilson Alexandrias in the front, two Maxx's for the rear channels; big MBLs in a large conference room).

 

It would suck right in the middle of the "Comfortably Numb" guitar solo if those turned into a tank to go fight the Decepticons.

 

I think the appropriate title for this thread should be "Dedicated Listening Rooms". Beautiful they are not.

 

Holy diffusion panels, Batman!!