Listening room lighting

I rarely see discussions about how lighting in the listening room affects the hi-fi experience. Does it? Does your room's lighting affect what you hear or at least how you feel about what you hear? Do you listen with all the lights on? With lights on but dimmed? With lights pointed in specific directions? With lights off?

 

Yes, everything our senses detects colors the experiences of our other senses.

Id prefer mine dimmed a little I suppose. But I dont try to think about that too much and often close my eyes anyway.

 

I go for yellowish lighting, dimmed halfway or more.

 

For concentrated listening and real three dimensional experience i always close my eyes and shot the lights.

 

I like somewhat subdued light at about 2700K light frequency.

BTW- Unbelievable view out your window. Nice to have the money for better things, is it not.

 

Those pictures were NOT taken at my house! I grabbed them off Google images as illustrations. My listening room is what you might expect a starving artist school teacher to occupy, along with wife, grandkids, students, etc.

 

With curtains open on a sunny day.



And yes, I have moved the speakers, its a very old picture.

 

^^^^^ "And yes, I have moved the speakers, its a very old picture." Think of the time you saved yourself with that preemptive strike!

I do most of my listening with extremely low lighting, mostly with eyes closed.

 

Eyes closed and lights preferably off.

 

When its dark I use the power light from my CD player to illuminate the way towards the record player, thats about all its good for ;^)

( I kid )

 

Always dimmed for serious music listening.
Three lava lamps, a couple of candles.
I have a flashlight by my CD library so I can pick another album to play.
I listen to a lot of music with the TV on and volume muted of course.
Mostly sports....
Glen

 

I have a couple of lamps with silk shades. I can turn one off or have both on. I rarely listen with no lights on.

 

I like the lighting in the 1st photo.

Does it affect your listening? Quite likely so, you can read all about cross-sensory effects by Googleing the lab at Cambridge with a similar name.

The photo with all the windows likely will have SQ issues due to lack of diffusion/absorption - I like being able to look out my big windows and just accept that problem.

I prefer dim lighting. Some of the newer gear allows turning off all the panel lights. Total darkness is good with Floyd.

Sometimes I like to put a slide show on my TV while listening (another likely SQ detriment is having the TV there).

 

Hampton Bay makes some cheap uplights that you can hide behind things to create "atmosphere" - I just bought two of them for behind some bookshelves. warms up the room a bit

 

Like many others, I find it easier to concentrate on the music with dim lighting to no lighting.

 

I have a Phillips Hue system in my music room. I used a Jimi Hendrix poster as a template for the lighting motif. Dimmed low for night listening, it creates a nice relaxing environment.

 

I always build a "room with a view" to make it fun even when the Stereo is off.
If I lived in Fort Lauderdale I would wish to have Madonna's home.
It's on the Intercoastal Waterway with a 270 degree view of the waterfront as speedboats and bikinis go flying by.
Great place to put my stereo.

 

For me, the lower the better.

 

I have four recessed ceiling lights (you can see two in my Avitar) in my room. They are on a dimmer, so I can adjust the lighting according to the mood

 

Lighting is massively important in my mind. For all things...

We have one of these which dims and gives off killer warm light with the right bulbs (like second pic):


And one similar to one of these that doesn’t dim but gives off awesome warm light:

 

Hey, it's about the music anyways.

 

For a minute there I thought you were trolling us all.

 

I'm pretty much standardized on the Philips Hue lights so yes, I do considers lights to be important for ambiance and mood but I don't have a specific setting for music. I usually select the light scene that match the time of day but sometime I experiment with different settings.

 

BTW, some LEDs can create an RFI issue... may be best on a different circuit

 

human bodies can make good absorbers if you put them in the right places...