Beautiful listening rooms

Because the best spot to be, frequency response wise is either in the front 30% of the room, or the rear 30% of the room.

 

I love rooms with the collection on display.
Many of the more extravagant rooms in this thread give the impression they're just show pieces and no-one actually uses the room.

 

I love having the desk right behind the listening area. That way, you can work and listen, albeit not critically per se, but still - some 802's as your "computer speakers?" Hell yes. And then when you want to enjoy a drink and some tunes, move approximately 5' forward And with the iMac, you can almost literally have nothing but a power cable strung somewhere. I get almost 100 MBps via wireless connection to my Macbook Pro, that's plenty for doing just about anything.

 

I find it interesting the number of these room that have the audio gear just sitting on the floor, between the speakers.
No shelving, nothing stacked to save floor space, no audio rack fancy or otherwise...nope. Just buy the high end gear, put it on the floor

 

Then you end up with listening rooms that looks like Michael Fremer's room or Ken Kessler's room.

If I had the means to do a dedicated room with killer gear I'd want to have the records in separate room, like a very large walk-in closet, rather than in the listening room itself. Have a wall of records on the back wall of the listening room. But the bulk of the records and CDs and other physical media, along with the record cleaning machine and the music server computer and the NAS and such, would be in a separate connected room. I don't assume that the people with no records visible in the listening room don't have a large record and CD collection.

 

I'm not rolling super expensive gear but between my amp, preamp, audio PC, and DAC... well I think I have around almost 7k invested, and it all sits on the floor. Well, it sits on bike tubes, on wood platforms, with ball bearings supporting the gear but... no fancy racks or anything. Just... the floor

Heck, the two most expensive pieces of gear I have are completely out of sight, in a closet. XLR cables snake into the room and into the preamp. I control the PC with a macbook. I love it, it looks like an exceptionally simple system. My media is all digital so no massive hard collections to be found. Just two SSDs in a nondescript PC case

 

In the discussion as to whether the software should be in the same room as the gear...for me...out of sight, out of mind. I need to see my records - preferably from my listening chair, for those moments when the record that's playing just isn't hitting the spot...I still wanna stay in the sweet spot and listen for the time being while scanning the collection to find the next target.

 

Fremer looks like he'd have trouble just getting within reach of the turntable at times ! Yeah, no doubt these people with the extravagant rooms have collections - well, I hope they do ! ...... and sure, if you can accommodate it, an adjoining room to house a large collection would be fantastic. I just prefer the rooms that have some of the collection on display, I think it adds to the feel of the room. Fremer's and Kessler's are more my style. Thanks for posting the links !

 

Kenny Kessler, the big bad audiophile perpetuating the myth that, his room is acoustically ok because records and/or books will diffuse the sound at the rear, and CD cases up front do something or other as well. God. lol.

 

Ladies and Gentlemen, I will show you a beautiful listening room and it's beautiful in so many ways.

In the late '60s-early '70s when I wasn't even in double figures, this room was meticulous, though stealthily fitted with LPs, various speakers, Quad preamps, pairs of Quad IIs and Leaks, many Connoisseur turntables and a Garrard 301. It was my Uncle and his partner's listening room and these photos were taken last year when my brother and I were asked to clear it out.

This room is where I began my audio odyssey. My musical Ground Zero. Until then, music was just 'on' while you did other things but these guys had their own space where all you did was listen (and assemble chandeliers) so from then on, just listening became the target.

So yeah, not as conventionally "beautiful" as the ones Brian and others have posted but, trust me, this was an exceptionally beautiful listening room.

The final shot is where it all led to, my beautiful listening room, or part thereof!

 

Good gosh..go outside.

 

This room would be perfect to replicate "The Cavern" sound on all of those early live Beatles albums.

Yes a nightmare for sure.

 

Behind the "Acoustically designed curtain" are 1 or 2 (or 4?) pairs of Quad 63s,. not the most elegant looking speaker

from the ear.net

"After the factory tour Cameron took me down to ARA’s famous music room which remains much as I remember it from the time when he was alive. Four pairs of Quad ESL63s are stacked two high in brass weighted frames with one pair of stacks facing the listeners and the other pair behind them at right angles. These are driven by a pair of monster Krell class A power amplifiers and the whole lot reside behind a green curtain in a distinctly theatrical setting. The source and preamplifier are right in front of the listening position in the Japanese style, it’s easy to see why, you wouldn’t want to have to cross several yards of carpet to a system behind the curtains every time a record finished. Unfortunately one of the panels had developed a fault especially for my visit but despite the slight buzz this produced there was no escaping the phenomenal resolution and breadth of image the system produced with an SME Model 20/3A sporting a Clearaudio Goldfinger cartridge at its front end. I can’t say that I’m a big Neil Diamond fan but hearing his classic live album Hot August Night it became apparent why so many people were and probably still are. The atmosphere was electric and Diamond breaks through the usual schmaltzy gloss and achieves a bit of communication thanks to ARA’s impressive music room."

 

What's that the brand of the floor lamp in the corner? I want a couple.

 

Classic. Although originally, mono, right?

 

That's pretty much what I wound up with in the current house- I do have a dedicated room, but not all the records are in the listening room; I have shelving scattered throughout the room and there is a large adjacent walk in closet with shelves of records- where I keep tools and some supplies (I also used to keep my RCMs and do my cleaning there); a set of shelves in the entry way to the listening room, and once I got serious about cleaning old records, I took over the adjacent room as well, where the cleaning equipment now is, along with the "intake" area where new vinyl acquisitions go (or where stuff from my stacks that I never listened to, or haven't cleaned in decades goes). When I do a cleaning session, that's all I do. When I'm ready to listen, I have stuff that i've pulled out in advance, but there's always the 'hunt' for a record I'm sure I had (which is a whole other story). I'm not going to do any major changes at this point, because we are trying to sell our place; once I move, I'll start from scratch. Although I like "stuff," I'm getting to the point where clutter bothers me.

 

As depicted, two interesting people listening to one speaker can be a better, much better set than a lonely self fronting two monsters.

 

My home office is right next to my listening room downstairs so it also serves as my music library. Works out well.

Also, to get to and from the music library, I have to pass right by my two taps of ice cold beer.

So I got that going for me. Which is nice.

 

I keep all my records in a separate room, but that's because I have an ultrasonic I want to be able to run while I'm listening to music in the other room.

That said, I also have piles of records all over the place including a huge pile of 1,500 jazz albums I just scored. Needless to say, I need more storage.

I have two of these storage units on the way that I'll be putting in our sitting room where I'll keep my "new arrivals". I'm also building some custom shelves to go in the record room.

Looking forward to everything being neat and tidy again.

 

I really hate to quote that whole long thing just to say this, but _that_ is one of the most beautiful things I've seen in this thread.

 

Brian, who makes that record bin? I'm planning on having at least one of the audiokarma bins from a 4x8 sheet of plywood done by Christmas. A friend has offered to do all the skilled labor on it.

 

Those things look like Daleks.

 

Found by the roadside 20 years ago and vintage then, I'm afraid. No brand, although some folks are remanufacturing them these days.
DD

 

My grandiose plans don't include me building anything, but I do want to move my tools and junk from the unfinished part of the basement to the furnace room, paint the walls and recover the floor in the open section, and move all my stackable particle board record shelves in there.